CXXXII - (Re) leituras -- The world until yesterday -- what can we learn from traditional societies ?, by Jared Diamond, comments by André Bandeira

People tend to make comparisons between vivid experiences they recently had, and reality as they see it. But it was'nt always like that .The way we see our experience also depends on the way we see imminence, emergence, and how we cope with reality. In the Middle ages, in Europe, people used to come across more often with the supernatural. In a world shaped by an atheist, of jewish background, such as Jared Diamond, reality is no epiphany of whatever supernatural, but just a neverending postponement of an overwhelming pain, simplily able to switch off our mind, for good, at a certain point. Jared is old, he won't be around for very long. He is no Darwin, maybe he was a little bit coarse in denouncing tribal wars in New Guinea, with names on it, which caused a lot of fear, as the western society began to take control of some, hitherto, «savage areas». This book is no emulation of that rhetorical device which mankind, compared to an woman called Earth, in her forties, is an event wich began happening some minutes ago. I seems to take the same path, when Jared explains how traditional societies display what we have been doing most of our time, as Homo Sapiens Sapiens, on Earth (60.000/100.000 years long). He takes samples of these once called «Primitive contemporaries», in the arctic regions (Inuit) in Africa ( the !Kung), in Bolivia(the Ashe) and, most of all, among the New Guinea mountain people, where he spent years in a row, as an ornitologist. But Jared, who would never be any Darwin, in a world of round-the-clock communications and self-expressive narcisism (where reflexion tends to be replaced by guess-work and obnoxious reactions), shows an incredible degree of egocentrism. This is no ornitologist book, neither an anthropological or geography one ( now, the once self-described, bio-geographer Jared Diamond, is teaching Geography in UCLA, the time when geopolitics has been resuscitaded, after the beheading of the double-headed tiranny of the Cold War). Among many reasonable advices, such as not allowing the remaining world languages to die out (poliglotism is, f.i., a preventive against Alzheimer), replace our proud civil rights, litigant-happy judicial system, with conciliatory mechanisms, and drastically change our diet, Jared Diamond doesn't put forward any compelling new theory. Should he do it, as a scientist, and not merely a Pulitzer Prize winner? The fact is that, between the lines, he furthers a very typical doctrine and a proud agenda. Therefore, if he, by all means, remains ideological, still he deserves to be challenged because he has fundamental flaws within whichever theory he made close tight to his field-notes In this book, he came a long way from being an ornitologist, as far as a social-engineer of self-help. Once got in here he just sounds as an old priest preparing his tomb in a closed building, while walled by determinism, scientific arrogance and a strange stubborn dyslexia. I give you just an example: all his work is in accordance with the late american anthropology, in the sense that the primitive societies were no paradise as the democratic and revolutionarist Europe assumed to be, all that with a tipping point at Rousseau´s influence. Honestly, there is no «state of Nature» besides a never-ending state of war. But he says that in New Guinea, the best show-case for those kind of «states of nature», there is an incredible number of living languages with completely different origins, being spoken in a very narrow, albeit until recently secluded area. All these languages seem to derive from very different sources. Well, it doesn't even cross his mind, while reading his carefully taken notes, that if that region has been secluded from the western civilization, may be it has also been crossed by ancient migrations and a complex archaic History which we're not discussing yet, perhaps because we can't take notes thereof. In conclusion: these «primitive societies» seem to be so primitive as our own primitiveness in a World History where we keep restraing the sources, for the sake of a ruminating heavy consciousness, and put it directly in the foundations of our Academy. No wonder that the new doctrine which the officiant of a tentative new world order, not strange to ecologist tiranny, has labeled it as «constructive paranoia». That means, we should take care with the potential lethality of things we do everyday in our ordinary lives. Yes,we should. And one of those lethal things we do, indeed,everyday, it is taking notes as in a detective story, without putting under scrutiny how much we load of ideological contamination, every step of the way, since we decided to have research, as a purpose in life. Jared Diamond didn't see it and he made us all look in just one direction. One day we'll all suffer from some kind of sclerosis. But some of us won't be longing any more for recognition as a hindsight. That his a step toward thought sclerosis: what we see well, that's only what we compulse from our notes.

CXXXI (Re)leituras -- La Arqueologia y la Etnohistoria - un encuentro andino, Edit. by John Topic, comments by André Bandeira

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This is the ultimate in Archeoloy and Ethnohistory on the Andean region (Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Argentina) that means on the Inca civilization. It is a common task undertaken by the « Instituto de Estudios Peruanos» and the Institute of Andean Research, in New York. It is also an honour to the most famous ethnohistorian of Peru, Maria Rostworovsky. What do we learn about this? First, the book is built on a cumulation of field reports, produced by Archeologists, as well as reports made by Ethnohistorians, which are followed by the stocktaking of their discussions. Second: one learns more, by reading the final pages, than all the -- I would say forensic -- support reports from the field. Third: the conclusions are full of ideology, something which builds a rather steep contrast with the punctillious description of the field work. As someone states in the end: ethnohistorians have to transform words (in the documents) in words ( both in the discussions and in the conclusions) whereas Archeologists have to transform pottery and fragments in words, and, then, words of Archeology, again, in words of History.What are the main points? Well, what mostly caught my eye was the following 1 - The so called «socialist Empire» which, once upon a time, the cold-war Historian Arnold Toynbee (one of the creators of the most recent and influential ideological synthesis of History) was not what ideologues really wanted to, in their sociological endeavours. The Inca came a long way, from a hunter-gatherer background, to incremental agricultural communities and, then, state enterprises, but they managed a high degree of pluralism, and even put into practiece what Toynbee praised, in his theory of Empires' rise and fall.They entertained a vague border, where alliances and conquest set different standards. So, there is no reason for calling the Inca Empire as any reason for a looming latin-american national socialism.2 -- Maria Rostworovsky (I hope that nobody comes up with any suggestion that she «must be jewish»...!) says that in Ethnohistory, especially if one has to resort to mithology, there are much more things in common among the andean cultures, that in Economics, where one is confronted to a wide variety of patterns.3 -- The ending is perhaps much ideological, though. Rostworovsky ventures that andean myths have an absence of the patriarch, or of the father-model. Andeans prefer myths where the relationship between mother and child, and brother and sister, are much more vivid than that one of the father, who either is absent, he has died, or has been slayed. She states that neither the universal prohibition of parricide nor incest are visible in andean myths. She adds that the isolation which andeans have experienced, for centuries long, cuts them off from the asian and european pathway, despite having been built on a harsh struggle against deserts, droughts, tropical climate shifts, forests and huge natural barriers.

Conclusion: as a matter of fact, Maria Rostworovsky steps on the train of the previous ideological interpretations she criticizes. She only widens the ideological buzz floating about a still fragmentary archeological evidence. She even finds support in psychoanalysis, a very recent practice, which has so much successes spread around, as the millenia-experience of the andean people remains unknown. This book makes me so fearful of the «studies» which are always evoked to support a new ground-breaking ideology as the one of «marriage for all». Here, one can read extensively on a variety of clues to support incestuous relationships, as well as a case for a kind of extensive family appertunance, out of which no individual life is conceivable or even sensible. Ideology cannot be avoided, and there it is at full steam. Take care.

