Arquivo da categoria: Uncategorized

Fans in Spain Reveal Their Prejudices, and Social Media Fuels the Hostilities (New York Times)

25/05/2014UncategorizedEspanha, Futebol, Racismo, Torcidasrenzotaddei

By RAPHAEL MINDER

MAY 22, 2014

Someone threw a banana at Dani Alves, who plays soccer for Barcelona, during a recent game.C reditAlejandro Garcia/European Pressphoto Agency

MADRID — Spain’s sports fans have given Europe a version of the Donald Sterling racism scandal roiling America.

While prejudice in sports is nothing new in Spain, a spate of racist and anti-Semitic abuses has set off a round of chagrin and soul-searching — and even a government clampdown — that has raised broad questions about why such behavior seems so hard to combat.

The latest example occurred this week when almost 18,000 people posted comments on Twitter with a profane and anti-Semitic hashtag after Real Madrid’s loss to Maccabi Tel Aviv in the final of Europe’s main basketball tournament on Sunday.

The tide of comments prompted Jewish organizations to file a lawsuit in a Barcelona court on Tuesday that is expected to be handed to the office of Spain’s attorney general. On Wednesday, Maccabi Tel Aviv said that while it had dealt with a handful of disrespectful pro-Palestinian activists while playing in Spain in the past, “nothing like this has ever been experienced.”

The postings were condemned by the Anti-Defamation League, the New York-based advocacy group that last week released its first global survey on anti-Semitism, which showed that 29 percent of Spanish adults harbor prejudicial stereotypes about Jews. “The sheer number and intensity of anti-Semitic hatred unleashed via Twitter in Spain is alarming and outrageous,” Abraham H. Foxman, the organization’s national director, said Thursday.

The anti-Semitic outbursts came the same week the Barcelona soccer club dismissed an employee of its museum after she was caught on video making monkey gestures toward an African player during a game between Llagostera and Racing Santander on Sunday. Llagostera said the police would investigate the matter and banned the woman from its stadium. That episode followed one last month in which someone threw a banana at Dani Alves, a Brazilian member of the Barcelona soccer team, during a match against Villarreal.

Taken together, the outbursts lay bare an undercurrent of prejudice in Europe that has persisted through generations. Social media appears to have fueled the hostilities, while also serving to counter them.

Esteban Ibarra, the president of the Movement Against Intolerance, a Spanish advocacy group, said it had identified 1,500 websites, pages or blogs in Spain that promote racism or anti-Semitism, compared with 300 to 400 five years ago. He attributed the rise, in part, to the growing political success of extremists in countries like Hungary and Greece.

“The fact that Spain doesn’t have an extreme-right party with an institutional presence doesn’t mean that we don’t have extremists who have been encouraged and coordinate with others in Europe and make their presence most felt in sports,” Mr. Ibarra said. “What we’re seeing in cases like Maccabi and Dani Alves is that the groups of ultra sports fans are themselves infiltrated by neo-Nazis.”

After Mr. Alves responded to the taunt by eating the banana in front of Villareal fans, he inspired a wave of videos and messages from athletes and politicians who posed with peeled bananas or ate them in solidarity.

The anti-racism response inspired by Mr. Alves was widely repeated outside Spain, even in countries like Italy that have also witnessed significant racism in sports. Matteo Renzi, the Italian prime minister, shared a banana in front of the cameras with Cesare Prandelli, the coach of Italy’s national soccer team.

Despite Mr. Renzi’s banana episode, however, the Italian police intervened on Wednesday at the training camp in Florence of the national team to stop racist chants against the striker Mario Balotelli. Mr. Balotelli was born to Ghanaian immigrants and was raised by an Italian foster family.

He has faced racist abuse in Italy, in England and during a 2012 match in the Portuguese city of Porto, for which the club there was fined 20,000 euros, more than $27,000.

In January this year, A. C. Milan abandoned a soccer match after one of its black players, Kevin-Prince Boateng, led a walkout because of racist abuses by opposing fans.

Xavier Torrens, a sociologist and professor of political science at the University of Barcelona, said anti-Semitism in Spain had been underestimated by sports officials, who see it as a collection of isolated, anecdotal episodes. By contrast, the National Basketball Association in the United States reacted firmly last month by imposing a lifetime ban on Mr. Sterling, the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, for making racist comments.

“In Spain, club directors — whether in soccer or any other sport — are not black, Gypsy, Jewish or Arab,” Mr. Torrens said, “so they don’t belong to any group that could feel some empathy for minorities.” Racism or anti-Semitism, he added, is “never a problem in their daily life, so that explains why such officials don’t take adequate measures and are so far from what was done in the N.B.A.”

The old-boy network that dominates English sports also drew criticism this week when the chief executive of the Premier League, Richard Scudamore, escaped dismissal Monday despite having sent emails with sexual innuendos about women.

Pledges by governments and sports authorities to combat the problem appear to have done little, despite specific episodes resulting in fines or bans. FIFA, the world governing body of soccer, has promised zero tolerance toward racism at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, which begins June 12, without detailing how it would penalize unacceptable behavior.

Steps against anti-Semitism have been even more tepid in Spain. “Anti-Semitism exists here,” Mr. Torrens, the sociologist, said, “but the problem is that Spanish society is much less aware of its anti-Semitism than in almost any other Western country.”

Even if such problems have become more prevalent in Spanish sports, he continued, it would be wrong to accuse Spanish society as a whole of racism and anti-Semitism. In the decade before 2008 and the bursting of Spain’s construction bubble, the country successfully integrated about five million migrants — more than 10 percent of its population. Even the subsequent economic crisis and the sharp increase in joblessness did not set off a wave of xenophobia.

But most surveys in Spain show that “21st-century prejudices are the same as those in medieval times,” said Mr. Torrens, adding that the prejudices were most often directed at Gypsies, Arabs and Jews. “That must say something about how little the authorities have done to respond to the problem,” he added.

After the recent basketball game that drew anti-Semitic comments on Twitter, the Spanish interior minister, Jorge Fernández Díaz, warned that those who posted offensive messages could face arrest. The police must help “eradicate from the web all the comments that incite hatred and xenophobia,” he said.

Maria Royo, a spokeswoman for the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain, said she could not recall an outburst of anti-Semitism like the one that came after Maccabi’s victory, but that the episode showed “the venom is here and comes out when you least expect it.”

The Israeli club’s general manager, Danny Federman, said in a statement, “It is very disappointing to see the rush of anti-Semitism following a well-fought competition.”

Several of the online comments included profanities about Jews, while others related to the Holocaust. One message, sent from the account of Guillermo de Alcázar, said, “Now I understand Hitler and his hatred for the Jews.”

In their court filing, the Jewish associations supplied a picture of Mr. de Alcázar and identified him among those who are suspected of violating a Spanish law that forbids the incitement of hatred. The associations said they had centered their inquiry on a profane hashtag that became a trending topic on Twitter after the basketball final and that was used by almost 18,000 people — most of them anonymous.

Hacker Helped Disrupt 300 Web Attacks, Prosecutors Say (New York Times)

25/05/2014UncategorizedAnarquismo, Anonymous, Estados Unidos, Hackers, Justiçarenzotaddei

By BENJAMIN WEISER and MARK MAZZETTI

MAY 24, 2014

A prominent hacker set to be sentenced in federal court this week for breaking into numerous computer systems worldwide has provided a trove of information to the authorities, allowing them to disrupt at least 300 cyberattacks on targets that included the United States military, Congress, the federal courts, NASA and private companies, according to a newly filed government court document.

The hacker, Hector Xavier Monsegur, also helped the authorities dismantle a particularly aggressive cell of the hacking collective Anonymous, leading to the arrest of eight of its members in Europe and the United States, including Jeremy Hammond, who the Federal Bureau of Investigation said was its top “cybercriminal target,” the document said. Mr. Hammond is serving a 10-year prison term.

The court document was prepared by prosecutors who are asking a judge, Loretta A. Preska, for leniency for Mr. Monsegur because of his “extraordinary cooperation.” He is set to be sentenced on Tuesday in Federal District Court in Manhattan on hacking conspiracy and other charges that could result in a long prison term.

Hector Xavier Monsegur cooperated with the authorities.

It has been known since 2012 that Mr. Monsegur, who was arrested in 2011, was acting as a government mole in the shadowy world of computer hacking, but the memorandum submitted to Judge Preska late on Friday reveals for the first time the extent of his assistance and what the government perceives of its value. It also offers the government’s first explanation of Mr. Monsegur’s involvement in a series of coordinated attacks on foreign websites in early 2012, though his precise role is in dispute.

The whereabouts of Mr. Monsegur have been shrouded in mystery. Since his cooperation with the authorities became known, he has been vilified online by supporters of Anonymous, of which he was a member. The memo, meanwhile, said the government became so concerned about his safety that it relocated him and some members of his family.

“Monsegur repeatedly was approached on the street and threatened or menaced about his cooperation once it became publicly known,” said the memo, which was filed by the office of Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan.

Born in 1983, Mr. Monsegur moved to the Jacob Riis housing project on the Lower East Side of Manhattan at a young age, where he lived with his grandmother after his father and aunt were arrested for selling heroin. He became involved with hacking groups in the late 1990s, drawn, he has indicated, to the groups’ anti-government philosophies.

Mr. Monsegur’s role emerged in March 2012 when the authorities announced charges against Mr. Hammond and others. A few months later, Mr. Monsegur’s bail was revoked after he made “unauthorized online postings,” the document said without elaboration. He was jailed for about seven months, then released on bail in December 2012, and has made no further postings, it said.

The memo said that when Mr. Monsegur (who used the Internet alias Sabu) was first approached by F.B.I. agents in June 2011 and questioned about his online activities, he admitted to criminal conduct and immediately agreed to cooperate with law enforcement.

That night, he reviewed his computer files with the agents, and throughout the summer, he daily “provided, in real time, information” that allowed the government to disrupt attacks and identify “vulnerabilities in significant computer systems,” the memo said.

“Working sometimes literally around the clock,” it added, “at the direction of law enforcement, Monsegur engaged his co-conspirators in online chats that were critical to confirming their identities and whereabouts.”

His primary assistance was his cooperation against Anonymous and its splinter groups Internet Feds and LulzSec.

“He provided detailed historical information about the activities of Anonymous, contributing greatly to law enforcement’s understanding of how Anonymous operates,” the memo said.

Jeremy Hammond is serving a 10-year prison term. CreditCook County Sheriff’s Department, via Associated Press

Neither Mr. Bharara’s office nor a lawyer for Mr. Monsegur would comment about the memo.

Mr. Monsegur provided an extraordinary window on the activities of LulzSec, which he and five other members of Anonymous had created. The memo describes LulzSec as a “tightly knit group of hackers” who worked as a team with “complementary, specialized skills that enabled them to gain unauthorized access to computer systems, damage and exploit those systems, and publicize their hacking activities.”

The memo said that LulzSec had developed an “action plan to destroy evidence and disband if the group determined that any of its members had been arrested, or were out of touch,” and it credits Mr. Monsegur for agreeing so quickly to cooperate after being confronted by the bureau. Had he delayed his decision and remained offline for an extended period, the document said, “it is likely that much of the evidence regarding LulzSec’s activities would have been destroyed.”

After his arrest, Mr. Monsegur provided information that helped repair a hack of PBS’s website in which he had been a “direct participant,” and helped patch a vulnerability in the Senate’s website. He also provided information about “vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure, including at a water utility for an American city, and a foreign energy company,” the document said.

The coordinated attacks on foreign government websites in 2012 exploited a vulnerability in a popular web hosting software. The targets included Iran, Pakistan, Turkey and Brazil, according to court documents in Mr. Hammond’s case. The memo said that “at law enforcement direction,” Mr. Monsegur tried to obtain details about the software vulnerability but was unsuccessful.

“At the same time, Monsegur was able to learn of many hacks, including hacks of foreign government computer servers, committed by these targets and other hackers, enabling the government to notify the victims, wherever feasible,” the memo said.

The memo does not specify which of the foreign governments the United States alerted about the vulnerabilities.

But according to a recent prison interview with Mr. Hammond as well as logs of Internet chats between him and Mr. Monsegur, which were submitted to the court in Mr. Hammond’s case, Mr. Monsegur seemed to have played a more active role in directing some of the attacks. In the chat logs, Mr. Monsegur directed Mr. Hammond to hack numerous foreign websites, and closely monitored whether Mr. Hammond had success in gaining access to the sites.

Sarah Kunstler, a lawyer for Mr. Hammond, said on Saturday: “The government’s characterization of Sabu’s role is false. Far from protecting foreign governments, Sabu identified targets and actively facilitated the hacks of their computer systems.”

At his sentencing in November, Mr. Hammond was prohibited by Judge Preska from naming the foreign governments that Mr. Monsegur had asked him to hack. But, according to an uncensored version of a court statement by Mr. Hammond that appeared online that day, the target list included more than 2,000 Internet domains in numerous countries.

Mr. Hammond’s sentencing statement also said that Mr. Monsegur encouraged other hackers to give him data from Syrian government websites, including those of banks and ministries associated with the leadership of President Bashar al-Assad.

The Immigrant Advantage (New York Times)

25/05/2014UncategorizedEstados Unidos, Imigração, Pobreza, Violênciarenzotaddei

By ANAND GIRIDHARADAS

MAY 24, 2014

IF you want to die a successful American, especially in the heartland, it helps to be born abroad.

Statistics show that if you are born elsewhere and later acquire American citizenship, you will, on average, earn more than us native-borns, study further, marry at higher rates and divorce at lower rates, fall out of the work force less frequently and more easily dodge poverty.

