O que diria Jesus Hoje?

 

Apesar de há muito tempo (mesmo muito) não ter feito aqui mais nenhuma crítica a nenhum livro que tenha lido, ou do qual tenha tido conhecimento, achei por bem fazer uma referência a este, a começar pelo título.
De facto, para crentes ou não crentes, que conheçam a História (pelo menos a quem é oficialmente apresentada pelas Igrejas Cristãs) e a pessoa de Jesus, ficariam certamente intrigados por saber quala  opinião que Jesus teria sobre o nosso mundo actual.
Bem, partindo daquilo que a Igreja ensina de que Jesus é Omnipotente, certamente que já estaria à espera de que a Humanidade no século XXI estivesse a viver neste planeta de uma maneira pelo menos parecida a esta. Mas, acreditando que o Homem tem capacidade para escolher o seu destino e de usar da melhor maneira que as suas capacidades o entendam, aquilo de que tem ao seu dispor, certamente que muitas coisas devem deixar Jesus estupefacto.
O livro, ao contrário do que se poderia pensar, não se baseia em conjecturas infundamentadas, mas parte antes daquilo que se encontra na Bíblia, por vezes baseado em relados de Historiadores da época, para argumentar sobre qual seria a opinião de Jesus sobre inúmeros assuntos, dando exemplos de como o Homem tem procedido erradamente ao ter interpretado mal o que de facto Jesus queria dizer com os seus gestos, as suas palavaras e os seus comportamentos.
Desde o eterno dualismo riqueza/pobreza, passando pela política e pela forma como as nossas sociedades vivem actualmente, os progressos feitos nos campos das ciências e a forma como eles são usados, incluindo assuntos mais internos à Igreja (aqui o autor tem como ponto de referência a Igreja Católica) como o casamento dos padres, o divórcio, o papel das mulheres dentro da instituição bem como o respeito pelas minorias e pelos perseguidos/refugiados.
A ideia com que eu fiquei, foi de que de facto a mensagem que Jesus queria transmitir não era tão conservadora, nem tão injusta, nem tão afastada do dia-a-dia das pessoas e sobretudo nem era uma justificação para todos os crimes e atrocidades que se têm cometido ao longo dos séculos em seu nome, e que ainda hoje se cometem.
O autor alerta para o facto de que muitos cristãos têm actuado ao longo dos séculos como os fariseus que Jesus tanto criticava: têm dado importância à letra e não ao seu conteúdo nem aplicabilidade na prática. O que muitas vezes era apresentado como regras e normas são apenas sinais daquilo que se deve fazer na prática. A purificação do corpo que os judeus faziam com inúmeros rituais de higiene e de abstinência de certos alimentos, na verdade deveria ser entendida no ponto de vista de Jesus, como a purificação da alma de maus pensamentos e de más obras.
Segundo o autor, a base do ensinamento de Jesus é a de colocar o ser humano como centro e ponto culminante do funcionamento da nossa sociedade, da nossa economia e da nossa política, e não utilizá-lo como mero meio para satisfazer as necessidades destas áeras. E entenda-se aqui o ser humano, como todas as pessoas do mundo, sem qualquer excepção, porque todas elas são importantes para o funcionamento e existência da civilização humana.
De facto Jesus teria muito a dizer hoje sobre a actual sociedade humana. Mas seria apenas dizer mal do que fizémos até hoje? Não devemos também pensar em todos os esforços que têm sido feitos para um desenvolvimento mais harmonioso de todos os países e na oferta de oportunidades a todas as pessoas independemente da raça, cor, sexo ou crença religiosa? No entanto, há ainda um longo caminho a percorrer, e os dados que o autor apresenta ao longo do livro, sobretudo das provações que as crianças e mulheres apresentam hoje em muitos países do mundo, são exemplo do enorme trabalho que ainda falta fazer, e de que talvez Jesus Hoje nos diria que ainda falta muito para o nosso mundo viver na sociedade justa e equílibrada que ele tantas vezes defendeu. Sejamos crentes ou não, os planos e a mensagem de Jesus para este mundo, ainda está muito além do que nós vivemos hoje. Será que lá chegaremos de facto um dia?

Italy: one country, many homelands?

Now we are used to see Italy as a single unified nation, the true is that this reality is very recent. This south-European country has actually many differences among its territory. And these differences are so strong and deep that is impossible to talk and see Italy as a single reality.