CXXX (Re)leituras -- A Study of History, by Arnold Toynbee, comments by André Bandeira

It's a long, long way to Tipperary. This classic on History was so much political! The more we write, on an Internet sheet, the more we go beyond books, where a kind of thourough thesis was supposed to be laid within covers. After all, Internet has helped us to write and read continuously, as it happened once with radio and TV. We swim in a kind of plasma which has only changed its consistency, since the times people were leavening their bioma, through words, gestures and expressions. We call it citizenship, «modern life», contemporaneity, whatever. I really think that the invention of printing made things more difficult, by means of facilitating them, since we didn't change our minds, we just amplifyied them. After all, Toynbee is no genious. He still tells History with a narrow set of moving characters. He masters Ancient Greek and Latin, but he cannot express India, neither Asia in his western History, albeit his extensive resources. This «Study of History» (not «on History») is no philosophical work, but it has a lot of religious. He sums-up History in 16/21 Civilizations, he spells them with three kinds of achievement, and he leads all that through a kind of weaving texture, better expressed by the ancient chinese dualism of Yin-Yang (first Yin, of course, otherwise he wouldn't have his Yang as the thing which is always present and never visible or, in other words, there is always a foundation for the tiranny of «whateverism», when freedom for anything doesn't leave one sole thing up). Let's say that Toynbee dances on a one-two/one-two/two-three step. He is superb in finding the intertwinement between «universal state» and «universal religion». He really manages to find the cultural forces which really define periods in History, thus satisfying Voltaire's claim that History shouldn't be a recitation of Kings and battles only (neither solely Civilizations). Of course he doesn't fall either in a continuum of tables of numbers, as the marxist «École des Annales» did. But he doesn't suceed in. Toynbee, despite being an anglican, still remains too much papist, a kind of stubborn hegemonist, a gambler who lost his bet but didn't lost his grip. Reading this classic of the Cold War, only urges us to look for other Civilizations which Toynbee didn't account for. I don't care if they are Civilizations lowsly deffameted by UFO chasers and other storytellers. After all, Caral in Peru, with its solid 3000 years B.C. was still unknown to Toynbee. It goes the same for the inception of the Maya culture, 1000 years before what was acknowledged, when Toynbee wrote. There are other things which the «unarmed civilian» of Cold War, who Toynbee was, couldn't guess at all. The older globalizations in archaic History, and this latter itself. Still, Toynbee got to be read again. He has three volumes devoted to the intertwinement of Civilizations, something he coined the difference between limes and limen (the military borderline which ultimately works against any Empire vs. the transitional room by which civilizations accommodate among them). In a world of immediacy, so typical of a Civilization about to commit suicide, there was some Samuel Huntington who devoted to this very matter only one volume, from time to time way misinformed in History and other times unreliable.

CXXIX(Re)leituras -- Die Hanse, von Karl Pagel, Bemerkungen von André Bandeira

Die Hanse, der kaufmannische, militär und politischerVerband, von Brügge, in Flandern, bis zum Nowgorod in Russland, den ein Maximum von 77 deutschen Städte aufgebaut haben, hat wegen einer drei Jahrhunderten Zeitstrecke, gedauert und hat die europäische Geschichte brandmarkiert. Warum dieses Buch, das von einen nicht-Historiker, in 1938 geschrieben wurde und in 1941, in der nazi Deutschland, ohne die Schaden des Zensurs herausgegeben worden ist? Das kann geradeaus antwortet werden sein: weil alles was in  Deutschland geschehen ist, ebensosehr in nazi Deutschland, war nicht eine Terrorerzählung die nur in Hollywood, als dämonischen und magischen Zeiten darstellt werden kann. Das Buch ist seriös, umfasseden und tief. Dieses meint weder keine nazi Nostalgie noch keine deutsche kollektive Schuld Kultivierung. Aber was interessant ist -- falls wir eine unabhängige Analyse vorstellen -- kann nicht, ebensowenig, ein historische Beweis, irgendeiner europäischen Zukunft. Ein seriös Schrifsteller darf die Hanse akkurat beschreiben, ohne irgendein «Wofür?» zu befolgen. Was kann man davon lernen? Die Hanse wurde von Lübeck allmählich geleitet. Die hansichen Städte haben Ausnahmen in dem Netzwerk des Hoheitprivilegen und Steuern des Feudalismus des kaiserlichen Imperiums gewahrleistet. Sie wurden von Rathausleute geleitet, die obwohl kein Aristokraten waren, eine starke soziale Differenzierung inzwischen die Städte, ebensowenig auf keinen Fall vernachlassen haben. Je «die Luft in der Stadt frei mächte», desto die Regelungen des täglichen Lebens strenger wurde. Obwohl die Hanse viele Kontoren in Ost und Westsee gehabt hat, die Mischung mit der einheimischen Völker, fast verboten war. Die Kontorn wirkten als extraterritorialen Botschaften die die ausländischen Sprachen zu lernen vermeidten und nur durch Dolmetschern, mit der Eiheimischen, Kontakt machten. Das Feudalismus hat immer von dieser Ausnahmen profitiert, um Finanzierung zu finden und gelegentlich und routinerweise es zu bedrohen, entweder durch  die Wiederherstellung  der feudalen Rechte oder die Hanse durch die Seeräuberei zu plundern. Aber die Hanse hat ein Leibild gefordert: wenn Schottland und England sich organisiert haben, sie haben auch die Piraterie verlassen und sie wandelten um die Seefahrt. Die hansischen Städte haben die Reform angenommen, deswegen sollten sie durch das Gehege von Karl den V. zu halten. Aber die Struktur des kaiserliches römisches Imperium hat, Frankreich und England andersweitig, niemals einer Nation entwickelt. Gleicherweise, die Hanse, die niemals eine nationale Solidarität entworfen hat, und die in dem Friede von Utrecht, seinen Spitzpunkt bekommen hat, wurde in der dreizig Jahre Krieg zersplittert. Es ist zu leicht, die Hanse als zuständig für das Pflügen des Kapitalismus zu darstellen weil es gibt kein Kapitalismus als geistliche Bestimmung, oder Beruf der Geschichte. Ohne die teutonische Orden, und seinen Ausdhenungdrang, die Hanse wurde ummöglich sein. Was Kapitalismus gennant wird, war, in der Hanse, nur die Umwandlung der feudalistischen Privilegen zu die kollektiven Zünfte die die Hanse gefuhrt haben. Es war die ritualistiche Strutktur dieser Zünfte, die später Recht gennant wurde die selber die, gleichfalls der Organisation des Handwerks selbst, eine Lage in der sozial Hierarchie, für die Handwerker fand. Es gibt keine Entwicklung des Feudalismus. Die Hanse war nur eine Ausdehnung der hierarchischen Lösungen die die Folge vom Krieg und Friede enthalten haben. Und die Beschreibung der Versammlungen der Rathaus Zünfte, die das Buch uns angibt ist nicht anders von heutzutage Zeremonie inzwischen der Firmen Aufsichträte.