What’s curious is where this immigrant advantage is most pronounced. In left-leaning, coastal, cosmopolitan America, native-borns seem well groomed by their families, schools and communities to keep up with foreign-borns. It’s in the right-leaning “Walmart America” where foreigners have the greatest advantage.

From Mississippi to West Virginia to Oklahoma, native-borns are struggling to flourish on a par with foreign-born Americans. In the 10 poorest states (just one on the East or West Coast: South Carolina), the median household of native-borns earns 84 cents for every $1 earned by a household of naturalized citizens, compared with 97 cents for native-borns in the richest (and mostly coastal) states, according to Census Bureau data. In the poorest states, foreign-borns are 24 percent less likely than native-borns to report themselves as divorced or separated, but just 3 percent less likely in the richest states. In the poorest states, foreign-borns are 36 percent less likely than native-borns to live in poverty; the disparity collapses to about half that in wealthier states like New Jersey and Connecticut.

This phenomenon came vividly to life for me while I was reporting a book about the brutal collision of a striving immigrant and a hurting native. One was Raisuddin Bhuiyan, a Muslim immigrant from Bangladesh, working in a Dallas minimart in 2001 to save for a wedding and an education; the other, Mark Stroman, shot him in a twisted post-9/11 revenge attack, blinding him in one eye, during a rampage that killed two other immigrant clerks. Mr. Bhuiyan eventually learned more about Mr. Stroman and the world that formed him. What he found astonished him, then inspired him to forgive his attacker and battle to rescue him from death row.

Mr. Bhuiyan realized that he was among the lucky Americans. Even after the attack, he was able to pick up and remake himself, climbing from that minimart to waiting tables at an Olive Garden to six-figure I.T. jobs. But Mr. Bhuiyan also saw the America that created Mr. Stroman, in which a battered working class was suffering from a dearth of work, community and hope, with many people failing to form strong bonds and filling the void with escapist chemicals, looping endlessly between prison and freedom.

Eventually, Mr. Bhuiyan petitioned a Texas court to spare his attacker’s life because he had lacked his victim’s advantages: a loving and sober family, pressure to strive and virtuous habits. The naturalized citizen claimed the native Texan hadn’t had the same shot at the American dream as the “foreigner” he’d tried to kill.

At a time when even the American middle class is struggling, a difficult question arises: Are you better off being born in some of the poorest parts of the world and moving here than being raised in the poorer parts of the United States?

There’s no easy answer. But let’s first acknowledge the obvious: Most naturalized citizens — nearly half of America’s roughly 40 million immigrants — arrived by choice, found employer sponsors, navigated visas and green cards. (We’re not talking here of immigrants who never reach citizenship and generally have harder lives than American citizens, native- or foreign-born.) It’s no accident that our freshest citizens have pluck and wits that favor them later.

BUT I also think there’s something more complicated going on: In those places where mobility’s engine is groaning and the social fabric is fraying, many immigrants may have an added edge because of their ability to straddle the seemingly contradictory values of their birthplaces and their adopted land, to balance individualism with community-mindedness and self-reliance with usage of the system.

American scholars have long warned of declining “social capital”: simply put, people lacking the support of others. In Texas, I encountered the wasteland described by writers from Robert D. Putnam on the left to Charles Murray on the right. In mostly white, exurban communities that often see themselves as above the woes of inner cities, I found household after household where country music songs about family and church play but country-music values have fled: places where a rising generation is often being reared by grandparents because parents are addicted, imprisoned, broke or all three.

In places bedeviled by anomie, immigrants from more family-centered and collectivist societies — Mexico, India, Colombia, Vietnam, Haiti, China — often arrive with an advantageous blend of individualist and communitarian traits.

I say a blend, because while they come from communal societies, they were deserters. They may have been raised with family-first values, but often they were the ones to leave aging parents. It can be a powerful cocktail: a self-willed drive for success and, leavening it somewhat, a sacrificial devotion to family and tribe. Many, even as their lives grow more independent, serve their family oceans away by sending remittances.

Mr. Bhuiyan seemed to embody this dualism. By back-home standards, he was a rugged individualist. But in America it was his takes-a-village embeddedness that enabled his revival: Immigrant friends gave him medicine, sofas to sleep on, free I.T. training and job referrals.

Working at Olive Garden, Mr. Bhuiyan couldn’t believe how his colleagues lacked for support. Young women walked home alone, sometimes in 100-plus degree heat on highways, having no one to give them rides. Many colleagues lacked cars not because they couldn’t afford the lease but because nobody would cosign it. “I feel that, how come they have no one in their family — their dad, their uncle?” he said. They told stories of chaotic childhoods that made them seek refuge in drugs and gangs.

Mr. Bhuiyan concluded that the autonomy for which he’d come to America, while serving him well, failed others who had lacked his support since birth. His republic of self-making was their republic of self-destruction. “Here we think freedom means whatever I wanna do, whatever I wanna say — that is freedom,” he said. “But that’s the wrong definition.”

A second dimension of this in-between-ness involves the role of government. In this era of gridlock and austerity, many immigrants have the advantage of coming from places where bankrupt, do-nothing governments are no surprise. They often find themselves among Americans who are opposite-minded: leaning on the state for economic survival but socially lonesome, without community backup when that state fails.

All this has nothing to do with the superiority of values. If distrust of government made for the most successful societies, Nigeria and Argentina would be leaders of the pack. What’s interesting about so many of America’s immigrants is how they manage to plug instincts cultivated in other places into the system here. Many are trained in their homelands to behave as though the state will do nothing for them, and in America they reap the advantages of being self-starters.

But they also benefit from the systems and support that America does offer, which are inadequate as substitutes for initiative but are useful complements to it.

Like many immigrants, Mr. Bhuiyan operated from the start like an economic loner, never expecting to get much from the government. He was willing to work at a gas station to save money. Recovering in his boss’s home, he ordered I.T. textbooks online to improve his employability. Plunged into debt, he negotiated with doctors and hospitals to trim his bills.

But the system also worked for him. Robust laws prevented employers from exploiting a wide-eyed newcomer. He sued the Texas governor, in pursuit of leniency for his attacker, and was heard. Through a fund for crime victims, Texas eventually paid his medical bills.

In an age of inequality and shaky faith in the American promise of mobility through merit, we can learn from these experiences. Forget the overused idea popularized in self-help guides that native-borns must “think like an immigrant” to prosper, an exhortation that ignores much history. Rather, the success of immigrants in the nation’s hurting places reminds us that the American dream can still work, but it helps to have people to lean on. Many immigrants get that, because where they come from, people are all you have. They recognize that solitude is an extravagance.

American poverty is darkened by loneliness; poverty in so many poor countries I’ve visited is brightened only by community. Helping people gain other people to lean on — not just offering cheaper health care and food stamps, tax cuts and charter schools — seems essential to making this American dream work as well for its perennial flowers as its freshest seeds.

Eduardo Galeano Disavows His Book ‘The Open Veins’ (New York Times)

25/05/2014UncategorizedAmérica Latina, Capitalismo, Economia, Galeano, História, Pós-colonialismo, Políticarenzotaddei

Author Changes His Mind on ’70s Manifesto

By LARRY ROHTER

MAY 23, 2014

For more than 40 years, Eduardo Galeano’s “The Open Veins of Latin America” has been the canonical anti-colonialist, anti-capitalist and anti-American text in that region. Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s populist president, even put a copy of the book, which he had called “a monument in our Latin American history,” in President Obama’s hands the first time they met. But now Mr. Galeano, a 73-year-old Uruguayan writer, has disavowed the book, saying that he was not qualified to tackle the subject and that it was badly written. Predictably, his remarks have set off a vigorous regional debate, with the right doing some “we told you so” gloating, and the left clinging to a dogged defensiveness.

“ ‘Open Veins’ tried to be a book of political economy, but I didn’t yet have the necessary training or preparation,” Mr. Galeano said last month while answering questions at a book fair in Brazil, where he was being honored on the 43rd anniversary of the book’s publication. He added: “I wouldn’t be capable of reading this book again; I’d keel over. For me, this prose of the traditional left is extremely leaden, and my physique can’t tolerate it.”

Hugo Chávez, president of Venezuela, handing President Obama a copy of Eduardo Galeano’s “The Open Veins of Latin America” in 2009. CreditMatthew Cavanaugh/European Pressphoto Agency

“The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent” was written at the dawn of the 1970s, a decade when much of Latin America was governed by repressive right-wing military dictatorships supported by the United States. In this 300-page cri de coeur, Mr. Galeano argued that the riches that first attracted European colonizers, like gold and sugar, gave rise to a system of exploitation that led inexorably to “the contemporary structure of plunder” that he held responsible for Latin America’s chronic poverty and underdevelopment.

Mr. Galeano, whose work includes soccer commentary, poetry, cartoons and histories like “Memory of Fire,” wrote in “Open Veins”: “I know I can be accused of sacrilege in writing about political economy in the style of a novel about love or pirates. But I confess I get a pain from reading valuable works by certain sociologists, political experts, economists and historians who write in code.”

“Open Veins” has been translated into more than a dozen languages and has sold more than a million copies. In its heyday, its influence extended throughout what was then called the third world, including Africa and Asia, until the economic rise of China and India and Brazil seemed to undercut parts of its thesis.

In the United States, “Open Veins” has been widely taught on university campuses since the 1970s, in courses ranging from history and anthropology to economics and geography. But Mr. Galeano’s unexpected takedown of his own work has left scholars wondering how to deal with the book in class.

“If I were teaching this in a course,” said Merilee Grindle, president of the Latin American Studies Association and director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard, “I would take his comments, add them in and use them to generate a far more interesting discussion about how we see and interpret events at different points in time.” And that seems to be exactly what many professors plan to do.

Caroline S. Conzelman, a cultural anthropologist who teaches at the University of Colorado, Boulder, said her first thought was that she wouldn’t change how she used the book, “because it still captures the essence of the emotional memory of being colonized.” But now, she said: “I will have them read what he says about it. It’s good for students to see that writers can think critically about their own work and go back and revise what they meant.”

Michael Yates, the editorial director of Monthly Review Press, Mr. Galeano’s American publisher, dismissed the entire discussion as “nothing but a tempest in a teapot.” “Open Veins” is Monthly Review’s best-selling book — it surged, if briefly, into Amazon’s Top 10 list within hours of Mr. Obama’s receiving a copy — and Mr. Yates said he saw no reason to make any changes: “Please! The book is an entity independent of the writer and anything he might think now.”

Precisely why Mr. Galeano chose to renounce his book now is unclear. Through his American agent, Susan Bergholz, he declined to elaborate. She said he had gradually grown “horrified by the prose and the phraseology” of “Open Veins.”

The Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, in 2012. CreditSergio Goya/dpa-Corbis

Mr. Yates said Mr. Galeano might simply be following in the tracks of the novelist John Dos Passos, a radical as a young man “who became a conservative when he got older.” On Spanish- and Portuguese-language websites, others have suggested that Mr. Galeano, who in recent years has had both a heart attack and cancer, might simply be off his game intellectually.

In his remarks in Brazil, Mr. Galeano acknowledged that the left sometimes “commits grave errors” when it is in power, which has been taken in Latin America as a criticism of Cuba under the Castro brothers and of the erratic stewardship of Venezuela under Mr. Chávez, who died last year. But Mr. Galeano described himself as still very much a man of the left, and on other occasions he has praised the experiments in social democracy underway for the last decade in his own country, as well as in Brazil and Chile.

“Reality has changed a lot, and I have changed a lot,” he said in Brazil, adding: “Reality is much more complex precisely because the human condition is diverse. Some political sectors close to me thought such diversity was a heresy. Even today, there are some survivors of this type who think that all diversity is a threat. Fortunately, it is not.”

Still, Mr. Galeano has caught many admirers by surprise, including the Chilean novelist Isabel Allende, who wrote a foreword for the English-language edition of “Open Veins.” In it, she describes how she “devoured” the book as a young woman “with such emotion that I had to read it again a couple more times to absorb all its meaning” and took it into exile after Gen. Augusto Pinochet seized power.

“I had dinner with him less than a year ago, and to me, he was the same man, passionate and talkative and interesting and funny,” she said of Mr. Galeano in a telephone interview from California, where she now lives. “He may have changed, and I didn’t notice it, but I don’t think so.”

In the mid-1990s, three advocates of free-market policies — the Colombian writer and diplomat Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, the exiled Cuban author Carlos Alberto Montaner and the Peruvian journalist and author Álvaro Vargas Llosa — reacted to Mr. Galeano with a polemic of their own, “Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot.” They dismissed “Open Veins” as “the idiot’s bible,” and reduced its thesis to a single sentence: “We’re poor; it’s their fault.”

Mr. Montaner responded to Mr. Galeano’s recent remarks with a blog post titled “Galeano Corrects Himself and the Idiots Lose Their Bible.” In Brazil,Rodrigo Constantino, the author of “The Caviar Left,” took an even harsher tone, blaming Mr. Galeano’s analysis and prescription for many of Latin America’s ills. “He should feel really guilty for the damage he caused,” he wrote on his blog.

But Mr. Galeano continues to have defenders. In a discussion on the website of the Spanish newspaper El País, one participant noted that in a world dominated by Apple, Samsung, Siemens, Panasonic, Sony and Airbus, Mr. Galeano’s lament that “the goddess of technology does not speak Spanish” seems even more prescient than in 1971.

And on his Facebook page, Camilo Egaña, a Cuban émigré who is the host of “Mirador Mundial” on CNN en Español, remembered meeting Mr. Galeano in Havana in the 1980s and hearing him tell a story about a man taking his son to the ocean for the first time. “In the face of that interminable blue, the child said to the man, ‘Daddy, help me to see,’ ” Mr. Egaña recalled.

