Misty Eyed Adventures · Máire Brennan (in memoriam)

 

Gently reach the blossom
Part the leaves and journey on
Don't be afraid, seas are deep
Stay close to me
Picture ships full of treasures
Stormy weather, warning clouds
Don't be afraid, oceans are wide
Feel our time is precious

 

Trump, Alexander & Aristotle

 

 JEFFREY ST. CLAIR  

+ That Demosthenes of the MAGA movement, Steve Bannon, has reversed himself on the Iran war and is now, as Gen. David Petraeus said to his lover/biographer, “all in:” “President Trump’s in. We’re in, too. We’re gonna go back and re-do what Alexander the Great did 2,300 years ago.” The image of Trump as Alexander is worthy of a cartoon by Gary Larson or R. Crumb. Imagine the size of the crane necessary to hoist Trump’s gargantuan girth onto the back of poor Bucephalus, the world’s most famous war horse.

After Alexander’s army subdued Persepolis, the spiritual capital of the Achaemenid Persian Empire for more than two centuries, he ordered the ancient city annihilated, in a reenactment of the genocidal destruction of Melos during the Peloponnesian War–a shocking act of depravity that many of Alexander’s admirers in the manosophere of the classical age, desperate to portray him as an enlightened despot, a philosopher king, blamed on a woman, a courtesan named Thaīs. Thaîs, a hetaira from Athens, was, along with Alexander’s childhood friend and lover Hesphastion, the Macedonian warlord’s most intimate companion during his rampages across Asia Minor and the Subcontinent.   According to the Greek historian Cleitarchus, a near contemporary of Alexander, Thaīs instigated the destruction of Persepolis, claiming that she used her erotic charms to seduce the young tyrant into burning the capital in revenge for Xerxes’s destruction of Athens in 480 BCE, one hundred and fifty years before Alexander’s army routed Darius and ended the Achaemenid dynasty. 

The historian Diodorus Siculus reprised Cleitarchus’ misogynistic account in 80 BCE, at a time when Julius Caesar was beginning to view himself as Alexander reincarnate: “It was most remarkable that the impious act of Xerxes, king of the Persians, against the acropolis at Athens should have been repaid in kind after many years by one woman, a citizen of the land which had suffered it, and in sport.” 

The truth is that Alexander almost certainly burned the city himself “in sport” and probably drunk, as was his violent custom.  The burning of Persepolis was less about revenge for past wrongs than a brutal warning to other cities and empires that might resist against Macedonian hegemony. Alexander and his father, Philip II, had burned plenty of Greek cities in their conquest of Greece. Philip razed Aristotle’s hometown of Stagira and Alexander demolished Thebes. Later, the boy tyrant would burn and loot his way across the Levant, Palestine, Iraq, Egypt, Afghanistan and India. It’s what being a “world conqueror” is all about, as the Romans showed when they destroyed Carthage in 146 BCE and, according to legend if not fact,  sowed the ground with salt so that the Punic capital could never again rise to threaten the Empire.

I’ve always been drawn to the theory that Aristotle, one of the first mycologists, arranged the assassination of Alexander of Macedon by shipping poisonous mushrooms, with detailed instructions on how to prepare them, to Babylon, after the great ethicist witnessed in horror what a genocidal psychopath his former student had become, after the burning of Persepolis and the murder in a drunken rage of his friend Cleitus the Black, who had saved his life at the crucial Battle of Granicus.

After Alexander’s death, Aristotle was chased out of the Lyceum by Athenians, who were now free to vent their anger against anyone associated with the heavy-handed hegemon from Pella. Apparently, the Athenians were unimpressed by the claims that AlexanderThaīs incinerated Persepolis on their behalf. and with good reason because the Macedonians had, in fact, allied themselves with Xerxes during the second Persian invasion and the sacking of Athens.  (As for Thais, she didn’t return to Athens, but instead married Alexander’s leading general, Ptolemy, moved to Alexandria and gave birth to the dynasty that would rule Egypt until Octavian and Marius defeated Cleopatra and Marc Antony at Actium in 30 BCE.)

Saying he fled Athens to prevent Athenians from “sinning twice against philosophy” (ie, killing him after having executed Socrates), Aristotle spent the last year of his life on his mother’s old estate in Chalcis, where he died at 67 of a mysterious stomach ailment in 322 BCE. (Was he poisoned in retaliation for poisoning Alexander?)

