A verdadeira medida da Africa: cartografia real

The true true size of Africa

The Economist, Nov 10th 2010, 17:52 by G.D.

LAST month Kai Krause, a computer-graphics guru, caused a stir with a map entitled "The True Size of Africa", which showed the outlines of other countries crammed into the outline of the African continent. His aim was to make "a small contribution in the fight against rampant Immappancy"—in particular, the fact that most people do not realise how much the ubiquitous Mercator projection distorts the relative sizes of countries.

A sphere cannot be represented on a flat plane without distortion, which means all map projections distort in one way or another. Some projections show areas accurately but distort distances or scales, for example; others preserve the shapes of countries but misrepresent their areas. You can read all the gory details on Wikipedia.

Gerardus Mercator's projection, published in 1569, was immediately useful because it depicts a line of constant bearing as a straight line, which is handy for marine navigation. The drawback is that it distorts the shapes and areas of large land masses, and the distortion gets progressively worse as you get closer to the poles. (Africa looks about the same size as Greenland under the Mercator projection, for example, even though it is in fact 14 times bigger.) This was not a big problem for 16th-century sailors, of course, and the Mercator projection remains popular to this day.

In Mr Krause's map (above) he seems to have used the shapes of the countries from a Mercator projection, but has scaled up the outline of Africa, without changing its shape, to show the appropriate area. An alternative and arguably more rigorous approach would be to repeat the exercise using an "equal area" projection that shows the countries' areas correctly while minimising shape distortion. These two properties are the hardest to balance when showing the whole world on one map. I decided to rework Mr Krause's map using Gall's Stereographic Cylindrical Projection (1855) with two standard parallels at 45°N and 45°S. Distortions are still evident at the poles, but for most countries shape is maintained, and their areas are shown correctly. As you can see (below), the results are distinct from Mr Krause's map. But however you look at it, his point is a good one: Africa is much bigger than it looks on most maps.

Criacionistas contribuem para o atraso cientifico; tambem existem no Brasil

Creationists on Texas Panel for Biology Textbooks

Drew Anthony Smith for The New York Times

Students and activists marched through the University of Texas in Austin to the State Board of Education’s hearing on biology textbooks on Sept. 17.

By MOTOKO RICH

The New York Times September 28, 2013

AUSTIN, Tex. — One is a nutritionist who believes “creation science” based on biblical principles should be taught in the classroom. Another is a chemical engineer who is listed as a “Darwin Skeptic” on the Web site of the Creation Science Hall of Fame. A third is a trained biologist who also happens to be a fellow of the Discovery Institute, the Seattle-based center of the intelligent-design movement and a vice president at an evangelical ministry in Plano, Tex.

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Drew Anthony Smith for The New York Times

Ide Trotter, left, a chemical engineer, is among the evolution skeptics on a state review panel.

As Texas gears up to select biology textbooks for use by high school students over the next decade, the panel responsible for reviewing submissions from publishers has stirred controversy because a number of its members do not accept evolution and climate change as scientific truth.

In the state whose governor, Rick Perry, boasted as a candidate for president that his schools taught both creationism and evolution, the State Board of Education, which includes members who hold creationist views, helped nominate several members of the textbook review panel. Others were named by parents and educators. Prospective candidates could also nominate themselves. The state’s education commissioner, Michael L. Williams, a Perry appointee and a conservative Republican, made the final appointments to the 28-member panel. Six of them are known to reject evolution.

Some Texans worry that ideologically driven review panel members and state school board members are slowly eroding science education in the state.

“Utterly unqualified partisan politicians will look at what utterly unqualified citizens have said about a textbook and decide whether it meets the requirements of a textbook,” lamented Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network, which monitors the activities of far-right organizations. The group filed a request for documents that yielded the identities of the textbook review panelists as well as reports containing their reviews.