“That is what Galeano has done with his book, 43 years after it having been published,” Mr. Egaña concluded. “Thank you.”

Ciência busca fármacos em formigas (O Estado de São Paulo)

24/05/2014UncategorizedAnimais, Fármacos, Formigas, Interação humanos-animaisrenzotaddei

JC e-mail 4958, de 23 de maio de 2014

Pesquisa apoiada pelo NIH e Fapesp vai estudar bactérias que vivem na carapaça dos insetos e têm capacidade de destruir fungos

A busca por moléculas naturais capazes de combater doenças em seres humanos sempre foi um trabalho “de formiguinha” da ciência, envolvendo a coleta, isolamento e análise de milhares de compostos de plantas, animais e micróbios da natureza, que precisam ser testados, um a um, sobre uma grande variedade de alvos terapêuticos. No caso de um novo projeto de pesquisa anunciado ontem, porém, essa expressão ganha sentido literal.

Cientistas do Brasil e dos Estados Unidos vão, literalmente, enfiar a mão em formigueiros e coletar formigas por todo o País em busca de novas moléculas capazes de destruir fungos, parasitas e, quem sabe, até células cancerígenas. Não nos insetos propriamente ditos, mas nas bactérias que vivem sobre suas carapaças e impedem que suas colônias subterrâneas sejam contaminadas por fungos nocivos à sua sobrevivência.

O projeto foi aprovado “com louvor” num edital conjunto dos Institutos Nacionais de Saúde dos Estados Unidos (NIH) e da Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (Fapesp), cujo resultado foi anunciado ontem pelo presidente do NIH, Francis Collins, em sua primeira visita ao Brasil. O projeto está previsto para durar cinco anos, e o valor de financiamento ainda não foi divulgado oficialmente pelas instituições.

Mônica TallaricoPupo, da Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas da Universidade de São Paulo (USP) em Ribeirão Preto, é a pesquisadora principal do lado brasileiro. Jon Clardy, de Harvard, lidera pelo lado americano.

A meta, segundo Mônica, é isolar cerca de 500 linhagens de bactérias simbiontes de formigas por ano, para serem testadas contra fungos infecciosos (que atacam, principalmente, pacientes com sistema imunológico comprometido), parasitas tropicais (em especial, os da doença de Chagas e leishmaniose) e células tumorais.

“Vamos começar pelas formigas agricultoras”, diz ela, que já desenvolve um projeto semelhante, de menor escala, com formigas saúvas. Agora, serão coletadas amostras de várias espécies, de biomas brasileiros: Amazônia, Cerrado, Mata Atlântica e Caatinga.

Fazendeiras. O termo “agricultoras” refere-se ao fato de essas formigas cultivarem “plantações” de fungos dentro de seus formigueiros. Os pedaços de folhas que elas carregam para dentro das colônias não é alimento para elas, mas para os fungos – que, por sua vez, são o verdadeiro alimento das formigas.

Como todo bom agricultor, as formigas não querem que suas plantações sejam contaminadas por pragas – neste caso, fungos oportunistas, que não servem de alimento para elas. E quem evita que elas carreguem esporos desses fungos para dentro dos formigueiros são bactérias que vivem em suas carapaças e destroem rapidamente esses organismos.

A meta dos cientistas é estudar essas bactérias e descobrir as moléculas que elas usam para destruir os fungos. Feito isso, a esperança é que algumas dessas moléculas sirvam como base para o desenvolvimento de novos fármacos.

A vantagem com relação a projetos semelhantes, que buscam moléculas com ação farmacológica na biodiversidade, é que a “triagem inicial de bactérias já foi feita pelas formigas”, aponta Mônica.

Collins falou com entusiasmo do projeto nesta quinta-feira, 22, na Fapesp. “Não é uma ideia incrível?”, disse. “Uma série de compostos completamente novos poderá emergir dessa pesquisa.” O projeto recebeu a melhor nota entre todos que foram submetidos ao NIH no edital.

(O Estado de São Paulo)
http://www.estadao.com.br/noticias/vida,ciencia-busca-farmacos-em-formigas,1170284,0.htm

Fauna brasileira registra 1.051 espécies em extinção, ante 627 em 2003 (O Estado de São Paulo)

24/05/2014UncategorizedAnimais, Biodiversidade, Extinção, Faunarenzotaddei

JC e-mail 4958, de 23 de maio de 2014

Coordenador do estudo disse que situação não piorou, pois ‘o universo analisado quintuplicou’; ministra do Meio Ambiente anunciou pacote de medidas para a fauna brasileira

O estudo Avaliação do Risco de Extinção da Fauna Brasileira, desenvolvido por 929 especialistas entre 2010 e 2014, mostra que atualmente 1.051 espécies de animais estão ameaçadas de extinção. Na primeira edição, de 2003, eram 627.

“A situação não piorou. O universo analisado quintuplicou, daí o aumento da lista”, afirmou o diretor de pesquisa, avaliação e monitoramento de biodiversidade do Instituto Chico Mendes, Marcelo Marcelino, responsável pela coordenação do trabalho.

Ao todo, foram avaliadas 7.647 espécies. Do total, 11 foram consideradas extintas, 121 tiveram sua situação agravada. A situação piorou, por exemplo, para o tatu-bola. “Seu habitat, a caatinga, vem sofrendo uma redução. Além disso, a espécie é muito vulnerável à caça”, completou. Para outras 126, a ameaça foi reduzida, mas ainda persiste.

O trabalho mostra que 77 espécies saíram da situação de risco – entre elas, a baleia Jubarte. Em 2012, foram contabilizados 15 mil indivíduos, quantidade significativamente maior do que os 9 mil encontrados em 2008. Duas espécies dos macacos uacaris e o peixe-grama também saíram da situação de perigo.

Os números foram apresentados nesta quinta-feira, 22, pela ministra do Meio Ambiente, Izabella Teixeira. Além do balanço, ela anunciou um pacote de medidas para tentar preservar a fauna brasileira. Entre as ações, está a moratória da pesca e comercialização da piracatinga, por cinco anos.

A regra, que começa a valer a partir de janeiro de 2015, tem como objetivo proteger o boto vermelho e jacarés, que são usados como isca. “Vamos criar um grupo para tentar encontrar alternativas a essa prática”, afirmou Izabella. A pesca acidental e comercialização de tubarão-martelo e lombo-preto também estão proibidas, a partir da agora. As duas medidas foram adotadas em parceria com o Ministério da Pesca e Aquicultura.

Izabella anunciou também a criação de uma força-tarefa de fiscalização, formada pelo Ibama, ICMBio e Polícia Federal para combater a caça de fauna ameaçada, como peixe-boi da Amazônia, boto cor-de-rosa, arara azul de lear, onça pintada, tatu-bola, tubarões, arraias de água doce e a extensão da bolsa verde para comunidades em situação de vulnerabilidade econômica em regiões consideradas relevantes para conservação de espécies ameaçadas de extinção. A bolsa será no valor de R$ 100 mensais.

(O Estado de São Paulo)
http://www.estadao.com.br/noticias/vida,fauna-brasileira-registra-1051-especies-em-extincao-ante-627-em-2003,1170125,0.htm

Concea aprova resolução sobre reconhecimento de métodos alternativos (MCTI)

24/05/2014UncategorizedAnimais, Animais de laboratório, ciência, Direitos animais, Interação humanos-animais, Justiçarenzotaddei

JC e-mail 4958, de 23 de maio de 2014

A intenção é reduzir, substituir e refinar o uso de animais em atividades de pesquisa

O Conselho Nacional de Controle de Experimentação Animal (Concea) aprovou em sua 24ª Reunião Ordinária, na quarta (21) e nesta quinta-feira (22), a resolução normativa que define o processo de reconhecimento de métodos alternativos validados para substituição progressiva e segura de ensaios toxicológicos.

Segundo o coordenador do Concea, José Mauro Granjeiro, a resolução permite, de forma efetiva, que o país adote métodos alternativos, independentemente do tipo de produto ou composto – ou seja, a mudança abrange agrotóxicos, cosméticos e medicamentos, por exemplo. A intenção é reduzir, substituir e refinar o uso de animais em atividades de pesquisa.

Em março, a instância acatou recomendação de câmara temporária interna para o reconhecimento de práticas validadas por entidades como o Centro Brasileiro de Validação de Métodos Alternativos (Bracvam) ou por estudos colaborativos internacionais publicados em compêndios oficiais.

Já nesta semana, o Concea recebeu, do Bracvam, a primeira recomendação de métodos alternativos validados e internacionalmente aceitos. Ontem, o conselho deliberou que a câmara permanente temática analise a proposta e convide para discussão representantes da Agência Nacional de Vigilância Sanitária (Anvisa) e dos ministérios da Agricultura, Pecuária e Abastecimento (Mapa) e do Meio Ambiente (MMA). A carta do centro sugere o reconhecimento de 17 técnicas, que envolvem sensibilização cutânea, potencial de irritação e corrosão ocular, fototoxicidade e genotoxicidade, dentre outros testes.

A expectativa do Concea é aprovar, em curto prazo, um conjunto de práticas validadas e aceitas internacionalmente. Na visão de Granjeiro, é fundamental ao país destinar recursos para o desenvolvimento de novos métodos que aumentem a capacidade preditiva dos ensaios toxicológicos, a fim de proteger o meio ambiente e diminuir o risco para a saúde de seres humanos e animais.

Com a decisão de março, a partir do reconhecimento pelo Concea do método alternativo validado, as instituições têm prazo de cinco anos para substituição obrigatória da técnica original. Para calcular o período, a instância projetou o tempo necessário para a adequação de infraestrutura laboratorial e a capacitação de recursos humanos demandadas pelos ensaios substitutivos.

Fiscalização
O Concea estabeleceu, no início de maio, um novo processo de credenciamento de instituições que produzem, mantém e utilizam animais em atividades didáticas ou científicas. Nesta quarta (21), o conselho discutiu e aprovou proposta de portaria interministerial que institui o Regulamento de Fiscalização do Uso de Animais para Atividades de Ensino ou Pesquisa.

A proposta de texto ainda recebe contribuições de áreas técnicas dos órgãos fiscalizadores estabelecidos pela Lei 11.794/2008. A lista inclui Mapa, MMA e os ministérios da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação (MCTI) – pasta à qual o Concea é vinculado -, da Educação (MEC) e da Saúde (MS). Esse grupo deve determinar estratégias de atuação para monitorar as instituições de pesquisa.

(Rodrigo PdGuerra / Ascom do MCTI)

Índice de suicídios entre indígenas no MS é o maior em 28 anos (Combate Racismo Ambiental)

24/05/2014UncategorizedÍndios, Guarani Kaiowá, Mato Grosso do Sul, Suicídio, Violênciarenzotaddei

Por CombateRacismoAmbiental, 23/05/2014 14:06

Por Carolina Fasolo, de Brasília (DF), no Cimi

No dia 3 de abril, quando amanheceu em uma aldeia Guarani-Kaiowá, localizada no sul do estado de Mato Grosso do Sul, a mãe de três filhos abriu a porta de casa e paralisou ao ver o corpo frágil de sua menina mais nova suspenso pelo lençol, amarrado à árvore por um nó que parecia firme. No dia anterior, a garota havia completado 13 anos.

“A mãe disse que ela chegou da escola muito triste e reclamando de dores na cabeça”, conta Otoniel, liderança Guarani-Kaiowá. “Depois que todos foram dormir ela amarrou o lençol na árvore e se matou. Um primo dela de 12 anos tinha se enforcado uma semana antes. E uns dias depois que ela morreu outro adolescente, de 16 anos, também se suicidou na mesma aldeia. Fui até lá para saber o que estava acontecendo”.

Os três enforcamentos em menos de duas semanas fazem parte de uma estatística que no ano de 2013 ganhou contornos históricos. Foram contabilizados 73 casos de suicídios entre os indígenas de Mato Grosso do Sul. De acordo com registros do Conselho Indigenista Missionário (Cimi), é o maior número em 28 anos. Os dados, apurados pelo Distrito Sanitário Especial Indígena (DSEI/MS), constam no Relatório de Violência Contra os Povos Indígenas no Brasil, a ser divulgado pelo Cimi em junho.

Dos 73 indígenas mortos, 72 eram do povo Guarani-Kaiowá, a maioria com idade entre 15 e 30 anos. Otoniel acredita que o motivo de tantos jovens cometerem suicídio é a falta de perspectiva. “Não têm futuro, não têm respeito, não têm trabalho e nem terra pra plantar e viver. Escolhem morrer porque na verdade já estão mortos por dentro”.

O procurador da República Marco Antônio Delfino de Almeida, do Ministério Público Federal (MPF) em Dourados (MS), explica que as oportunidades de trabalho para os indígenas são praticamente restritas a atividades subalternas degradantes, como o corte da cana-de-açúcar. “Temos escolas indígenas, mas o modelo educacional não foi construído para a comunidade, existe apenas uma ‘casca indígena’, que não contempla a inserção do jovem no processo produtivo”, completa.

“A discriminação e o ódio étnico, condutas incentivadas inclusive pelos meios de comunicação, acentuam sobremaneira o problema dos suicídios. Os indígenas são pintados como entraves, empecilhos, obstáculos ao desenvolvimento. É como se a mídia passasse a mensagem ‘Se você quer ficar bem, tire o índio do seu caminho’, ressalta o procurador.