CXXVIII (Re) Leituras - Evil in Modern Thought - an alternative History of Philosophy, by Susan Neiman, commenst by André Bandeira

This one comes from Princeton, and was written in Israel. The author has an intriguing sentence at some point, when one turns the page. The classics have doubted of the existence of the world we see, not because they thought it could be unreal, but because the real world could be frightfully real.And, here, the author sets the scene with a dramatic move, disguised in thesis. Some hundred pages further, there is a recurrence, when she states that, in something taken as a disputed hypothesis, it was not a possibility which was in balance, but the Impossible which was incrementing its probability. The book reviews all main  Illuminists, goes as far as the Frankfurt School and John Rawls, displays a anti-hegelian flavour, idolizes Hannah Arendt, and establishes two landmarks in the historiography of  the question «Why Evil?»: the Earthquake of Lisbon, in 1755, and Auschwitz, in the Second World War. The book addresses what we may call «complex metaphysics», criticizes the seductive doctrines with totalitarian consequences and aims at sketching an alternative History of Philosophy, by recentering it in Theodicey. It also widens the human objective responsibility, at the sources of Evil (or tells us not to discuss natural Evil and concentrate in man-made Evil), and ends up in resuscitating the metaphysical tradition, where the philosopher elegantly gives the floor to the cleric. Calling attention to the modern complexity of Evil is never out of place. It is not because something gets consensual, that it turns out not being completely forgotten by media demagogy. Unfortunately, this is one more attempt to usher judaism in a Noah's Arch being built in th West. If it is true that totalitarianism may easily descend from seductive philosophical fashions -- and that explains the degree of european collaborationism with the nazi Evil -- it doesn't explain why nazism itself had deep cultural and psychological roots in Europe, long before illuminism and even before Christianity emerged. This means, that a good critique of the enthusiasms in western illuminism, leaves many important things, in western mind, out of hand. No wonder, the admiration for Hannah Arendt, who in «Eichmann in Jerusalem» managed to inculpate as far as the death penalty, the not so crude Eichmann, for his petty but decisive responsibility, as bureaucrat-in-chief of the Holocaust. As a matter a fact, Arendt was in a state of euphoria, when she advocated the sole official death penalty carried out in Israel, so far. And, as she concedes, probably she had her soul empty. What does this mean, «soul»? Perhaps, that such a certainty in the rhetorical flux of arguments, such brilliance in a theological debate, keeping in mind, at any moment, all what has been accounted for, leaves us completely dry, debating in a cemetery. The book juggles superbly with the rhetorical tricks who made famous many western philosophers and ends up with a conclusion which may well be brilliant: at some junctures, Providence is excrucitingly invisible, as in the Book of Job. We have to be acquainted to not being at home, even within ourselves. All this is very «sexy» in Philosophy, especially when this latter is a political cover-up. «Sufficient reason», as the jesuit Luis the Molina has, once, manufactured, maybe is  what we apport to an unreasonable reality, but reality -- no matter how unreasonable -- is sufficient in being real. Instead, it is love in practice, pure emotion as the summing-up of all vital energies, which replaces all suicidal attempts in either conceiving God, or keep staring at His finger. Maybe Philosophy, instead of returning to a psychologically westernized metaphysics, should find out what was creative and original in the western thinkers, besides hard core bibliography. The gadgets of human living engineering are worthier than any universal wisdom, mostly when this latter arrogates to be encyclopedic or available in a network. First and foremost, even a philosopher is due to create, and  then the historian may talk about it. Philosophy is no background reporting. Philosophy is no judicial expertise. In trying to interrogate Good, we just perfected more Evil, got heavier and more dyslexic, and tainted even more our hands with blood. Definetly, we have to revisit the classical greek double mind and stop being olympic pagans, disguised in five o'clock tea conversation. In the imminence of any asteroid fallout on Earth we still would have an Eternity to complete our Humanity among ourselves.

CXXVII (Re)leituras - I Sofisti, da Mario Untersteiner, commenti da André Bandeira

Questo è un libro che fa la genealogia della Democrazia e non più, la sua etimologia (demos: popolo; kratia: potere). Scritto nel 49 da un erudito in Filologia classica, non deve essere  venduto, comè si di un libro di Filosofia si trattasse. È un resoconto materiale. Mario Untersteiner scrive nel 49, quando l’Italia era dominata dei antichi partigiani comunisti che non salirono al potere, semplicemente perche Stalin ha eseguito gli accordi da Yalta, lasciando l’Italia sulla sfera occidentale. Si può riconoscere la tradizione illuminista del’Alto Adige, che ha prodotto gente come Filangeri, però anche come Gianbattista Vico, equidistante sia della tirania illuminata francese, sia del’imperialismo settario anglosassone.  La Democrazia nasce della Guerra, in particolare, in questo caso, quella de Atene nel Peloponeso. Percioè, la Guerra contro i Persiani fa qualchi Sofisti, come Gorgia, vedere che, aldilà della solidarità fra le famiglie dei aristocrati greci, e, doppo le riforme di Sólon ( e la conseguente perdita di potere in favore dei cittadini marinai) c’è una stessa natura che stabilisce un arco comune tra gli adversari. L’uomo è la misura di tutte le cose, sì, anche tra greci e persiani. Serve misurare, perche il uomo che percepisce è una realtà tra i fenomeni che fluiscono e la cosidetta filosofia pré-socratica aveva  esagerato gli esempi de fenomeni  incommensurabile.  Sotto Il segno del’Apollo delfico,  questo vuole dire che ci sono «logoi» (veritá/raggioni) contraditori e che la vera sapienza è, primo, la riconoscenza dell’umanità inesorabile di tutti fenomeni e, secondo, la collezione di tutte le esperienze, la Storia (una Storia arcaica che, oggi, sconosciamo). Non c’è, qui, nessun cetticismo. Per questo,  da Hippia si diceva che, in un tempo dovè c’era bisogno di argomentare velocemente in piazza, lui aveva sviluppata una tècnica di memorizzare grandi quantità di datti. Si diceva che Gorgia aveva uma dottrina secreta, imparata dei magi persiani, che contradiceva la sua filosofia relativistica predicata all’aperto. Crizie, dove Il padre era stato uno dei quattrocento oligarchi, ed anche lui stesso, con Calicle, diventerebbe  il constituzionalista dei trenta tiranni, completava cosi la riputazione dei sofisti, come aristocrati testardi che avevano simulato l’apertura sulle piazze, soltanto per manipolare la folla, persino  iniziati nelle arti più secrete dell’enemico. Contro questa dottrina, è stata finalmente sollevata l’utopia totalitaria delle idee platoniche, oppure la majestà senza identità de Aristotele ed Alessandro Il Grande. Si è vero che i Sofisti erano aristocrati chi, in tempo di crisi e pericolo mortale, giocavano al fuòco perche la folla aveva distrutto la memoria dell’esperienza più antica dei greci ad altri popoli attichi, Socrati non è stato capace di rifiutare la bevanda avelenata della città. Infatti, Socrate è stato molto più democratico che i sui enemici, i Sofisti, però, qui, esserene democratico significa essere fatto a pezzi. Lui si è sottommesso à la cità, dove la Democrazia, la voce dei cittadini, è stata fatta la soprana assoluta, più importante che la vita umana, oppure non fosse lui un antico soldato. Invece, i Sofisti, hanno considerata la ricchezza della memoria più importante che la città e, per quello, hanno provato vivere la crise permanente della democrazia, nonostante ne fossero incredenti. In conclusione, i Sofisti – chi, secondo Il autore, discendono del’virtuosismo magico dei pitagorici – si sono mischitatti nella folla ed hanno data la forza (kratia) della magia, al popolo (il demos). Fuorchè l’etimologia, questa è la genealogia, invece: democracia è, di nascita, la forza camuffatta.

