The United States of Europe

Art by thumboy21

I just read in The Sunday Business Post, Michael McDowell's article about the speech Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament Coordinator on Brexit, gave in the Oireachtas last week.

Despite his humour - he said as a Belgian, surrealism comes naturally to him, but to reinstate a border would be more than surreal - his soothing words assuring "we (EU) will never allow Ireland to suffer as a result of the British to leave the EU. That's a commitment given by the European Parliament and the European Union as a whole" - are actually quite meaningless without a proper explanation on what he meant by "suffer" and by "EU as a whole".

Clearly Ireland has been a thorn in the EU's foot when it comes to corporation taxes, and the recent news about Apple's €13bn tax evasion in Ireland (and the mystery why Ireland doesn't want it back) only helps EU with more ammunition towards an more unified tax system across Europe. Verhofstadt's ideas are no secret to anyone. It's all there in his books - The United States of Europe (Federal Trust) and the latest Europe's Last Chance: Why the European States Must Form a More Perfect Union, among others.

Question is: will it be that bad to have a Federal Europe?

not many brazilians like that...

Chico Mendes

Today is the day Chico Mendes was killed, in 1988. A trade union leader and environmentalist, Chico Mendes fought to preserve the Amazon rainforest, and advocated for the human rights of Brazilian peasants and indigenous peoples. He was assassinated by Darly Alves da Silva, a rancher, who shoot Mendes in his Xapuri home, as week after Mendes' 44th birthday, when he had predicted he would "not live until Christmas".

Mendes' murder made international headlines, and led to an outpouring of support for the rubber tappers' and environmental movements. Thanks in part to the international media attention surrounding the murder, the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve was created in the area where he lived. More than 20 such reserves, along the same lines as Mendes had proposed, now cover more than 8 million acres (32,000 km²).

Mendes was portrayed by Raul Julia in the 1994 telemovie The Burning Season.

What will be?

Believe it or not, some people just don't clearly see the "interjunction" of their lives! Call it 3-way junction, Y-intersection, T-junction, it doesn't matter... you will clearly face this dilemma at some stage... the sooner the better!

Some people are so skeptic that they can't see the big steps in every little decisions they make... in other hand, some of them just think every little decision, no matter how little, is part of a bigger plan!

How to achieve the right balance?

Easy as it seems to be, this can get really complicated if we start with a simple question: are you a believer? This question probably triggers another one: in what? From there, we had open a whole world of possibilities... pretty predictable, isn't it?

Talking about predictability, isn't it the most extraordinary thing about the universe? To write down equations to describe the unseen from the seen? Yes, and I have to concur with my determinist friends: mathematics is simply beautiful!

But... what else? As my determinist friends believe, is maths the new God (if any)? Is determinism just an excuse to exempt one-self from any responsibility from their acts? Perhaps... but perhaps it's just uncertainty! Or even worse, the new faith! An irrational desire of ending up with an explanation for the unexplained!

I still sustain the free-will approach, and will, eventually, take the memorable way to my life, while the determinists, sadly don't know yet, as the way they will take is already determined, but they will only know after they've take it!

guess who is getting older?

older, older and older,
the burden on your shoulder
everything you've ever done
with your youth now is gone
and you're older, older and older

wiser, wiser and wiser
your lore overflows like a geyser
the wisdom you'd like to share
finds no one who really cares
and you getting wiser, wiser and wiser

skeptical, skeptical and skeptical
can't decide if a coffin or a receptacle
doesn't matter, get your things on time
whether you fall whether you climb
and keep skeptical, skeptical and skeptical

you're a clown, a clown, and a clown
spent your life trying to be by your own
so that you couldn't see your beloved ones
crying over your dust, over your bones
and you're still a clown, a clown, a clown.

Old School

BIMM is comming to Ireland. The Brighton Institute of Modern Music have announced that they will be opening a new college in Dublin in association with the DIT (Dublin Institute of Technology). They already have the backing of Sir Bob Geldof, who says in BIMM's website that he is aware of BIMM’s track record as the leading provider of modern music training in the UK, and the success of their graduates and their employment in all areas of the music industry, plus many hit record successes.

Hummm... he sounds like a business man, doesn't he? This is all about money, investment and employment. It's just another business, don't get exited about it... What were you expecting for? To be taught how to be an artist? No! They can teach you some music theory and pratice, OK, but art itself they can't!

Ah, the old days where all the music came from the heart...

for a better life

After the announcement of reductions in the overall budget programme to €39 billion (from the original €75 billion) for infrastructure, plus the possible call for privatisation of particular state companies and agencies (ESB, CIE, DAA, Bord Bia, RTE, etc), comes to light what everybody already knew but pretended not to know: the crisis is not financial but about values. Surely privatisation can improve competition in areas like transport, but in the energy sector, would be better to keep the assets and clean the bills by other meanings, such as efficiency and private investment.

The solidarity is down, distorted by all those "tigers" - Celtic Tiger, the Four Asian Tigers, Gulf Tiger,  Baltic Tiger, etc. People are busy making money, while they are lobotomized to believe that their happiness is all about consumption: we have to buy more in order to keep the economy growing, without  realising our needs are limited, the resources are limited, and we are coming to an inevitable explosion.

A brand new economic model is needed, based on community, solidarity, better values, justice,  and sustainability. Live a simpler and better life, is all we need...

The Silver Swan

by Orlando Gibbons

The silver Swan, who living had no Note,
when Death approached, unlocked her silent throat.
Leaning her breast against the reedy shore,
thus sang her first and last, and sang no more:
"Farewell, all joys! O Death, come close mine eyes!
"More Geese than Swans now live, more Fools than Wise."

Borders' Shutdown

The only branch of the UK's bookstore Borders has shutdown this weekend. The Blanchardstown branch started to sale everything 50% off 3 weekas ago. Last week they've dropped the prices even more, to 75% off, and last weekend - just before shutdown - every and any item was only 1 euro! The store was quite out of options, I tell you, but even that was not a problem to me to spend 91 euros there! It means 91 items (1 "Instant Russian" CD and 90 books!) more to keep...

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This is what they say. I'll be using it for Flash Fiction....

Language & Open Source

Installing some IBM eclipse-based softwares - yes, I am... an ICT consultant, I am... - I noticed something... at least funny!

During the initial preparation, the installation program prompts you to chosse the additional language - apart of the standard english - would you like to install. Among the options are italian, spanish, simplified chinese, japanese and Brazilian portuguese! Not just portuguese, but Brazilian portuguese...

This could mean two things: or Brazil is quite famous among the Open Source community (Linux, Eclipse), or we have a bad name on the english speaker community!

I think I'll stick with the first one...

Monday, monday...

Monday - "day of the moon" - has a similar meaning in many languages, but some of them prefer to eschew the pagan origin of the word. This is the case in chinese, 星期一 (xingqi yi), meaning "day one of the week". Also in Georgian, Greek and Syriac means "first day". For similar reasons the official liturgical calendar of the Roman Catholic Church refers to Monday as "Feria II". The Portuguese name for Monday reflects this - the Portuguese word for Monday is segunda-feira. The Russian word for Monday is понедельник (poniediélnik), meaning "after holiday." In Hungarian (hétfő) means "head of seven"

As I don't do Mondays - even if I had a quite weekend - eitheir because of the metaphoric sense of the moon or the post-holiday role, doesn't matter...

our rioters are better...

Last week, art-lovers in National Galery and Royal Hibernian Academy were delighted to see a brand new piece of work of the most fine taste: the primer minister Brian Cowen nude! The painting above were exposed at the Royal Hibernian Academy for a couple of days till they realise it wasn't "official". The other one bellow, survived only for 20 minutes...


It is a very creative way of protesting, indeed, but the brazilians, I'd say, are far more creative and inventive in the ways to protest against their leaders...

what we've learnt this week...

The non-religious Americans are growing... Being an evangelical christian or a benedict catholic is not so "cool" as used to be, says The Sunday Times. It seems like the faithless are a growing force as the churches duck the challenges of the age!

The iraq journalist who hurled his shoes at President George Bush during a visit to Bagda last year has been jailed for 3 years! Bush is still free, after all...

The Pope Benedict XVI sent a message to everyone affected by the fires in Australia... he said "I am lighting a candle to you all!"

This year's EuroVision song context will be held in Moscow, and Georgia has a song called "I don't Wanna Put In" - Put In pronounced as Poot In"... But tell me something... Who wants to be Put In ?!?