Publishers including well-known companies like Pearson, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and McGraw-Hill submitted 14 biology textbooks for consideration this year. Reports from the review panels have been sent to publishers, who can now make changes. Mr. Williams will review the changes and recommend books to the state board. Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Williams repeatedly declined requests for an interview. The state board will vote on a final approved list of textbooks in November.

The reports contained comments from Karen Beathard, a senior lecturer in the department of nutrition and food science at Texas A&M University, who wrote in a review of a textbook submitted by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt that “Students should have the opportunity to use their critical thinking skills to weigh the evidence between evolution and ‘creation science.’ ”

In reviews of other textbooks, panel members disputed the scientific evidence, questioning, for example, whether the fossil record actually demonstrates a process of mutation and natural selection over billions of years. “The fossil record can be interpreted in other ways than evolutionary with equal justification,” one reviewer wrote. Among the anti-evolution panelists are Ide Trotter, a chemical engineer, and Raymond G. Bohlin, a biologist and fellow of the Discovery Institute.

By questioning the science — often getting down to very technical details — the evolution challengers in Texas are following a strategy increasingly deployed by others around the country.

There is little open talk of creationism. Instead they borrow buzzwords common in education, “critical thinking,” saying there is simply not enough evidence to prove evolution.

If textbooks do not present alternative viewpoints or explain what they describe as “the controversy,” they say students will be deprived of a core concept of education — learning how to make up their own minds.

Historically, given the state’s size, Texas’ textbook selections have had an outsize impact on what ended up in classrooms throughout the country. That influence is waning somewhat because publishers can customize digital editions and many states are moving to adopt new science standards with evolution firmly at their center.

Even in Texas, districts can make their own decisions, but many will simply choose books from the state’s approved list. “It’s a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval,” said David Anderson, a former official in the Texas Education Agency, as the department of education is known, and now a consultant who works with textbook publishers.

Four years ago, a conservative bloc on the state school board pushed through amendments to science standards that call for students to “analyze and evaluate” some of the basic principles of evolution. Science educators and advocates worry that this language can be used as a back door for teaching creationism.

“It is like lipstick on a Trojan horse,” said Ms. Miller of the Texas Freedom Network.

Parents are worried that their children will not be able to compete for jobs that require scientific backgrounds.

Jessica Womack, who traveled from near Houston this month to participate in a rally before a public hearing on the books, recounted how her daughter, now 14, had been shamed by a third-grade teacher for raising her hand when the class was asked who believed in evolution.

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Drew Anthony Smith for The New York Times

Kathy Miller is the president of the Texas Freedom Network.

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Drew Anthony Smith for The New York Times

Students made signs before a public hearing on biology textbooks. Educators and advocates worry about standards that call for students to “analyze and evaluate” basic principles of evolution.

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Drew Anthony Smith for The New York Times

Educators and advocates worry about science standards that call for students to “analyze and evaluate” some of the basic principles of evolution.

The publishers are considering changes. A spokeswoman for Pearson said that the publisher had made some adjustments but that they “did not compromise the integrity of the science.” She added, “Our book has always been honest that evolutionary biologists don’t have all the answers nor does evolution provide all the answers.”

A spokeswoman for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt said that the publisher had not yet received any requests for corrections, but that the company’s textbook was of the “highest quality based on research.” A spokesman for McGraw Hill declined to comment.

Across the country, textbook publishers are likely to increasingly tailor materials to the new science standards developed by a consortium of 26 state governments and several groups of scientists and teachers.

Already seven states — California, Delaware, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Rhode Island and Vermont — have officially adopted the standards. This month, after a legislative committee in Kentucky voted to reject the new science standards, Gov. Steven L. Beshear overruled the decision and said he would use his executive powers to put the standards in place.

But educators note that standards and textbooks can be overridden by teachers who themselves question evolution.

“Most educational decisions are made in the 17,000 school districts and by individual schoolteachers in the classroom,” said Joshua Rosenau, programs and policy director at the National Center for Science Education, a nonprofit group that defends the teaching of evolution and climate change. “And it is really hard to know what is happening there.”