CXXVI - Winston Churchill, by Sebastien Haffner, comments by André Bandeira

A short biography, for adding to so many. The author begins with describing the life of Sir Randolph Churchill, Winston's father, who arguably was «mentally ill». And the report ends up with the coordinates of Winston Churchill's tomb, side by side with his father. Randolph was an unfortunate politician, with some talent, cut short by an early death. Winston admired him very much, as any young boy who takes his father as an idol, but his father never really shared very much with his son and, the few he cared, always left a pessimistic imprint. Winston stayed an agnostic but he believed in Destiny. He was superstitious and 1/4 of his blood, from his mother's side, was american indian. He picked a personal fight with Hitler, who, mesmerized by Karl May's novels, spent many of his young free time, playing cowboys and indians, where he always chose to be an indian, and won. The result of this duel was the end of the British maritime Empire as well as the design of a continental empire in Europe. At the center of this bet, there are two indians, one real and one imaginary, as if the victims of one of the worst genocides in History had put a spell on the cubs of a ruling race. Winston Churchill seems to be the result of a political culture where Tradition floats at the top of changing waves, with no clear distinctive line between their flow and ebb. He certainly belongs to an elite, a very well constructed one, where many diverse individuals step in, but where the entry remains narrow. Nevertheless, their life has no easy ways. The champions sleep light and with their weapons unseathed, as in Carlyles's designs. That doesn't make them more noble -- they sound just like an uneasy imitation of some ancient contentment, a sort of Roman Antiquity played by the people who threw down the Empire. Churchill oscillated between a left-wing liberalism (when there was no socialist in the Commons) and -- according to the author -- a pre-fascist reactionarism. Since he became one of the major players of WWII, and in its outcome, he still tried to exploit what happend after the war came to an end, basically trying to restore a conservative Europe, he used to know. He didn't get it from the USA, besides all he stocked from them, during the war. He even went to Stalin, to get his share unscathed, and he got there fulfilled commitments as by no any other power. The author is seduced by the tremendous role played by Churchill in History (there would be one until Churchill and another, afterwards) but he measures the unintended consequences of any personal imprint in the flow of events. And he states that Churchill, by allowing the emergence of a new order, he contributed to the Revolution. What kind of Revolution he's referring to, besides ephemeral designs during the Cold War and the ensuing fragmentation of the contemporary world, remains obscure. Churchill didn't contribute to anything he didn't want. Many things happened despite his will, but his achievements are most of all in perfecting his different and timely interventions, as if they had been designed before, in his subconscious belief in Destiny. In conclusion: Churchill basically got what the wanted, even adjourning several times Death. But if the british political Tradition always enhanced these poliical dynamos above the line of cumulative traditions, it never prevented its own entropy  either. It is as if it was burning out all its stock of personality, while exchanging a slippery foothold in reality, with moral superiority. But morals are there to be followed, not just  to be admired.

CXXV - Dog sense, by John Bradshaw, comments by André Bandeira

Should a pitbull be sacrified after it had slaughtered a child in the house where both lived? The author tells us that there is always a scandal, in England, everytime it comes about to media the liquidation of a dog for whatever reason. And, of course this extends to other animals. There are millions of animals being slaughtered, round the clock, for our nourrishment, as well as other human beings, at the end of a causal chain where a human purpose or conscious neglect may be identified. This book is written by a Bristol specialist who fostered an Anthropozooic Institute to care about the conviviality among Human and dogs. The book may easily be inserted in a market cluster where dog trainers compete among themselves to improve (and also certify) that conviviality. The competition erupts in the media, comes back to books, slides into Law and involves Science. Where does Ethics have a say? Everywhere, everytime. One thing is certain: the market cluster tends to be regulated as the rest of the markets, but definitely depends on some kind of power institutionalization which defines the enclusterd market.The market is no human condition, but a cultural and civilizational choice. It didn't always exist, it won't exist forever. Nevertheless, since we found our base in a Civilization, what is sick in it, and what symptoms emerge here, in this fever surge? Animal Rights campaigns are normally based in an analogical reasoning, which surpasses the dignity of one sole species, and extends it to an universe of sentient beings (sometimes even going beyond the partition into «species») and thereon, it works in terms of general Welfare, as did Jeremy Bentham. This path is contemporary of the levelling of criteria concerning minorities' statutes, where some relevant characteristics are enhanced in order to institutionalize a new set, or universe, where the injuctions are at hand of any sovereign citizen. It is a path generally taken by what some mirror as «Left» (but not only so, due to the intrinsic vagueness of the concept), it resorts to some extra-civilizational elements, notably religious ones, and follows the rules of the political market. One of the «Market» virtues dwells in the provision of information, normally in the reverse sense of its processing. It answers a human need, it is a human achievement but, as it happens with many species, Human kind is still in the middle of a huge vital experiment, of which inception and aims, doesn't master very well. The author gives us notice of very fragmentary and isolated data about registered dangers involving pittbulls, as well as recent efforts for a specific legislation on this race. He's very optimistic about the future of conviviality between Man and dog but his optimism sounds too simplistic and marketing, taking into account all his premisses. Mankind has only managed to domesticate about 20 species, the studies on animal conscience and mental faculties are still very much un-holistic and raise a lot of still unanswered questions, in a field where science is young. At a certain point, in a recent debate, some said that the life of a dog (or «my dog») would be worthier than the one of Hitler or the one of Breivick, the terrorist. They did it, replying to some who pondered that the dog should be liquidated because any human life, the most repulsive it might be, would always be worthier than the one of a dog. Of course this all should be inserted in different strategies, or policies, in the market-place of ideas.The face-valued emotions have a provocation element, to catch by surprise the indifferents and get a stage. But the sudden eruption of the debate may set a very frightening scene. Hitler himself was a vegetarian, he certainly cherished more the life of his dog than the one of many of his kin, or enemies. In the USSR (but not only so), there have been carried out many experiments with human beings and Nature in general, to prove theories such as the one of Lyssenko, which was a forgery. If the modern western society (and not only it) stands, in practice, for a field of social, political, and moral experiments, where what is true depends very much on human mentality trends, should it be there other criteria than the one of trial and error? Is it really there an innate right of self-defense when  both the concepts of «self» and defense have been eroded in such a way that Sodoma and Gomorrah are just an oppressive dam, adjourning the flow of a major flood, as the narrative in the Bible implies?

