30/10/2002

One Million Lawyers

Tom Paxton

Humankind has survived some disasters for sure
Like locusts and flash floods and flu
There's never a moment when we've been secure
From the ills that the flesh is heir to
If it isn't a war it's some gruesome disease
If it isn't disease then it's war
But there's worse still to come, and I'm asking you, please
How the world's gonna take any more

In ten years we're gonna have one million lawyers
One million lawyers, one million lawyers
In ten years we're gonna have one million lawyers
How much can a poor nation stand

The world shook with dread of Attila the Hun
As he conquered with fire and steel
And Genghis and Kubla and all of the Khans
Ground a groaning world under the heel
Disaster, disaster - so what else is new
We've suffered the worst, and then some
So I'm sorry to tell you, my suffering friends
Of the terrible scourge still to come

In ten years we're gonna have one million lawyers
One million lawyers, one million lawyers
In ten years we're gonna have one million lawyers
How much can a poor nation stand

Oh, a suffering world cries for mercy
As far as the eye can see
Lawyers around every bend in the road
Lawyers in every tree
Lawyers in restaurants
Lawyers in clubs
Lawyers behind every door
Behind windows and potted plants
Shade trees and shrubs
Lawyers on pogo sticks
Lawyers in politics

In ten years we're gonna have one million lawyers
One million lawyers, one million lawyers
In ten years we're gonna have one million lawyers
How much can a poor nation stand

In spring it's tornados and rampaging floods
In summer it's heat stroke and drought
There's Ivy League football to ruin the fall
It's a terrible scourge without doubt
There are blizzards to batter the shivering plain
There are dust storms that strike, but far worse
Is the threat of disaster to shrivel the brain
It's the threat of implacable curse

In ten years we're gonna have one million lawyers
One million lawyers, one million lawyers
In ten years we're gonna have one million lawyers
How much can a poor nation stand



26/10/2002

Jornalismo não é tênis

Luiz Garcia

É extremamente difícil, inclusive pelo temor ao ridículo, exprimir indignação com o 54 lugar atribuído ao Brasil pelos Repórteres sem Fronteiras. O sentimento mais adequado deve ser a frustração. Estudos sérios sobre a liberdade de imprensa no mundo são necessários --- quanto mais não seja porque um índice dessa liberdade poderia ser, em tese, um índice do nível da democracia nos diferentes países.

É pena que o bem-intencionado grupo dos Repórteres sem Fronteiras mostre como estabelecer índices de liberdade é diferente de calcular, por exemplo, os de mortalidade infantil ou de casos de Aids. Nestes casos, basta contar as vítimas e relacionar o total com a população. Ainda assim, há um considerável potencial de erro no fato de que os países mais bem organizados produzem estatísticas mais confiáveis — e podem ser punidos por isso.

No caso da imprensa, o Repórteres sem Fronteiras atribui o que supõe ser um desempenho desastroso do Brasil aos casos de violência física e perseguição por agentes do Estado no interior do país. O problema de fato existe. A própria grande imprensa — que a ONG considera de alto nível — não se cansa de denunciar a indústria das indenizações por dano moral que vitimiza a imprensa do interior. E a legislação sobre imprensa, produzida no regime militar, certamente é inadequada. Entre outros motivos porque vulnerabiliza a pequena imprensa sem causar dano permanente aos grandes órgãos.

Tudo isso sendo verdade, como se explica que o Brasil seja considerado como tendo uma imprensa pior que a do Paraguai? Ou que o Reino Unido esteja atrás de Hong Kong, controlada por um regime que só admite a imprensa oficial? No caso brasileiro bastaria argumentar que a grande massa da população é abastecida de informações livremente colhidas e escolhidas pelas redes nacionais de TV e de rádio, que não sofrem as chamadas “pressões locais”. E os grandes centros urbanos têm acesso à grande imprensa que a ONG considera a salvo de pressões.

Isso, e mais a baixa confiabilidade de fontes com motivação obviamente política — cuja presença e cujo poder de deturpação é inevitável em estudos marcados pela subjetividade — bastam para que se lamente o pitoresco relatório.

Quando se concentrarem em realmente investigar (o que não é o mesmo que distribuir questionários) casos de violência, intimidação etc. estarão prontos para prestar bom serviço à democracia. Quando aprenderem a trabalhar estatísticas, maior será sua contribuição. Enquanto se preocuparem em produzir rankings, como se jornalismo fosse tênis ou automobilismo, não poderão ser levados a sério.

(O GLOBO, 24.10.2002)



21/10/2002


B a R L o W F R i e N D Z


1. What Has Happened.
2. Why This Has Happened.
3. What We Might Do About It Now.


THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC IS DEAD.
HAIL THE AMERICAN EMPIRE. OR ELSE.


My old pal Mitch Kapor said years ago that what I needed was a "hyperbolectomy." Were such a procedure to exist, this would probably be a good time to get one, since I suddenly find myself incapable of discussing the present state of the American Experiment without veering off into Very Large Statements.

With that admonition in mind, I hope that you will continue to read this rant, adjusting it to your own reality settings. This is just how bad it looks to me. From my perspective, this is not hyperbolic at all.

I believe that the American Republic died in the U.S. Senate last Thursday morning and was buried yesterday morning in the East Room of the White House.

Despite a deluge of calls, letters, and e-mails, which Capital Hill staffers admitted ran overwhelmingly against the ludicrously-named "Resolution Authorizing the President to Use Force, if Necessary, to End the Threat to World Peace from Saddam Hussein's Weapons of Mass Destruction," Congress extended to George II the authority to make unlimited and preemptive war against another nation that has neither attacked us nor shown the ability or inclination to do so.

(Thank you, by the way, for your own contributions to this flood of futile dissent. They may have ignored you, but you will sleep better for knowing that you were not one of the "silent Germans.")

The resolution was deemed necessary on several grounds.
Iraq possesses and is developing weapons of mass destruction - an unquestioned if Orwellian phrase that makes no qualitative distinction between a hundred pounds of spoiled hamburger and a 50 megaton bomb.
Iraq has flouted a number of U.N. resolutions and international accords regarding such weapons, many of which the United States has also ignored or abrogated.
A member of Al-Queda is thought to have visited Iraq.
Iraq has shown a willingness to use military force in the Middle East, again, not unlike ourselves.
Saddam Hussein is a real son-of-a-bitch who is easier to find than Osama bin Laden.

Despite the fact that we have been exposed to far worse during our history - whether by Bloody Old England, the Kaiser, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, the Soviet Union, Red China, or, hell, France on a bad day - we have never before declared war without being attacked nor have we extended an American President the right to do so at his pleasure.

The dangerous possibility of such behavior was explicitly foreseen by the architects of the American Republic when they designed the Consitution. As James Madison declared in a letter to James Monroe:

The only case in which the Executive can enter on a war, undeclared by Congress, is when a state of war has 'been actually' produced by the conduct of another power, and then it ought to be made known as soon as possible to the Department charged with the war power.

Their reasons were eloquently restated by Abraham Lincoln in an 1848 letter to his law partner, William H. Herndon. Herndon had suggested that the United States would be prudent to attack Mexico before they attacked us, as they clearly appeared willing to do. Lincoln replied:

Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose - - and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after you have given him so much as you propose. If, to-day, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us' but he will say to you 'be silent; I see it, if you don't.'

The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where kings have always stood.


Robert Byrd quoted that passage in his brilliantly Quixotic speech to the Senate last week. The Senate ignored him as easily as they ignored you and millions of others who believe in American principles.

And now we have a King, George II, where presidents have always stood.

Today, as he signed his coronation decree, he lied, "I have not ordered the use of force. I hope the use of force will not become necessary."

But, folks, he *has* ordered the use of force and began doing so shortly after seizing office. Though you'd scarcely know it to read the papers, we've been bombing the crap out of Southern Iraq since February 16, 2001, when we hit five radar installations in the vicinity of Baghdad. Since then, the bombing has been increasing steadily. There have been 48 bombing raids south of the "no-fly zone" so far this year. Iraq claims that 1300 civilians have been killed in these bombings - and, while I doubt that number, many of these casualties have been confirmed by international observers. I'll bet the last thing those innocent wretches saw looked a lot like force to them.

It is not simply that we have made a Caesar of Bush, we have, in effect, assented to allowing him the entire world as his Empire.

