Martha My Dear - Márcio Greyck (Lennon-McCartney)

Hold your head up, you silly girl
Look what you've done
When you find yourself in the thick of it
Help yourself to a bit of what is all around you, silly girl

Meu album de 2025 (6)

 

Foi daqui que pediram um ano novo?

GALVÃO

 

 

Preliminary Notes on a Kidnapping

 

 

 

JEFFREY ST, CLAIR> 

+ The cocksure boast that the US will “run” Venezuela appears to be another Trumpian fantasy. It’s impossible to “run a country,” if you don’t have control of it, which the US doesn’t by any measure. The Maduro government remains in place and defiant, even with Maduro renditioned to New York City. Indeed, the attack appears to have only strengthened the resolve of the Venezuelan people, instead of inspiring the chimerical uprising Rubio led Trump to expect, much as Rumsfeld and Cheney deceived Bush into believing about Iraq.

+ Despite Trump’s claim that Delcy Rodríguez was “cooperative,” Venezuela’s vice-president, who was sworn in as the nation’s leader after Maduro was renditioned to the US, vigorously denied that she planned to help the U.S. government run the country. Instead, she asserted her own power as acting president and defiantly demonstrated the continuity of the Bolivaran Revolutionary government in the wake of the US attacks.

+ Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello: “Here, the unity of the revolutionary force is more than guaranteed, and here there is only one president, whose name is Nicolas Maduro Moros. Let no one fall for the enemy’s provocations. We are outraged because in the end everything was revealed — it was revealed that they only want our oil.”

+ Venezuela’s Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López forcefully rejected Trump and Rubio’s claim that Venezuela will be run by the US and demanded the return of Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. “Our sovereignty has been violated and breached. The [Venezuelan military] will guarantee the governability of the country … [and will] continue to employ all its available capabilities for military defense, the maintenance of internal order, and the preservation of peace.”

+ Trump responded to Rodríguez’s defiant stance with his usual boorish bombast when being confronted by a woman by threatening her with a fate worse than Maduro’s: “If she doesn’t do what’s right, she’s going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.”

 

Brazilian Connection

 

Deu no Guardian:

Marina Lacerda, a Brazilian immigrant identified as “Minor-Victim 1” in the federal indictment, was a central witness who spoke publicly for the first time in September. She detailed her abuse by Epstein from the age of 14 and said she saw Donald Trump with Epstein more than once, though Trump has denied knowing of any of Epstein’s criminal actions.

Her testimony ultimately resulted in Epstein’s indictment. Epstein later killed himself in a New York jail cell in 2019.

Jean-Luc Brunel, who founded a modeling agency with Epstein’s support, was arrested in 2022 by French authorities on suspicion of trafficking and raping underage girls. Brunel was accused of supplying more than 1,000 girls and young women for Epstein to have sex with.

In April 2019, Brunel visited an agency in Brazil that his company had worked with in the past to find new models to bring over to the US, according to a source who saw him in Brasilia. Convicted Epstein confidante Ghislaine Maxwell was also reportedly traced to the Brazilian riviera shortly after Epstein’s death.

 

Meu album de 2025 (5)

 

Feliz Ano Novo !

BRUNO AZIZ

 

 

FRAGA

 

 

JBOSCO

 

 

Nicolas Krassik,Zé da Velha e Silvério Pontes,2004,"Cochichando".

IN MEMORIAM ZE DA VELHA 

‘Pluribus’ Turned Its Back on the Mystery Box

 

 

"The biggest surprise Pluribus has in store is the way it subverts the viewer’s priors re: the rhythms of serialized streaming TV. “We are all attuned to the ebb and flow of a mystery box type show, or movie,” Gilligan observed to Alan Sepinwall, writing for The Ringer. “We’ve all seen our share of M. Night Shyamalan movies or Twilight Zone episodes where there’s a great twist. We are attuned to that, we expect it. Sometimes, the best twist is no twist.”

Pluribus stubbornly resists the twist. In dystopian thriller Soylent Green, the shocking epiphany that civilization runs on nutrients from human bodies precipitates the end of the film. In Pluribus, it precipitates … the end of Episode 5. And when Carol shares her new knowledge with Koumba in Episode 6, she learns that the Others already told him, and that he essentially accepts their “other other white meat” meal replacement. Nobody’s being murdered, and although the nonviolent cannibalism is disquieting, it follows from what we already know about the Others. The discovery doesn’t dictate Carol’s actions, either; in fact, she grows closer to the Others after finding out about “HDP.”"

read analysis by BEN .LINDBERGH 

‘Pluribus’ Turned Its Back on the Mystery Box - The Ringer

Brigitte Bardot - Jorge Veiga 1960 (in memoriam)

Brigitte Bardot, Bardot,
Brigitte beijou, beijou.
Lá dentro do cinema,
Todo mundo se afobou.