CXXIV - O Homem, by Aluísio Azevedo, comments by André Bandeira

This novel has the same characteristics of «O Cortiço» (The bee-hive,  harbinger of the modern «Favela», the contemporary urban slum). Indeed, it had been written before. It is set out from the same naturalistic premisses, that means, it has a character, the physician Dr. Lobão, who knows everything about what is going to happen to the protagonist, Magdá, the daughter of an old aristocrat, who, by disgrace, won't manage to get married. The woman is beautiful, has a good dowry, but she had been brought with a half-brother she thought to be just a stepson of her widowed father. Having been brought up together, when they come of age, they swear each other what the feelings were already hatching, till the old man states that any marriage between them, is impossible. The secret he kept for so many years has to be revealed, he pronounces both of them brother and sister, and the son departs to Europe, from where he'll never return. The novel intends to be naturalistic, and is immediately set by the Physician who -- in a modern way -- sums up all the bibliography predicting Magda's future hysteria. But the way how the young adolescent, in love with her stepbrother, shifts to brotherly affection, at the revelation, is simply not convincing. The brother dies in Portugal and, then, it begins the familiy chase for a bridegroom. In a sequence, Magda refuses a rich but ageing bachelor, a brilliant, but sick bureaucrat and a dandy. Then, in an episode, she happens to be carried in the arms of a robust portuguese quarry worker, who is about to marry one of his own, in the slum nearby. She simply cannot stop dreaming of his robust arms, flat belly and proeminent breast. The rest of the novel, which had been incepted at the pace of a grouchy physician, mixes up the reality of a distant worker who's going to get married, and an aristocratic bachelor who dreams, in her delirious letarghias, that she got married to him. As a matter of delirious facts, it is not him. In her dreams, chased by an authoritarian father so onirical has her dreams, the workman is no workman, but a sophisticated aristocrat who desguised himself as a quarry worker just to get close to her. Magda gets crazier and crazier and when the happy marriage happens in the slum ahead, she invites the freshly married couple. Then, pretending to make them taste a fine wine, poisons both of them to death. She narrowly escapes to be lynched by the mob, thanks to the same grouchy physician who had predicted almost everything, and shields his patient with his body. Questioned by the Police, and before being committed to a Psychiatric Institution, she reckognizes the corpses, she states that the man was her husband and that she killed him because he had cheated her with that woman liying aside. The novel is a promise of a naturalistic proselytism when suddenly it mouths in an almost real, golden delirium. Did the author want to prove that natural erotical inclinations have to be fulfilled, despite parenthood, or did he want to describe that there was a paralel romantic world that no Physician, albeit very prepared, could never avert? Maybe the Physician was the author himself and he loved the romantic madness that, in Émile Zola's Paris would be wiped out by the next local revolution. The author became a diplomat of Brazil and, being already one of the most successful novelists of his time, never really wrote again.

CXXIII - Socialisme libéral, by Carlo Rosselli, comments by André Bandeira

It is very exciting to read this book, the only one Carlo Rosselli wrote, this said in 1930, in French, speciallly when the copy one has in hand, had been signed by Carlo Rosselli himself and even contains one important correction he wrote by hand ( about Mazzini's intentions). Carlo Rosselli was an oppositionist to Mussolini, who fought in the same volunteer italian force, during the spanish civil war, side by side with italians such as Berneri, this one having been slaughtered by the communists. He himself, died, in the aftermath of the spanish civil war, victim of a pay-back with french rightists, in the south of France. Rosselli coined the term «liberal socialism» as Mussolini had coinded the expression «totalitarian». Basically, Rosselli takes a distance from the marxist dogma in socialism, he says that Marx was wrong in his catastrophism, in his theory of the plus-value and in his deterministic image of «class struggle». He honors Marx for waking up the workers who didn't have neither the culture, nor the means for reacting to a society which condemned them to live and die like beasts of burden. But he points out that the working class has, in the meantime, made so much progress as the capitalist society itself, in such a way that the vindications of socialism have to be more on the cultural side, striving for more individual freedom and morals. Thus, Socialism has the same aim of keeping a freer and freer society where the fundamental rights are respected and the mechanisms of a liberal democratic society are an end in itself. Of course there is always the bourgeois liberalism in the way, but the Burgeoisie itself is plural, with segments open to innovation and more freedom, coexisting with other segments who just want to conserve the privileges taken from the Aristocrats. In theoretical terms, he subscribes to Bernstein, the revisionist, telling that, in Socialism « die Bewegung ist alles» (the movement is everything) and the aim is open, depending on any individual and social filling. Politically, he lines up with the Labour Party, in England, and Proudhon's tradition, in France. Rosselli, who wrote this 80 years ago, and who paid with his life, for his commitment, is balanced, tolerant, precise and very civilized. He comes from a jewish familiy from the North of Italy, has a strong connection with one of the world's cultural capitals, Florence, and he even could anticipate the socialist outset for gay rights and animal rights. But there is something disturbing in this very civilized character: he boasts that everything that Mussolini was doing in Italy would cater for the italians surpassing their primitive and fragmentary political society, to rationalize Italy and give birth to a liberal society after the fall of the dictator. This proved to be optimism: Rosselli describes the fascist movement as «groups of outcasts, criminals, hallucinated,  and also idealists at the forefront of a political and romantic delirium...». Then, he describes the italian national character as one lacking autonomy of thought, with a «very rich inner life, although very much one-sided» and «morally lazy». I' d rahter think that it was this kind of «british» vision which catered for Mussolini to stay in power, to be demoted in 1943, while still keeping on his side a large portion of the italian population, and fight a civil war that some say only ended up in the sixties. Two final remarks on this very consensual and obviously remarkable man: when he says that the fight of the oppressed should be mostly for Education, he has a biased idea of what to educate about, and he leaves a slight scratch on those ones which, by lack of words, have to consent in being labeled as «ignorants». Second, he says, something that has been attributed to Churchill: the speech on «blood, sweat and tears». Apparently,  it was Garibaldi who said something very similar, in a much riskier situation for the speaker, 70 years before the astute and resourceful Churchill had done it.

CXXII - A Vida como ela é, by Nelson Rodrigues - Comments by André Bandeira

«Life as itself is», could well be the translation for the title of this collection of short stories by Nelson Rodrigues, probably the most important playright of Brazil, during the second half of the XXth Century. He was born in Recife, in the sub-equatorial Northeast, but it was in Rio, as a journalist, where he got most of his fame, and where he died, in 1980. The short stories are a masterpiece, both in sequence as in the pace of gathering critical mass. At the end of the first dozen, or so, one gets stricken, if not revolted, with the pessimistic layout, almost obscene, of the emotional and social wounds, and one hesitates in proceeding to the rest. Almost every story turns around love, sex and marriage (I would say in this order) and they are staged in the traditional Rio families from the suburbs, or the middle class which was moving up to the Copacabana waterfront, in the fifties. They have much of criminal chronicle, which was a job that the author himself, exerted, as a matter of fact, for many years, as a journalist. As he was confronted with a corpse, in a crime scene, probably in the first place, or at the same time as the forensic Police, his short stories have a scent of tragedy and we get addicted to them, as crime novels. Notwithstanding the weight of the North-american crime novel of that time, Nelson Rodrigues’s short stories don’t have the same aim of power rattle and moral cleansing which underpinned authors, such as Dashel Hammet. He is much more humble in his scope. It seems that, by the gathering of  almost identical sories, despite the variations in the plots, that he is proclaiming the doomsday of family and marriage, as institutions inherently contradictory with the hearts and minds of the Rio’s society of that time. In a way, he implodes the building of society, behind the façade and, thereby, he protects a society which was probably at the disposal of the rest of the world’s wildest dreams and perversions. Death very often plays the role of liberation in the intricate web of patriarchalism, coarseness and irony which sets the scene in society, as it did, probably, in the long flow of slavery, immigration and indian mutilation in brazilian History. Nelson Rodrigues is not advocating death, as other latin-americans  novelists could do, because he has a touch of irony and awe, which are able to disarm almost any conclusion jumping. But he seems resolved to leave an almost black-african Magic of bitterness, which sets the night on fire, and which could almost lead him to repeat the same themes into eternity. That is why it is said that theater began by being a ritual and it stayed so, even in the most seductive brazilian soap-operas. In conclusion, a quest: did Nelson Rodrigues believe that there was a guise of love – I mean physical and spiritual love, merged in one and only «natural love»-- which endures all social formats and follows its path, no matter the consequences, as a vital imprint? In that case, theater, both in art, as well as in political engineering, would be the only way of keeping our bodies in peace, away of the human sacrifice of the tribe.