What this resolution is truly about is the elimination of all sovereignty but our own. This is about our becoming the Dad of the World. Having declared ourselves immune from international prosecution for war crimes, we have proposed our right to disregard the sovereignty of any country that, in our opinion, doesn't deserve it.

If another country harbors people we regard as terrorists, they have forfeited their sovereignty. If they cobble together a few of the weapons we possess in stupefying abundance, we will cross their borders and disarm them by force. Indeed, if they do anything that might eventually, left to develop unchecked, threaten American interests, we will stop them as brutally as we must.

These statements are not merely polemical on my part. They are American policy.

On September 20, the Bush Administration released its National Security Strategy. You can find it here. It speaks plainly of American "convincing or compelling states to accept their sovereign responsibilities." According to whom?

In other words, Nations of the World, if you don't make smart choices, you will just have to accept that there will be consequences. Now go clean your rooms.

Reading this document, which makes ironic use of the word "freedom" every third sentence or so, one begins to imagine the United States as the jut-jawed marshal, patrolling the world's mean streets, showing the lonely courage that is the sinew of virtue.

But as a fellow Wyomingite, Don Cooper, wrote me after my last rant, the metaphor is horribly flawed. The Code of the West required proof of guilt and threats made bad. The scoundrels actually had to actually raise hell before the marshal took up arms against them.

What we are doing in Iraq is more like this, to quote Cooper:

A storekeeper is sweeping the wooden sidewalk in front of his shop and sees a rough stranger approaching. He runs across the street to the Marshal's office crying out and waving his broom in the air. The Marshal comes out, asking what all the fuss is about. 'It's a bad guy ridin' into town, Marshal. I can tell he's up to no good. Got that look about him. Word is he is planning to rob the bank, steal a horse, burn down the church and slap a barmaid.' The Marshal is aghast, 'Well, not in my town he ain't!' The Marshal grabs his shotgun and waits out in front of the saloon. When the stranger rides up, the Marshal levels his shotgun and blows him off his horse.

This isn't American. It's chickenshit.

I feared it would come to this when I realized, ten years ago, that we were the last credible superpower left on the planet. But Bill Clinton, whatever his manifold weaknesses, knew that if we were were to possess such towering power, we would have to wield it with the humility necessary to create moral as well as military force.

He might have had a zipper as slick as his tongue, but he was not facile when it came to deploying more lethal weapons. Furthermore, Bill Clinton knew himself to be an unlikely instrument for Almighty God. I suspect Clinton secretly hopes there isn't One.

But George II has been working for the Lord ever since he was divinely instructed some years back to stop snorting blow. He knows that God wants us to have oil and that the world's second largest petroleum reserves are not to be entrusted to a people whose divine messenger was, to quote Jerry Falwell, "a terrorist."

I don't think that our new Emperor is an evil man. But he has the kind of unquestioning belief in his own virtue that is the richest loam for growing evil. He is simply too weak to possess this kind of power without misusing it. And now we have removed all the Constitutional impediments that might have checked his hubris. We have thrown ourselves on the mercy of a conscience too clear to be reliable.


PEACE IS WAR, LOVE IS HATE


How has this tragedy happened?

Why have Americans - whom I still believe are, in their essence, a decent people - allowed themselves to become complicit with such monstrosity.

It's because the terrorists won. Through incredibly deft manipulation of our media, encouraging that which is worst in our government, they have already inflicted astonishing casualties on the American mind.

Wherever he may be, I hope the ghost of George Orwell is up to date on contemporary American politics. If he is, I'll bet he's having a swell time.

I could give you a million examples of what I'm talking about, but I'll tell you a story instead.

A couple of weeks back, I was asked to do a brief live interview on MSNBC, the result of a piece I wrote which appears in the current Forbes ASAP on the irremediable failure of the American intelligence system. (You will find it here and I will spam you the longer version sometime soon).

I had misgivings about doing this, since I think television is very bad for you, no matter which side of the camera you're on. But, since one of my many missions is trying inspire an intelligence system that actually increases political understanding, I figured I would seize whatever silly pulpit they briefly provided me.

They put me in a dark little room with a huge camera and a monitor that was displaying the current out-going feed from MSNBC. They wired me up and I waited for my cue, with nothing to do but watch the tube and try to keep myself from hallucinating as a result.

There ensued a series of events that compelled me to watch a stream of televised news longer than any I've seen since 911. (When it became obvious, once and for all, that there was no viewing level that wasn't inimical to clear thought.)

Like so many other bad things, it was Bush's fault. After I was all wired up and seated in involuntary viewing mode, I was suddenly preempted by an informal press briefing from the Cabinet Room.

There, apparently sitting across the desk from me, was our still unannointed Monarch. I sat there in speechless awe as he said, among other astonishing things, that we might have to attack Iraq in order to preserve peace.

That's right. We must start a war that there might have peace.

When the anchors came back on after the press briefing, they made absolutely no note of the surreal logic we'd all been exposed to. It made sense to them, I guess.

Nor did they make any mention of the the Malaprop Effect, such as when the Resident said, "He [Saddam] faces a true threat to the U.S," and didn't stop to correct himself. (And, indeed, didn't even appear to notice.)

Then we got back to "the news." All of it was straight out of 1984. Saddam Hussein has always been the object of the Two Minute Hate. Osama bin Laden was never our Emmanuel Goldstein.

The anchor-bimbo actually hissed whenever she uttered Saddam's name, and she did so involuntarily. I remembered the line from Orwell's novel, "The horrible thing about the Two Minute Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in." I managed not to.

There was plenty more Newspeak to follow. For example, practically everyone who spoke, anchor or civilian, used the phrase "weapons of mass destruction," as if they knew what they were talking about. I don't think they do.

What this insidious phrase does is to equate biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons in their degrees of lethality. But, as I said before, there is a vast difference between a cylinder of poisonous gas and a 5 megaton thermonuclear bomb. The former is easy to make but very hard to deliver in any massively destructive way. The latter is hard to make and easy to deliver, at least over short distances. But when it arrives, it doesn't just kill a few hundred commuters.

(Actually the latter is not terribly hard to make. I could probably do it with a good machine shop and a hundred kilos of weapons grade Plutonium. Making weapons grade Plutonium is very hard, but fortunately for the evil-doers, the U.S. and Russia have already manufactured so much of this vile stuff over the last 57 years that Iraq could, if it wanted to, probably pick it up from the right Russians simply by signing a few subrosa oil contracts.)

Never mind that. My point is, we're not thinking about these things to that level of detail. We're thinking things like "Weapons of mass destruction, bad. Iraq, bad. America, good." Or Eurasia, bad. Oceania, good.

We're also accepting rather blandly American support for a brutal military dictatorship in Pakistan which really *does* have nuclear weapons as well as the means to deliver them quite a distance. Why are we not disarming Pakistan? Why, for that matter, are we not disarming France? Or, perish the thought, ourselves?

I observed with mounting anxiety the way in which the "news" I watched that morning was subtly but continuously slanted to support the war.

For example, while reporting a story regarding considerable Labor Party unrest over Blair's support of Bush, one of the anchors casually (and rhetorically) asked, "But isn't that just the old Socialist wing of Labor coming back to life?" The question hung in the air like a mild mind toxin while they rushed off to the next bit of gory footage.

This involved a deranged person who had tried to slit the throat of a Greyhouse bus driver in California with a pair of scissors, causing him to veer off I-5. There were a number of vivid injuries for the cameras to feed on. One of the anchors asked about the attacker, a Mexican-American, "Do we know if this guy has any terrorist connections?"

Now is a time to think clearly. But the government and the media are mutilating the very structure of rational thought by attacking the language. Noam Chomsky was and is right about this.

Even the more reliable media, like, say, the New York Times, are editing reality in a dangerous way.

For example, somewhere between 15,000 and 30,000 people spontaneously gathered in Central Park on October 6 and it barely made the papers. What few stories did appear placed a distorted emphasis that some of the bullhorn wielders had made anti-semitic remarks.

It's no wonder that many of us have been brain-washed into an uneasy stupor. You are what you watch.

But what about the millions of us who are agitated as hell about this? I know lots of different people, and they aren't all seditious scum like me. Hell, I come from Pinedale, Wyoming, the most conservative place in the non-Islamic world. And yet about one in a hundred people that I talk to approves of what's going on. Why don't we matter anymore?

It pains me deeply to say this, but I think that part of the problem may be the Internet.

A lot of what's wrong may be the very sort of thing you're reading right now.