The text of Aristotle’s remarkable will, which is clearer than any written by an estate lawyer these days, was preserved by two Muslim scholars (Al Garib and Ishaq bin Hunayn), who chose to record and translate the last testament of the conqueror’s teacher. It’s highly unlikely the Christians would have done the same. In fact, in 392, Theophilius of Alexandria, a Bishop of the Christian Church, destroyed the Serapeum and urged Christian mobs to ransack the last Neo-Platonist school in the city and murder its leader, Hypatia, one of the first (that we know of) female philosophers and mathematicians.

COUNTERPUNCH  

 

Fernanda Abrey - Tambor (in memoriam AFRICA BAMBAATAA)

 

E quando toca o tambor É festa, eu canto, eu danço E quando toca o tambor Acende a esperança

a fotógrafa

 

Candidatura Encilhada

 FRAGA

Contagem regressiva #25

 

 

"Não é só, nem principalmente, o resultado da pesquisa. A gente vê que esse governo não empolga. Tem pouco que possa apresentar diante do eleitorado para pedir um novo mandato. Podemos atribuir a muitas circunstâncias externas, da situação mundial à herança do governo Bolsonaro e à correlação de forças interna. Mas seria preciso um eleitorado muito politizado para colocar tudo isso devidamente na equação. E esse eleitorado politizado pensaria também se não faltou vontade política para o enfrentamento de muitas destas questões – se, paralisado por sua política de frente desmesuradamente ampla, o governo não se acomodou ao quase nada que lhe era permitido fazer."

leia a análise de LUIS FELIPE MIGUEL  

Contagem regressiva #25 - by Luis Felipe Miguel

Duke Ellington - Creole Love Call

 

 

Resistance in Palestinian Art: The Role and Significance of Culture in Our Struggle

 

 

By Nadia Naser-Najjab

Art and culture have long enabled us to confront dispossession, assert identity, and resist erasure by colonization and now genocide. Cultural resistance emerged amidst pervasive repression, becoming essential to our attempts to preserve and assert our narrative.

 

 

Comportamento errático de Trump reacende debate sobre sua saúde mental

 

 

 

"Em seu segundo mandato, Trump parece ainda menos contido e mais incoerente às vezes. Ele usa mais palavrões, fala por mais tempo e regularmente faz comentários com base em fantasia em vez de fatos. Ele continua dizendo que seu pai nasceu na Alemanha quando, na verdade, nasceu no Bronx, em Nova York. Ele repete uma história inventada sobre seu tio, professor do Instituto de Tecnologia de Massachusetts, contando-lhe sobre ter ensinado o terrorista conhecido como Unabomber.

Ele divaga em tangentes estranhas —uma divagação de 8 minutos em uma recepção de Natal sobre cobras venenosas no Peru, uma longa digressão durante uma reunião de gabinete sobre canetas Sharpie, uma interrupção de uma atualização sobre a guerra com o Irã para elogiar as cortinas da Casa Branca.

Ele confundiu a Groenlândia com a Islândia e mais de uma vez se gabou de ter encerrado uma guerra fictícia entre Camboja e Armênia, dois países separados por quase 6.500 quilômetros.

Mesmo antes de atacar o papa Leão 14 no domingo à noite, e depois postar uma imagem de si mesmo como uma figura semelhante a Jesus antes de deletá-la, Trump havia chocado muitos com suas explosões contra críticos."

LEIA MAIS

: Melania's "I Barely Knew Epstein" Presser Just Blew Up In Her Face

 

 

"Why the hell is she doing this right now? Nobody asked her. Nobody forced the issue. The Epstein noise had actually been dying down. Trump launched a war with Iran — critics allege partly to drown out the DOJ’s catastrophically inept release of the Epstein files — and the MAGA machine had, for a hot second, moved on. So why is the First Lady suddenly at the podium with the energy of someone who just checked their phone and did not like what they saw?

The answer, if you follow the thread, is a 41-year-old Brazilian woman currently sitting in Brazil — furious, freshly deported, with 23 years of receipts — who, the day before Melania’s presser, posted on social media that she was about to blow the entire thing up.

Her name is Amanda Ungaro. And before we get to her, we need to talk about the man who connects every single dot in this story. "

read stack by DEAN BLUNDELL 

BREAKING: Melania's "I Barely Knew Epstein" Presser Just Blew Up In Her Face — And It's Because Her Former "Pimp" Used ICE To Deport His Baby Mama, Melania's Friend, Before She Could Talk

Chicabe - Saltwater ( IN MEMORIAM MOYA BRENNAN)

Open my eyes, saltwater rain
Fol lol the doh fol the day
Oscail mo shùil, no more inside
Fol lol the doh fol the day

2 pombos | 2 doves

 

“Doctor” My Ass

 

"Because he doesn’t have to sell it. Because he knows the cult will believe whatever the fuck he says. He knows it doesn’t matter that it’s ridiculous on its face. It doesn’t matter that no one on the planet is dumb enough to believe he thought that was a doctor. Nobody actually believes he looked at that image and thought “doctor.” No one. Not one person with a pulse and a partially functioning cerebrum. It doesn’t matter that a plastic houseplant wouldn’t buy it, that RFK Jr.’s dead brain worm would perform immediate seppuku rather than co-sign that level of stupidity."

read stack by jojo from jerz 

“Doctor” My Ass - by JoJoFromJerz

Germano Mathias - Falso Rebolado

 

O seu requebrado é falsificado
Ritmo que é bom você também não tem
Dá paralisia toda vez que vai ao samba
Fica de perna bamba e não convence ninguém

St. John the Evangelist

 

Afrika Bambaataa & Soulsonic Force - Looking for the Perfect Beat (in memoriam)

 

Universal people, looking for the perfect beat

Mortal motivations, looking for the perfect beat Mighty Zulu Nation, they have found the perfect beat Afrika Bambaataa, I possess the perfect beat, beat, beat, beat

Trump, o Destruidor

BOLIGAN

 

 

AROEIRA

 

 

AMORIM

 

 

 

JBOSCO

 

 

 

Clannad - Theme from Harry's Game

 

Imtheochaidh soir is siar
A dtainig ariamh
An ghealach is an ghrian

Fol lol the doh fol the day
Fol the doh fol the day

IN MEMORIAM MOYA BRENNAN 

 

Time Zone (J. Lydon, Afrika Bambaataa & B. Laswell) - World Destruction (1984)

 

This is a world destruction, your life ain't nothing.
The human race is becoming a disgrace.
Countries are fighting with chemical warfare.
Not giving a damn about the people who live.

 

Irã deu o troco: Trump de lego bomba nas redes

 

  "As animações com o uso de Lego viralizaram, especialmente no Tik Tok e no X.

Elas são atribuídas ao cartunista Mahdi Hemmat, que é de origem iraniana e vive nos Estados Unidos.

É uma produção sofisticada, que vem acompanhada de versos em rap que descrevem Donald Trump como um mitômano de dedos pequenos e gordurosos, a serviço de Benjamin Netanyahu."

leia mais< 

Irã deu o troco: Trump de lego bomba nas redes

Novo ministro da Fazenda

    

AMORIM 

 

Is Cuba Next?

 ZETEO>

History’s cattiest warmonger, Donald Trump, continues to publicly dangle a US invasion of Cuba, the island nation that his administration has been strangling to death with a brutal, months-long energy blockade.

“We may stop by Cuba after we’re finished with this,” Trump said Monday – meaning once his disastrous war in Iran actually ends.

It was an insane moment, as Trump stood next to a woman wearing a “DoorDash grandma” shirt for a corporate White House photo-op. (At the same event, Trump claimed he had only mistakenly committed blasphemy when he posted an image depicting himself as Jesus, because he thought it was “me as a doctor.”)

This isn’t the first time the president has threatened to invade Cuba. It’s not even the first time he’s made this threat during the US-Israeli war in Iran, which is throttling the global economy. “Cuba is going to be next,” Trump said two weeks ago.

It would be one thing if President Trump were only mouthing off for the cameras. He’s not.

In recent days, according to two sources familiar with the situation and another person briefed on it, officials at the Pentagon and elsewhere in the US government were quietly given a new directive that came straight from the Trump White House. The message: ramp up your preparations for possible military operations against Cuba. 

Rapaz de bem (Johnny Alf) – Nara Leão

 

Você bem sabe
Eu sou um rapaz de bem
E a minha onda é do vai e vem

plantando o futuro

 

The Gaza Doctrine

 

 

 

Over the course of two years, Israeli forces systematically destroyed the Gaza Strip’s health system. Their attacks in Iran and Lebanon follow a disturbingly similar pattern.  

"Since the start of Operations Roaring Lion and Epic Fury, critics have charged that Israel is expanding its Gaza doctrine—a combination of mass displacement, mass killing, and mass destruction of civilian infrastructure—to other parts of the Middle East. (In some sense this is a return of “the Dahiyeh doctrine,” named after the neighborhood in Beirut’s southern suburbs that the Israeli military ruthlessly pummelled during the 2006 Lebanon War—only in Gaza the destruction was not confined to a specific area and the people living within it but became the military’s modus operandi throughout the territory.) Israel, surprisingly or not, has embraced the accusation, dropping leaflets on Beirut reminding the city’s residents of the Israeli military’s “great success in Gaza.” One of the more pronounced features of the Gaza doctrine—and of contemporary warfare more generally—is turning life-saving medical sites like hospitals, health clinics, and ambulances into targets: it was the “deliberate and systematic dismantling of Gaza’s health and life-sustaining systems” that Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI) cited to argue that the Israeli military’s conduct in the Strip met the legal definition of genocide. The reports emerging out of Iran and Lebanon raise the deeply troubling prospect that Israel hopes to replicate that “success” abroad."

read article by NEVE GORDON

O ultimo Dodô

DODÔ

 

 

 

The Cult of Cesar’: Inside the Mountain Compound Led by Cesar Chavez

 

In his remote headquarters, the United Farm Workers leader began to see himself as not just a union leader, but a visionary healer. 

  

 READ newstory By Shawn HublerSarah Hurtes and Manny Fernandez

Quem é Amanda Ungaro, a ex-modelo brasileira que acusa Trump e Melania no escândalo do caso Epstein?

 

 

 

 

O nome da ex-modelo brasileira Amanda Ungaro, de 41 anos, voltou a movimentar as redes sociais neste sábado, quando foi ao X para fazer uma série de desabafos (e ameaças). Em resposta a um vídeo de Melania Trump em que ela negava ter relação com o criminoso sexual Jeffrey Epstein, Amanda afirma que esteve “ao redor” do casal Trump por 20 anos e que vai tomar medidas legais contra Melania e “seu marido pedófilo”, o presidente dos Estados Unidos Donald Trump. Mas quem é Amanda Ungaro

 ? 

 

Marina Lima - Stromboli (Alvin L)

 

IN MEMORIAM ALVIN L

Todos eles querem
Fama, poder
Dinheiro e diamantes
Flashes excitantes
E ela nadando
Em lava fervendo
E ela entrando
Em erupção

Sylvan Road

 

Que tal prorrogar a CPI?

AMORIM

 

 

 

Tim Bernardes - A Balada de Tim Bernardes

 

Quanto mais o tempo passa
Mais eu acho graça nessa enganação
Chamada virar adulto
O tempo é todo junto, sem separação

Sem ter barra de compasso
Sem ter ponto ou traço, sem ter travessão
Procurando estar presente
Nesse encontro entre o antes e o depois

paquetá

 

Melania Throws Donald Under the Bus

 

read stack by William Kristol Melania Throws Donald Under the Bus

"Shakespeare knew that rats instinctively leave a sinking ship. Yesterday, Melania Trump made her move to quit the rotten carcass of her husband’s presidency."

 

read stack by William Kristol

 

 

Rua São José

 

Sylvan Road

 

Afrika Bambaataa & The Soulsonic Force - Planet Rock (in memoriam)

 

Everybody just rock it, don't stop it

You gotta rock it, don't stop Keep tickin' and tockin', work it all around the clock Everybody keep rockin' and clockin' and shockin' and rockin', go house Everybody say, "Rock it, don't stop it!"

Dancinha da Vitória

AROEIRA

 

 

LUTE 

 

 

 

MOR

 

"Pra ninguém (por enquanto)" - Nila Branco (Alvin L) in memoriam

 

Ninguém pra ligar e dizer onde estou
Ninguém pra ir comigo onde eu vou
Por outro lado
Ninguém pra abaixar o volume
Ninguém pra reclamar dos pratos sujos
Ninguém pra fingir que eu não amo

Jack McDuff - Hot Barbeque 1966

 

hot barbecue today!

Of Monsters and Men - Little Talks

 

I don't like walking around this old and empty house
So hold my hand, I'll walk with you my dear
The stairs creak as you sleep
It's keeping me awake

‘Her head was broken’: parents at Iranian school bombed by US describe their worst day

"Nothing prepared him for what he saw when he entered the gates. “Arya’s classroom had been completely destroyed – there was absolutely nothing left,” he says. “It was flattened to the ground.” This moment – the sight through the gate, the thick cloud of dust obscuring the blue sky – was the worst he endured. Then, Bahadori stepped to the ruins to look for his boy. Over and over, he and the men would grip a piece of rubble, heave it upwards together, look for a child underneath."

read report by Tess McClure and Shah Meer Baloch

‘Her head was broken’: parents at Iranian school bombed by US describe their worst day | Children | The Guardian

At last, David has landed a double punch on the tech Goliaths. Now to hit them even harder

"She describes how the company, able to track users’ activity on and off the platform, could see when, for example, girls aged between 13 and 17 deleted a selfie. Realising that signalled the girls’ dissatisfaction with their appearance, the company saw a way to monetise that unhappiness. For a fee, a cosmetics company could serve a beauty ad to those children at that very moment.

Facebook did not hide this behaviour; they boasted of it. Wynn-Williams reveals how Facebook made a presentation for an Australian client, bragging that its ability to monitor users’ online lives – their posts, their photos, their conversations with friends – enabled them to know exactly when teenage girls were feeling “worthless”, “insecure”, “stressed”, “defeated”, “anxious”, “stupid”, “useless” and “like a failure”. Those were optimal moments for selling."

read article by Jonathan Freedland

At last, David has landed a double punch on the tech Goliaths. Now to hit them even harder | Jonathan Freedland | The Guardian

 

Trump consultou o Oráculo de Delphos

"Creso, que entrou para a história como anedota, enviou um emissário para consultar o Oráculo de Delphos. O emissário perguntou se o rei deveria atravessar o rio e lançar-se à guerra contra os persas. A resposta do oráculo foi uma dessas obras-primas da ambiguidade: se Creso atravessasse o rio, destruiria um grande império. Satisfeito, o rei ouviu apenas a parte que agradava ao seu desejo, entendeu que destruiria a Pérsia. Atravessou o rio, iniciou a guerra e destruiu, de fato, um grande império: o seu."

leia artigo de EDGARD PICCINO

Trump consultou o Oráculo de Delphos - Revista Fórum

Redes pariram esse mundo apocalíptico

 Sérgio Rodrigues

A ascensão da extrema direita no mundo é filha das redes sociais —eis uma verdade que, se ainda não foi provada cientificamente, acredito que logo será.

Quando explodiu de vez, perto da virada do século, a internet vinha embalada em fumos humanistas de biblioteca universal e plataforma democrática de informação e voz para todos. Quem se lembra?

Era um progressismo vago que não negava a origem pós-hippie do Vale do Silício. Seu teor de ingenuidade era elevado. A internet permitia fazer coisas antes impensáveis, mas aquele otimismo inicial padecia de um grave viés do bem.

Cena do filme 'Hair' (1979), de Milos Forman, que aborda o movimento hippie e a Guerra do Vietnã - Reprodução

O sonho era que, tendo subitamente acesso imediato a toda a informação disponível na Terra, cada pessoa teria a chance de desenvolver ao máximo seu potencial humano e comunitário.

Os seres humanos se tornariam mais sábios e, devido ao debate permanente de suas sabedorias na ágora imaterial —sempre com a vitória do melhor argumento—, infinitamente ponderados na média.

Corta para o presidente dos EUA anunciando em rede social: "Uma civilização inteira morrerá esta noite". Opa, parece que alguma coisa deu errado, não? Convém voltar algumas casas.

Sim, é óbvio que a internet nunca foi um empreendimento humanitário —aquela era só uma das histórias que ela contava sobre si mesma. Nova fronteira de negócios basicamente privados, logo começava a bombar.

Ao lado da biblioteca e da sala de aula que os idealistas trataram de transferir para o mundo digital, transferiram-se também partes menos nobres e mais rentáveis do empreendimento humano.

Casal em frente à Biblioteca Central da Universidade Nacional Autônoma do México (Unam), uma das mais importantes do mundo - Francisco Cañedo - 27.fev.26/Xinhua

O submundo do crime e os exércitos de golpistas, as coberturas duplex do crime e os salões da jogatina, além de um tipo de lixo populista audiovisual que era uma mutação maligna da TV —tudo migrou junto.

Como o mundo propriamente dito —que agora era necessário qualificar de analógico—, o mundo que cada um de nós passou a habitar via tela sempre foi movido pela busca do lucro, que seria redundante qualificar de inescrupulosa.

A diferença é que, no digital, havia ainda mais recursos para explorar as fraquezas humanas que o crime sempre explorou —como o vício. Nossa própria existência online virou então uma sucessão de armadilhas para capturar atenção. Os produtos éramos nós.

As redes sociais redesenharam por completo o ambiente da informação, realizando a promessa de dar "voz" a todos, e adivinha —em vez de debates democráticos e médias ponderadas, vimos um pega pra capar.

Dedo no olho do inimigo, campanhas de ódio, cinismo rampante, terraplanismo, uma usina de desinformação política que nunca dorme. Sitiadas atrás de suas telas, deprimidas e absolutamente sós em sua interconexão digital plena, as pessoas estão vulneráveis.

Metade da humanidade parece ter hoje um fraco pelo caminho apontado pela extrema direita, essa mistura de "salve-se quem puder" com "farinha pouca, meu pirão primeiro" e "morte ao diferente" que de resto surpreende pouco em tempos tingidos de apocalipse.

Eu me pergunto se ainda vai dar para salvar alguma coisa daquele sonho de 2000, que afinal era bem bonito.

FOLHA