CXXI -- Central African and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora, by Linda M. Heywood (coord.), Jan Vansina, Joseph C. Miller, John K. Thornton, Mary C. Karasch, Elizabeth W. Kiddy & Robert W. Slenes - comments by André Bandeira

Very interesting, and enlightening, collection of essays on the African diaspora in the Americas and, particularly, in Brazil. What strikes me most is that the data available, clearly points out to a majority of  central african stock. I would count about 50% among those who made it to brazilian shores, after the great crossing. There are many cultures mixed up in this demographic tragedy. Bob Marley sings of «redemption songs» to emerge alive from under the decks. How did they manage, though, rooted out of their own homeland as they were, through tribal wars and the the slave industry, to tune together the same «redemption melody»? The authors tell us that, despite the diversity and the estrangement of many central african languages which gathered in the heart of Africa, freshly or for far long, by demography and geopolitics, they also had glued together thanks to a non-african culture. That culture was portuguese. But no «portuguese culture» comes to matter, here, as one could get  to argue, in the chase for any portuguese specificity within an imperial Europe. This portuguese culture, which was no way «iberian», was forged since the maritime expansion by means of the alliance of the portuguese King with the King of Congo and, then, with the Queen Dzinga, northwards of the Kwanza river. The conversion of the congolese aristocracy to Christianity was not superficial, although it was the result of an open native theology, where the magic value of Christianity added up to the animist and islamic blend. One author gives us a very good testimony: at a certain point, a warlord was sentenced to death by the portuguese. Apparently, he decided to convert to Christianity before being executed, because it considered it a good safe-conduct to the other world. But one has more: the portuguese culture was already pregnant of african spirits when it got to Brazil. Maybe -- this is purely my guess -- that is why the portuguese language finally came over the guarany, which was the language already spoken, both by the people and the rulers in Brazil. Portuguese was the river where the different african dialects could transfer their own meanings and make them flow, even if it was to resist, for decades, the slave-traders in the woods of Brazil, as Zumbi did in Palmares. As a matter of fact, the dream of an Empire of their own, in a tiny kingdom such as Portugal, had to be, specially after the defeats in North Africa, black african. And the congolese empire found there a very good opportunity to strengthen its position in central Africa. When the african traditions got to Brazil and managed to recognize, through the slave chains and bars, they also rebuilt, in a way, the portuguese-congolese kingdom. Sooner than expected, the white people were already under the spell of that powerful underground kingdom. They could call it superstition but it was already a mutually interesting fusion of peoples which met by seeway. And one cannot understimate the hidden survival code  and strength of any superstition.

CXX - The Life of George Sand, by Joseph Barry, comments by André Bandeira

Joseph Barry arrived in Paris, in 1945, with the american troops and never left. He fell in love with a woman, who was a man, who was credited to be an «homosexual», and who was dead for a long time, when he arrived, despite Victor Hugo phrasing at her burial that « she died, and she became immortal». What strikes me most in this biography, that is its honesty. The author gets carried away by the impetus of George Sand, but he doesn't pretend to make a romantic biography in the style of George Sand, Aurore Dupin. He just admires the character -- probably he shoulders the crush that Georg Sand has imprinted in his foreign invader's heart -- and then, he describes the case the best he can. The result is a very good one, which, I would say, seems to be enough for having an updated knowledge of her, beyond the snapshots of the modern totalitarian media. Who was George Sand, after all, in this biographer's perspective?  George Sand appears to be an unpleasant typhoon of selfishness till the very end, when the time comes for her to disclose her soul. She dies, probably with stomach cancer, in terrible pain, counting one by one, her grand-children, after spending her final days, playing and tutoring each of them as a very classical grandmother would do, and rushing away from the time she lost being other things. But it is not only George Sand who died with cancer. The whole France, which shooted down 25.000 Paris communards, against the «Wall of the Federated», in Père Lachaise's cemetery, died with cancer, too. How could George Sand not sympathize with the miserable being killed by the different revolution crushers, in the streets of Paris? She was a descendent of Maurice of Saxe, a privileged woman in education and wealth, despite all the miseries in her personal conduct. She had no paradise on earth, but she could see outcasts who didn't even have the right to be in hell. How could she see otherwise? She saved four republican soldiers of being shot, after intervening by the side of Louis Napoléon. She saved other people, everyone who asked for her help, in face of imminent death. As an aristocrat she could indulge in the luxury of choosing the position of libertarian socialism, to be extracted gradually from democracy, as a picknick party among young lords, in Spring. She could imagine whatever, and figure it out as a political position. She even could write about it and stop the show, distracting, for moments, the real Destiny brokers, and even rescue fron their claws, a few miserable ones. But she couldn't be one of them. So, what to do, when one cannot fill a never plenishable hole? Maybe compensate on the opposite side, the brute forces which loom on one side. Jesus didn't come for the virtuous. He came for the sinners. And this sinner, George Sand, was saved since the beginning of Times.

CXIX - Maya Jyzn', by Lev Trotsky, comments by André Bandeira

This autobiography, by Lev Davidovitch Bronstein (Trotsky), written in 1930, is so continuous as his theory of «Permanent Revolution», but it is not so vertiginous as it could sound. The blame for the 1917, October Revolution and its atrocities, comes a long way from within tsarism. As a matter of fact, the side of democracy was so vast, and the form of the Tsar's regime, since Peter the Great, was so european in an asian country, that everything one could count as opposition, never really managed to come over its own diversity. No wonder that bolchevism was a kind of moving train where many jumped in,  and many more were kicked out, more due to the laws of Physics than to Politics. The defense that Trotsky makes of himself is plausible, but there is something blind, assertive and demagogical in it. There is even something malignant in his truculence. Taking into account the circumstances -- a bolshevik government which was nothing more than a bunch of putschists in a defeated ally of France and England -- Trotsky was a good diplomat, a good Minister of War and a «cosmopolitan» without diletantism. But he is very much indulgent with the questions posed by History which reverberate as a deafening silence, through the full-steam train of his rhetoric. In his role as a warlord in the Russian civil war I take his realism. All sides involved were just furthering the slaughter they arranged during the Great war and which would only end up in 1945. But what Trotsky catered for the «holy Revolution» in Russia is too ellusive of the chaos within the chaos that the Russian Empire had incepted during the flaming of the Great War, and where all the republican oppositionists just poured oil. Many more than we could account for, died abjectly, just as a result of a «gush of thinking» of the «revolutionarites». No wonder that after the train of violence and abjection is rolling on the rails, that a sudden glimpse of rationality rushes to the head of some, and implacably reduces the steep, to ashes. Lev Trostky states, at a certain point -- with a coarseness, he's not very much aware of -- that, once in his youth, he switched from rationalism, to dialectics. The Trinity of Hegel's Spirit always reminded me that Satan is a spirit too. And it was in this cynicism, where Reason takes a hike, that Trotsky, nevertheless, showed much more rationality than his contemporaries, including the Great Wizard, Lenin. Then, the rival Stalin emerged as Secretary-general, by the hand of Lenin, and Trotsky, as many others, got killed. But  Stalin was not wise, he was as much smart, as bolchevism was just a war smoke-screen. One thing I retain from Trostky's portrait of Kerensky: this latter described the bolshevik revolution as « a slaves' insurrection». As Trotsky rightly points out, Kerensky overlooked the fact that slaves don't want to stay so. Moreover, Kerensky didn't know that historical times had deposited a looming phenomena that came to be called «masses» and -- narcisistic as a democrat can be-- he didn't even know how to pet this new beast. That is why Kerensky got a lowsy role in History and Trotsky got a role, which is still rolling today. It is  a vertiginous role but it has much more followers than Trotsky could have imagined and even more than those followers could figure out. The permanent revolution is very much on its way. Finally why was Trostky so lucid and analytical about the decadence where he was being carried away, and he never analysed the end of tsarism and the self-indulgence of his youth? Did he also want to stay young forever? Or he simplily had a killer instinct, he always hid from the mirror?