13 anos, 684 suicídios

No período de 1986 a 1997, foram registradas 244 mortes por suicídio entre os Guarani-Kaiowá de MS, número que praticamente triplicou na última década. De 2000 a 2013 foram 684 casos.

“As atuais condições de vida desses indígenas, que desembocam em estatísticas assombrosas de violência, têm origem num processo histórico”, explica Marco Antonio Delfino. “O que aconteceu foi uma transferência brutal, por parte da União, de territórios indígenas para não índios”.

A transferência se deu, principalmente, pelo então Serviço de Proteção ao Índio (SPI) que demarcou, entre 1915 e 1928, oito pequenas reservas no sul do estado para onde diferentes povos indígenas foram obrigados a migrar. “As reservas demarcadas serviam como um depósito gigantesco de mão de obra a ser utilizada conforme os interesses econômicos. Todo o processo de confinamento indígena teve como finalidade sua utilização como mão de obra para os projetos agrícolas implantados no país, desde a cultura da erva-mate até recentemente, com a cana-de-açúcar”, completa o procurador.

O confinamento compulsório, com a sobreposição de aldeias distintas e de dinâmicas político-religiosas peculiares, acirrou o conflito dentro das reservas, alterando profundamente as formas de organização social, econômica e cultural dos indígenas, o que resultou em índices alarmantes de superpopulação, miséria e violência nestes espaços.

Definida pela vice-procuradora-geral da República, Deborah Duprat, como “a maior tragédia conhecida na questão indígena em todo o mundo”, a Reserva Indígena de Dourados é um dos exemplos mais contundentes desse processo histórico. Encravada no perímetro urbano do município, na Reserva vivem hoje mais de 13 mil indígenas em 3,6 hectares de terra. É a maior densidade populacional entre todas as comunidades tradicionais do país, e onde aconteceram 18 dos 73 casos de suicídio no estado em 2013.

“Hoje enfrentamos uma carência extremamente aguda de políticas públicas. Desde 2009 existem discussões para implantar um Centro de Atenção Psicossocial Indígena em Durados mas, por enquanto, não foi adotada nenhuma medida concreta para sua construção”, diz Marco Antonio Delfino. “A impressão que se tem é que as pessoas perderam o controle sobre o monstro que criaram, que são essas reservas. Então, fica nesse jogo de empurra-empurra, sempre com soluções paliativas. Precisamos reconhecer e reparar os erros cometidos para que existam soluções efetivas. O primeiro passo é demarcar os territórios usurpados dos indígenas”, conclui o procurador.

Stem cells as future source for eco-friendly meat (Science Daily)

21/05/2014UncategorizedAnimais, Carne, Células tronco, Interação humanos-animais, Vegetarianismorenzotaddei

Date: May 20, 2014

Source: Cell Press

Summary: The scientific progress that has made it possible to dream of a future in which faulty organs could be regrown from stem cells also holds potential as an ethical and greener source for meat. So say scientists who suggest that every town or village could one day have its very own small-scale, cultured meat factory.

Pigs on a farm (stock image). The rising demand for meat around the world is unsustainable in terms of environmental pollution and energy consumption, not to mention the animal suffering associated with factory farming, the authors note. Credit: © goory / Fotolia

The scientific progress that has made it possible to dream of a future in which faulty organs could be regrown from stem cells also holds potential as an ethical and greener source for meat. So say scientists who suggest in the Cell Press journal Trends in Biotechnology that every town or village could one day have its very own small-scale, cultured meat factory.

“We believe that cultured meat is part of the future,” said Cor van der Weele of Wageningen University in The Netherlands. “Other parts of the future are partly substituting meat with vegetarian products, keeping fewer animals in better circumstances, perhaps eating insects, etc. This discussion is certainly part of the future in that it is part of the search for a ‘protein transition.’ It is highly effective in stimulating a growing awareness and discussion of the problems of meat production and consumption.”

van der Weele and coauthor Johannes Tramper point out that the rising demand for meat around the world is unsustainable in terms of environmental pollution and energy consumption, not to mention the animal suffering associated with factory farming.

van der Weele said she first heard about cultured meat in 2004, when frog steaks were served at a French museum while the donor frog watched on (http://tcaproject.org/projects/victimless/cuisine). Tramper has studied the cultivation of animal cells—insect cells mostly—in the lab for almost 30 years. In 2007, he published a paper suggesting that insect cells might be useful as a food source.

It is already possible to make meat from stem cells. To prove it, Mark Post, a professor of tissue engineering at Maastricht University, The Netherlands, presented the first lab-grown hamburger in 2013.

In the new Science & Society paper, van der Weele and Tramper outline a potential meat manufacturing process, starting with a vial of cells taken from a cell bank and ending with a pressed cake of minced meat. But there will be challenges when it comes to maintaining a continuous stem cell line and producing cultured meat that’s cheaper than meat obtained in the usual way. Most likely, the price of “normal” meat would first have to rise considerably.

Still, the promise is too great to ignore.

“Cultured meat has great moral promise,” write van der Weele and Tramper. “Worries about its unnaturalness might be met through small-scale production methods that allow close contact with cell-donor animals, thereby reversing feelings of alienation. From a technological perspective, ‘village-scale’ production is also a promising option.”

Journal Reference:

Cor van der Weele, Johannes Tramper. Cultured meat: every village its own factory? Trends in Biotechnology, 2014; 32 (6): 294 DOI:10.1016/j.tibtech.2014.04.009

Ariel Palácios: “Não são gentlemen” – sobre os barrabravas argentinos (OESP)

21/05/2014UncategorizedArgentina, Copa do Mundo, Discriminação, jornalismo, Racismo, Sensacionalismo, Torcidas organizadas, Violência de torcidasrenzotaddei

20.março.2014 15:06:53

Seção “Não são gentlemen”: Barrabravas argentinos intensificam violência enquanto preparam as malas para viajar para a Copa

Hunos fazendo rolezinho em terras europeias no dia 20 de junho de 451. A gravura, de A. De Neuville (1836-1885), ilustra os bárbaros descendo pauleira na Batalha de Chalôns. Os barrabravas – os hooligans argentinos – teriam estado à vontade. Os “barrabravas” argentinos cresceram durante a ditadura militar com respaldo das autoridades e dos cartolas dos times. Nas últimas três décadas de democracia continuaram sua expansão.

Mais de 50 times de futebol da Argentina, desde os grandes Boca Juniors eRiver Plate aos pequenos El Porvenir e o Chaco For Ever, estão padecendo uma intensificação generalizada das atividades dos“barrabravas”, denominação nativa para os “hooligans”. Tiroteios, assassinatos, espancamentos, extorsões e depredação da propriedade privada e pública foram a tônica no futebol local nos últimos meses, somadas às costumeiras atividades de vendas de drogas, revenda de entradas nos estádios, entre outras. No meio da polêmica sobre esta escalada de violência os responsáveis por estas ações estão planejando detalhadamente sua viagem ao Brasil, onde pretendem assistir os jogos da Copa do Mundo.

Ou, caso não consigam as entradas (a imensa maioria destes barrabravas, segundo informações extraoficiais, ainda não contam com os tíquetes), ficariam do lado de fora dos estádios, fazendo o que os argentinos denominam de “el aguante” (expressão local para designar a exibição de respaldo enfático que uma torcida propicia a seu time).

‘ROLÊ’ NO BRASIL – Uma comitiva de dez barrabravas viajará a Porto Alegre no final de março para reunir-se com contatos locais – entre eles José “Hierro” Martins, da Guarda Popular, do Inter – para preparar o desembarque do contingente das torcidas organizadas argentinas, que usariam a capital gaúcha como quartel-generalpara as viagenspelo resto do país. O grupo argentino estáorganizando o financiamento da viagem desde 2011.

Diversas estimativas indicam que ao redor de 650 barrabravas de 38 clubes argentinos viajariam ao Brasil em dez ônibus para estar presentes durante a Copa. Este volume implicaria em um aumento de 150% em comparação ao número de barrabravas que viajaram à Copa da África do Sul em 2010.

Estes barrabravas integram a Torcidas Unidas Argentinas, entidade conhecida pela sigla “HUA”, que se auto-apresenta como uma ONG para divulgar a “cultura do futebol”. Mas, enquanto que na Copa de 2010 os barrabravas desta organização contavam com lideranças fortes que serviam de interlocutor com diversos integrantes do governo dapresidente Cristina Kirchner, que lhes conseguiam financiamentos, atualmente não possuem um comando único, além de receberem apoios econômicos por parte de aliados da Casa Rosada e da oposição.

Não, o moço do moletom preto não está dando um abraço no rapaz da camista cinza. Segundo diversas autoridades e colunistas esportivos é apenas “paixão esportiva”.

Analistas esportivos consultados pelo Estado sustentam que este cenário de atomização das lideranças e vínculos complicou nos últimos anos o controle da violência dos barrabravas por parte das forças de segurança. No entanto, as autoridades argentinas prometem fiscalizar estes grupos violentos que viajarão ao Brasil. Mas os críticos ironizam, afirmando que o governo Kirchner sequer consegue controlar os barrabravas dentro do próprio país.

O município de Quilmes, na Grande Buenos Aires, foi o cenário de confrontos de barrabravas na semana passada. Os torcedores do clube Quilmes, famosos por sua violência, espancaram os rivais do All Boys com pás, além de desferir punhaladas. Além dos conflitos com outras torcidas, os divididos barrabravas do Quilmes também protagonizam combates internos. Segundo odeputado Fernando Pérez, da União Cívica Radical (UCR), “a Copa acelera as disputas porque os barrabravas se desesperam por financiar suas viagens ao Brasil”.

Estimativas das agênciasde turismo indicamque15 mil argentinos viajariam ao Brasil paraparticipar dos eventos da Copa. Mas, deste total, apenas 4.300 argentinos conseguiram entradas por intermédio da site na internet da Associação de Futebol da Argentina (AFA). Uma parte destes visitantes conseguiriam entradas por intermédios dos cambistas. No entanto, a maioria ficaria sem entradas.

Barrabravas de um time expressam o que desejam que aconteça aos torcedores do time rival com metáfora funérea.

MORTES E BUSINESS – Desde o primeiro ataque protagonizado por barrabravas com saldos fatais na Argentina em 1924 até o ano passado haviam morrido 230 pessoas, além de milhares de feridos. As brigas, que até os anos 80 eram resolvidas a base de socos e pontapés, nos últimos 30 anos foram definidas a base de armas de fogo. Nestes 90 anos a Justiça argentina foi costumeiramente omissa, já que pouco mais de três dezenas de pessoas foram condenadas por essas mortes entre 1924 e 2013.

Ao contrário de outros países onde as torcidas organizadas mais violentas estão vinculadas a grupos de skinheads e neonazistas, na Argentina os barrabravas possuem fortes laços políticos e econômicos com ministros, senadores, deputados, governadores, prefeitos e vereadores, para os quais trabalham organizando comícios, cabos eleitorais e seguranças.

Nos últimos anos na cidade de Buenos Aires enos municípios da Grande Buenos Aires osbarrabravas assumiram gradualmente o controle dos flanelinhas que circulam nas áreas dos shows de rock, estádios de futebol, exposições e demais lugares de passeio dos habitantes da área. Os barrabravas também estão vinculados ao tráfico de drogas, que cresceu de forma acelerada na última década no país. As lideranças destas torcidas organizadas obtêm dos cartolas dos times argentinos entradas para os jogos que são revendidas e também arrancam dízimos dos vendedores de cachorro-quente e outros camelôs. “Não somos escoteiros”, admitiu um barrabrava consultado pelo Estado.

Coreografia improvisada da violência dos estádios argentinos. Um clássico que repete-se com mais frequência nos últimos anos.

ATAQUES – Na semana retrasada, no distrito de Gerli, no município de Lanús, na zona sul da Grande Buenos Aires,um grupo de barrabravas incendiou um carro da polícia estacionado na frente da residência de Enrique Merellas, diretorde El Porvenir, um pequeno time local. “Merellas, você morrerá!” foi uma das legendas pintadas no muro do campo do time. No ano passado o diretor do clube havia apresentado na Justiça 53 denúncias por ameaças e agressões dos barrabravas, que aumentaram desde queo timefoi rebaixado à quinta divisão. “Este time é um depósito de drogas, tal como os outros clubes do país”, sustentou Merellas.

Merellas havia pedido ajuda ao governadorde Buenos Aires eao secretário da Justiça, que colocaram à sua disposição uma viatura policial para proteger sua casa. No entanto, na hora do ataque, os policiais não estavam no carro.

No mesmo dia, no norte da Argentina, na província do Chaco, a casa de Héctor Gómez, presidente do clube Chaco For Ever, da terceira divisão, foi alvo de tiros disparados por um grupo de barrabravas, irritados com sanções da Justiça que determinam que somente os sócios do time podem assistir os jogos quando o clube é anfitrião. “É muito difícil combater a violência no futebol argentino”, lamentou Gómez, que destacou que as drogas e álcool dentro de um estádio tornam “incontrolável” o comportamento dos barrabravas. Segundo Gómez, “o governo e a política usam estes rapazes”.

General e ditador Jorge Rafael Videla com sorriso amplo celebra a conquista da Copa de 1978 na Argentina. Durante o regime militar os barrabravas consolidaram-se e iniciaram sua expansão.

DITADURA E BARRABRAVAS – A Copa de 1978 na Argentina foi um divisor de águas na violência e na estrutura dos “cartolas” do futebol local. Por um lado, a truculência do regime teve influência sobre as torcidas, consolidando o crescimento dos “barrabravas”, que nos anos seguintes à copa começaram a desfrutar da cumplicidade das autoridades esportivas em suas atividades violentas. Simultaneamente, vários técnicos, jogadores de futebol e grupos de barrabravas colaboraram ativamente com o regime militar na repressão aos civis.