The Internet, has, as expected, provided a global podium to everyone with an opinion. Cyberspace has become an infinite set of street corners, each with its lonely pamphleteer, howling his rage to a multitude all too busy howling their own to listen.

All of our energy goes into things like this BarlowSpam, energies that might be better spent in creating traditional blocs like the NRA, or the AARP, or some large group capable of either buying Congress or scaring the shit out of them. This screed won't scare an elected official anywhere. And it wouldn't generate enough money to elect or defeat a dogcatcher.

As much as I loathe organizations, we need to organize.

And we'd better start doing it now before the Empire decides it's necessary to declare a National Emergency and make it lethally illegal to oppose it. It could get that bad.

Or it might get oddly worse than that. The Empire has discovered something important. The best way to deal with us is to ignore us altogether, as they did last Thursday. Our calls and letters had no effect whatever.

But those were the acts of citizens. In an Empire, there are no citizens, only subjects.

Empires in the past found it expedient to jail, torture, and execute recalcitrant subjects. This one has learned that you can get a lot further with less trouble simply by pretending that the opposition doesn't exist.

These arrogant bastards are so persuaded of their sublime duties to God and Exxon that they no longer need concern themselves with public outrage or even, I shudder to say, elections.

Let us prove them wrong. We must make ourselves painfully visible to them.


COME TOGETHER WHEREVER, OCTOBER 26, 11:00 AM.


What is to be done?

Well, for a start, I recommend that wherever you are in the world, you should pick an arbitrary public location in your area, call or e-mail everyone you know who feels as you do about this madness, and ask them to meet there at 11:00 am on Saturday, October 26.

Ask them also to call or e-mail everyone *they* know with the same message. Thanks to what my friend Howard Rheingold calls "smart mobs," a lot of people can gather very quickly this way. The microwave threads between cell phones can be like formic acid for ants. Make an instant electronic hive of humanity.

Be very peaceable and difficult to provoke, but don't worry about getting a permit. If no one's in charge, there's no one to hold accountable.

In Washington, DC and San Francisco, those locations have already been chosen. They are:

In DC -

Constitution Gardens adjacent to the
Vietnam Veterans War Memorial
21st St. & Constitution Ave. NW

In San Francisco -

Justin Herman Plaza
Market and Embarcadero


Unfortunately, there is a problem. And, as someone who went through this in the 60's, it's one I'm very familiar with.

The organization that nominated these two locations, International A.N.S.W.E.R.
(Act Now to Stop War & End Racism), is an honest-to-god Communist front. I'm not kidding. It is to the left of Mao. It is also virulently anti-semitic, and appears to be saddling up the wild horse of war opposition to pursue a lot of causes most you probably don't support, like Shining Path in Peru.

It is so radical that I almost wonder if it isn't a set of agents provocateurs created by the Empire to discredit the whole peace movement. I am very concerned that people will not engage in these gatherings, or that they will be easily misinterpreted, once they perceive these qualities in A.N.S.W.E.R.

But I say it doesn't matter who names the gathering point. Wherever we normally reside in the political spectrum, this is not about the left wing or the right wing. It's about how to stop these wing-nuts from turning the world into a military playground for the Fortune 500. It's not about ideology. It's about human decency and common sense. The important thing is that we all get together in such numbers that the ideologues of A.N.S.W.E.R. will be but a small part of something so big that neither the media nor the Empire can ignore us.

I also recommend against speeches, though I suspect they are unavoidable in Washington and San Francisco. The less said the better. What do we need to say? We know how we feel. We don't need to be told.

So, even though I have grave misgivings about the organizers of the gatherings in DC and San Francisco, we can come together in such overwhelming diversity that there can be no party line aside from a love of peace, liberty, and the right of all nations to determine their destinies without American imposition.

The second thing I recommend we all do is vote. I know many of you gave up on this a long time ago, for which dereliction of citizen's duty you are getting exactly the government you deserve. But there's still time. Many states permit registration right down to the wire.

I particularly hope you will vote heavily against everyone who supported this treasonous resolution, no matter how enlightened they appeared before. Right now, a weakling with good intentions is worse than an outright Facist.

They didn't listen to your phone calls or letters. Let them now hear your silent voice speaking from the voting booth.

You should also organize on behalf of everyone who had the courage to resist it. Give money and time to their campaigns. Write letters to their local newspapers, expressing your support for them and praising them for their courage on behalf of the Constitution.

Right now, I agree absolutely with George Bush on one thing. One is either with him or against him. I am against him. As Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Lincoln would have been.

And if that makes me a terrorist, I am proud to be one.

Be Free,

Barlow

John Perry Barlow, Cognitive Dissident
Co-Founder & Vice Chairman, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Berkman Fellow, Harvard Law School


**************************************************************

The resolution before us today is not only a product of haste; it is also a product of presidential hubris. This resolution is breathtaking in its scope. It redefines the nature of defense, and reinterprets the Constitution to suit the will of the Executive Branch. It would give the President blanket authority to launch a unilateral preemptive attack on a sovereign nation that is perceived to be a threat to the United States. This is an unprecedented and unfounded interpretation of the President's authority under the Constitution, not to mention the fact that it stands the charter of the United Nations on its head.

-- Senator Robert Byrd to the Senate, October 3, 2002





VOLTA














09/10/2002

Do livro de visitas



Esta msg foi deixada no livro de visitas do internETC. Como está meio grande, transferi para cá:

Sobre gatos



Name: Ana Maria
Email: a.m.d.n@bol.com.br
Comments:: Frases sobre gatos

Prezada Cora,
Sou leitora do seu blog tem um tempinho.
Temos uma paixão em comum que são os gatos (criaturas maravilhosas!)
Estava dando uma olhadinha hoje no Petsite, que você deve conhecer e achei muito interessantes essas frases sobre os gatos. Não as conhecia todas. Pensei em transcrevê-las aqui. Quem sabe você as ache interessantes também e as divulgue no blog pro pessoal todo.Seguirão abaixo.
Abraços e tudo de bom


Autor: Laura

Assunto: Ótimas frases sobre gatos

Mensagem: Gente, traduzi estas frases interessantes sobre gatos, escritas por pessoas famosas que gostam dos bichanos. Espero que gostem. O original em inglês está aqui:http://www.catanna.com/catquote.htm

“Não existem gatos comuns” – Collete

“O menor entre todos os gatos é uma obra-prima” – Leonardo da Vinci

“Se o homem pudesse cruzar com os gatos, isso melhoraria o homem e deterioraria o gato” – Mark Twain

“Não há nada mais divertido que um gato jovem, nem mais sério que um gato idoso” - Thomas Fuller

“O modo como tratamos os gatos aqui em baixo determina nossa situação quando formos para o céu” – Robert ª Heinlain

“Quem pode acreditar que não há uma alma atrás daqueles olhos luminosos?” – Theophile Gauthier

“Gatos são pessoas misteriosas. Há mais coisas passando naquelas mentes do que nós podemos imaginar” - Sir Walter Scott

“Gatos sabem como obter comida sem trabalho, abrigo sem confinamento e amor sem castigos” – W. L. George

“Como qualquer um que já passou muito tempo com os gatos já sabem, os gatos têm enorme paciência com as limitações da mente humana” – Cleveland Amory

“Os gatos raramente interferem com os direitos das outras pessoas. Sua inteligência os impede de fazer coisas bobas que atrapalham a vida” – Carl van Vechten

“Gatos amam mais as pessoas do que elas permitiriam. Mas eles têm sabedoria suficiente para manter isso em segredo” – Mary Wilkins

“Mesmo quando gordos, os gatos conhecem instintivamente uma regra importante: quando estiver gordo, saiba se colocar em poses elegantes” – John Weiz

“Um gato sempre chega quando você o chama. A não ser que ele tenha algo de mais importante para fazer” – Bill Adler

“Milhares de anos atrás os gatos eram adorados como deuses; e até hoje eles não esqueceram isto” – Anônimo

“Gatos são mais esperto do que cães. Você nunca conseguiria colocar oito gatos para puxar um trenó” – Jeff Valdez

“Pessoas que odeiam gatos retornarão como ratos na próxima encarnação” – Faith Resnick

“Existem muitas espécies inteligentes no mundo. E todos eles são possuídos por gatos” – Anônimo

“Existem duas maneiras de nos refugiarmos das misérias da vida: música e gatos” - Albert Schweizer

“O tempo que passamos com os gatos nunca é desperdiçado” – Colette

“O ideal da tranqüilidade é um gato sentado” – Jules Reynard

“Duas coisas são esteticamente perfeitas no mundo: relógios e gatos” – Emile Auguste Chartier

“Já encontrei muitos pensadores e muitos gatos. Mas a sabedoria dos gatos é infinitamente superior” – Hippolyte Taine

“Eu acho que possuir um gato é muito mais importante que possuir uma bíblia” – R. H. Byth

“Mulheres e gatos fazem o que querem, enquanto que os homens e cães devem relaxar e se acostumar com esta idéia” – Robert Heinlein

“Acredito que gatos são espíritos vindos para a terra. Tenho certeza de que um gato andaria nas nuvens sem cair” – Júlio Verne

“Quando você vê seu gato absorto em meditação, olhando atentamente algo que você não enxerga, pode ter certeza de que ele está viajando no universo” – Bonni Elisabeth

“Um cão, sempre tenho dito, é prosa; um gato é poesia” – Jean Burden

“Gatos são criaturas gloriosas – que não podem, de modo algum ser subestimadas. Seus olhos são profundezas inexpugnáveis dos mistérios felinos” – Lesley Ann Ivory

“Ninguém pode ser dono de um gato, mas eles podem abençoá-los com sua companhia, se quiserem” – Frank Engram

“Gatos podem honrar a si mesmos com a capacidade de não fazer nada” – John R. Breen

“Respeitar o gato é o começo do senso estético” – Erasmus Darwin

“Eu fecho meu livro ´O Significado do Zen` e vejo o gato sorrindo para sua pele, e penteando-a cuidadosamente com sua língua cor de rosa e áspera. ´Gato, eu gostaria de te emprestar este livro, mas parece que tu já o leste´. Ele me olha com seu olhar penetrante, e ronrona: `Não seja ridículo. Fui eu que escrevi!´” – Dilys Laing

03/10/2002

Obstinado e perfeccionista,
mas também engraçado


O candidato do PSDB tem algumas características óbvias: é determinado e obsessivo. O que pouca gente sabe é que, ao contrário da fama, ele não é antipático e tem até senso de humor. Desde que não seja de manhã.


Aeroporto de Cuiabá, Mato Grosso, 22h30m. Depois de mais de sete horas de um exaustivo corpo-a-corpo a 40 graus à sombra (sem sombra), o candidato José Serra chega ao pé da escada do avião da Líder que vem usando durante a campanha, onde sua assessora Diala Vidal discute com o piloto. Ele a chama de lado:

— O que é que está havendo? — pergunta.

— É que esqueceram de reabastecer o avião — explica Diala. — Estamos sem comida nenhuma.

Má — na verdade, péssima — notícia, considerando-se que a última refeição da pequena comitiva fora um mísero sanduíche, nove horas antes. Ao seu melhor estilo, porém, José Serra não se deixa atrapalhar em relação a prioridades:

—- Não se discute com piloto antes do embarque! A gente viaja com fome, mas este homem tem que ir muito contente e bem disposto até São Paulo. Lá vocês se entendem...

Impossível discordar de argumento tão sensato. No avião, reviramos bolsas e mochilas, encontramos algumas balinhas, um saco de batatas fritas e dois chocolates inteiramente derretidos; a bordo havia ainda saquinhos de amendoim e pistache. Dividimos irmanamente os víveres e duas horas e meia depois chegamos a São Paulo.

Famintos, é verdade, mas sãos e salvos.

No começo da jornada, ainda no hangar da Líder, os sanduíches já haviam sido tema de conversa. Diante da minha recusa em aceitar uns salgadinhos, a assessora de imprensa Paula Santa Maria, que acompanha José Serra constantemente, alertou-me sobre o triste destino gastronômico à minha espera, insistindo para que eu comesse ao menos uma fruta.

Mais tarde, já em pleno ar, os famosos sanduíches de campanha fizeram a sua entrada em cena: duas fatias de pão preto, queijo de minas, peito de peru. Um conjunto light, sem dúvida — mas perfeitamente comestível.

Gostoso, até.

— Você só diz isso porque este é o primeiro que come — observou Serra.

Àquela altura da campanha, com cerca de 140 mil horas de vôo, tendo percorrido mais de 130 cidades, ele e a equipe imediata — composta, além de Paula e de Diala, de dois seguranças que se alternam — já haviam comido, cada qual, uns 120 sanduíches iguais.

O equivalente a seis quilos de pão, mais de sete quilos de peito de peru e quase três quilos de queijo para cada um. Não era à toa que ninguém agüentava mais os tais sanduíches; mas ainda havia — e se o candidato do PSDB chegar ao segundo turno ainda haverá —- um bocado de céu a voar antes que eles desapareçam para sempre do cenário.

Acontece que, zeloso com a forma e com a saúde, José Serra evita, habitualmente, comidas pesadas; em campanha, então, o faz de forma quase obsessiva. Quando, no meio do corpo-a-corpo, parou numa pastelaria com Dante de Oliveira e comeu um pastel de carne, causou o maior frisson entre os jornalistas. Cinegrafistas e fotógrafos voaram para registrar a cena. Isabela Paiva, a repórter do GLOBO que tem acompanhado suas viagens, ficou visivelmente frustrada por ter sido empurrada pela turma da imagem e perdido o acontecimento, raríssimo na sua experiência.

Ele odeia cebola, detesta alho, não pode ver gordura. A fama o precede, talvez com alguma ajuda da equipe que marca a sua agenda. No seu roteiro são raros os sucessivos banquetes que costumam pontuar o dia-a-dia de candidatos: a probabilidade de que venha a se encontrar com uma buchada de bode é extremamente remota.

Daí, porém, vem a fama universal de hipocondríaco, a essa altura quase inerradicável — e da qual, aliás, não desgosta de todo. Ser hipocondríaco não é nenhum defeito de caráter e, como mania, cai até bem para um ministro da Saúde.

Muito embora, como faz questão de frisar, não tenha sido por familiaridade com a medicina que acabou no cargo, mas sim pela intimidade com os números: quando assumiu o ministério, em 1998, as coisas andavam tão ruins que o próprio presidente Fernando Henrique se referia à pasta como “um pesadelo”. Serra gosta de dizer que uma das grandes vantagens de ter sido economista no Ministério da Saúde foi não se deixar enganar pelos economistas dos outros ministérios.

Cigarro, nem pensar

No domingo passado, à tarde, conversando com Mônica Serra na residência do casal no Alto Pinheiros, em São Paulo, toquei novamente na questão da hipocondria.

— As pessoas sempre dizem isso, mas é lenda mesmo, o Zé não tem nada de hipocondríaco. Ele apenas toma cuidado com o que come, tem o estômago sensível.

Estávamos as duas na cozinha, fazendo um café, e os pratos do almoço ainda esperavam na pia. Ela cutucou com um garfo uns pedaços de gordura deixados de lado, óbvias pontas de uma costeleta.

— Olha só isso, tá vendo? Ele não come gordura, não há hipótese... o pior é que ainda deixa essa carne toda...

Este parece ser um ponto delicado na casa. Não é difícil imaginá-la insistindo com o marido para comer mais um pouco. Até porque, diferentemente de tantos políticos, ele emagrece quando está em campanha. Nos últimos meses perdeu cinco quilos.

— Mas não é só o excesso de trabalho, não, porque o Zé normalmente trabalha muito. É excesso de cuidado com a alimentação, mesmo. Ele é assim até com a família. Sempre foi muito atento à forma como as crianças se alimentavam.

As “crianças” são Verônica, que se formou em direito mas acabou administradora de empresas com mestrado em Harvard (e que espera o primeiro neto do casal para janeiro), e Luciano, que começou a estudar engenharia mas também passou para administração. Lu, como é chamado em família, alto e moreno, praticante de esportes radicais, é tão bonito que podia fazer propaganda de cigarro na televisão.

Isso, claro, se o pai não tivesse proibido a modalidade.

Tão tímido quanto Serra, ele vai, provavelmente, morrer de vergonha quando ler isso aqui; já Verônica, que não conheci, mas que todos garantem ser extrovertida como a mãe, vai gostar de saber que é considerada linda pelo Chico Caruso, que não é muito de fazer desses elogios.

Mais romântico, impossível

Serra protege a família com feroz tenacidade. Tem medo que a política atrapalhe a vida dos filhos, e faz uma distinção muito clara entre a vida pública e a vida privada. Dos quatro candidatos à Presidência, é indiscutivelmente o mais reservado, o que com mais afinco preserva a sua intimidade.

O que é, até certo ponto, uma pena: se há um lado em que a campanha falhou foi no de apresentá-lo como o homem emotivo que é capaz de chorar no cinema e de se apaixonar à primeira vista.

— Nós nos conhecemos na festa de aniversário de uma amiga dele — diz Mônica. — Eu fui convidada por uma amiga que queria muito que eu conhecesse a aniversariante, que havia acabado de chegar da França. Eu não queria ir, não conhecia ninguém lá, e a minha amiga, tentando me convencer, me disse que iriam também uns brasileiros muito divertidos. Ela me falou muito deles, disse que um era meio quieto e calado mas inteligente demais. Bom, quando chegaram, ele se aproximou de mim e ficou falando, falando, falando e eu pensei: esse não deve ser o inteligente. Ele fala tanto! (risos) Até que, a uma certa altura, minha amiga, que nunca tinha visto ele falando daquele jeito, me chamou num canto e perguntou o que é que a gente tanto conversava.

— E o que vocês tanto conversavam?

— Ora... tudo! Ele se abriu imediatamente, me contou toda a vida dele, que é uma coisa que não costuma fazer, é muito discreto. No dia seguinte, já sabia tudo da minha vida e estava me esperando no balé, com uma história em que eu não acreditei muito... aliás, no dia, até acreditei. Depois é que vi que era enrolação, porque daí para frente, todos os dias, ele vinha me buscar. Tempos depois, o Claudio Salm, que morava com ele na época, me contou que, quando o Zé chegou da festa, disse: “Conheci a mulher da minha vida”. Isso no próprio dia em que me conheceu, imagina!

— E quando ele disse isso a você?

— Ele não me disse... (risos) Mais ou menos um mês depois, o Claudio, achando que nós já estávamos namorando, falou, sem querer: “Que bom que você vai casar com a Mônica, assim não vamos mais morrer de fome...” Isso porque eu ia lá, via a geladeira deles vazia e levava umas comidas, umas guloseimas. O Zé ficou vermelho, completamente encabulado, e aí é que o Claudio se deu conta da situação: “Mas como? Ele não te disse nada? Passa o dia me enchendo dizendo que vai casar com você, e para você não diz nada? Como é que pode?!”

Passados alguns meses, José Serra estava mesmo casado com a bela bailarina do Balé Nacional do Chile. Corria o ano de 73. Ele estava com 31 anos, exilado há nove, morando há sete em Santiago e muita coisa já tinha acontecido em sua vida política, iniciada nos tempos de estudante.

A política e a fé: Santa Rita

José Serra nasceu em São Paulo, na Mooca, em 19 de março de 1942, filho único de Serafina e Francesco Serra, italiano dono de uma barraca de frutas no mercado da Cantareira. Seu amigo e companheiro de exílio Artur da Távola atesta que ele tem, de fato, muitas características dos piscianos: por exemplo, a sensibilidade, a intuição, a reserva nos assuntos emocionais.

Essa última talvez venha também de família. A relação de Serra com o pai foi, como contou a Teodomiro Braga no livro de entrevistas publicado no início da campanha, uma relação de reverência, mas sem muita camaradagem ou cumplicidade:

— Havia uma barreira invisível. Anos depois, entendi melhor por que isso acontecia. Quando estive na Itália pela primeira vez, em 1974, meu tio Giovanni, que era o caçula da família, contou-me que meu avô era tão rígido e autoritárioque os filhos não podiam se dirigir a ele diretamente — tinham que fazê-lo por intermédio da mãe. Você já pensou? — contou Serra.

Da família vêm, também, a compulsão pelo trabalho, e uma fé inabalável. Serra, que recebeu o nome de José por nascer no dia do santo, teria se chamado Jorge, em homenagem ao avô Giorgio, tivesse nascido uns dias antes ou depois.

Para alguém que, como eu, está acostumada com intelectuais agnósticos e esquerdistas ateus, é difícil conciliar a imagem de extrema sofisticação intelectual e trajetória de esquerda com uma fé tão enraizada: Serra é católico praticante, vai à missa, comunga, se benze quando entra em avião. Parecem-me dois lados muito distantes.

— Mas não são dois lados, é um lado só! — surpreende-se Mônica, diante da minha incompreensão. — Ele é uma pessoa que tem uma vida espiritual, intelectual... enfim, uma vida completa, como qualquer pessoa. É muito devoto de Santa Rita. Aliás, quando apareceu o nome da Rita Camata entre os candidatos a vice, eu pensei: “Ah, não adianta, vai ser a Rita...” Mas veja bem, até o lado de esquerda ele começou a desenvolver na JUC, a Juventude Universitária Católica.

Sucesso de público, mas...

A política estudantil, porém, fisgou Serra antes ainda da JUC por um caminho curioso: o do teatro. Assim que entrou para a Escola Politécnica da USP, descobriu o GTP (Grupo Teatral Politécnico), no qual atuavam colegas que, posteriormente continuaram na carreira artística, como Fauzi Arap. Aqui vale um parênteses para lembrar que, naquele começo dos anos 60, teatro era uma atividade extremamente politizada. Podemos fechar o parênteses.

Ator apenas razoável, na sua própria definição, Serra acha que o teatro o ajudou a enfrentar a inibição de encarar platéias, feito nada desprezível para um tímido em primeiro grau. Logo ele estaria pondo a nova habilidade à prova: foi o principal organizador da greve estudantil da Politécnica em 62, em breve estava dirigindo a UEE (União Estadual de Estudantes) e, em 63, foi eleito presidente da UNE (União Nacional dos Estudantes).

A sua ficha no Dops registra que, em 23 de agosto daquele mesmo ano, foi mais aplaudido do que Jango Goulart, então presidente da República, num comício em homenagem à memória de Getúlio que reuniu 90 mil pessoas na Cinelândia. Em tese, ele deveria ter falado antes do presidente — mais ou menos como um músico alternativo esquentando a platéia para o grande astro.

Mas chegou atrasado (como sempre) e acabou falando entre os oradores principais.

O comício pode ter sido um grande sucesso com as massas, mas o mesmo não se pode dizer dos militares que, mal dado o golpe, já estavam com o seu nome numa listinha especial. O pior é que no dia 1 de abril de 1964 José Serra estava no Rio, para onde se mudara ao assumir a presidência da UNE, e não tinha idéia para onde correr.

Com a ajuda de Marcello Cerqueira, seu vice na UNE, rodou a cidade inteira procurando algum lugar seguro para ficar — mas isso, aparentemente, não existia então. Finalmente, ambos foram para uma garçonnière que Jacob Kligerman (sim, esse mesmo, hoje presidente do Inca) mantinha na Lapa. Mas lá também a segurança era, no mínimo, questionável: o prédio era vizinho ao Dops. Alguns dias depois, estavam na embaixada da Bolívia, junto com Artur da Távola, na época líder do PTB na Assembléia Legislativa. A amizade dura até hoje.

Ao fim de três meses — que considera entre os piores momentos da sua vida junto com os nove meses de asilo que passou na embaixada da Itália, no Chile, em 1973 — José Serra conseguiu, finalmente, deixar o país, para onde só voltaria 14 anos depois.

A história do diploma

Ele foi inicialmente para a França, onde ficou pouco tempo; viajou em seguida para o Chile, grande centro de efervescência política e cultural da América Latina e, de qualquer forma, bem mais próximo ao Brasil.

Terminar o curso de engenharia da Politécnica estava, por razões óbvias, fora de questão. Resultado: ele nunca chegou a se graduar aqui. A descoberta deste fato tem, aliás, feito a festa dos sites de seus adversários, que proclamam, na internet, que “Serra também não tem diploma!”.

Mas não é bem assim. No Chile — onde consolidou a amizade com Fernando Henrique — chegou à conclusão de que engenharia não era tão interessante quanto economia e, em 1967, entrou para a pós-graduação da Universidade do Chile, a Escolatina.

Para ser admitido, teve que fazer um exame equivalente a todo o curso de graduação. Estudou durante meses, virou muitas noites mas, enfim, passou na prova. Terminou o curso entre os três primeiros colocados. Foi contratado pelo Instituto de Economia, e passou a dar aulas na Escolatina. Apesar das saudades do Brasil, esta foi uma fase relativamente tranqüila — até que os ventos chilenos mudaram.

Já pai de duas crianças pequenas, Serra se viu novamente no olho do furacão. Para desespero de Mônica, foi levado para o Estádio Nacional de Santiago, de onde quase ninguém saía vivo — mas de onde, por pura sorte, conseguiu escapar. E lá se foi a família para a embaixada da Itália. Verônica tinha 4 anos; Luciano, 3 meses. Mônica e as crianças receberam um salvo-conduto três meses depois; Serra ainda ficaria seis longos meses trancado, longe da família, angustiado, sem notícias precisas ou freqüentes.

Obtido o salvo-conduto, escolheu ir para Cornell, nos Estados Unidos. Tinha convites de várias instituições de ensino, mas nenhuma lhe oferecia uma bolsa melhor. A próxima parada, depois do doutorado, foi a Universidade de Princeton, onde foi para o Instituto de Estudos Avançados.

Foi nos Estados Unidos, também, que a vida de Mônica tomou um novo rumo. Com a carreira de bailarina interrompida pelo exílio, aproveitou a vida universitária do marido para fazer mestrado em psicologia educacional em Cornell e, em Princeton, em terapia pelo movimento. Na volta ao Brasil, em 1978, fez doutorado em psicologia clínica na USP. Hoje ensina na Unicamp e dirige a associação internacional Arte Sem Fronteiras.

A fala de Mônica ainda guarda leves traços de espanhol — mas ela fala apenas com sotaque, sem qualquer vestígio de portunhol, o que é bastante raro entre imigrantes da América Latina.

— Ah, o Zé é responsável por isso — explica — Tudo o que eu falava ele corrigia. Sempre! Eu conversando e ele corrigindo, corrigindo... até o pessoal falar: “Serra, deixa de ser chato, ela tá falando muito bem.” Como ele é perfeccionista, ia em cima: “Mas errou, né? Se é para falar certo, é para falar certo...”

Uma questão de fuso horário

“Perfeccionismo” é uma das palavras que invariavelmente aparecem quando se pede a alguém próximo de Serra uma definição do candidato. “Obstinação” e “determinação” são outras. Nenhuma delas surpreende o público; mas alguns adjetivos, como “simpático” e “engraçado”, soam definitivamente bizarros para quem não o conhece. No entanto, aplicam-se ao homem, numa boa.

Pude comprovar isso mais uma vez quando viajamos para Cuiabá. Eu já havia me encontrado com Serra uma vez, há uns dez anos, durante um debate do qual participaram ele e Millôr Fernandes, um adversário dialético notoriamente difícil. Para minha surpresa, porém, ele se saiu incrivelmente bem, com muita graça e agilidade.

Durante a ida, no avião, nos momentos em que não estávamos cochilando, nos entendemos às mil maravilhas sobre literatura e cinema, duas de suas grandes paixões. Ele lê compulsivamente (estava com um Nabokov a bordo), vê todos os filmes e, pior, é do tipo que lembra nome de iluminador assistente. Também conversamos muito sobre software livre, assunto para o qual consegui chamar sua atenção na sabatina do GLOBO ao encontrar uma analogia que pôs a questão nos seus termos: programas como o Linux, por exemplo, são os genéricos do software.

Como, por acaso, funcionamos ambos no mesmo fuso horário, foi fácil para mim perceber que o José Serra que as pessoas encontram até as duas, três da tarde não tem nada a ver com o José Serra do fim da tarde. À noite, então, está sempre ótimo, muitíssimo bem disposto, canta músicas do repertório clássico da MPB, conta histórias e tem, acreditem, um ótimo senso de humor, de tiradas finas e sutis, sempre inteligentes.

O problema é que, a essa hora, a maioria das testemunhas já foi dormir.

Mais difícil de entender é por que uma pessoa que tem tantas qualidades óbvias a qualquer hora — como a extrema determinação política que o levou a ganhar a queda-de-braço com os laboratórios internacionais ou com a indústria do fumo, dois lobbies poderosíssimos — não conseguiu passar, no horário eleitoral, uma mensagem que falasse mais claramente à emoção dos telespectadores.

Artur da Távola, amigo de longa data e comunicador por excelência, tem algumas teorias. Ele acha que Serra deveria esquecer do teleprompter na televisão.

— Quando você lê, você olha para fora; quando fala, olha para dentro, — explica. — Isso faz uma diferença enorme, você não imagina.

E por que ele passa a impressão de ser tão fechado, quando é apenas tímido?

— Porque a figura pública do Serra é feita das suas defesas psicológicas. Ele é uma pessoa muito especial. Ele não cumpre os rituais habituais da política, não consegue fingir interesses que não tem e, por isso, acaba ficando com fama de antipático. O que as pessoas não percebem é que, por trás dessa aparente “antipatia”, está uma grande virtude. Ele não transige, não compactua com mediocridade, não tem paciência com burrice — e não faz qualquer esforço para disfarçar isso.

Ele tem razão. José Serra não faz a menor questão de “agradar”, de fazer o que se espera que faça. Está sempre numa posição sua, algo solitária, um pouco à margem do sistema, seja lá que sistema for — do relógio biológico “normal” da humanidade ao governo Fernando Henrique.

Que representa, sem exatamente representar.

19/02/2002

Do livro de visitas


Estas msgs foram deixadas por amigos no livro de visitas do internETC. Como estão meio grandes, transferi para cá:

Sobre auto-estima

Name: Denize Feijó
Email: denizefeijo@hotmail.com
Comments:: Sobre Auto-Estima

Isto eu tirei do "The New York Times" - como diria o Elmer Fudd - vewy, vewy intewsting!!!!!

February 3, 2002

The Trouble With Self-Esteem
By LAUREN SLATER

Take this test:
1. On the whole I am satisfied with myself.
2. At times I think that I am no good at all.
3. I feel that I have a number of good qualities.
4. I am able to do things as well as most other people.
5. I feel I do not have much to be proud of.
6. I certainly feel useless at times.
7. I feel that I am a person of worth, at least the equal of others.
8. I wish I could have more respect for myself.
9. All in all, I am inclined to feel that I am a failure.
10. I take a positive attitude toward myself.

Devised by the sociologist Morris Rosenberg, this questionnaire is one of the most widely used self-esteem assessment scales in the United States. If your answers demonstrate solid self-regard, the wisdom of the social sciences predicts that you are well adjusted, clean and sober, basically lucid, without criminal record and with some kind of college cum laude under your high-end belt. If your answers, on the other hand, reveal some inner shame, then it is obvious: you were, or are, a teenage mother; you are prone to social deviance; and if you don't drink, it is because the illicit drugs are bountiful and robust.

It has not been much disputed, until recently, that high self-esteem -- defined quite simply as liking yourself a lot, holding a positive opinion of your actions and capacities -- is essential to well-being and that its opposite is responsible for crime and substance abuse and prostitution and murder and rape and even terrorism. Thousands of papers in psychiatric and social-science literature suggest this, papers with names like ''Characteristics of Abusive Parents: A Look At Self-Esteem'' and ''Low Adolescent Self-Esteem Leads to Multiple Interpersonal Problems.'' In 1990, David Long published ''The Anatomy of Terrorism,'' in which he found that hijackers and suicide bombers suffer from feelings of worthlessness and that their violent, fluorescent acts are desperate attempts to bring some inner flair to a flat mindscape.

This all makes so much sense that we have not thought to question it. The less confidence you have, the worse you do; the more confidence you have, the better you do; and so the luminous loop goes round. Based on our beliefs, we have created self-esteem programs in schools in which the main objective is, as Jennifer Coon-Wallman, a psychotherapist based in Boston, says, ''to dole out huge heapings of praise, regardless of actual accomplishment.'' We have a National Association for Self-Esteem with about a thousand members, and in 1986, the State Legislature of California founded the ''California Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem and Personal and Social Responsibility.'' It was galvanized by Assemblyman John Vasconcellos, who fervently believed that by raising his citizens' self-concepts, he could divert drug abuse and all sorts of other social ills.

It didn't work.

In fact, crime rates and substance abuse rates are formidable, right along with our self-assessment scores on paper-and-pencil tests. (Whether these tests are valid and reliable indicators of self-esteem is a subject worthy of inquiry itself, but in the parlance of social-science writing, it goes ''beyond the scope of this paper.'') In part, the discrepancy between high self-esteem scores and poor social skills and academic acumen led researchers like Nicholas Emler of the London School of Economics and Roy Baumeister of Case Western Reserve University to consider the unexpected notion that self-esteem is overrated and to suggest that it may even be a culprit, not a cure.

''There is absolutely no evidence that low self-esteem is particularly harmful,'' Emler says. ''It's not at all a cause of poor academic performance; people with low self-esteem seem to do just as well in life as people with high self-esteem. In fact, they may do better, because they often try harder.'' Baumeister takes Emler's findings a bit further, claiming not only that low self-esteem is in most cases a socially benign if not beneficent condition but also that its opposite, high self-regard, can maim and even kill. Baumeister conducted a study that found that some people with favorable views of themselves were more likely to administer loud blasts of ear-piercing noise to a subject than those more tepid, timid folks who held back the horn. An earlier experiment found that men with high self-esteem were more willing to put down victims to whom they had administered electric shocks than were their low-level counterparts.

Last year alone there were three withering studies of self-esteem released in the United States, all of which had the same central message: people with high self-esteem pose a greater threat to those around them than people with low self-esteem and feeling bad about yourself is not the cause of our country's biggest, most expensive social problems. The research is original and compelling and lays the groundwork for a new, important kind of narrative about what makes life worth living -- if we choose to listen, which might be hard. One of this country's most central tenets, after all, is the pursuit of happiness, which has been strangely joined to the pursuit of self-worth. Shifting a paradigm is never easy. More than 2,000 books offering the attainment of self-esteem have been published; educational programs in schools designed to cultivate self-esteem continue to proliferate, as do rehabilitation programs for substance abusers that focus on cognitive realignment with self-affirming statements like, ''Today I will accept myself for who I am, not who I wish I were.'' I have seen therapists tell their sociopathic patients to say ''I adore myself'' every day or to post reminder notes on their kitchen cabinets and above their toilet-paper dispensers, self-affirmations set side by side with waste.

Will we give these challenges to our notions about self-esteem their due or will the research go the way of the waste? ''Research like that is seriously flawed,'' says Stephen Keane, a therapist who practices in Newburyport, Mass. ''First, it's defining self-esteem according to very conventional and problematic masculine ideas. Second, it's clear to me that many violent men, in particular, have this inner shame; they find out early in life they're not going to measure up, and they compensate for it with fists. We need, as men, to get to the place where we can really honor and expand our natural human grace.''

Keane's comment is rooted in a history that goes back hundreds of years, and it is this history that in part prevents us from really tussling with the insights of scientists like Baumeister and Emler. We have long held in this country the Byronic belief that human nature is essentially good or graceful, that behind the sheath of skin is a little globe of glow to be harnessed for creative uses. Benjamin Franklin, we believe, got that glow, as did Joseph Pulitzer and scads of other, lesser, folks who eagerly caught on to what was called, in the 19th century, ''mind cure.''

Mind cure augurs New Age healing, so that when we lift and look at the roots, New Age is not new at all. In the 19th century, people fervently believed that you were what you thought. Sound familiar? Post it above your toilet paper. You are what you think. What you think. What you think. In the 1920's, a French psychologist, Emile Coue, became all the rage in this country; he proposed the technique of autosuggestion and before long had many citizens repeating, ''Day by day in every way I am getting better and better.''

But as John Hewitt says in his book criticizing self-esteem, it was maybe Ralph Waldo Emerson more than anyone else who gave the modern self-esteem movement its most eloquent words and suasive philosophy. Emerson died more than a century ago, but you can visit his house in Concord, Mass., and see his bedroom slippers cordoned off behind plush velvet ropes and his eyeglasses, surprisingly frail, the frames of thin gold, the ovals of shine, perched on a beautiful desk. It was in this house that Emerson wrote his famous transcendentalist essays like ''On Self-Reliance,'' which posits that the individual has something fresh and authentic within and that it is up to him to discover it and nurture it apart from the corrupting pressures of social influence. Emerson never mentions ''self-esteem'' in his essay, but his every word echoes with the self-esteem movement of today, with its romantic, sometimes silly and clearly humane belief that we are special, from head to toe.

Self-esteem, as a construct, as a quasi religion, is woven into a tradition that both defines and confines us as Americans. If we were to deconstruct self-esteem, to question its value, we would be, in a sense, questioning who we are, nationally and individually. We would be threatening our self-esteem. This is probably why we cannot really assimilate research like Baumeister's or Emler's; it goes too close to the bone and then threatens to break it. Imagine if you heard your child's teacher say, ''Don't think so much of yourself.'' Imagine your spouse saying to you, ''You know, you're really not so good at what you do.'' We have developed a discourse of affirmation, and to deviate from that would be to enter another arena, linguistically and grammatically, so that what came out of our mouths would be impolite at best, unintelligible at worst.

Is there a way to talk about the self without measuring its worth? Why, as a culture, have we so conflated the two quite separate notions -- a) self and b) worth? This may have as much to do with our entrepreneurial history as Americans, in which everything exists to be improved, as it does, again, with the power of language to shape beliefs. How would we story the self if not triumphantly, redemptively, enhanced from the inside out? A quick glance at amazon.com titles containing the word ''self'' shows that a hefty percentage also have -improvement or -enhancement tucked into them, oftentimes with numbers -- something like 101 ways to improve your self-esteem or 503 ways to better your outlook in 60 days or 604 ways to overcome negative self-talk. You could say that these titles are a product of a culture, or you could say that these titles and the contents they sheathe shape the culture. It is the old argument: do we make language or does language make us? In the case of self-esteem, it is probably something in between, a synergistic loop-the-loop.

On the subject of language, one could, of course, fault Baumeister and Emler for using ''self-esteem'' far too unidimensionally, so that it blurs and blends with simple smugness. Baumeister, in an attempt at nuance, has tried to shade the issue by referring to two previously defined types: high unstable self-esteem and high well-grounded self-esteem. As a psychologist, I remember once treating a murderer, who said, ''The problem with me, Lauren, is that I'm the biggest piece of [expletive] the world revolves around.'' He would have scored high on a self-esteem inventory, but does he really ''feel good'' about himself? And if he doesn't really feel good about himself, then does it not follow that his hidden low, not his high, self-esteem leads to violence? And yet as Baumeister points out, research has shown that people with overt low self-esteem aren't violent, so why would low self-esteem cause violence only when it is hidden? If you follow his train of thinking, you could come up with the sort of silly conclusion that covert low self-esteem causes aggression, but overt low self-esteem does not, which means concealment, not cockiness, is the real culprit. That makes little sense.

''The fact is,'' Emler says, ''we've put antisocial men through every self-esteem test we have, and there's no evidence for the old psychodynamic concept that they secretly feel bad about themselves. These men are racist or violent because they don't feel bad enough about themselves.'' Baumeister and his colleagues write: ''People who believe themselves to be among the top 10 percent on any dimension may be insulted and threatened whenever anyone asserts that they are in the 80th or 50th or 25th percentile. In contrast, someone with lower self-esteem who regards himself or herself as being merely in the top 60 percent would only be threatened by the feedback that puts him or her at the 25th percentile. . . . In short, the more favorable one's view of oneself, the greater the range of external feedback that will be perceived as unacceptably low.''

Perhaps, as these researchers are saying, pride really is dangerous, and too few of us know how to be humble. But that is most likely not the entire reason why we are ignoring flares that say, ''Look, sometimes self-esteem can be bad for your health.'' There are, as always, market forces, and they are formidable. The psychotherapy industry, for instance, would take a huge hit were self-esteem to be re-examined. After all, psychology and psychiatry are predicated upon the notion of the self, and its enhancement is the primary purpose of treatment. I am by no means saying mental health professionals have any conscious desire to perpetuate a perhaps simplistic view of self-esteem, but they are, we are (for I am one of them, I confess), the ''cultural retailers'' of the self-esteem concept, and were the concept to falter, so would our pocketbooks.

Really, who would come to treatment to be taken down a notch? How would we get our clients to pay to be, if not insulted, at least uncomfortably challenged? There is a profound tension here between psychotherapy as a business that needs to retain its customers and psychotherapy as a practice that has the health of its patients at heart. Mental health is not necessarily a comfortable thing. Because we want to protect our patients and our pocketbooks, we don't always say this. The drug companies that underwrite us never say this. Pills take you up or level you out, but I have yet to see an advertisement for a drug of deflation.

If you look at psychotherapy in other cultures, you get a glimpse into the obsessions of our own. You also see what a marketing fiasco we would have on our hands were we to dial down our self-esteem beliefs. In Japan, there is a popular form of psychotherapy that does not focus on the self and its worth. This psychotherapeutic treatment, called Morita, holds as its central premise that neurotic suffering comes, quite literally, from extreme self-awareness. ''The most miserable people I know have been self-focused,'' says David Reynolds, a Morita practitioner in Oregon. Reynolds writes, ''Cure is not defined by the alleviation of discomfort or the attainment of some ideal state (which is impossible) but by taking constructive action in one's life which helps one to live a full and meaningful existence and not be ruled by one's emotional state.''

Morita therapy, which emphasizes action over reflection, might have some trouble catching on here, especially in the middle-class West, where folks would be hard pressed to garden away the 50-minute hour. That's what Morita patients do; they plant petunias and practice patience as they wait for them to bloom.

Like any belief system, Morita has its limitations. To detach from feelings carries with it the risk of detaching from their significant signals, which carry important information about how to act: reach out, recoil. But the current research on self-esteem does suggest that we might benefit, if not fiscally than at least spiritually, from a few petunias on the Blue Cross bill. And the fact that we continue, in the vernacular, to use the word ''shrink'' to refer to treatment means that perhaps unconsciously we know we sometimes need to be taken down a peg.

Down to . . . what? Maybe self-control should replace self-esteem as a primary peg to reach for. I don't mean to sound Puritanical, but there is something to be said for discipline, which comes from the word ''disciple,'' which actually means to comprehend. Ultimately, self-control need not be seen as a constriction; restored to its original meaning, it might be experienced as the kind of practiced prowess an athlete or an artist demonstrates, muscles not tamed but trained, so that the leaps are powerful, the spine supple and the energy harnessed and shaped.

There are therapy programs that teach something like self-control, but predictably they are not great moneymakers and they certainly do not attract the bulk of therapy consumers, the upper middle class. One such program, called Emerge, is run by a psychologist named David Adams in a low-budget building in Cambridge, Mass. Emerge's clients are mostly abusive men, 75 percent of them mandated by the courts. ''I once did an intake on a batterer who had been in psychotherapy for three years, and his violence wasn't getting any better,'' Adams told me. ''I said to him, 'Why do you think you hit your wife?' He said to me, 'My therapist told me it's because I don't feel good about myself inside.''' Adams sighs, then laughs. ''We believe it has nothing to do with how good a man feels about himself. At Emerge, we teach men to evaluate their behaviors honestly and to interact with others using empathy and respect.'' In order to accomplish these goals, men write their entire abuse histories on 12-by-12 sheets of paper, hang the papers on the wall and read them. ''Some of the histories are so long, they go all around the room,'' Adams says. ''But it's a powerful exercise. It gets a guy to really concretely see.'' Other exercises involve having the men act out the abuse with the counselor as the victim. Unlike traditional ''suburban'' therapies, Emerge is under no pressure to keep its customers; the courts do that for them. In return, they are free to pursue a path that has to do with ''balanced confrontation,'' at the heart of which is critical reappraisal and self- -- no, not esteem -- responsibility.

While Emerge is for a specific subgroup of people, it might provide us with a model for how to reconfigure treatment -- and maybe even life -- if we do decide the self is not about how good it feels but how well it does, in work and love. Work and love. That's a phrase fashioned by Freud himself, who once said the successful individual is one who has achieved meaningful work and meaningful love. Note how separate this sentence is from the notion of self. We blame Freud for a lot of things, but we can't blame that cigar-smoking Victorian for this particular cultural obsession. It was Freud, after all, who said that the job of psychotherapy was to turn neurotic suffering into ordinary suffering. Freud never claimed we should be happy, and he never claimed confidence was the key to a life well lived.

I remember the shock I had when I finally read this old analyst in his native tongue. English translations of Freud make him sound maniacal, if not egomaniacal, with his bloated words like id, ego and superego. But in the original German, id means under-I, ego translates into I and superego is not super-duper but, quite simply, over-I. Freud was staking a claim for a part of the mind that watches the mind, that takes the global view in an effort at honesty. Over-I. I can see. And in the seeing, assess, edit, praise and prune. This is self-appraisal, which precedes self-control, for we must first know both where we flail and stumble, and where we are truly strong, before we can make disciplined alterations. Self-appraisal. It has a certain sort of rhythm to it, does it not? Self-appraisal may be what Baumeister and Emler are actually advocating. If our lives are stories in the making, then we must be able to edit as well as advertise the text. Self-appraisal. If we say self-appraisal again and again, 101 times, 503 times, 612 times, maybe we can create it. And learn its complex arts.

Lauren Slater is a psychologist. Her memoir, ''Love Works Like This,'' will be published by Random House in May.

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O Gatinho Clonado

Name: Frederico Cintra
Email: fredcintra@hotmail.com
Comments:: como vc gosta de gatos te envio essa reportagem gostaria de saber sua opinião!
abraços FRED


Pesquisadores apresentam o primeiro gato clonado

"Cc" nasceu em 22 de dezembro de 2001

14 de fevereiro, 2002
Às11:06 PM hora de Brasília (0106 GMT)

WASHINGTON -- Pesquisadores da Universidade A&M, no Texas, Estados Unidos, apresentaram, nesta quinta-feira, o primeiro gato clonado da história.

A gatinha, que tem quase dois meses de vida, recebeu o nome de "Cc" e é o primeiro produto de sucesso do programa chamado Copycat, desenvolvido pela universidade e que é patrocinado pela companhia Sperling's Genetic Savings & Clone, com o intuito de ajudar as pessoas a clonar seus animais de estimação.

A filhote entra para uma lista crescente de animais que já foram clonados a partir de células adultas, encabeçada pela ovelha Dolly e que inclui porcos, cabras, bovinos, ratos, entre outros.

"A gatinha parece ser completamente normal, disse Mark Westhusin, em reportagem publicada na revista científica Nature.

Não é cópia exata
Mas, o animal clonado não será necessariamente uma cópia do original, explicou o cientista Duane Kraemer.

É uma reprodução, não uma ressurreição, disse Kraemer.

Cc é branca e marrom, mas não exatamente igual à sua mãe genética. Além disso, é muito diferente da gata listrada da qual nasceu.

Os cientistas disseram que sua cor é única porque não é apenas a genética que contribui para suas características externas, mas também as condições do ventre materno.

Além da diferença na aparência exterior, os pesquisadores também disseram que os donos dos animais de estimação deverão compreender que os animais clonados não têm laço afetivo algum com seus doadores genéticos, nem possuem sua memória.

188 tentativas
Os pesquisadores precisaram de 188 tentativas para chegar ao nascimento de Cc, ocorrido em 22 de dezembro de 2001.

Eles implantaram 82 embriões, mas apenas uma gata ficou grávida com um filhote. Por isso, Westhusin disse que ainda não está claro se será fácil ou não clonar gatos.

Os pesquisadores estão preocupados com a saúde dos clones. Muitos dos animais de fazenda clonados, quando sobrevivem à gravidez e ao parto, se mostram saudáveis e normais. Mas, os clones freqüentemente têm placentas anormais, que levam à morte.

Cientistas informaram, no início deste mês, que a maioria dos ratos clonados morre jovem por problemas de fígado e pulmão. Especialistas sugerem que a técnica utilizada para clonagem é fundamental para a criação de um animal saudável.

Polêmica
Tanto Kraemer como Randall Prather, da Universidade de Missouri e que não participou do projeto do Texas, concordam que a clonagem felina poderia ter benefícios para o ser humano em geral.

Entre esse benefícios está o uso dos felinos nas pesquisas que buscam cura para doenças que atingem seres humanos.

Os gatos são normalmente utilizados em pesquisas neurológicas e Kraemer disse que um grupo de cientistas quer usar felinos para testar remédios para combater o vírus que causa a Aids.

Além disso, a clonagem pode ajudar a conservar espécies felinas em perigo de extinção.

Mas, para o vice-presidente da Sociedade Humana dos Estados Unidos, Wayne Pacelle, os cientistas devem parar de usar animais em pesquisas médicas e que o principal problema das espécies felinas em perigo de extinção é a destruição de seu hábitat natural.


(Com informações da Reuters e da Associated Press)