CXVIII - Manifesto for the New Intellectual, by Ayn Rand, comments by André Bandeira

Reading this manifesto makes our «statist» prejudices surface. Is it the beginning of a therapy or is it a new addiction? My conspiracy theory (strategy is the conspiracy of life within the mind): Ayn Rand, albeit all her merits in fighting a tiranny which was being sold as the quintessence of freedom, she was fighting a windmill. That has its merits too, but they are D. Quijote's. Rand defended a pure capitalism, which never grew up to be an angel, and, which got blended with many other things, because mankind is plural and historical. But her gesturing, which resorted to brilliant rhetorical blows, never amounted to build a philosophy, as she claimed. It was a new style of being intellectual. The fight within the fight, Rose Luxemburg alluded to, on the theme of «Class struggle», was no major finding, it was only the verification of an european genetic code, where many tribes and cultures, had to accomodate a territory side by side, before the wild, wild Atlantic. The libertarian merits of early capitalism, where given a very bad reputation by a much more pragmatic and ruthless state capitalism, desguised in new clothes and labeled «communism», as a romantic evocation of a pristine past and of a mystical future. But Moscow inspired national-socialism: the once deputy of the italian communist party, Niccolò Bombacci, was gunned down, shoulder to shoulder, with the super-fascists, lake Como behind, his fist in the air, shouting «Long live Socialism! Long live Mussolini!». National-socialists and Bolsheviks partioned the geno and ethnocide of 22.000 officers and foot-soldiers of the Polish Army, in Katyn. These are facts, not episodes. No, Ayn Rand didn't amount to be a philosopher. She was a very good publicist, a master in counter-propaganda, a superb caricaturist of western philosophy. This said, she has no consistency to give a nicer view of the ruins perpetrated by the neo-conservatives, who, at least, didn't have the hipocrisy of hiding behind a novelist. In conclusion: it is true that we live between the Witch Doctor and Attila, in their different blendings, I concede to Ayn Rand. But then, we do not live, we've just been caught. Is the return to pure capitalism, the guarantee to live again, instead of just muddling through? There, we have to resort to the historical analysis and Ayn Rand is too indulgent with the genocides perpetrated by «free-enterprise» (I omit «capitalism») and I'm stupified by her ignorance of the boxer wars and how they did begin (among other wars on «savages»). We have to avoid to be in a «statist state of mind», I agree, but the State's state of fact is much more complex than Ayn Rand depicts it, and surviving is not a choice between oppression and relief, as the dentist-torturer in «The Marathon Man», starring Dustin Hoffman, would have put it.

CXVII- Triste Fim de Policarpo Quaresma, by Lima Barreto, comments by André Bandeira

This novel, possibly translated as «The sad end of Mr. Policarpo Quaresma», is generally described as a novel written by a libertarian writer. Yes, it is from that epoch, whem libertarians didn't have to be rubber-stamped by Ayn Rand to become respectable, but who, nonetheless, stretched from a pacifist Lev Tolstoin, to a genocidal Henri Michel. The writer was a «mulato», with the african and european traits, quite conspicuous in his physiognomy. It is amazing how these characteristics were important, that time. A writer, with such traits, wouldn't be taken seriously, or, alternatively, he had to fight an up-will battle just to be published, not to mention to be respected or live decently. Not everybody had the witchy crafts of Machado de Assis, in the creative streets of old Rio. Lima Barreto died young, as  an alcoholic. In this book, he demonstrates, by means of a model civil servant named Policarpo Quaresma, who devoted all his life to Brazil, how a generous ideal may turn into the hallmark of human tragedy. Policarpo didn't marry, he was a diligent civil servant, who even managed to learn tupi-guarani and who dared to propose it as the official language of Brazil. But he had no relevant studies, he was mostly an auto-didact and the boss who received the proposal, felt himself humilliated, by a subordinate, who knew better than him. Then it comes the consulate of Floriano Peixoto, the military who had congeminated the fall of the monarchy, who became the first vice-president of the new brazilian republic, and the second President, reputed as an authoritarian. Marshall Peixoto belonged to that middle-class in Rio, which flirted jacobinism, which abhorred the portuguese still remnant in the Empire's system,  and who was able to shoot around to get a centralized Brazil rather than a regional, fragmentable federation. That is why Policarpo, who saluted the advent of the Republic as the realm of merit, and who even managed to get close to the Marshall and pass him a memorandum he spent years on, for the rehabilitation of Brazil's agriculture, misunderstands eveything. When former rivals take arms against Floriano Peixoto -- and they end up defeated  (this, at the beginning of a long series of putsches in Brazil) -- the diligent Quaresma dares to ask mercy for some of them, before the death squad lines up. The novel ends with the reader never really knowing whether Mr. Policarpo Quaresma, finishes himself before the death squad, too. Is this the anguished chronicle of a libertarian on the Republic, or a nostalgic evocation of the Empire? Lima Barreto didn't live to tell us. One thing was certain: he longed for a Justice which could never come at gun point. If the scent of the Republic was the one of powder, he, a «mulato», would always be one of the sand bags, or a genetic target, moving in the crossfire.

CXVI – Contos Novos,  Mário de Andrade, comments by André Bandeira

These «New Tales», by Mário de Andrade, who died at 52, in 1945, were projected to be titled «Worse Tales» if they ever had to be accomplished, before death came on the way. Generally, they protest what the week of 1922, strived for: that one could interject modernity in Brasil, without changing deeply social conditions. From the point of view of a bipolar mind, what Mário de Andrade was contending for, was that technological and mental progress would only pierce through, if there were a kind of socialism, to be implemented in Brazil. However, while reading these tales, one gets the notion that Mário de Andrade was very much critic of what socialists and communists were looking for. In the tale «First of May», he describes the generosity of a warlike young worker, ready to punch a policeman, anytime that day, as naif, narcisistic and brute energy, mostly arising from a burgeoning nature than any reasonable consistency. It is the same burgeoning nature which gives a place for homossexuality in « Frederico Paciência», this said, in the early forties, of the XXth Century. But that doesn’t work for the other tales.  Social inequality becomes human disgrace, only when the people responsible for the others (not only the boss, but also the collection of «others») make no effort, or simplily are nescient about an individual drama. That is why, in the last tale «A camisolinha» («The little night-gown»), a child of somebody, we would say today was rising from Class D, to middle-Class C, offers a starfish, to a portuguese worker, «skinny and barbaric» he was, finally unloading to the sympathetic child, why he is standing there, infinitely sad about his moribund wife and seven children («bad luck!», he sighs). The child ends up injuncting the disgraced immigrant to accept that sign of good luck, which is everything that he has, a child who doesn’t even have underwear, besides his ridiculous «little night-gown» he’s been dressed in. No wonder Mário de Andrade died young, with a heartattack. How  to reconcile collective compulsions with individual drama? «Nelson» stands for his most mysterious tale: a former rich landlord, happily married to a parguayan, abbandoned by the wife in the sequence of the brazilian-paraguayan war, and who, after surviving the wounds of some civil war in Brazil,  lives the rest of his life, gossiped around and misantropic. It is time to say that the enormous heart of brazilian middle-class, descends from a latin-american ancestry, whose very heavy luggage, was the final thing, the worker of «First of May», found to exert his burgeoning muscles. An old man had tried to put his heavy suitcases on the tram, but he stopped, scratching his head, till the young worker came along.