Meses após a final de 1978, apadrinhado pela Marinha argentina – que participava da Junta Militar – estabeleceu-se um grupo de poder no controle da Associação de Futebol da Argentina (AFA), liderado por Julio Grondona, que mantém-se no comando do futebol argentino há três décadas e meia. Grondona reelegeu-se ininterruptamente nove vezes desde os tempos da Ditadura. Octogenário, não exibia em 2014 sinais de querer se aposentar.

Barrabravas: sangue, suor e musculatura. Na companhia de colegas do mesmo sexo, com torsos nus, barrabravas fazem apologia da heterossexualidade em âmbito público esportivo.

E embaixo, do pintor francês Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904), a emblemática obra “Police Verso” (Polegares para baixo) que retrata o “panem et circenses” (pão e circo) do Império Romano. O quadro está no Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona, EUA. A cena pode parecer algo velha…Mas no fundo é bem atual. Gérôme nasceu em 1824. E morreu em 1904, época em que o futebol era apenas um esporte jogado de forma cavalheiresca.

E vamos para um pouco da imprescindível civilização: Georges Prête rege o Intermezzo da Cavalleria Rusticana, de Pietro Mascagni:

* * *

Seção “Não são gentlemen”, parte II: Mais de 1.200 ‘barrabravas’ tentariam entrar no Brasil durante a Copa

Não é massagem reiki. São os barrabravas de uma facção do clube Quilmes que espancam outros torcedores do mesmo time (mas de setores rivais).

Mais de 1.200 “barrabravas”, denominação dos ‘hooligans’ argentinos, estão preparando as malas para viajar ao Brasil durante a Copa do Mundo. Isso é o que sustentam investigações feitas pelo jornal portenho “Clarín”, que indicam que o volume de “barrabravas” teria duplicado as estimativas originais, de março, quando as autoridades argentinas calculavam que iriam ao lado brasileiro da fronteira 650 integrantes das violentas torcidas organizadas de times de Buenos Aires e outras cidades do país.

Organizados na “ONG” Hinchadas Unidas Argentinas (Torcidas Unidas Argentinas), conhecida pela sigla “HUA”, os barrabravas foram favorecidos em abril por uma determinação da Justiça de Buenos Aires que permitirá que possam sair da Argentina sem problemas, a não ser nos casos de pessoas que, por questões de processos nos tribunais, estejam impedidos de viajar para fora do país.

Segundo a advogada da HUA, Debora Hambo, os torcedores que irão ao Brasil “não possuem processos penais abertos nem antecedentes de fatos de violência. Os torcedores que viajarão não possuem grau algum de periculosidade”.

Apesar das recentes declarações do ministro dos esportes do Brasil, Aldo Rebelo, de que as autoridades brasileiras estarão de olho nos voos provenientes da Argentina e nos principais pontos de passagem na fronteira entre o Brasil e a Argentina, diversos barrabravas argentinos já estão planejando entrar em território brasileiro pelas fronteiras que o país possui com o Paraguai e Bolívia.

Os barrabravas argentinos teriam conseguido pelo menos 900 entradas para os jogos da primeira fase da Argentina por intermédio da Associação de Futebol da Argentina (AFA), comandada desde 1979 por Julio Grondona. O cartola, aliado de todos os presidentes de plantão, civis e militares, tornou-se colaborador da presidente Cristina Kirchner a partir de 2009, quando fez um lucrativo acordo com o governo para estatizar as transmissões dos jogos de futebol.

Há duas semanas um grupo de 300 barrabravas manifestou-se nas portas da AFA para exigir entradas para os jogos da Argentina no Brasil. Os integrantes da HUA alegam que constituem uma ONG de “luta contra a violência”, e que, portanto, merecem as entradas.

Outras épocas, outros protagonistas de pancadarias a granel. Gravura do séc.XIX sobre invasões bárbaras.

MORTES – Desde 1924, quando ocorreu a primeira morte em um estádio argentino, um total de 278 pessoas foram assassinadas pelos barrabravas em confrontos diretos individuais ou choques de grupos. A AFA, que tem contatos fluidos com as torcidas organizadas – aos quais ocasionalmente recebe em sua sede no centro portenho – jamais atendeu os parentes das vítimas da violência nos estádios. Nestes 90 anos a Justiça argentina condenou apenas três dezenas de pessoas por essas mortes.

POLL: Tea Party Members Really, Really Don’t Trust Scientists (Mother Jones)

20/05/2014UncategorizedClima, Conservadorismo, Estados Unidos, Mudanças climáticas, Tea Partyrenzotaddei

The “science gap” between traditional Republicans and tea partiers is huge in a new survey of New Hampshire residents.

—By Chris Mooney

Tue May 20, 2014 10:46 AM EDT

Kevin Yeaux/Flickr

It’s one of the biggest trends in US politics over the last decade: A growing left-right split over the validity of scientific information. This “science gap” is apparent most of all on the issue of climate change, but the problem is much broader, encompassing topics ranging from evolution to the safety and effectiveness of condoms in preventing sexually transmitted diseases.

Yet even those of us who know how politicized science has become may be surprised by some new polling data out of the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire. There, survey researcher Lawrence Hamilton has run a new analysis of 568 New Hampshire residents, asking them a variety of questions including the following: “Would you say that you trust, don’t trust, or are unsure about scientists as a source of information about environmental issues?” Hamilton then broke down the responses by party, separating out members of the tea party from more mainstream Republicans. And look at the result:

Lawrence Hamilton, 2014.

This is pretty striking: The first three political groups—Democrats, independents, and non-tea party Republicans—all trust scientists on the environment. But then you come to tea party members, and suddenly, distrust in scientists soars. The numbers are stark: 60 percent of traditional Republicans trust scientists on the environment, versus only 28 percent of tea partiers.

Hamilton says he’s surprised by the strength of these results. “I didn’t realize it would be at the level of division that it was,” says Hamilton. He adds that while Republicans and tea partiers in New Hampshire aren’t precisely the same in all respects as they are elsewhere in America, “in general, New Hampshire is not drastically unrepresentative.” When it comes to tea partiers and more traditional Republicans on the national level, Hamilton says that he “would expect similar gaps to show up.”

So what’s going on with this plummeting trust in scientists on the ideological right? The main factor, Hamilton thinks, is that the highly polarized climate issue is leading climate deniers to break up with scientists in general. “Climate change is sort of bleeding over into a lower trust in science across a range of issues,” says Hamilton. That means the consequences are not limited to the climate issue. “The critiques of climate science work by often arguing that science is corrupt, and then that spills over to other kinds of science,” Hamilton observes.Prior research has found that watching Fox News, in particular, leads to a declining trust in climate scientists.

The new data on trust in science comprise just one part of Hamilton’s new report. The study also looked at partisan gaps on a number of other scientific issues, and compared the size of those gaps with those that exist on non-scientific issues. And again, the result was pretty surprising: In New Hampshire, there is a bigger partisan divide over climate change and whether environmental scientists are trustworthy than there is over abortion and the death penalty. Note that in this analysis, unlike in the earlier figure, Republican responses include both those of traditional Republicans and those of tea partiers. It is the latter who are driving much of the partisan gap on issues like trust in science:

Lawrence Hamilton, 2014

Last week, we got some of the scariest news about global warming yet: We may have already helped set in motion an irreversible destabilization of the West Antarctic ice sheet, thus locking in 10 or more feet of sea level rise over the coming centuries. It’s the kind of news that ought to serve as a wake up call for all Americans, causing them to stop and say: Enough. We’ve got to do something here.

But as these data make clear, when it comes to science, there’s no such thing as “all Americans” any more. There are highly polarized camps, divided over the very validity of the information.

Lectures Aren’t Just Boring, They’re Ineffective, Too, Study Finds (Science)

20/05/2014UncategorizedEducação, Mediação tecnológica, participatividaderenzotaddei

12 May 2014 3:00 pm

Blah? Traditional lecture classes have higher undergraduate failure rates than those using active learning techniques, new research finds.

Wikimedia. Blah? Traditional lecture classes have higher undergraduate failure rates than those using active learning techniques, new research finds.

Are your lectures droning on? Change it up every 10 minutes with more active teaching techniques and more students will succeed, researchers say. A new study finds that undergraduate students in classes with traditional stand-and-deliver lectures are 1.5 times more likely to fail than students in classes that use more stimulating, so-called active learning methods.

“Universities were founded in Western Europe in 1050 and lecturing has been the predominant form of teaching ever since,” says biologist Scott Freeman of the University of Washington, Seattle. But many scholars have challenged the “sage on a stage” approach to teaching science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) courses, arguing that engaging students with questions or group activities is more effective.

To weigh the evidence, Freeman and a group of colleagues analyzed 225 studies of undergraduate STEM teaching methods. The meta-analysis, published online today in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concluded that teaching approaches that turned students into active participants rather than passive listeners reduced failure rates and boosted scores on exams by almost one-half a standard deviation. “The change in the failure rates is whopping,” Freeman says. And the exam improvement—about 6%—could, for example, “bump [a student’s] grades from a B– to a B.”

“This is a really important article—the impression I get is that it’s almost unethical to be lecturing if you have this data,” says Eric Mazur, a physicist at Harvard University who has campaigned against stale lecturing techniques for 27 years and was not involved in the work. “It’s good to see such a cohesive picture emerge from their meta-analysis—an abundance of proof that lecturing is outmoded, outdated, and inefficient.”

Although there is no single definition of active learning approaches, they include asking students to answer questions by using handheld clickers, calling on individuals or groups randomly, or having students clarify concepts to each other and reach a consensus on an issue.

Freeman says he’s started using such techniques even in large classes. “My introductory biology course has gotten up to 700 students,” he says. “For the ultimate class session—I don’t say lecture—I’m showing PowerPoint slides, but everything is a question and I use clickers and random calling. Somebody droning on for 15 minutes at a time and then doing cookbook labs isn’t interesting.” Freeman estimates that scaling up such active learning approaches could enable success for tens of thousands of students who might otherwise drop or fail STEM courses.

Despite its advantages, active learning isn’t likely to completely kill the lecture, says Noah Finkelstein, a physics professor who directs the Center for STEM Learning at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and was not involved in the study. The new study “is consistent with what the benefits of active learning are showing us,” he says. “But I don’t think there should be a monolithic stance about lecture or no lecture. There are still times when lectures will be needed, but the traditional mode of stand-and-deliver is being demonstrated as less effective at promoting student learning and preparing future teachers.”

The current study didn’t directly address the effectiveness of one new twist in the traditional lecturing format: massive open online courses that can beam talks to thousands or even millions of students. But Freeman says the U.S. Department of Education has conducted its own meta-analysis of distance learning, and it found there was no difference in being lectured at in a classroom versus through a computer screen at home. So, Freeman says: “If you’re going to get lectured at, you might as well be at home in bunny slippers.”

‘We Don’t Want to Die Again’: Yanomami Leader Kopenawa (Indian Country Today Media Network)

19/05/2014UncategorizedAntropologia, Índios, Cidadania, Economia, Kopenawa, Mudanças climáticas, Violência, Visualidade, Yanomamirenzotaddei

Courtesy Survival International. Davi Kopenawa, a Yanomami shaman, who has been fighting for his peoples rights for more than 20 years will be in California in April to speak about protecting the rainforest and his spiritual life. Kopenawa is seen here surrounded by Yanomami children.

Rick Kearns

5/16/14

“It’s very important to talk to everybody here. We don’t want what happened 500 years ago to happen again. We, the Yanomami people, don’t want to die again,” said Davi Kopenawa in an interview with ICTMN at the end of April.

Kopenawa, an internationally known advocate for the Yanomami people of Brazil and the rainforest, was in San Francisco at the end of April to meet with activists, scholars and political officials to alert them to an escalating crisis involving gold miners in Yanomami territory and to speak about his book “The Falling Sky.”

For the interview on April 25th, Kopenawa sat down with ICTMN along with his interpreter and friend, Fiona Watson, Research Director for Survival Internationaland longtime ally of the Yanomami and other indigenous peoples of Brazil.

During the 35 minute conversation Kopenawa began by asserting how dangerous the gold mining operations have been for the people and the environment in their territory.

“The gold miners are people with lots of vices. They bring alcohol, they bring illnesses. They couldn’t find jobs in the cities and got no help from the government and the only thing they want to do is get gold from Indigenous Peoples territories. They have spread all over our land.

“The gold miners (garimpeiros) only work in the rivers,” he explained. “They use mercury to clean and separate the gold from the sand. When they wash the gold with mercury, the mercury sinks to the bottom of the river bed. The communities who live downstream use this water for drinking, washing and bathing. The fish also swallow mercury when they are eating which in turn affects the people who eat the fish. So the Yanomami get ill from mercury poisoning. That’s how the mercury contaminates our place.”

Kopenawa also emphasized that there are laws currently being proposed in Brazil that would make it easier for miners and others to invade indigenous territories. Watson noted that the indigenous communities and their allies such as SI are very worried about three potential laws in particular: PEC 215 is a constitutional amendment that would allow congress, which has members influenced by a strong anti-indigenous lobby, to be involved with demarcation of land; Portaria 303 which would prohibit extending any indigenous territory and that indigenous rights to use their resources would not extend to preventing large scale hydro-electric and mining projects; and Law Project 1610 would open up all indigenous territories to large scale mining (and there were already hundreds of petitions to start mining in Yanomani territory).

“I will talk about these things,” Kopenawa said in regards to his then upcoming presentations (he later spoke with California Governor Jerry Brown about the mining issues).