In a survey of more than 900 high school biology teachers conducted by Michael Berkman and Eric Plutzer, political scientists at Penn State University, one in eight said they taught creationism or its cousin, intelligent design, as valid scientific alternatives to Darwinian evolutionary theory.

In Texas, the debate has each side borrowing from the other to make its point. Those who challenge evolution invoke the scientists Carl Sagan and Richard Dawkins, while those who plead for the sanctity of science cite Genesis and the Book of Job.

At the public hearing this month, Michael Singer, a biology professor at the University of Texas who teaches courses to nonscience majors, said his students were often nervous about learning evolution. “I tell them that the Book of Job says that their faith will be tested,” he said. “You don’t need faith to believe what the evidence suggests. You need faith to believe what the evidence doesn’t suggest.”

Then he pulled out a £10 note from his native Britain to show the audience: on one side was a picture of Queen Elizabeth II, on the other, Charles Darwin.

Alvaro Mutis: um viajante das palavras e dos livros, 1923-2013; toda a eternidade para ler...

Álvaro Mutis, Novelist Who Created a Rambling, Ruminative Soul, Dies at 90

William Yardley

The New York Times Review of Books, September 28, 2013

Álvaro Mutis, a Colombian poet and novelist who created one of Latin American literature’s more memorable characters, the rambling and ruminative Maqroll, an inadvertent explorer of jungles and his own jaded soul for whom life seemed a long and futile boat ride, mostly upriver, often running aground, died on Sept. 22 in Mexico City. He was 90.

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Denis Doyle/Associated Press

The novelist Álvaro Mutis, right, with King Juan Carlos of Spain in 2002, when he was awarded the Cervantes Prize.

The cause was cardiorespiratory problems, his wife, Carmen Miracle, told news agencies in Mexico.

Mr. Mutis was 19 when, in verse, he first introduced Maqroll to readers as the “Gaviero,” the Lookout, a label linked to his early life as a seaman whose duties included scanning the horizon for potential peril, even if he did not always recognize it.

More than 40 years later — after Mr. Mutis had become a widely admired poet, spent more than a year in prison on embezzlement charges that were later dropped, moved to Mexico and was a well-traveled representative for Standard Oil and two Hollywood studios — he transferred his protagonist to prose. Beginning in the late 1980s, Maqroll appeared in a popular series of seven novellas that were eventually published as a single volume in 1997.

The collection appeared in English in 2002 as “The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll.”

In a 2003 review of the collection for The New Yorker, John Updike wrote that Maqroll’s journey in the first novella, “The Snow of the Admiral,” in which he hopes to reunite with a former lover, is “rendered so vividly as to furnish a metaphor for life as a colorful voyage to nowhere.”

Mr. Mutis was well known and well read in Latin America and Europe but received far less attention in the United States than his fellow Colombian writer and confidant, Gabriel García Márquez. They became friends in their youth and stayed close after both moved to Mexico City, reading each other’s work before it was published and sometimes sharing the same translator for their English editions, Edith Grossman.

“One of the greatest writers of our time,” Mr. García Márquez called his friend. Mr. Mutis received numerous awards, including the Cervantes Prize, the most prestigious literary award in the Spanish-speaking world, and the Neustadt International Prize for Literature. But Maqroll rarely got much recognition. He was a bundle of conflicts and foolish schemes, his life filled with close calls. Alternately optimistic, realistic and fatalistic, he kept going, compelled even as he lost lovers, friends, money and hope.

“I’m really intrigued: these disasters, these decisions that are wrong from the start, these dead ends that constitute the story of my life, are repeated over and over again,” he says as the narrator in “The Snow of the Admiral.” “A passionate vocation for happiness, always betrayed and misdirected, ends in a need for total defeat; it is completely foreign to what, in my heart of hearts, I’ve always known could be mine if it weren’t for this constant desire to fail.”

He continues: “We’re about to re-enter the green tunnel of the menacing, watchful jungle. The stink of wretchedness, of a miserable, indifferent grave, is already in my nostrils.”