CXV - Michael Collins, by Neil Jordan and The IRA, by Tim Pat Coogan - comments by André Bandeira

When one sees the movie «Michael Collins», from 1996, and when one reads this 800 pages long History of the Irish Republican Army, of which edition has been revised on 1986, one tries to sum up a turbulent sequence of events: first, there is the Easter rising, in Dublin, on 1916, and the declaration of independence of the Irish Republic; then there is the establishment of the Dail Eireánn ( a parliament freely elected by the Irish, scorning the British rule), on 1919, and the proclamation of the Republic of Ireland, followed by the anglo-irish war; then there is the negotiation of a Treaty, by Michael Collins, with the British, which leads to the Irish Free State, in 1922; then there is the Irish civil war, between 1922 and 1923; then there is the proclamation of the Republic of Eire, led by de Valera, on 1937, and the exit from the British Commonwealth, as well as the neutrality during the Second World War; and finally there is the proclamation of the Republic of Ireland, on 1948, which leads Ireland to the United Nations, on 1955, and keeps it out of NATO, on the same year. I see here, nothing less than four proclamations of the Republic. In the meantime, there is an Irish Republican Army which fights against the British, then there is an IRA which fights against Irish of the Free State, then there is a contemporary IRA which fights against the protestant majority of Northern provinces which stood only one month under ther Free State, and which accepted the Good Friday agrement, for catholic-protestant power share, only on 1998. The IRA is historically an army of volunteers who fought for the independence and unity of Ireland. But it acts much more as an huge guerrilla network, than as a regular army. Nevertheless, and according with the book, it is not an irregular army. It also seems to be hand in glove with vast segments of the southern irish population, as well as with the irish diaspora, and very much in accordance to rites of initiation as well as some code of honour in the irish catholic tradition, which has very much of mediterranean, and terror. It is nevertheless disturbing, how easily the last consequences of violence, are drawn from the turbulent institution of the contemporary Ireland. According to the communists of the Comintern, Irish were «too mexican» so that Stalin decided to arm and equip them. According to Herman Goercz, the nazi spy living in Dublin during WWII, they were individually very brave but they were nothing, militarly speaking, as a body. Sean Russell, who commanded a bomb campaign in England, on the eve of WWII, died from stomach ulcer in a Nazi german submarine, in the arms of Francis Ryan, a international brigade volunteer, who had been imprisoned by Franco and, committed to the Nazis, after narrowingly escaping the death squad. Both of them were IRA officers, and they were trying to reach Ireland, supported by the nazis and on their free will, to sabotage the British. After this readings, one has the impression, that, when a Nation wants to get rid of an Empire, it is better to let it happen, the way it is, and not postpone the collapsing of an ideal umbrella, which has no longer any weather to protect us against. The irish nobility had already been uprooted from Ireland, during the «flight of the earls», three centuries before. The Irish had no king and their choice wouldn't certainly be between a scotish catholic Tudor and a german Orange. Any good monarchy is based on a solid Republic, which is unthinkable without a nation, although it may found it. A national monarchy adds a lot to any Republic as both this book and the movie «Michael Collins» enlighten us. Collins was heroical and ruthless. Notwithstanding, he was intelectually prudent and altruistic. He knew he should play the moderation card, when everybody around him was drunk with blood. But, as a leader, he had not the notion of a degree of sovereignty above him, to suspend the political and belligerent speculation he was deeply drown in, way above his neck. It was Eamonn De Valera who managed to do that, despite his squalid personality. Shall I say that a conservative is better than a revolutionary when the commonwealth has been beheaded, and the radar of our life, lies on a mat, seeing and lessoning in the void? No. What I say is that the squalor of conservantism, which is so often tempted by greed and cruelty, is just a sign that the commonwealth has been beheaded. Furthermore, looking for recovering a head with eyes, ears, and a all-weather of expressions we call sensibility, should be the first priority of any revolution. Else, those who have the fortune, of prolonguing the existence of a headless body, thanks to a strict conservantism, the only thing they are condemned to do for the rest of their lives, it is to refrain from cruelty and comfort in desolation. That is not enough for any commonwealth and, at a certain point, it is even oppressive, unbearably oppressive.

CIV(Releituras)- Capitalism: the unknown ideal, by Ayn Rand, comments by André Bandeira

This is a selection of texts, signed by the escaped-from-USSR Ayn Rand, with names such as Alan Greenspan, Nathaniel Branden, and othet objectivists. It dates back to the mid-sixties, during the demonstrations against the Vietnam War, during Lyndon Johnson's term. When someone navigates in the world of books, one steps in a special universe, which anticipates, in a reversible spacetime, new techniques of communication. But the verbal language has its own devices, because -- at least in its contemporay layout -- it is both sufficiently old and hopelessly young, as not to surface depurated of survivalism. Rand is schocking when she says that altruism is morally wrong, and she is not kidding. She says that it would be better live in a desert island, than in the USSR or nazi Germany -- she had never lived in a desert island, of course, and, in this archipel of desert islands she is still string-attached to the utopias and abstractions such as Daniel Defoe's. That's why she stops in the first generation «Rights of Man» and, at a certain point -- in her very political/ideological way -- she is one of the best templates for the minimal state enthusiasts. Her experience as a soviet citizen, justifies the mood she has chosen for life. But it doesn't justify her attacks in evreything which stands for western History. She attacks the «Popolorum Progression», of Paul the VI, considering it a kind of fascist encyclic, or at least, a statist one, where communism, fascism and statism are blended. She argues superbly, using contrasting pieces of the political discourse and reaching to very obvious maxims, which have their wake-up value in the general stream of words. But her capitalism, the perfect one, probably worked once in a while in perfect conditions, which rapidly tend to vanish. It is a libertarian utopia, probably better to figure out, even to keep us alive and dignified, than other baroque, nightmarish, neurotic utopias. But, in what boils down to reality, it is a vast, mixed, consensus society, where consensus, often gets duped by intrinsic and never-ending power games. Besides, her evidence (where, episodically, Alan Greenspan and Nathaniel Branden officiate), especially about the Middle-Age in Europe, is dubious and very partial -- as a matter of fact it focus on some History philosophers and not on Historians. In this universe of superb language, Ayn Rand -- so prone and keen, as she is,  in keeping us awake against totalitarian hypnotizers, who make tricks look like magic -- she has a sudden crush for a type of non-verbal language: it is what she calls, the light-bulb look that sometimes rushes even to a child's face. That is the sign of Reason. I think Ayn Rand was too naif, to count on accolytes such as Alan Greenspan, she was overstretched in her insistence in Morality, instead of Morals, and she cannot hide a strange hint of Pride, which makes out of its apparently lucid Objectivism, a very wide room for satanism. This said, all her criticism of the blend fascism/comunism/statism is very valid, as well as her caricature of Analytic Philosophy, Pragmatism, and Marxism. Notwithstanding, it seems that she manages to wipe away that dust, only to uncover some old stubborness, where «freedom» leaves us with the bitter question of «freedom for what?».