“I want to talk about the concerns of the Yanomami people. We are beginning to get nervous and sad because the government is preparing to invade our territory even though it is demarcated and recognized by law.”

He stated that his book, “The Falling Sky,” explains those concerns and how the Yanomami are guardians of their region of the earth.

“It is important to explain this to the city people who know about their land and mountains and places but we Yanomami needed a book to explain things to white people so they would know our story. We are guardians of the knowledge of our region of earth, of the mountains and the rivers. For us, the forest is a thing of great beauty and it is our story. Some white people think that the Yanomami know nothing, so for this reason I thought about writing a book about the traditional knowledge of the Yanomami, my people.”

At the end of the interview, Kopenawa re-iterated his principal message to the people of the United States.

“All we Indigenous Peoples in Brazil are very worried because of the project to mine in the Yanomami’s territory and in the territories of other indigenous brothers and sisters. We Yanomami people don’t want mining because we don’t want to suffer and die of the white peoples’ diseases. Mining will not bring positive benefits to the Indigenous Peoples. It will only bring a lot of diseases and problems and fights with the indigenous people. For this reason all we Indigenous Peoples are against mining.

“I, Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, an indigenous leader, ask for support from the American people not to allow mining to start in the Yanomami territory. I would like you to help to defend the lungs of the earth. I thank you for your strength. Thank you very much.”

Read more athttp://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/05/16/yanomami-leader-kopenawa-we-dont-want-die-again-154849

From Amazon to Garden State (CBS)

19/05/2014UncategorizedAntropologia, Índios, Cultura, Educação, Enquadramento, Yanomamirenzotaddei

http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/from-amazon-to-garden-state

MAY 11, 2014, 9:53 AM|David Good’s mother grew up in a remote village in the Amazon jungle. After meeting an American anthropologist, she moved to New Jersey and started a family. After she decided to return to her village, her son made an extraordinary trip to reconnect with her. Steve Hartman reports.

Wyoming is 1st state to reject science standards (AP)

19/05/2014UncategorizedEducação, Estados Unidos, Fundamentalismo, Mudanças climáticas, Religiãorenzotaddei

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — Wyoming, the nation’s top coal-producing state, is the first to reject new K-12 science standards proposed by national education groups mainly because of global warming components.

The Wyoming Board of Education decided recently that the Next Generation Science Standards need more review after questions were raised about the treatment of man-made global warming.

Board President Ron Micheli said the review will look into whether “we can’t get some standards that are Wyoming standards and standards we all can be proud of.”

Others see the decision as a blow to science education in Wyoming.

“The science standards are acknowledged to be the best to prepare our kids for the future, and they are evidence based, peer reviewed, etc. Why would we want anything less for Wyoming?” Marguerite Herman, a proponent of the standards, said.

Twelve states have adopted the standards since they were released in April 2013 with the goal of improving science education, and Wyoming is the first to reject them, Chad Colby, spokesman for Achieve, one of the organizations that helped write the standards.

“The standards are what students should be expected to know at the end of each grade, but how a teacher teaches them is still up to the local districts and the states, and even the teachers in most cases,” Colby said.

But the global warming and evolution components have created pushback around the country.

Amy Edmonds, of the Wyoming Liberty Group, said teaching “one view of what is not settled science about global warming” is just one of a number of problems with the standards.

“I think Wyoming can do far better,” Edmonds said.

Wyoming produces almost 40 percent of the nation’s coal, with much of it used by power plants to provide electricity around the nation. Minerals taxes on coal provided $1 billion to the state and local governments in 2012 and coal mining supports some 6,900 jobs in the state.

Burning coal to generate electricity produces large amounts of CO2, which is considered a heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere. Most scientists recognize that man-made CO2 emissions contribute to global warming. However, the degree to which it can be blamed for global warming is in dispute among some scientists.

Gov. Matt Mead has called federal efforts to curtail greenhouse emissions a “war on coal” and has said that he’s skeptical about man-made climate change.

This past winter, state lawmakers approved budget wording that sought to stop adoption of the standards.

“Wyoming is certainly unique in having legislators and the governor making comments about perceived impacts on the fossil fuel industry of kids learning climate science, and unique in acting on that one objection to prohibit consideration of the package of standards, of which climate science is a small component,” said John Friedrich, a member of the national organization Climate Parents, which supports the standards.

Friedrich and Colby noted that oil and gas industry giants Exxon Mobile and Chevron support the standards.

Opponents argue the standards incorrectly assert that man-made emissions are the main cause of global warming and shouldn’t be taught in a state that derives much of its school funding from the energy industry.

“I think those concepts should be taught in science; I just think they should be taught as theory and not as scientific fact,” state Rep. Matt Teeters, R-Lingle, said.

Paul Bruno, an eighth-grade California science teacher who reviewed the standards for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, said the climate-change components can cause confusion because they are difficult to navigate.

The Fordham Institute, a conservative think tank, gave the standards a “C” grade.

While the standards overall are “mediocre,” Bruno said they are being “a little bit unfairly impugned on more controversial topics like climate change or evolution.”

The standards for high school assert that models predict human activity is contributing to climate change, but leave an “appropriate amount of uncertainty” and note that it’s important to factor in costs, reliability and other issues when considering global warming solutions, he said.

“And so I think it’s fair to say that the Next Generation Standards at least make gestures in the direction of wanting to accommodate those potentially skeptical viewpoints, particularly when it comes to things like energy production,” Bruno said.

CPTEC/INPE desenvolve novo conceito de sistema de previsão, monitoramento e de alertas para ondas e ressacas (CPTEC)

19/05/2014UncategorizedGestão costeira, Instituto Nacional de Meteorologia, Meteorologia, Monitoramento, Ressacasrenzotaddei

Atualizado em 15/05/2014 13:54

Sistema também pode ser utilizado para avaliar impactos ambientais em regiões costeiras

O grupo do CPTEC/INPE dedicado à previsão de agitação marítima lançou há dois anos em sua página de previsão de ondas a primeira fase do Sistema de Previsão e Monitoramento Costeiro (SIMCos) para 61 pontos da costa brasileira (link no canto superior direito da página http://ondas.cptec.inpe.br/). A segunda fase deste projeto foi concluída recentemente, colocando em operação um sistema de avaliação de impactos de ondas e marés, de alta resolução, para um daqueles 61 pontos do litoral brasileiro: a Baia de Vitória, no Espírito Santo. Esta região do litoral capixaba foi escolhida como área teste para avaliar o funcionamento completo do SIMCos (Sistema de Previsão e Monitoramento Costeiro), concebido para disparar um segundo sistema, como este voltado à Baia de Vitória, quando houver previsões de ondas ultrapassando limites que envolvam riscos ambientais e às atividades na costa.

O SIMCos, projeto temático da FAPESP, gera previsões diárias de ondas, indicando situações de risco ao comparar os níveis de ondas de cada um dos cerca de 60 pontos da costa brasileira a uma climatologia de 30 anos (condições atmosféricas de resolução espacial de 0,3 grau e temporal de 1 hora) da agitação marítima destes mesmos pontos. Para a baía capixaba, que abrange a ilha de Vitória, região metropolitana e os portos de Tubarão e Vitória, foram desenvolvidos modelos com o objetivo de monitorar e avaliar os possíveis impactos, através de simulações numéricas de ondas, de circulação, das marés astronômicas e meteorológicas, com alta resolução temporal e espacial, e capaz, se necessário, de emitir alertas de ressacas.

A plataforma do SIMCos foi composta pelo modelo WWATCH, do NCEP/NOAA, cujas previsões são rodadas em um computador de 120 processadores, obtido exclusivamente para o projeto. Segundo o pesquisador responsável pelo desenvolvimento do SIMCos, Valdir Innocentini, os 61 pontos de previsão e monitoramento ao longo da costa brasileira estão distantes entre si de 100 a 200 quilômetros, e se situam sobre uma linha de profundidade de 100 metros, aproximadamente, para que os efeitos do relevo oceânico não interfiram muito nas características das ondas. Já para o sistema desenvolvido para o litoral capixaba, foi utilizado o modelo holandês de circulação costeira e marés DELFT3D, com condições atmosféricas simuladas pelo modelo WRF (Weather Research Forecasting Model), dos Estados Unidos, e condições iniciais e de contorno hidrodinâmicas do modelo francês global Mercator.

O sistema implementado na Baía de Vitória permite simular e avaliar impactos relacionados à vazão de rios, circulação e interação de água doce e oceânica, erosão, dispersão e transporte de sedimentos e poluentes (como manchas de petróleo), entre outras aplicações. Também simula os efeitos das marés para obras de dragagem, construção de obras civis, como ampliação de portos, prevendo áreas de assoreamento e de possíveis danos ambientais. O desenvolvimento deste módulo do SIMCos contou com a cooperação da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo (UFES) e Universidade Nacional Autonoma do México (UNAM).

Segundo Innocentini, o desenvolvimento do SIMCos, alcançou seu objetivo, que era viabilizar um conceito de sistema de alerta, com potencial para ser lançado operacionalmente cobrindo toda a costa brasileira. Para implementar o sistema completo, o pesquisador do CPTEC/INPE explica que seria necessário um novo projeto que permitisse colocar em operação os modelos de alta resolução para cada uma das regiões associadas aos 60 pontos restantes do SIMCos. Para tal empreitada, seria preciso desenhar a grade do relevo submerso de cada uma destas regiões costeiras, com base na batimetria destas áreas.

O desenvolvimento destes modelos de maior resolução – melhor precisão e refinamento para boa parte da costa brasileira – permitiria a simulação de impactos dos movimentos de marés e ressacas nas diferentes atividades econômicas costeiras, como extração de petróleo, turismo e náutica. Os modelos também teriam aplicações em pesquisas ambientais, com possíveis aplicações na área de mudanças climáticas, além de atuarem como uma poderosa ferramenta de monitoramento ambiental capaz de oferecer subsídios a ações fiscais na costa e à formulação de políticas ambientais.

Latinos in the U.S. have a strong belief in the spirit world (Pew Research Center)

19/05/2014UncategorizedAnimismo, Cultura, Religiãorenzotaddei

MAY 15, 2014

BY MICHAEL LIPKA

A majority of American Catholics see Pope Francis as a major change for the Catholic Church. But in one area, Francis may be the most traditional pope in a generation: He has “not only dwelled far more on Satan in sermons and speeches than his recent predecessors have,” according to a recent Washington Post article, “but also sought to rekindle the Devil’s image as a supernatural entity with the forces of evil at his beck and call.”

Francis is the first pope from Latin America, where “mystical views of Satan still hold sway in broad areas of the region,” according to the Post. Last week, Catholics from 33 countries gathered in Vatican City for a conference on exorcism. The Post estimated the number of “official exorcists” to be between 500 and 600, “the vast majority operating in Latin America and Eastern Europe.”

While we do not have data on how many Americans overall believe in the presence of spirits, a recent Pew Research survey found widespread belief in this among Latinos in the United States. More than half (57%) said that people can be possessed by spirits, and 44% said magic, sorcery or witchcraft can influence people’s lives.

In our survey, about one-in-eight Hispanic Catholics in the U.S. (12%) said they have witnessed an exorcism. Even more Hispanic Protestants (37%) – including 59% of Pentecostals – said they have seen “the devil or evil spirits being driven out of a person.”

Varying percentages of U.S. Hispanics also hold other spiritual beliefs, which in some cases may reflect a mix of Christian and indigenous or Afro-Caribbean influences.

Roughly four-in-ten U.S. Hispanics (39%), including a similar share of Hispanic Catholics, said they believe in the “evil eye,” or that certain people can cast curses or spells that cause bad things to happen. A smaller share (15%) said they have had witchcraft or black magic practiced on them or someone close to them.

Jardim Botânico do Rio lança livro de plantas medicinais em tribo no Acre (EFE)

19/05/2014UncategorizedAntropologia, Índios, Caxinawa, Cultura, Etnobotânica, Huni Kuinrenzotaddei

sáb, 17 de mai de 2014

Janaína Quinet.

Rio de Janeiro, 17 mai (EFE).- O Instituto de Pesquisa do Jardim Botânico do Rio de Janeiro (IJBRJ) e a Editora Dantes lançaram nesta semana o livro “Una Isi Kayawa, Livro da Cura”, que documenta o conhecimento medicinal do povo Huni Kuin do Rio Jordão, no Acre.

O trabalho que durou cerca de dois anos e meio foi realizado através de pesquisas e oficinas com os pajés das 33 aldeias das três terras indígenas Kaxinawá, que, que se estendem pelo Rio Jordão.

Comandado pelo pesquisador do JBRJ, Alexandre Quinet, e com o apoio do Coordenador do Centro Nacional da Conservação da Flora Brasileira do Instituto de Pesquisa do Jardim Botânico, Gustavo Martinelli, o livro conta com 109 espécies de plantas com a descrição de seus usos medicinais em português e em “hatxa kuin”, língua falada na tribo.

A identificação do material botânico foi feita com a colaboração de 21 taxonomistas de instituições brasileiras e internacionais. A obra apresenta, além do conhecimento científico das plantas, a cultura do povo Huni Kuin por meio de relatos e desenhos, desde seus hábitos alimentares e artesanato como também as suas concepções espirituais.

Por conta do lançamento, foi organizada na Aldeia São Joaquim uma grande festa, reunindo a maior parte dos pajés das 33 aldeias, que realizaram seus rituais com a “nixi pae” (ayhausca) e rapé de tabaco. Todos vestiram suas roupas tradicionais, enfeitaram-se com seus cocares e, com urucum e jenipapo, desenharam em seus corpos os “kenes”, representações gráficas de conceitos sagrados.