Usually it’s normal to divide Italy in two different realities: The North rich as more developed, and the South less rich and less developed. However, with a more thorough economic analysis is possible to divide Italy into 3 different realities.

As I said before, the reasons for this division are very strong and some of them older than we can imagine. Basically we can find historical, political, economic and social differences.

Historical Differences:

Until de 1860’s Italy wasn’t an unified country, but divided into several states that have been changed over the centuries. Since the Roman Empire to the Risorgimento in the 1860’s many independent States were created and eliminated in this peninsula. The political unity was lost by the invasions of the Barbarian people in the end of the Roman Empire (476 a. C.). Since them Italy was the place of many small states, principalities and kingdoms where the political and religious (the Pope) powers fought to obtain a bigger part of territory. In the end of the Middle-Age some cities in the Italian peninsula started to prosper and were the birth place of a big cultural movement: The renaissance. However this prosperity was concentrated almost only in the Center and North of the Peninsula. This has consequences in the tourism. The North has much more historical attractions than in the South. It's possible to see in the North monuments that attest the historical richness of this region: the Renaissance, the influences from the Austrian Empire, the richness of Vatican and other catholic monuments.
The historians have found in the Renaissance movement an attempt to unify the country.

Map of the Italian peninsula in 1860

Before the unification, the Italian peninsula was composed by:
-        The Kingdom of Sardinia;
-        The kingdom of two Sicilies;
-        The Papal States;
-        One part of the Austrian Empire;
-        Habsburg sicons;

These independent states had their own laws, culture and social habits. So, before the unification, the divisions remained. Many people refer to the Italy unification more to a colonial level than to a really unification.

Economic differences:

In this field we can see not two but three different regions in Italy.

The economic differences are a consequence of the economic past. First, it’s a consequence of the entrance of the northern regions in the two Industrial Revolutions. In the North we can find the Industrial Triangle (Turin, Milan and Genoa) that focused their industrialization on specialization and small products, taking advantage of the geographical proximity to the most developed European countries (Switzerland, Austria, Germany and France), which benefits from a lower distance costs. Also since the population density is bigger in the North, is has been also a benefit for the domestic and foreign companies to install their affiliates in the North, where the workforce is more abundant, than in the South.
Since the more technologically advanced industries are almost all in the North, this also means that the North contributed more for the economic italian performance.
On the other side... the South - the so called Mezzogiorno, economically charecterized by an retarded agriculture and a big absense of manufacturing industries.
There have been many attempts to develope the south and to reduce the lack between the North and South, but the results are very far away from the intended.
And here it comes the "Third Italy" a purely economic concept. Between the very industrialized North based on leading industries and the South with many problems on its industrialization, there's the so called "Middle Italy" - a region that experienced a rapid growth in the lighter industries, caractherized by a small and medium sized family firms - . This region is also caratherized by an active role of the women, that started to replace the men in the agricultural work and next in the industries. These small firms are the cuore of suche division, and are assuming an important role in the importance of the "Third Italy" in the national and international context, because these firms are benefiting for the labour specialization, the production decentralization from the biggest industries in the North for these smaller.

Besides the industry, there's another economic sector that has an huge importance on the Italian economy: the tourism. And even here we can see many differences between the North and the South.
As I said before, the Historical Background of the North, made of it one of the best tourist destinations in the World: cities as Rome, Florence and Venice atracts every year many tourists all over the world. And also the natural resources in the north contrubute for it.
From the Cathedrals, to the museums, the Palaces, the Opera's Theaters, the cosmopolitan cities to the beauty of the nature, everything makes of the North, a important tourist destination.
However, in the recent years the South has focused on the specifics of its region, in order to attract tourists, by the agritourism and inside it, the Wine-tourism.
Using the small size of the big part of the cities in the South, the region has focused on presenting the relation between tourism and rural life as an attraction. The recent importance given to the environment and the biological food (the so called green-environment) is helping the south to attract many tourists. Many tourist units and hotels have been oppened in the recent years to give the possibility to the foreigners to feel the particularities of this unknow side of Italy, together to the possibility to live in a more rural environment.
The wine is maybe the most famous product that attracts many tourists to this region, to see where it is produced, attracting many wine producers to the region and increasing the procution of those that are already installed.
surprisingly, the tourist actitvity and profits are increasing in the South, while in the North are facing a problem of decreasing.
However, the South stills attracting tourists almost only from the rest of Italy.