Meu album de 2025 (3)

 

Trump Plunges the U.S. Into a New Era of Risk in Venezuela

 

 

 

By David E. Sanger and Tyler Pager

President Trump’s declaration on Saturday that the United States planned to “run” Venezuela for an unspecified period, issuing orders to its government and exploiting its vast oil reserves, plunged the United States into a risky new era in which it will seek economic and political dominance over a nation of roughly 30 million people.

Speaking at his Mar-a-Lago private club just hours after Nicolás Maduro, the leader of Venezuela, and his wife were seized from their bedroom by U.S. forces, Mr. Trump told reporters that Delcy Rodríguez, who served as Mr. Maduro’s vice president, would hold power in Venezuela as long as she “does what we want.”

Ms. Rodríguez, however, showed little public interest in doing the Americans’ bidding. In a national address, she accused Washington of invading her country under false pretenses and asserted that Mr. Maduro was still Venezuela’s head of state. “What is being done to Venezuela is a barbarity,” she said.

Mr. Trump and his top national security advisers carefully avoided describing their plans for Venezuela as an occupation, akin to what the United States did after defeating Japan, or toppling Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Instead, they vaguely sketched out an arrangement that sounded like a mix of economic coercion and a guardianship over the country: The United States will provide a vision for how Venezuela should be run and will expect the interim government to carry that out in a transition period, under the threat of further military intervention.

By Sunday morning, with Mr. Trump’s repeated declaration that the administration would “run” Venezuela ricocheting around foreign capitals, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and national security adviser, complained that people were “fixating” on the president’s declaration.

“It’s not ‘running’” he said, clearly distancing himself from Mr. Trump’s words. “It’s running policy, the policy with regards to this.”

He maintained that rather than administer the country’s operations, it would be enough to keep a quarantine on oil shipments until the post-Maduro government acted the way Washington demanded. “That’s a tremendous amount of leverage that will continue to be in place until we see changes, not just to further the national interest of the United States, which is No. 1, but also that lead to a better future for the people of Venezuela,” he said in an interview with “Face the Nation” on CBS News.

On Saturday, even after Ms. Rodríguez contradicted Mr. Trump, Mr. Rubio said he was withholding judgment.

“We’re going to make decisions based on their actions and their deeds in the days and weeks to come,” he said in an interview with The New York Times. “We think they’re going to have some unique and historic opportunities to do a great service for the country, and we hope that they’ll accept that opportunity.”

Mr. Rubio is usually careful to avoid showing any daylight between his positions and the president’s. But he had little choice on Sunday because Mr. Trump, asked directly on Saturday who, exactly, would be running the country, named Mr. Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine. He said the “people that are standing right behind me, we’re going to be running it,” he said, pointing to all three men.

Mr. Trump also suggested on Saturday that while there were no American troops on the ground now, there would be a “second wave” of military action if the United States ran into resistance, either on the ground or from Venezuelan government officials.

“We’re not afraid of boots on the ground,” Mr. Trump said, a comment Mr. Rubio echoed on Sunday, while insisting there is no plan for a physical occupation of the country.

Mr. Trump paired that with a declaration that a key American goal was to regain access to oil rights that he has repeatedly said had been “stolen” from the United States. With those statements, the president opened a new chapter in American nation building.

It is one in which he hopes to influence every major political decision in Venezuela by the presence of an armada just offshore, and perhaps to intimidate others in the region. He repeated a warning to the president of Colombia, another country targeted by the administration for its role in drug trafficking, to “watch his ass.”

Image

President Trump listened as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spoke about the operation at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday. Mr. Trump and his top national security advisers have carefully avoided describing their plans for Venezuela as an occupation.Credit...Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times

Mr. Trump’s actions on Saturday cast America back to a past era of gunboat diplomacy, when the United States used its military to grab territory and resources for its own benefit.