Durante a entrega dos livros aos pajés de cada aldeia, Quinet declarou que o livro “é um registro fiel do que foi dito pelos pajés.

“Esse foi um processo todo participativo. Nós fomos apenas os costureiros. Essas palavras são de vocês, vocês são os autores e protagonistas deste livro feito por vocês e para vocês”, disse.

Já Martinelli afirmou que o acolhimento que o povo lhe proporcionou foi o melhor que ele recebeu em todas as suas viagens.

“Desde a primeira vez que eu vim aqui, nunca tinha me sentido tão bem acolhido. As pessoas estavam aqui me saudando, e nunca vou esquecer esse momento. Por isso eu quis retribuir, colaborando ao máximo para concretização desse projeto”, explicou.

Anna Dantes, que editou o livro acompanhando sua realização desde as oficinas, coordenando a tradução dos textos em “hatxa kuin” e selecionando com eles os desenhos, exaltou a iniciativa.

“Trabalho com a edição de livros há mais de 20 anos, para mim isso é pegar um sonho e fazer com que ele alcance outras pessoas. O livro vai durar mais tempo que a gente, o livro fica na história”, argumentou.

Ela ainda explicou que, para apresentar um conteúdo tão rico, foi criada uma fonte tipográfica a partir das letras manuscritas em cadernos, placas dos parques e quadros negros.

A fonte foi usada para a escrita do “hatxa kuin” e para todas as informações de autoria Huni Kuin no livro. Além disso, o papel utilizado na impressão é resistente e pode ser molhado, já que é feito de garrafas de plástico recicladas. O objetivo é que ele possa resistir às condições úmidas e permeáveis da floresta.

A realização deste livro é a concretização do sonho do pajé Agostinho Manduca Mateus Inka Muru.

Durante 20 anos, ele realizou a missão de reunir seu povo que estava disperso, de resgatar sua cultura, com seus cânticos, rituais, pinturas, tecelagem, desenhos, alimentos, histórias e lendas. Ele desejava perpetuar todo esse conhecimento em um livro, “como os brancos”, dizia ele, para que os mais jovens não esquecessem e pudessem passar adiante as tradições e a cultura Huni Kuin.

Dias após a realização da última oficina, tendo encaminhado sua missão de transmissão de conhecimento, enquanto terminava suas recomendações para o livro, o Pajé Ika Muru morreu nos braços de seus filhos. EFE

West Antarctic Ice Sheet Is Collapsing (Science)

19/05/2014Uncategorizedciência, Clima, Desastre, Incerteza, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

12 May 2014 6:15 pm

Linchpin. Thwaites Glacier (shown) in West Antarctica is connected with its neighbors in ways that threaten a wholesale collapse if it recedes too far inland.

NASA. Linchpin. Thwaites Glacier (shown) in West Antarctica is connected with its neighbors in ways that threaten a wholesale collapse if it recedes too far inland.

A disaster may be unfolding—in slow motion. Earlier this week, two teams of scientists reported that the Thwaites Glacier, a keystone holding the massive West Antarctic Ice Sheet together, is starting to collapse. In the long run, they say, the entire ice sheet is doomed, which would release enough meltwater to raise sea levels by more than 3 meters.

One team combined data on the recent retreat of the 182,000-square-kilometer Thwaites Glacier with a model of the glacier’s dynamics to forecast its future. In a paper published online today in Science, they report that in as few as 2 centuries Thwaites Glacier’s outermost edge will recede past an underwater ridge now stalling its retreat. Their modeling suggests that the glacier will then cascade into rapid collapse. The second team, writing in Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), describes recent radar mapping of West Antarctica’s glaciers and confirms that the 600-meter-deep ridge is the final obstacle before the bedrock underlying the glacier dips into a deep basin.

Because inland basins connect Thwaites Glacier to other major glaciers in the region, both research teams say its collapse would flood West Antarctica with seawater, prompting a near-complete loss of ice in the area. “The next stable state for the West Antarctic Ice Sheet might be no ice sheet at all,” says the Science paper’s lead author, glaciologist Ian Joughin of the University of Washington (UW), Seattle.

“Very crudely, we are now committed to global sea level rise equivalent to a permanent Hurricane Sandy storm surge,” says glaciologist Richard Alley of Pennsylvania State University, University Park, referring to the storm that ravaged the Caribbean and the U.S. East Coast in 2012. Alley was not involved in either study.

Where Thwaites Glacier meets the Amundsen Sea, deep warm water burrows under the ice sheet’s base, forming an ice shelf from which icebergs break off. When melt and iceberg creation outpace fresh snowfall farther inland, the glacier shrinks. According to the radar mapping released today in GRL from the European Remote Sensing satellite, from 1992 to 2011 the Thwaites Glacier retreated 14 kilometers at its core. “Nowhere else in Antarctica is changing this fast,” says UW Seattle glaciologist Benjamin Smith, co-author of the Sciencepaper.

To forecast Thwaites Glacier’s fate, the team plugged satellite and aircraft radar maps of the glacier’s ice and underlying bedrock into a computer model. In simulations that assumed various melting trends, the model accurately reproduced recent ice-loss measurements and churned out a disturbing result: In all but the most conservative melt scenarios, a glacial collapse has already started and will accelerate rapidly once the glacier’s “grounding line”—the point at which the ice begins to float—retreats past the ridge.

At that point, the glacier’s face will become taller and, like a towering sand pile, more prone to collapse. The retreat will then accelerate to more than 5 kilometers per year, the team says. “On a glacial timescale, 200 to 500 years is the blink of an eye,” Joughin says.

And once Thwaites is gone, the rest of West Antarctica would be at risk.

Eric Rignot, a climate scientist at the University of California, Irvine, and the lead author of theGRL radar mapping study, is skeptical of Joughin’s timeline because the computer model used estimates of future melting rates instead of calculations based on physical processes such as changing sea temperatures. “These simulations ought to go to the next stage and include realistic ocean forcing,” he says. If they do, he says, they might predict an even more rapid retreat.

Antarctic history confirms the danger, Alley says: Core samples drilled into the inland basins that connect Thwaites Glacier with its neighbors have revealed algae preserved beneath the ice sheet, a hint that seawater has filled the basins within the past 750,000 years. That past flooding shows that modest climate warming can cause the entire ice sheet to collapse. “The possibility that we have already committed to 3 or more meters of sea level rise from West Antarctica will be disquieting to many people, even if the rise waits centuries before arriving.”

CONCLIMA 2013 – acesse vídeos de todas as palestras (Rede Clima)

19/05/2014Uncategorizedciência, Clima, comunicação científica, Educação, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

CONCLIMA 2013 – acesse vídeos de todas as palestras

Estão disponíveis na Internet os vídeos de todas as apresentações realizadas durante a 1ª CONCLIMA – Conferência Nacional da Rede CLIMA, INCT para Mudanças Climáticas (INCT-MC) e Programa Fapesp de Pesquisas sobre Mudanças Climáticas Globais (PFPMCG), realizada de 9 a 13 de setembro em São Paulo. A Rede CLIMA também produziu uma síntese de toda a conferência, com duração de 30 minutos.

O objetivo da CONCLIMA foi apresentar os resultados das pesquisas e o conhecimento gerado por esses importantes programas e projetos – um ambicioso empreendimento científico criado pelos governos federal e do Estado de São Paulo para prover informações de alta qualidade em estudos de clima, detecção de variabilidade climática e mudança climática, e seus impactos em setores chaves do Brasil.

Acesse os vídeos:

Vídeo da CONCLIMA – 1a Conferência Nacional de Mudanças Climáticas Globais:

Apresentações – arquivos PDF

Íntegra das apresentações – VÍDEOS

Mesa de Abertura

MODELO BRASILEIRO DO SISTEMA TERRESTRE

Paulo Nobre – INPE

Iracema Cavalcanti – INPE

Léo Siqueira – INPE

Marcos Heil Costa – UFV

Sérgio Correa – UERJ

PAINEL BRASILEIRO DE MUDANÇAS CLIMÁTICAS

Tércio Ambrizzi – USP

Eduardo Assad – Embrapa

Mercedes Bustamante – UnB

REDE CLIMA

Agricultura – Hilton Silveira Pinto – Embrapa

Recursos Hídricos – Alfredo Ribeiro Neto – UFPE

Energias Renováveis – Marcos Freitas – COPPE/UFRJ

Biodiversidade e Ecossistemas – Alexandre Aleixo – MPEG

Desastres Naturais – Regina Rodrigues – UFSC

Zonas Costeiras – Carlos Garcia – FURG

Urbanização e Cidades – Roberto do Carmo – Unicamp

Economia – Eduardo Haddad – USP

Saúde – Sandra Hacon – Fiocruz

Desenvolvimento Regional – Saulo Rodrigues Filho – UnB

INCT PARA MUDANÇAS CLIMÁTICAS

O INCT para Mudanças Climáticas – José Marengo – INPE

Detecção e atribuição e variabilidade natural do clima – Simone Ferraz – UFSM

Mudanças no uso da terra – Ana Paula Aguiar – INPE

Ciclos Biogeoquímicos Globais e Biodiversidade – Mercedes Bustamante – UnB

Oceanos – Regina Rodrigues – UFSC

REDD – Osvaldo Stella – IPAM

Cenários Climáticos Futuros e Redução de Incertezas – José Marengo – INPE

Gases de Efeito Estufa – Plínio Alvalá – INPE

Estudos de ciência, tecnologia e políticas públicas – Myanna Lahsen – INPE

Interações biosfera-atmosfera – Gilvan Sampaio – INPE

Amazônia – Gilberto Fisch – IAE/DCTA

PROGRAMA FAPESP MUDANÇAS CLIMÁTICAS

Sistema de Alerta Precoce para Doenças Infecciosas Emergentes na Amazônia Ocidental – Manuel Cesario – Unifran

Clima e população em uma região de tensão entre alta taxa de urbanização e alta biodiversidade: Dimensões sociais e ecológicas das mudanças climáticas – Lucia da Costa Ferreira – Unicamp

Cenários de impactos das mudanças climáticas na produção de álcool visando a definição de políticas públicas – Jurandir Zullo – Unicamp

Fluxos hidrológicos e fluxos de carbono – casos da Bacia Amazônica e reflorestamento de microbacias – Humberto Rocha – USP

O papel dos rios no balanço regional do carbono – Maria Victoria Ballester – USP

Aerossóis atmosféricos, balanço de radiação, nuvens e gases traços associados com mudanças de uso de solo na Amazônia – Paulo Artaxo – USP

Socio-economic impacts of climate change in Brazil: quantitative inputs for the design of public policies – Joaquim José Martins Guilhoto e Rafael Feltran Barbieri- USP

Emissão de dióxido de carbono em solos de áreas de cana-de-açúcar sob diferentes estratégias de manejo – Newton La Scala Jr – Unesp

Impacto do Oceano Atlantico Sudoeste no Clima da America do Sul ao longo dos séculos 20 e 21 – Tércio Ambrizzi – USP

MESA REDONDA: C,T&I EM MUDANÇAS GLOBAIS COMO APOIO ÀS POLÍTICAS PÚBLICAS

Apresentação Sergio Margulis – SAE – Presidência da República

Apresentação Gustavo Luedemann (MCTI)

Apresentação Carlos Klink (SMCQ/MMA)

Apresentação Couto Silva (MMA): Ambiente sobre o status da Elaboração do Plano Nacional de Adaptação. Funcionamento do GT Adaptação e suas redes temáticas. Proposta de Calendário. Proposta de Estrutura do Plano.

Apresentação Alexandre Gross (FGV): Recortes temáticos do Plano Nacional de Adaptação: apresentação do Relatório sobre dimensões temporal, espacial e temática na adaptação às mudanças climáticas (Produto 4), processo e resultados do GT Adaptação, coleta de contribuições e discussão.

Mesa redonda: Mudanças climáticas, extremos e desastres naturais

Apresentação Rafael Schadeck – CENAD

Apresentação Marcos Airton de Sousa Freitas – ANA

Mesa redonda: Relação ciência – planos setoriais; políticas públicas

Apresentação Carlos Nobre – SEPED/MCTI

Apresentação Luiz Pinguelli Rosa (COPPE UFRJ, FBMC)

Apresentação Eduardo Viola – UnB

Mesa redonda: Inventários e monitoramento das emissões e remoções de GEE

Apresentação Gustavo Luedemann – MCTI

CONFERÊNCIAS SOBRE A VISÃO DA PRODUÇÃO DO CONHECIMENTO: DETECÇÃO, MITIGAÇÃO, IMPACTOS, VULNERABILIDADE, ADAPTAÇÃO, INOVAÇÃO

Apresentação Patrícia Pinho – IGBP/INPE

Apresentação Paulo Artaxo – USP

Umbanda e candomblé não são religiões, diz juiz federal (FSP)

17/05/2014UncategorizedDiscriminação, Fundamentalismo, Justiça, Racismo, Religiões afrobrasileirasrenzotaddei

FABIO BRISOLLA

DO RIO

16/05/2014 19h34

Uma tentativa do Ministério Público Federal (MPF) de retirar do Youtube uma série de vídeos com ofensas à umbanda e ao candomblé resultou em uma decisão polêmica: a Justiça optou por manter a exibição das imagens e ainda salientou que “as manifestações religiosas afro-brasileiras” não podem ser classificadas como religião.

Em decisão de 28 de abril de 2014, o juiz Eugênio Rosa de Araújo, titular da 17ª Vara Federal, afirmou que as crenças afro-brasileiras “não contêm os traços necessários de uma religião”. De acordo com o magistrado, as características essenciais a uma religião seriam a existência de um texto base (como a Bíblia ou Alcorão), de uma estrutura hierárquica e de um Deus a ser venerado.

“Se o Juiz tivesse simplesmente negado que havia ofensa nos vídeos já seria uma decisão lamentável. Mas ele foi além. Em poucas linhas, resolveu ditar o que seria ou não uma religião, o que nos pareceu um absurdo”, disse à Folha o procurador Jaime Mitropoulos, que apresentou um recurso contra a decisão da 17ª Vara Federal.

Procurado pela Folha, o juiz Eugênio Rosa de Araújo preferiu não falar sobre a decisão.

Nos vídeos denunciados pelo MPF, pastores evangélicos associam praticantes de umbanda a uma legião de demônios. Também fazem comparação semelhante com o culto aos orixás característico do Candomblé.

A ação do MPF teve origem em uma denúncia da Associação Nacional de Mídia Afro, que pedia a exclusão dos vídeos citados do Youtube pelas ofensas disseminadas contra as religiões com raízes africanas.

No início de 2014, o MPF chegou a recomendar que a representação do Google no Brasil deletasse os vídeos. Entretanto, segundo a Procuradoria, a empresa se negou a atender a orientação. A partir daí, o caso foi encaminhado à Justiça.

Are We Bothered? (Monbiot)

17/05/2014Uncategorizedambientalismo, ciência, Clima, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Mídia, Opinião pública, Previsãorenzotaddei

May 16, 2014

The more we consume, the less we care about the living planet.

By George Monbiot, published on the Guardian’s website, 9th May 2014

That didn’t take long. The public interest in the state of the natural world stimulated by the winter floods receded almost as quickly as the waters did. A YouGov poll showed that the number of respondents placing the environment among their top three issues of concern rose from 6% in mid-January to 23% in mid-February. By early April – though the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had just published two massive and horrifying reports – the proportion had fallen back to 11%.

CarbonBrief has plotted the results on this graph:

Sustaining interest in this great but slow-burning crisis is a challenge no one seems to have mastered. Only when the crisis causes or exacerbates an acute disaster – such as the floods – is there a flicker of anxiety, but that quickly dies away.

Why is it so difficult to persuade people to care about our wonderful planet, the world that gave rise to us and upon which we wholly depend? And why do you encounter a barrage of hostility and denial whenever you attempt it (and not only from the professional liars who are paid by coal and oil and timber companies to sow confusion and channel hatred)?

The first thing to note, in trying to answer this question, is that the rich anglophone countries are anomalous. In this bar chart (copied from the website of the New York Times) you can see how atypical the attitudes of people in the US and the UK are. Because almost everything we read in this country is published in rich, English-speaking nations, we might get the false impression that the world doesn’t care very much.

This belief is likely to be reinforced by the cherished notion that we lead the world in knowledge, sophistication and compassion. The bar chart puts me in mind of the famous quote perhaps mistakenly attributed to Gandhi. When asked by a journalist during a visit to Britain, “What do you think of Western civilization?”, he’s reputed to have replied, “I think it would be a good idea.”

Our erroneous belief that we are more concerned about manmade climate change than the people of other nations informs the sentiment, often voiced by the press and politicians, that there’s no point in acting if the rest of the world won’t play its part. For example, last year the Chancellor, George Osborne, remarked:

“I don’t want us to be the only people out there in front of the rest of the world. I certainly think we shouldn’t be further ahead of our partners in Europe.”

But we’re not “the only people out there in front of the rest of the world.” In fact we’re not in front at all. As this map produced by Oxford University’s Smith School suggests, we are some way behind not only some other rich nations but also a number of countries much poorer than ours.

As for the US, Australia and Canada, they are ranked among the worst of all: comprehensively failing to limit their massive contribution to a global problem. We justify our foot-dragging with a mistaken premise. Our refusal to stop pumping so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is pure selfishness.

Both the map and the bar chart overlap to some degree with the fascinating results of the Greendex survey of consumer attitudes.

For years we’ve been told that people cannot afford to care about the natural world until they become rich; that only economic growth can save the biosphere, that civilisation marches towards enlightenment about our impacts on the living planet. The results suggest the opposite.

As you can see from the following graph, the people consulted in poorer countries feel, on average, much guiltier about their impacts on the natural world than people in rich countries, even though those impacts tend to be smaller. Of the nations surveyed, the people of Germany, the US, Australia and Britain feel the least consumer guilt; the people of India, China, Mexico and Brazil the most.

The more we consume, the less we feel. And maybe that doesn’t just apply to guilt.

Perhaps that’s the point of our otherwise-pointless hyperconsumption: it smothers feeling. It might also be the effect of the constant bombardment of advertising and marketing. They seek to replace our attachments to people and place with attachments to objects: attachments which the next round of advertising then breaks in the hope of attaching us to a different set of objects.

The richer we are and the more we consume, the more self-centred and careless of the lives of others we appear to become. Even if you somehow put aside the direct, physical impacts of rising consumption, it’s hard to understand how anyone could imagine that economic growth is a formula for protecting the planet.

So what we seem to see here is the turning of a vicious circle. The more harm we do, the less concerned about it we become. And the more hyperconsumerism destroys relationships, communities and the physical fabric of the Earth, the more we try to fill the void in our lives by buying more stuff.

All this is accompanied in the rich anglophone nations with the extreme neoliberalism promoted by both press and politicians, and a great concentration of power in the hands of the financial and fossil fuel sectors, which lobby hard, in the public sphere and in private, to prevent change.

So the perennially low level of concern, which flickers upwards momentarily when disaster strikes, then slumps back into the customary stupor, is an almost inevitable result of a society that has become restructured around shopping, fashion, celebrity and an obsession with money. How we break the circle and wake people out of this dreamworld is the question that all those who love the living planet should address. There will be no easy answers.

John Oliver Does Science Communication Right (I Fucking Love Science)

17/05/2014Uncategorizedciência, Clima, comunicação científica, Educação, Enquadramento, Incerteza, John Oliver, jornalismo, Mídia, Mudanças climáticasrenzotaddei

May 15, 2014 | by Stephen Luntz

photo credit: Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (HBO). Satirist John Oliver shows how scientific pseudo-debates should be covered

One of the most frustrating experiences scientists, science communicators and anyone who cares about science have is the sight of media outlets giving equal time to positions held by a tiny minority of researchers.

This sort of behavior turns up for all sorts of concocted “controversies”, satirized as “Opinions differ on the Shape of the Earth”. However, the most egregious examples occur in reporting climate change. Thousands of carefully researched peer reviewed papers are weighed in the balance and judged equal to a handful of shoddily written, numerically flaky publications whose flaws take less than a day to come to light.

That is, of course, if you ignore the places where the anti-science side pretty much gets free range.

So it is a delight to see John Oliver show how it should be done.

We have only one problem with Oliver’s work. He repeats the claim that 97% of climate scientists agree that humans are warming the planet. In fact the study he referred to has 97.1% of peer reviewed papers on climate change endorsing this position. However, these papers were usually produced by large research teams, while the opposing minority were often cooked up by a couple of kooks in their garage. When you look at the numbers of scientists involved the numbers are actually 98.4% to 1.2%, with the rest undecided. Which might not sound like a big difference, but would make Oliver’s tame “skeptic” look even more lonely.

HT Vox, with a nice summary of the evidence

Crazy Climate Economics (New York Times)

16/05/2014UncategorizedCapitalismo, Clima, Conservadorismo, Economia, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Mudanças climáticas, Política, Previsãorenzotaddei

MAY 11, 2014

Paul Krugman

Everywhere you look these days, you see Marxism on the rise. Well, O.K., maybe you don’t — but conservatives do. If you so much as mention income inequality, you’ll be denounced as the second coming of Joseph Stalin; Rick Santorum has declared that any use of the word “class” is “Marxism talk.” In the right’s eyes, sinister motives lurk everywhere — for example, George Will says the only reason progressives favor trains is their goal of “diminishing Americans’ individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism.”

So it goes without saying that Obamacare, based on ideas originally developed at the Heritage Foundation, is a Marxist scheme — why, requiring that people purchase insurance is practically the same as sending them to gulags.

And just wait until the Environmental Protection Agency announces rules intended to slow the pace of climate change.

Until now, the right’s climate craziness has mainly been focused on attacking the science. And it has been quite a spectacle: At this point almost all card-carrying conservatives endorse the view that climate change is a gigantic hoax, that thousands of research papers showing a warming planet — 97 percent of the literature — are the product of a vast international conspiracy. But as the Obama administration moves toward actually doing something based on that science, crazy climate economics will come into its own.

You can already get a taste of what’s coming in the dissenting opinions from a recent Supreme Court ruling on power-plant pollution. A majority of the justices agreed that the E.P.A. has the right to regulate smog from coal-fired power plants, which drifts across state lines. But Justice Scalia didn’t just dissent; he suggested that the E.P.A.’s proposed rule — which would tie the size of required smog reductions to cost — reflected the Marxist concept of “from each according to his ability.” Taking cost into consideration is Marxist? Who knew?

And you can just imagine what will happen when the E.P.A., buoyed by the smog ruling, moves on to regulation of greenhouse gas emissions.

What do I mean by crazy climate economics?

First, we’ll see any effort to limit pollution denounced as a tyrannical act. Pollution wasn’t always a deeply partisan issue: Economists in the George W. Bush administration wrote paeans to “market based” pollution controls, and in 2008 John McCain made proposals for cap-and-trade limits on greenhouse gases part of his presidential campaign. But when House Democrats actually passed a cap-and-trade bill in 2009, it was attacked as, you guessed it, Marxist. And these days Republicans come out in force to oppose even the most obviously needed regulations, like the plan to reduce the pollution that’s killing Chesapeake Bay.

Second, we’ll see claims that any effort to limit emissions will have what Senator Marco Rubio is already calling “a devastating impact on our economy.”

Why is this crazy? Normally, conservatives extol the magic of markets and the adaptability of the private sector, which is supposedly able to transcend with ease any constraints posed by, say, limited supplies of natural resources. But as soon as anyone proposes adding a few limits to reflect environmental issues — such as a cap on carbon emissions — those all-capable corporations supposedly lose any ability to cope with change.

Now, the rules the E.P.A. is likely to impose won’t give the private sector as much flexibility as it would have had in dealing with an economywide carbon cap or emissions tax. But Republicans have only themselves to blame: Their scorched-earth opposition to any kind of climate policy has left executive action by the White House as the only route forward.

Furthermore, it turns out that focusing climate policy on coal-fired power plants isn’t bad as a first step. Such plants aren’t the only source of greenhouse gas emissions, but they’re a large part of the problem — and the best estimates we have of the path forward suggest that reducing power-plant emissions will be a large part of any solution.

What about the argument that unilateral U.S. action won’t work, because China is the real problem? It’s true that we’re no longer No. 1 in greenhouse gases — but we’re still a strong No. 2. Furthermore, U.S. action on climate is a necessary first step toward a broader international agreement, which will surely include sanctions on countries that don’t participate.

So the coming firestorm over new power-plant regulations won’t be a genuine debate — just as there isn’t a genuine debate about climate science. Instead, the airwaves will be filled with conspiracy theories and wild claims about costs, all of which should be ignored. Climate policy may finally be getting somewhere; let’s not let crazy climate economics get in the way.

Uma (in)certa antropologia

An (un)certain anthropology

Arquivo da categoria: Uncategorized

Fans in Spain Reveal Their Prejudices, and Social Media Fuels the Hostilities (New York Times)

Hacker Helped Disrupt 300 Web Attacks, Prosecutors Say (New York Times)

The Immigrant Advantage (New York Times)

Eduardo Galeano Disavows His Book ‘The Open Veins’ (New York Times)

Ciência busca fármacos em formigas (O Estado de São Paulo)

Fauna brasileira registra 1.051 espécies em extinção, ante 627 em 2003 (O Estado de São Paulo)

Concea aprova resolução sobre reconhecimento de métodos alternativos (MCTI)

Índice de suicídios entre indígenas no MS é o maior em 28 anos (Combate Racismo Ambiental)

Stem cells as future source for eco-friendly meat (Science Daily)

Ariel Palácios: “Não são gentlemen” – sobre os barrabravas argentinos (OESP)

Seção “Não são gentlemen”: Barrabravas argentinos intensificam violência enquanto preparam as malas para viajar para a Copa

Seção “Não são gentlemen”, parte II: Mais de 1.200 ‘barrabravas’ tentariam entrar no Brasil durante a Copa

POLL: Tea Party Members Really, Really Don’t Trust Scientists (Mother Jones)

Lectures Aren’t Just Boring, They’re Ineffective, Too, Study Finds (Science)

‘We Don’t Want to Die Again’: Yanomami Leader Kopenawa (Indian Country Today Media Network)

From Amazon to Garden State (CBS)

Wyoming is 1st state to reject science standards (AP)

CPTEC/INPE desenvolve novo conceito de sistema de previsão, monitoramento e de alertas para ondas e ressacas (CPTEC)

Latinos in the U.S. have a strong belief in the spirit world (Pew Research Center)

Jardim Botânico do Rio lança livro de plantas medicinais em tribo no Acre (EFE)

West Antarctic Ice Sheet Is Collapsing (Science)

CONCLIMA 2013 – acesse vídeos de todas as palestras (Rede Clima)

CONCLIMA 2013 – acesse vídeos de todas as palestras

Umbanda e candomblé não são religiões, diz juiz federal (FSP)

Are We Bothered? (Monbiot)

John Oliver Does Science Communication Right (I Fucking Love Science)

Crazy Climate Economics (New York Times)