Yet Maqroll’s destiny was not death but the journey toward it. The Chilean poet Gonzalo Rojas threatened to sue Mr. Mutis if he ever killed off his beloved character. Mr. Mutis spoke of Maqroll as if he were a living person.

“He often accompanies me, but we are no longer side by side but face to face,” he said in an interview with the writer Francisco Goldman, who wrote the introduction to the 2002 collection. “So Maqroll doesn’t surprise me too much, but he does torment me and keep me company. He is more and more himself, and less my creation, because of course, as I write novels, I load him up with experiences and actions and places that I don’t know but that he of course does.”

Álvaro Mutis Jaramillo was born on Aug. 25, 1923, in Bogotá. His father, Santiago, was a Colombian diplomat, and Mr. Mutis spent much of his early childhood in Brussels. In the summer, his family returned to Colombia by boat, and he later said his writing was rooted in his long stays at the sugar and coffee plantation his grandfather owned in Tolima Province. He never graduated from high school, but he read voraciously and widely, from Jules Verne to Marcel Proust.

Maqroll read, too, bouncing between biographies of dukes and saints. “In each novella, internal life is represented by the book he happens to be reading,” Leonard Michaels wrote in a review of three novellas in The New York Times in 1992. “One night, after a grueling effort to carry guns up the side of a mountain, Maqroll must sleep. But first he must read.”

Mr. Mutis published books of poetry in 1948 and 1953 (his early verse was praised in reviews by Octavio Paz), and he also wrote short stories and nonfiction. But he did not write full time until he began writing novels in his 60s. In the decades between, he worked in jobs whose only link to his literary interests were the experiences they provided — traveling to Latin American capitals, venturing into jungles to search for oil, riding with river captains through rain forests.

“My life became a long trip and I met thousands of people, in all different kinds of situations,” Mr. Mutis told Mr. Goldman. “And this was like a continuation of what I had experienced as a child. In this way I lost the sense of belonging to a particular country.”

Many people in Latin America also knew him for his dubbing of English-language television programs into Spanish, most notably for “The Untouchables.” Information on his survivors was not immediately available.

While he was at Standard Oil, he was accused in 1956 of spending company money on friends, including those who opposed the Colombian dictator at the time, Gustavo Rosas Pinilla. Warned by a friend that his arrest was imminent, Mr. Mutis fled to Mexico. He avoided immediate extradition back to Colombia but was jailed for 15 months while awaiting trial. When the Rojas Pinilla government fell in 1957, Mr. Mutis was freed. He later said the experience was more influential than any great book.

“There is one thing that I learned in prison, that I passed on to Maqroll,” he said, “and that is that you don’t judge others, you don’t say, ‘That guy committed a terrible crime against his family, so I can’t be his friend.’ In a place like that, one coexists because the judging is done on the outside.”

================

Álvaro Mutis, creador del Maqroll y amigo íntimo de García Márquez

Por: EFE |

9:46 p.m. | El Tiempo, 22 de Septiembre del 2013

Los escritores colombianos, Alvaro Mutis (izq) y el premio Nobel Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Foto: Archivo / EL TIEMPO

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Mutis jamás se consideró a sí mismo "un escritor profesional".

El escritor colombiano Álvaro Mutis, fallecido este domingo en México a los 90 años, se consagró como uno de los mejores poetas y narradores de su generación y como un excepcional exponente del "realismo mágico". (Lea también: Murió el escritor colombiano Álvaro Mutis)

Hijo de diplomático y nacido en Bogotá en 1923, Álvaro Mutis creó una extensa obra poética caracterizada por la exuberancia, la torrencialidad, la vegetación sensual y feraz, según los críticos.

