Entre outras coisas

Iraq, now a democracy, is banned from Olympics. It’s funny nobody at the IOC seemed to care much about the Iraqi sport’s scene when Uday Hussein was the president of the Iraqi National Olympic Committee. Here’s a sample:

There may never have been a sports official, though, as brutal as his son, Uday.

As president of the Iraqi National Olympic Committee, Uday allegedly tortures athletes for losing games. He sticks them in prison for days or months at a time. Has them beaten with iron bars. Caned on the soles of their feet. Chained to walls and left to stay in contorted positions for days. Dragged on pavement until their backs are bloody, then dunked in sewage to ensure the wounds become infected. If Uday stops by a player’s jail cell, he might urinate on his bowed, shaven head. Just to humiliate him.

(HT: Gordon Chang, Contentions)

This vast power differential is what Germans and Europeans don’t quite fathom in their infatuation with Obama. Their problem was not Mr. Bush, but Mr. Big–America as Behemoth Among the Nations, unwilling to succumb to the dictates of goodness that animate post-heroic, post-imperial, and post-sovereign Europe.

Josef Joffe (The New Republic)

Some on the Left are getting their count-me-outs in already, realising that Mr Obama is, after all, a big-game hunter, a full-trousered American candidate. They, I think, are more realistic than those who manage on one day to laud the Democrat as not being a real politician, and on the next to praise him for his sensible left-trimming when seeking the party’s nomination and his equally sensible centre-hugging once it was in the bag. I say the antis are more realistic because, eventually, we will hate or ridicule Mr Obama too - provided, of course, that he is elected and serves two full terms.

      David Aaronovitch (Times online)

Robert J. Samuelson writes:

The Great Depression of the 1930s — the last time the term rightly applied — was industrial capitalism’s worst calamity. U.S. unemployment peaked at 25 percent in 1933; it averaged 18 percent for the decade. From 1929 to 1933, 40 percent of U.S. banks failed. People lost deposits; businesses and consumers lost access to credit. Over the same period, wholesale prices dropped a third, driving farmers and firms into bankruptcy. Farm foreclosures, shantytowns (called “Hoovervilles,” after the president) and bread lines followed.

This was a social as well as economic breakdown. Our present situation bears no resemblance to this. In June, unemployment was 5.5 percent, slightly below the average since 1960 of 5.8 percent. It’s true that banks and investment banks — Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, Wachovia — have suffered large losses. But on the whole, the banking system seems fairly strong. Although profits in the first quarter of 2008 were down 46 percent from 2007, they totaled $19 billion even after $37 billion set aside for loan loss reserves. Overall corporate profits are still running at a near-record annual rate of $1.5 trillion.

Are we in “the worst financial crisis since Depression” or is Phil Gramm right?

Is it the media that is whipping us into this frenzy?

The answer is unclear, but a 5% unemployment rate and the successful launch of the iphone 3G (more here and here), make this a very unique crisis…

‘‘The development of the situation in Zimbabwe until now has not exceeded the context of domestic affairs,'’ Wang said, adding that sanctions would ‘’interfere with the negotiation process.'’

Chinese Ambassador to the UN Wang Guangya

(HT: The Bayesian Heresy)

(HT: BUUUUURRRRNING HOT
WIRED )

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/25575190#25575190

I’ve had always had some difficulty, while learning English, to distinguish the sound of the words gorilla and guerrilla. With the FARC, no distinction is necessary.

As Reinaldo Azevedo points out,  we share with apes 99.4% of our DNA. This would, in theory, be enough reason for the curious decision of the Spanish parliament to support the rights of great apes to life and freedom.  However, if we think about it we see that

“it is simple truth that man does differ from the brutes in kind and not in degree; and the proof of it is here; that it sounds like a truism to say that the most primitive man drew a picture of a monkey, and that it sounds like a joke to say that the most intelligent monkey drew a picture of a man. Something of division and disproportion has appeared; and it is unique. Art is the signature of man.” (G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man)

Shouldn’t we wait a bit more?

Brazil’s Economic Boom Marred by Social Inequalities

Brazil Seeks to Break New Ground in Global Marketplace

 Young Brazilian Musicians Try to Go Global

If you experience an erection lasting more than four hours….

enjoy while you can, it might be your last.