Social differences:

There are some big social differences between the South and the North that have been increasing in the recent years because the South is still following the old traditions meanwhile the North have been broke them and is moving toward the modernity.
The socio-economic backwardness together with the weight of corruption, caractherized nowadays the South of Italy that persistes in not following the modernization of the North and the rest of the Western Europe. The south still follows the same traditions of a patriarchal society based on the family. The importance of the family as the central unit of the society has consequences in the social relations and also in the economic activity. In the South is usual to have a huge lunch time (for example) where teh big part of the economic activities stop in order to give to the people the opportunity to go home to have a big lunch and have some sleep.
The importance of family is also caractherized by the existence of a big size families living together in the same or adjacent houses. While in the North is normal the youngers leave the parent's home to go to the University or when they marry (which occurs generally in a younger age than in the North), in the South is normal to stay at parent's home, at least until the youngers have a solid career or marriage.
On the other side, the North, where the youngers leave their parent's home to study and to marriage, and despite the fact that the family has also an important role in the society, it's given much more importance to the individual and the family's size is quite different from the South. The average age for marry is also later and it's not common to stop the economic activities ao long in the lunch time (it's even more common not close at all).
The importance given to the individual development is the social cause of the development of the North.

Political differences:

As I said in the previous point, the corruption has a deep penetration in the South. But the corruption is also very common in the North as we have been seeing over the years with the discovery of many corruption scandals, some of them involving members of the local, regional and also central governments.
Relate to the corruption, is the big national inbestigation called Mani Pulite that revealed many scandals related to the vote system and others. This investigation led to the fragmentation of two major political parties: the Christian Democrats and the Communists.
One of the consequences was the ceration of the Lega Nord in 1990 that proposed the creation of Padania: an independent State, agregating some of the regions in the North, and making an independent State with them, basing their oppinion in the fact that the North is suffering of the corruption caused by the Central Government. Unlike other party forces, the Lega Nord has a big importance, specially in the North. They also joined forces with Forza Italia the Berlusconi's party. However, they became opponents quickly. After this break, Lega Nord returned to the regionalism defence, arguing that the North souldn't share its big economic sucess with the South, and shouldn't  be harmed by the bad economic and development performance of the South. So, as we can see the reason for the creation of Padania doesn't have a Historical or cultural reason, but the similar soci-economic values and background. But of course the different economic performance can use as a social difference between the North and South, in ways of level of living and access to goods and services.




As we can see in this article, there are many differences between the North and the South. And they don't tend to disappear, but to increase. North has been always richer than the South thanks to its strategic position and to the Historical Background. Currently the break with tradition in the North is aggravating the differences on both regions.
And in the political and tourist fields, the differences are more than obvious.
The Third Italy is contributing to the existence of more competition between the regions among the Italian territory.
Are all theses differences enough to a future division of Italy in two or more independent territories?

Cuba: the end of comunism?

1959, 1st of January: the revolutionary movement of Fidel Castro droped the Fulgencio Batista's dictatorship. With this event, Cuba started a new era. And it seems that Cuba is facing now a new big change.



Cuba's Revolution: when Fidel took the control of Cuba

But let's go back to understand why the current differences are changing so much the economic and political environment in Cuba. After the revolution, the new government nacionalized  the economic apparatus and stablished strategic relations with the Sovietic Union. But only in 1965 was born the Modern Comunist Party. In that year, the country held a total adherence to the Marxist-Leninist Communism: all the economic activities were under the government control and all the workers became public employees. And despite the fact that the Government - as usual in all the Comunist Regimes - couldn't supply all the basic goods and services to the population, it resisted over the years thanks to the population's support.
This was possible because the Government supplied many services like education and health cares for free.
But there are other reasons for all the support given to the government by the population. First, the propaganda, second the USA blockade to Cuba (The Government used it as an excuse for the shortage of many goods and services) and third the support and economic help by the Sovietic Union (because it was good for them to have an ally near to the USA).
With the fall of the Sovietic Union, Cuba lost it's principal buyer and supplier. The shortage became even worst. Since it was impossible to continue to buy the goods for the population in the international market with the so called "comunist prices" - prices with scount -, in the 90's the Government decided to reduce even more the standard of living. The population in general started to live with less goods, less income and the hunger became even more normal.
Second the Government started to authorized the private investments in the tourism, one of the strongest sectores for the economy. This decision truned into a good decision because with the increase in the number of tourists, more private companies invested in teh country in this sector, the country received more money and many jobs were created.
However the situation was still dramatic for the population that continued to move to the USA hoping to find a better life.