A year ago this week, he openly mused, also at Mar-a-Lago, about making Canada, Greenland and Panama parts of the United States. Now, after hanging in the White House a portrait of William McKinley, the tariff-loving president who presided over the military seizure of the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico, Mr. Trump said it was well within the rights of the United States to wrest from Venezuela resources that he believes had been wrongly taken from the hands of American corporations.

The U.S. operation, in seeking to assert control over a vast Latin American nation, has little precedent in recent decades, recalling the imperial U.S. military efforts of the 19th and early 20th centuries in Mexico, Nicaragua and other countries.

Mr. Trump and his aides claimed they had a legal basis for the immediate action he ordered on Friday, the extraterritorial rendition of Mr. Maduro. An indictment that dates to 2020 charged the Venezuelan leader with a series of acts related to drug trafficking. A refreshed indictment was published Saturday, one that included Mr. Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores.

But that indictment only deals with Mr. Maduro’s alleged crimes. It did not provide a legal basis for taking control of the country, as the U.S. president declared he was doing.

Mr. Trump was unapologetic about taking that step, and in his justification, he showed he had given much thought to the oil industry.

“Venezuela unilaterally seized and sold American oil, American assets and American platforms, costing us billions and billions of dollars,” he said of resources that were being pumped out of Venezuelan bedrock. “They did this a while ago, but we never had a president that did anything about it. They took all of our property.” He added: “The socialist regime stole it from us during those previous administrations, and they stole it through force.”

Now, he made clear, he was taking it back, and Americans would be compensated before Venezuelans became, he predicted, “rich.”

But that left many open questions. Will the United States need an occupying military force to protect the oil sector while the Americans and others rebuild it? Will the United States run the courts, and determine who pumps the oil?

Will it install a pliant government for some number of years, and what happens if a legitimate, democratic election is won by Venezuelans with a different vision for their country?

All of these questions, of course, could enmesh the United States into exactly the kind of “forever wars” which Mr. Trump’s MAGA base has warned against.

When pressed on that point, Mr. Trump dismissed it. He noted that he had been successful in killing the leader of the Iranian Quds force, Gen. Qassim Suleimani, in January 2020. He cited the success for his attack on Iran’s major nuclear sites, burying its uranium stockpile.

But those were largely one-and-done attacks. They did not involve running a foreign nation, or dealing with the resistance that almost always accompanies an effort like that.

For much of the 20th century, the United States intervened militarily in smaller countries in the Caribbean and Central America. But Venezuela is twice the size of Iraq, with challenges that may prove just as complex.

“Any democratic transition will require the buy-in of pro-regime and anti-regime elements,” John Polga-Hecimovich, a Venezuela scholar at the U.S. Naval Academy, said in an interview.

One crucial test, he said, is how the Venezuelan armed forces react. “If it splinters, with some backing a transition and others not, things could get violent,” he said. “On the other hand, a unified force would help legitimize whatever government comes next."

Simon Romero contributed reporting from São Paulo, Brazil.

THE NEW YORK TIMES  

 

 

R.I.P. PHIL: 1961 Philip Upchurch Combo - You Can’t Sit Down (Parts 1 & 2)

Meu album de 2025 (2)

 

Enquanto isso, no Caribe...

FRAGA

 

 

 

KLEBER

 

OSCAR

 

 

AROEIRA

 

 

 

The Road Goes On Forever - Joe Ely (in memoriam)

Sonny's playin' eight-ball in the joint where Sherry works
When some drunken out-of-towner put his hand up Sherry's skirt
Sonny took his pool cue, laid the drunk out on the floor
Stuffed a dollar in her tip jar, walked out the door
She's running right behind him, reaching for his hand
The road goes on forever and the party never ends

Meu album de 2025 (1)

 

Mãe Carmen

CAU GOMEZ

 

Chaos Is the Policy

Trump’s Venezuela strike, the erosion of trust, and the quiet reordering of global power

"If you were looking for a textbook example of how to bury inconvenient truths under a geopolitical explosion, Donald Trump delivered one with terrifying efficiency this weekend."

read stack by MARY GEDDRY

Chaos Is the Policy - by Mary Geddry - Geddry’s Newsletter

Five Questions After the Finale of ‘Pluribus’

The most pressing mysteries on Carol’s mind, and our minds, at the end of Season 1F

ive Questions After the Finale of ‘Pluribus’ - The Ringer

The Foreclosure of a Country

SIR TERRYNCE

There is a glitch in the Venezuela story that most people are missing. The official line is that we captured a dictator to "restore democracy" and "stop drugs." But those reasons don't explain the timing. There is a $13 billion transaction happening right now that does. It’s called the Citgo Auction. 

Most people don’t realize that Venezuela’s "crown jewel"—the massive Citgo refinery network—is being sold off in a Delaware court this month. It’s a forced liquidation to pay creditors, but the auction had been frozen for years by political chaos. The capture of Maduro didn’t just change the regime. It cleared the title so the sale could close.

The winning bidder isn’t an oil major or a democracy activist. It’s Amber Energy, an affiliate of Elliott Management. That is Paul Singer’s fund, the most feared "vulture capitalist" in the world, famous for seizing sovereign ships to collect old debts. He isn’t betting on freedom. He’s closing a distressed asset deal.

 The timeline tells you everything you need to know. The sale to Elliott was approved by the court late last year, but it needed a "change in political circumstances" to finally clear regulatory hurdles. Maduro was the obstacle blocking the transfer. His capture on January 3rd wasn’t a police action. It was the final signature on the closing documents.

This reframes the entire operation. We aren't watching an episode of Law & Order; we are watching a foreclosure. The legal doctrine allowing the capture turns a President into a defendant, but the economic doctrine is simpler. It's a distressed asset restructuring with a military escort.

The playbook is the same one private equity uses for a failing mall, just scaled up to a sovereign nation. You depress the asset value with sanctions, buy the debt for pennies on the dollar, and use the courts to force a liquidation. Then you send in the troops to evict the tenant so you can collect at face value. It’s a leveraged buyout with an air force.

If you look at who is getting paid, the "democracy" frame falls apart completely. It isn't voters waiting in line; it's a queue of corporate creditors like Crystallex, ConocoPhillips, and Siemens, with Elliott Management at the front. Marco Rubio isn't representing a constituency here. He's processing a payout.

There is a simple way to prove the drug war angle is just wallpaper. Two weeks ago, the administration pardoned Rubio’s own brother-in-law for cocaine trafficking. You don't pardon traffickers while invading a country to stop trafficking. The drug story is decoration. The $13 billion asset transfer is the load-bearing wall.     That’s why the bonds rallied before the raid. The market wasn't guessing about justice; it had inside information about the closing date. Power is just physics with a spreadsheet, and the spreadsheet says the auction is finally closed.

        

'Stranger Things' chega ao fim com expressão de seu próprio desespero

"Nunca antes na TV americana houve uma série que expressasse tão bem o desespero com seu próprio final como "Stranger Things". Com a imagem de um planeta que despenca dos céus em direção à cidade de Hawkins, o derradeiro capítulo levou ao pé da letra a sensação de agonia eterna do público, que viu o programa ser soterrado pelo peso das altas expectativas.
Foi uma temporada difícil. Encerrado na virada do ano, o seriado criado pelos irmãos Duffer sofreu com um destempero de ambição no quinto e último ano. A trama apanhou com episódios ao mesmo tempo corridos e arrastados, além de um desfecho de duas horas que descambou de vez para o constrangimento —de resoluções, pieguice ou explicações"

leia critica de PEDRO STRAZZA

'Stranger Things' chega ao fim com expressão de seu próprio desespero | Diario de Cuiabá

ZÉ DA VELHA - Sonoroso (K.Ximbinho) in memoriam

First Photo of 2026 | Primeiro foto de 2026

 

2025 2026

DALCIO MACHADO

 

FERNANDES

 

 

 

JBOSCO

 

 

 

 

 

KLEBER

 

Brigitte Bardot - Maria Ninguém (Carlos Lyra)

Maria Ninguém
É um dom que muito homem não tem
Haja vista quanta gente que chama Maria
E Maria não vem

IN MEMORIAM 

Last Photo of 2025

 

Out of the Greenhouse and Into the Madhouse: the Year in Climate Politics

 

 

JEFFREY ST. CLAIR 

025 will go down as the second or third hottest year on record. The last decade has been the hottest decade in human history.  Driven by drought and extreme winds, a massive fire burned its way across the LA Basin, incinerating more than 10,000 homes. The estimated damage ranges from $76 billion to $133 billion. Total losses to businesses and workers in income and wages totaled at least $297. The year saw two of the largest, most rapidly intensifying hurricanes in the history of the Atlantic Ocean. Floods in central Texas killed at least 137 people, while massive flooding driven by twin cyclones that tore across Sumatra and the southern Philippines killed at least 1,800 people and left more than a million people homeless. We are in the midst of the largest mass coral bleaching event in history, affecting 83% of the world’s extant coral reefs. The melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is accelerating. Its surface is fracturing, causing massive ice falls and rockslides that are warping the southern continent’s geology. A total collapse of the ice sheet, which now seems certain, would raise global sea levels by 12 feet. The Arctic Ocean is now expected to be “ice-free” in the summer by 2030, twenty years earlier than predicted just a few years ago. The Atlantic Current is slowing down and may be on the verge of collapse, which would likely destabilize rainfall patterns for much of the planet. Wildfires in Canada now burn year-round. There were 24,000 heat-related deaths in Europe this summer from June to August alone. Deaths from extreme heat in the US have increased by more than 50% since 2000. 

None of these catastrophic events has left the slightest impact on Trump, who has ordered his administration to slash nearly every restraint on the release of CO2 into the atmosphere. Oil drilling has been expanded on federal lands (including the high Arctic) and waters. The dying industry of coal mining has been put on life support with new subsidies and exemptions from environmental regulations, while coal-generating power plants slated for closure have been forced to keep operating. Large-scale renewable energy projects, in the planned for years, have been cancelled and tax credits and incentives for small-scale solar have been gutted. Energy-hogging data centers have been fast-tracked and freed from regulatory constraints.  Prior to Trump’s re-inauguration, Bethany Kozma — who now heads RFK’s Department of Health and Human Services Office of Global Affairs— vowed that the administration “will have to eradicate climate change references from absolutely everywhere” in government. And they’ve largely followed through gutting NOAA’s Office of Atmospheric Research; the EPA’s Office of Research and Development, National Center for Atmospheric Research,  U.S. Global Change Research program and NASA’s Earth Science program. Climate research stations have been shuttered. References to climate change have been removed from federal websites, documents, databases and signage on federal lands, offices and parks.

And it’s not just Trump. The supposed global protectors of the climate had their annual meeting in Bélem, Brazil this year and likely generated more CO2 coming and going from the confab than they saved during the sessions. That’s in part because they came and went without even mentioning fossil fuels in their final document. These actions go beyond denial and amount to incitement of the wrath of the climate gods. Their vengeance will be a terrible thing to behold. We’ve gone from trying to survive in a global greenhouse into a madhouse.

  

United States Of America - Love Song For The Dead Ché

And in the stillness of the Oriente rainfall
I remember the warmth of you, still in my arms
Late, late in the year

IN MEMORIAM JOSEPH BYRD 

Joe Ely - Me And Billy The Kid (in memoriam)

Me and Billy the Kid
Never got along
I didn't like the way he cocked his hat
And he wore his gun all wrong

We had the same girlfriend
And he never forgot it
She had a cute little chihuahua
Til one day he up and shot it

atravessar

 

 

o dia esta acabando.

o ano esta acabando.

nesta noite faremos a travessia,

cruzaremos a ponte, de um ponto a outro ponto do tempo.

que tenham conforto e companhia nessa travessia.

chegaremos lá l

(foto: rio tejo)

 

Papais Noéis

DALCIO MACHADO

 

 

 

JBOSCO

 

 

 

MIGUEL PAIVA

 

 

 

 

RICO

 

Phil Upchurch - Darkness, Darkness (James Brown - Pee Wee Ellis) in memoriam

Laboratorio

MARTINEZ

 

Serge Gainsbourg & Brigitte Bardot Bonnie & Clyde (in memoriam)

Alors voilà, Clyde a une petite amie
Elle est belle et son prénom c'est Bonnie
À eux deux, ils forment le gang Barrow
Leurs noms, Bonnie Parker et Clyde Barrow

 

Charges Natalinas

-+ 

 

MARTINEZ

 

 

LAERTE

 

 

 

RICO 

KLEBER

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

+

 

 

os cartões vitorianos de natal

 

The Future According to Trump

 

  "As Shakespeare’s witches saw the future in their cauldron’s bubbling brew and said of Macbeth, a man who would be king (whatever the cost), “Something wicked this way comes,” they also caught our Trumpian moment so many centuries later."

read article by ALEX MCCOY  

The Future According to Trump - CounterPunch.org

Acabaram as férias remuneradas

FRAGA