Su labor literaria comenzó con la publicación de poemas y crítica literaria en el suplemento del diario El Espectador de la capital colombiana principalmente, como su colega Gabriel García Márquez. (Lea también: En las redes sociales le dicen adiós a Mutis / Reacciones)

En 1947 publicó su primer poemario, ‘La balanza’, en colaboración con Carlos Patiño y a partir de entonces empezó a publicar una obra limpia, que en su mayor parte se gestó lejos de su natal Colombia. (Lea también: Respuesta de Álvaro Mutis al homenaje que quisieron hacerle a la HJCK)

Alguna vez dijo que era escritor "por necesidad, para sobrevivir día a día el terrible mundo que habitamos", fruto de las "caídas y debilidades del hombre que tan bien retrató Cervantes en 'El Quijote'". (Vea un paso de EL TIEMPO del escritor)

Mutis jamás se consideró a sí mismo "un escritor profesional" y sostenía que sus libros no nacían de coyunturas particulares, sino que se nutrían de un particular modo de entender la literatura.

"Yo dejo que los temas vayan trabajando en mi cabeza y en mi memoria, y llega un momento en que empiezo a escribir, pero no tengo planes ni obras ya planificadas completas", aseguró. (Lea también: ¿Cuál es la importancia de Mutis para la literatura?)

Aunque su obra es esencialmente poética y él se considera más poeta que otra cosa, a partir de 1986, año en que lanzó su primera novela, ‘La nieve del Almirante’, su aportación fundamental fue narrativa.

Entre sus libros sobresale el enigmático personaje de Maqroll, El Gaviero, su "alter ego", un marinero protagonista de la narrativa y la poesía de Mutis que apareció en el poemario ‘Los elementos del desastre’ (1953).

Del personaje llegó a confesar que "vino lentamente" a su vida y no sabe cuál puede ser su final: "Yo tengo la impresión que Maqroll nació en la costa belga y es muy posible que haya sido así, pero él nunca me ha dicho (risas). Se lo guarda por algún motivo", afirmó hace varios años. (Vea la infografía: Vida y obra de Álvaro Mutis)

La vida de Mutis en Colombia dio un giro en 1956, durante la dictadura del general Gustavo Rojas Pinilla (1953-1957), cuando fue acusado de malversación de fondos en la petrolera Esso, donde era jefe de relaciones públicas, y se vio obligado a exiliarse en México, donde fijó su residencia.

A partir de entonces escribiría ‘El diario de Lecumberri’ (1960), un relato sobre los quince meses en que estuvo encarcelado a la espera de su posible extradición a Colombia por los delitos que se le imputaban y que a la postre nunca se consumó, ‘Summa de Maqroll el Gaviero’ y relatos ‘La mansión de Araucaíma’ (ambos en 1973), así como ‘Ilona llega con la lluvia’ (1988). Otros destacados libros suyos son ‘Un bel morir’ (1989), ‘La última escala del Tramp Steamer’ (1990), ‘La muerte del estratega’ (1990), ‘Amirbar’ (1990), ‘Abdul Bashur, soñador de navíos’ (1991), y ‘Empresas y tribulaciones de Maqroll el Gaviero’ (1997). (Lea también: Colombia entera lamenta la muerte del poeta: Santos)

En 2002 leyó sus poemas en la madrileña Residencia de Estudiantes (audiolibro ‘La voz de Álvaro Mutis’) e hizo un encendido ‘Elogio de la lectura’ en una intervención que comenzaba así: ‘Leer un libro es volver a nacer’.

En tierras mexicanas frecuentó a escritores y artistas como Octavio Paz, Carlos Fuentes, Luis Buñuel y Fernando Botero, entre otros. En 2004 García Márquez confesó que tres décadas atrás había llegado a México "por una semana" para ver a su amigo Álvaro Mutis y a consecuencia de aquel viaje se quedó toda una vida en este país, donde escribió ‘Cien años de soledad’ (1967), su obra maestra.

De su relación con Gabo, Mutis dijo en la XXI Feria Internacional del Libro de Guadalajara (FIL) de 2007 que era una amistad sincera y entrañable: "Ha sido muy armónica, llena de afecto, de lealtad. Nunca hemos tenido la menor discusión sobre nada. Siempre hemos estado unidos en todo. Lo siento como algo fraterno", reveló.

En 1988 se le concedió en México el título de Comendador de la Orden del Águila Azteca, al año siguiente fue nombrado Caballero de las Artes y las Letras de Francia, en 1993 recibió la Gran Cruz Boyacá de Colombia, y en 1996 la Gran Cruz española de Alfonso X El Sabio.

También fue galardonado con el Príncipe de Asturias de las Letras y el Reina Sofía de Poesía (ambos en 1997), el Cervantes de Literatura (2001), el Premio Médicis a la mejor novela extranjera en Francia ('La nieve del almirante', 1988) y el Grinzane-Cavour de Italia (1997).

EFE

A version of this article appears in print on September 29, 2013, on page A26 of the New York edition with the headline: Álvaro Mutis, Novelist, Dies at 90; Created a Rambling, Ruminative Soul.

Sorry, folks, no photos. Please, just one! No! I'll take anyway...

Hey ' Starry Night,' Say 'Cheese!'

Illustration by Joon Mo Kang, Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” From The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by Scala — Art Resource, NY

By DEBORAH SOLOMON

The NEw York Times, September 28, 2013

• 
  

ARE you thinking of seeing the big fall art exhibitions, including the Magritte show at the Museum of Modern Art or the Balthus show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art? Please be advised: photography is not permitted. Please also be prepared for skirmishes in the galleries between museum guards charged with enforcing no-photography rules and a public that is likely to ignore them. These days, many museum visitors arrive with smartphones and the assumption that they have an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of good photographs.

Museum bans on picture-taking are practically unenforceable and are also obsolete. Art museums in America typically permit visitors to take (nonflash) photographs of works in a museum’s permanent collection but forbid pictures at temporary exhibitions. This prohibition is currently under review at many institutions, some of which have already dropped it.

You don’t have to be a cultural alarmist to feel unsettled by the ubiquity of digital cameras in museums. As early as 1936, the German critic Walter Benjamin warned that cameras were instruments of distraction that impeded concentration and robbed art of its “aura.”

Indeed, there is a type of museum visitor today who stops in front of Rembrandts and Vermeers for only as long as it takes to snap a picture of them. Other visitors prefer taking photographs of art-plus-people, blocking traffic in the galleries as they step forward and back trying to compose either “selfies” or tourist-style snaps in which entire families pose in front of old master paintings. This can be exasperating for other visitors and can make smartphones seem to be the enemy of art and beauty.

Nonetheless, the vogue for digital photography is a constructive development that, for the most part, enhances our experience of art. First, there is the eye factor. A visitor who photographs van Gogh’s “Starry Night” echoes, however wanly or casually, the basic mission of visual art: to celebrate the act of looking. When you gaze through a lens, you are likely to consider the world more deeply. You frame space and take note of composition, the curve of a line, the play of light and shadow. As the photographer Dorothea Lange noted, “The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.”

As an aid to art education, smartphone cameras are preferable to older devices. Consider Acoustiguides, which offer a blizzard of facts in the place of soulful communication and create a buzzing sound in the galleries that can cause you to wonder, “Am I hearing voices?”

Unlike Acoustiguides, photographs go home with you and offer long-term benefits. For art-history students, iPhone photographs are an earnest reference aid, a crystalline substitute for hard-to-decipher notes.

For everyone else, digital photographs work in much the same way as art postcards did in their heyday a half-century ago when museum gift shops devoted more display space to them. On a recent trip to the Museum of Modern Art, I admired a plastic handbag in the gift shop, peeked at the price — $595, an Issey Miyake! — and ached for the humble Picasso postcards of my childhood.

Astoundingly, there are still a handful of museums that prohibit photography altogether. The Frick Collection, for one, seems to take a perverse pleasure in its old-world formality; it does not permit children under the age of 10 on the grounds either. The Frick’s camera policy, like those elsewhere, is now under review. “We are keenly aware of how devices like smartphones are used in galleries,” Ian Wardropper, the Frick’s director, noted recently in a statement. “We’re reviewing the policy, but have not yet made a change.”

Most other museums permit photography at least in the permanent exhibition galleries, but ban picture taking at temporary shows to accommodate and appease lenders. Private collectors who lend museums their paintings like reassurance. They don’t want thousands of strangers to photograph their artwork, post it on Facebook or add a humorous mustache to it.

Museums have lately begun to rethink loan contracts and to encourage lenders to be less possessive with their artwork. “In the past year we have been making strides to loosen our policy,” Maxwell L. Anderson, the director of the Dallas Museum of Art, noted in an e-mail. “We now routinely attempt to negotiate with all of our lenders to allow photography of their works while on display in the galleries. We have included that express permission in our own loan letters and contracts.” The change, he notes, should put an end to confrontations between guards and visitors. “It is far more important for our gallery attendants to focus on the safety of the works of art and our visitors than to have to constantly admonish our visitors, ‘No photographs!’ ”

As subtle as that point may seem, the new loan arrangements represent a sea change. Or rather a see change. We are at the tipping point where art museums are poised to become copying centers whose every single artwork can be reproduced in digital form a million times every day.

I say hooray. When we photograph, e-mail, tweet and Instagram paintings, we capitalize on technological innovation to expand familiarity with an ancient form. So, too, we increase the visual literacy of this country. Much can be gained. Nothing can be lost. A photograph of a painting can no more destroy a masterpiece than it can create one.

Deborah Solomon is the art critic at WNYC and the author of the forthcoming book “American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell.”

Companheiros nao protegidos ameacam fazer chantagem (mas sao logo protegidos, ou silenciados...)

Abandonado pelo PT, à espera de pesadas penas de prisão por crimes de pedofilia, mergulhando em processo depressivo, o ex-assessor especial de Gleisi Hoffmann na Casa Civil, Eduardo Gaievski, está disposto a radicalizar. 

Ucho.info, 28 Sep 2013

Após a ainda ministra Gleisi declarar que não pretende cumprir a promessa de visitar o ex-assessor na prisão e renegá-lo em público, o que permitiria avançar na negociação de uma assistência jurídica nos padrões Mensalão e Rose Noronha, como combinado, Gaievski acredita não ter mais dívida ou compromisso com o PT e principalmente com Gleisi Hoffmann. 

Ciente também de que nada mais tem a perder e que dificilmente receberá algum tipo de ajuda por parte do PT ou mesmo de Gleisi, o delinquente sexual já considera a possibilidade de delação premiada, como forma de eventualmente abrandar as penas que certamente o alcançarão, apesar de crimes hediondos, como é o estupro de vulnerável, não prever esse benefício. 

Prefeito de Realeza, no interior do Paraná, por dois mandatos, Gaievski incluiu no pacote de negociação uma radiografia completa do modo petista de arrecadar fundos nada ortodoxos nas prefeituras comandadas pelo partido. Fora isso, os seis meses em que esteve assessor especial da Casa Civil lhe forneceram munição privilegiada, de alta poder explosivo, capaz de mandar pelos ares boa parte da “companheirada”. Eduardo Gaievski está certo de que tudo o que sabe é de interesse do Ministério Público.

“Estão fingindo que não me conhecem, estão me tratando como um leproso”, diz Gaievski, cada vez mais revoltado com aqueles que o paparicavam quando era o prefeito de Realeza ou o todo-poderoso assessor especial da Casa Civil que liberava verbas federais para os municípios do Paraná como se nas mãos tivesse uma varinha de condão. 

Na longa lista de rancores de Gaievski se destacam os nomes do presidente do PT do Paraná, Enio Verri, que foi célere ao suspender o pedófilo dos quadros do partido, sem qualquer chance de defesa. Outro nome que está no poço de mágoas de delinquente sexual é o da deputada petista Luciana Rafagnin, que o assediava para fazer dupla nas eleições de 2014, mas que agora se diz horrorizada com o “companheiro”.

Por fim, a lista traz o nome de Gleisi Hoffmann, que prometia apoiar o ex-assessor na eleição para deputado estadual no próximo ano, além do compromisso de, em caso de vitória da petista, convidá-lo para ocupar a chefia da Casa Civil do governo paranaense.

A "pedagogia" de Paulo Freire como fraude no ensino

Apenas registrando para desenvolver:

Todo o ensino brasileiro baseado em Paulo Freire é uma fraude e uma mediocridade. 

Ensinar com base na experiência vivida é de um senso comum beócio. 

Ensinar que o mundo se caracteriza pela luta de classes e que os pobres são melhores que os ricos é um fraude completa. 

O Brasil tem uma tragédia educacional, aliás duas: uma se chama Paulo Freire. 

Outra é a ditadura pedagógica exercida sobre o ensino por essa fraude, ambas patrocinadas pelo partido neobolchevique no poder. 

Infelizmente para o Brasil e os brasileiros. 

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Companheiros sempre protegem os seus corruptos...

...mesmo na adversidade, ou sobretudo na adversidade. Claro, existem companheiros e companheiras, alguns mais queridos do que outras, que são superqueridas e dispõem de advogados extorsivos...

Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

Corrupção

Conab nega afastamento de diretor investigado pela PF

Silvio Porto continua no cargo apesar de o Ministério da Agricultura ter informado que ele havia sido afastado

Marcela Mattos, de Brasília

O petista Silvio Porto, diretor de Política Agrícola e Informações da Conab (Elza Fiúza/ABr)

A Companhia Nacional de Abastecimento (Conab) negou neste sábado o afastamento temporário do diretor de Política Agrícola e Informações Silvio Porto, um dos suspeitos de envolvimento em um esquema de desvio de verba do programa Fome Zero. Apesar de o Ministério da Agricultura ter informado oficialmente que o ministro Antônio Andrade havia determinado que Porto ficasse fora de suas funções, a companhia alega que o diretor, “até o presente momento”, permanece no cargo. 

Em nota, a assessoria da Conab informou ainda que a nomeação e o afastamento da diretoria colegiada, de acordo com o Estatuto Social da Companhia, são prerrogativas da Presidente da República. A Conab aguarda autorização judicial para ter acesso ao inquérito da operação. 

Leia também: Polícia Federal investiga desvios de recursos públicos no Fome Zero

A Operação Agro-Fantasma, deflagrada pela Polícia Federal na semana passada, detectou que o Programa de Aquisição de Alimentos, o PAA, é em grande parte uma simulação de produção e de entrega de alimentos. Os produtos não existem, assim como compradores e vendedores, mas o dinheiro existe. Para desviar os recursos públicos, a Conab autorizava repasses para associações e cooperativas rurais, o grande público que vota no PT no campo, utilizando nomes de produtores rurais e notas fiscais frias e superfaturadas.  

Histórico - Petista do Rio Grande do Sul, homem de confiança da presidente Dilma Rousseff e do ministro Gilberto Carvalho, Silvio Porto administrava mais de 1 bilhão de reais por ano em compras feitas sem licitação e quase sem nenhum controle. O PAA ajudou na escolha de José Graziano da Silva para a diretoria-geral da FAO, a agência da ONU para agricultura e alimentação. O programa também serviu para neutralizar a ação de muitos movimentos sociais, pois os sem-terra estão entre os beneficiários, seja recebendo comida enquanto acampados ou vendendo ao governo quando assentados.

O diretor Silvio Porto foi indiciado na terça-feira. Ele chegou a comparecer à Superintendência da Polícia Federal em Brasília para dar explicações, mas, na ocasião, alegou que não tinha tido acesso às investigações e que posteriormente daria satisfações. 

Os investigadores que acompanharam a ação acreditam que as fraudes tenham surrupiado mais de 30% de todo o dinheiro do programa, que movimentou 5 bilhões de reais em dez anos.

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