The brothers Fidel and Raul that are controling Cuba

In the 31st of July of 2006 due to a big disease, Raul Castro - Fidel's brother - took the control of the government and the people though that everything will still the same. They were totally wrong. Obviously the Communist Party was still the only party, and continue to rule by its own decisions without accepting any kind of opposition. But the economic activity changed a lot. Raul introduced huge economic changes, like the liberalization of the big part of the economic activity and the extinction of more than half a million jobs in the public sector with the objective of having at least 40% of workers working in the private sector by 2015. And in 2011 the population was authorized for the first time in decades to sell and buy their own properties.
Of course these big and fast changes are bringing other consequences specially for the economic agents, like the inflation, but it seems that the Government will not turn back.
The Cuban Government is making the same changes that China made some years ago: both Governments understood that it's necessary to provide a good way of living to the population to them accept the absence of liberty. With no economic development there's no future for the cuban comunist regime.
Now, we only need to wait and see when (and if) the population will realize the differences between the liberty to make their own money and have their own activity and the liberty to say what they want and to choose their own government, and the fact that both are important and essential for a good way of living.

The Legacy of Keynes

A crisis is always associated to a fall of the paradigm into force. And the current crisis isn't an exception.

Today we see many economists bringing back the theories and models of Keynes. Despite the wrong idea some people have about theories, the world is seeing now that the contribution of Keynes for the economics theory is broader that what many though was.
When Keynes in 1930 argued that the USA weren't in a simple recession and the markets couldn't solve the solution by themselves, as the people belive then, the world was shocked.
In 1936 Keynes published his most famous  work: "General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money", despite his fame and contribution to the european economy and politics were already considerable.
With many publications and an important role in the negotiations of the Treaty of Versailles, with his General Theory,  Keynes showed the weaknesses and failures of the economic theory to explain the problems that were hauting the Western Economies.
The Great Depression of 1929 with its consequences - exponential growth of the unemployment, banks and companies failures, and decrease in the industrial production, money suplly and international trade flows - changed the way as the people were seeing the world and the economy. The economists trained in the current theory weren't able to explain how the world come to that situation: the faith in the mechanisms of self-recovery of the markets were put aside as the crisis was becoming worse.
This was the perfect time for Keynes, to struggle against the current theories.
At that time the economic theory already defined the economic cycles theory. According to it, the economic growth of the capitalist economies evolved according to 4 phases:

• ascendent phase (propserity or expansion);
• inflection from the ascending to descending;
• descending phase (depression or contraction);
• inflection from the descending to ascending;

Keynes concentrated his Theory in the last phase, in order to help to recover from the crisis the Western World was suffering. Keynes created a Theoretical model to explain the insufficiency of aggregate demand, the decrease in the capacity of investment and consumption and the decrease in the confidence of the economic agents.
The Western Economies survived to the 1929 Great Depression acording to Keynes predictions. One of the ways founded to solve the Depression was the restoration of the confidence in the markets, thanks to the public intervention in the macroeconomic field, by the decrease in the interest rates and the increase in the budget deficits.
Using the explanation of the existence of equilibrium solutions below the full employment and some possible recipes for the economy becomes to prosperity, the contribution of Keynes was benefited by the New Deal policies of Roosevelt in the USA, the cycle inversion in many Western European Countries (thanks to expansionary monetary and fiscal policies) and of course the abandonment of the global standard system.
Keynes showed a new short-run macroeconomic approach, based on the management of the aggregate demand through public incentives to increase the investment and consumption.
However his theories were sometimes misunderstood. When he annouced the end of the laissez faire, he wasn't trying to predict the end of the private innitiative: the capitalism wasn't a model to shoot down, but to improve.
Many economists though that the solution was to become a planning and central management economy. For Keynes the capitalism should remain because it wasn't a wrong system: it was only imperfect in the way it was beeing applied in the real economies that time. For Keynes the markets should work with public incentives to stimulate the investment and consumption and fight the unemployment, leaving intact the private property.
Since then, according to the cycle theory, the crisis couldn't be avoided, the solution according to keynes was be already prepared to struggle and recover from this situation.
After the Western World recover from the Great Depression, the economists though that a solution for all the depressions was founded. In fact, in the next recesions suffered by the USA (1975, 1982 and 1991), the Federal Reserve used the policies proposed by Keynes: decrease in the interest rate in order to stimulate the economy, accompanied sometimes by the decrease in taxes and increase in the public expenditure. However in the Asiatic Great Crash of 1997, the affected economies didn't follow the Keyne's recipe: the policies applied were the budget austerity and the increase in the interest rate. The governments of these countries knew perfectly the Keynes policies. But they realized that untill 1997 they were following the policies issued by the International Monetary Fund and the U.S. Treasury. So, the governments selected another way to solve the crash.

After Keynes, our world faced big crisis and is now facing the biggest crisis after the Great Depression in the Keynes' time. And the current big crisis showed that it's  necessary a new approach and understand of the Keynes' theories, for a better implementation of those theories.

Voynich: the alien manuscript?

The manuscript's cover

It's a completly mistery. From the texts to the draws, no one can translate and find the meaning of these 204 pages (although it seems that 28 pages were lost). Baptized as Voynich in 1912 by the antiquarian Wilfrid Voynich, after discovered in the Jesuit college in Villa Mandragone.
Today we can admire this mysterious manuscript in the Beineck rare book and manuscript Library in the University of Yale - USA.
This manuscript doesn't have an author, a title or even a date. However in 2009 some researchers from the University of Arizone, thanks to the radiocarbon dating, put the origin of this manuscript from 1404 - 1438.




Let's start to analyse the figures:
- 113 of them represent what it's called the allien plants: no one knows or ever saw these plants - they don't exist in any place of our planet;


Some of the alien plants

- from the sheets 73 to 86 it's possible to see some bizarre draws: many women naked, maybe pregnant, in strange positions and with the feet submerge in a dark liquid: there are also many tubs connecting the groups of figures, but no one knows the meaning;

Some of the strange naked women

- we can also see 25 diagrams that seem to be a celestial map, astral charts and astrological schemes: it's possible to see the sun, the moon, some Zodiac signs and other heavenly bodies - however not all agree with that - , this section is even more strange because shows things that it's not supposed to be known in such anciente time;

Some of the celestial maps

Finally the mysterious language. There are many Hypotheses. In 1900 William Newbold argued that this manuscript should have been written by Rugegro Vacone, an english philosopher from the middle-age. Later in 1946, Leonell Strong from the University of Yale, said that this manuscript should be a ciphertext wrote in medieval english. Some years later, two experts in encryption from the american army put the Hypothesis that the text is written in a philosofic artificial language, like an ancient Esperanto, by an ancient alchemist.
Many other hypothesis were made over the years about the language: that should be written in ancient cipher hebrew, pre-Gallic, ancient Scotish or in nahuatl, the ancient aztech language. In 1978 the philologist John Stojko argued that the language is ancient ucranian and in 1987, Leo Levitor said that the text was wrote in Catarian, an eretical christian group, in their secret alphabet.
Jorge Stolfu from the Brazilian University of Campinas had another idea: according to him, a chinese delegation made a phonetic transliteration from the chinese, during it's travel in Europe. And finally one of the last hypothesis was made by Nicholas Pelling, who said that the author was the italian architect Antonio Averlino, the so called "Il Filatore".
With so many theories about the origin, the name, the author, the purpose, the language, the sense of the figures, this manuscript is becoming even and even more intesristing. After so many hipothesis, Gordon Rugg from the University of Keele and Robert Brumbough from the University of Yale, made a radical hypothesis: there's no mistery aorund the significance of anything in this manuscript because it's just a swindle.

China: the new economic superpower?

"China is a very interesting country, and in some years will overtake the USA".
We can listen  in the beginning of the movie. Is this what will really happen? Will the world now turn again to East? This movie shows that China was already a superpower some centuries ago. And, with the big crisis in the USA and all teh Western World, China is now taking part in the international comparative advantages, and becoming the new production center of the world. From politics, to economics and militar power, we can see in this movie how the world is being changed by the growth of this superpower.
But, is this just a historic consequence? Will China be the next in this continuos cycle?

Let's see the answers in teh movie, and how is China is working now and how is its role and behaviour in the regional and international context.

Capitalism: a lovely approach

Yes, there are many approaches for this thing called Capitalism. Here is the lovely approach: a love story about the capitalism.
Full of irony, Michael Moore shows to us, the deffects and the stupid decisions made in the american policy, but that can be adapetd in a different way to all the Capitalist countries. This movie shows how we are making the same mistakes almost since the beginning of the human societies, and how we still allow them to be make.
It's impressive to see the numbers of this disaster, and how much did we loose and are we loosing with this system called capitalism.
Should we need to review this capitalist paradigm? Decide yourself: