A Cultura da Doença

Na antiga China existia o hábito de pagar regularmente ao médico pela saúde. Quando a pessoa ficava doente, deixava de pagar.

Actualmente, na nossa sociedade, paga-se quando se está doente, i.e., para haver lugar a pagamento as pessoas têm de estar doentes!

Ora, os valores inverteram-se.
Aquilo que temos é a cultura da doença, ao invés da cultura da saúde.
Todo o sistema está assente na doença, no cultivo desta. A não ser assim, não haveria necessidade da indústria farmacêutica, da indústria hospitalar e de toda a(s) classe(s) de profissionais ligados à "saúde".

Não é a saúde que se pretende fomentar, mas sim a doença.
E ainda nos questionamos sobre a atitude das pessoas perante a vida, e a forma 'negativa' como a encaram!
Há que revalorizar, para permitir uma aproximação mais positiva e construtiva da vida, optando por valores optimistas.

U.S. Official Witnesses Sudan Attack

Visiting U.S. Official Witnesses Attack on Sudanese Official in Camp for Internal Refugees in Darfur

MORNIE, Sudan Sept. 17, 2004 — A U.S. aid chief got a firsthand look at the anger among Darfur's beleaguered population Friday, when residents of a refugee camp beat up a government worker who tried to stop them from complaining to the visiting diplomat.
U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Andrew Natsios said Friday's violence sprang from "absolute rage" across the region among displaced Darfurians, who blame the Sudanese government and an Arab militia for the violence that forced them from their homes.

Natsios was touring Mornie, West Darfur's biggest camp with up to 80,000 people, hearing complaints from residents when the scuffle occurred.

An official from Sudan's Humanitarian Affairs department tried to silence those who were telling Natsious that they cannot return to their homes, as the government has recommended, because they feared more attacks by the government and the Janjaweed, the pro-government militia accused of atrocities against civilians.

Some in the crowd shouted: "Shut up, you're Janjaweed! Shut up, you're government," and began beating the official with sticks, Natsios said.

The official was conscious and bleeding from gashes across the front and back of his head before aid workers and African Union monitors were able to shove his attackers away. Last month, a mob in another camp killed an alleged Janjaweed member.

"Now it's confirmed in a terrible way that you are clearly dealing with an explosive situation," Natsios told reporters after his security whisked him from the camp, some 750 miles west of Khartoum.

Natsios, who has toured Darfur this week, has pressed the Sudanese government to do more to restore calm.

The United Nations estimates 50,000 Darfurians have died from disease, violence or malnutrition since February 2003, when two Darfur rebel groups began a revolt and, in response, the Janjaweed began a rampage, attacking villages and killing and raping residents.

The conflict has its roots in decades of tensions between ethnic African tribes and Arab herdsmen, who have long competed over the region's scarce resources. The rebel groups, formed from the ethnic Africans, accuse the Sudanese government of discrimination against them.

The Sudanese government is accused of backing the Janjaweed in an effort to quash the rebellion, a charge Khartoum denies.

Some of Natsios's aides said the official who was beaten or another Sudanese official had been photographing those talking to Natsios on Friday. International human rights groups have accused the Sudanese government of detaining people who complain to foreign officials, including U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell during their visits to the region in June, about the situation in Darfur.

"This is outrageous, they're trying to intimidate them," Natsios said.

Earlier Friday in the West Darfur capital of Geneina, Habib Makhtoum of the regional Social Affairs ministry claimed that those in the camps who complain are either rebels or had been intimidated into lying by rebels.

Thursday, Natsios had visited another camp where children showed them their drawings of armed fighters on horseback killing people and looting cattle.

"It's horrifying," he said. "I get very angry when I see this.

At the United Nations Thursday, Annan accused the Sudanese government of failing to rein in the Arab militia known as the Janjaweed. He also said that both government forces and rebels in Darfur were guilty of violating a cease-fire.

African Union-mediated talks between the rebels and the government on an overall peace deal broke down earlier this week. The Nigerian hosts and mediators are now pressing the rebels to accept a separate humanitarian accord.

Sudan's government already has agreed to sign the humanitarian accord guaranteeing access for international relief workers and promising to safeguard the return of refugees. Aid groups had earlier accused the government of blocking their work.

One rebel group, the Justice and Equity Movement, has refused to sign the humanitarian accord, saying existing accords already provide for relief, and that it is impossible to do more before the Janjaweed are disarmed.

The other rebel movement, the Sudan Liberation Army, has yet to formally present its position.

Meanwhile, the U.N. Security Council is considering a U.S. draft resolution threatening sanctions, singling out the "petroleum sector," if the Sudanese government doesn't curb the Janjaweed, start to disarm them and punish those who have committed human rights violations.

- The Associated Press.

OPEC Lifts Quotas, Oil Prices Still Rise

By Khaled Oweis and Andrew Mitchell
VIENNA (Reuters) - OPEC on Wednesday lifted oil supply quotas by one million barrels a day, four percent, in a renewed bid to force down stubbornly high crude prices.

The pact is designed to underscore the intent among the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to exert downward pressure on prices that last month neared $50 a barrel.

But the new deal is expected to make little difference to actual supply flows because OPEC is already pumping almost flat out.

With prices failing to react, and certainly showing no sign yet of a serious reversal, the agreement may only heighten worries about OPEC's inability to cope with the fastest growing oil demand in a generation.

"This is a signal to the market not a change in total output. It will have a psychological effect on prices," said Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh.

"Practically speaking quotas are all but suspended at the moment so where they are set is not important," said Alirio Parra, a former OPEC president.

Traders ignored OPEC and crude traded up 76 cents to $45.10 a barrel as a hurricane battered U.S. Gulf oil operations and weekly data showed a big fall in U.S. crude stocks.

Officially, output allocations for the group that controls half the world's oil exports go up to 27 million barrels a day from November 1. But OPEC is already pumping more than that, at 28 million barrels daily, and leading producer Saudi Arabia has made a commitment to customers to keep deliveries high.

Producers worry that inflated energy costs may hamper world economic growth and dent crude demand growth led by China's booming economy.

But there is little evidence yet that rising fuel bills costs are slowing growth and investment funds continue to bet on oil.

Saudi Arabia rejected suggestions that it has lost control of prices that OPEC says are inflated by $10-$15 a barrel over levels warranted by supply-demand fundamentals.

"OPEC has not lost control of the market, it is market orientated," said Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi.
"We are not going to be pushing oil that is not wanted. If there is no shortage in the market then OPEC has not lost control."

Although Saudi still has a cushion of a million barrels daily of spare capacity it is not of the grade required by most refiners. "What we really need is more spare capacity and less sour crude for prices to go down," said Deutsche Bank analyst Adam Seminski.

OPEC output includes a large proportion of high-sulfur, or sour, heavy crude but world markets are short of transport fuels refined more easily from low-sulfur, light grades.

At least high prices have encouraged producers to accelerate plans to bring new oilfields onstream, promising to rebuild some spare capacity into a severely stretched world supply system.

Two new fields in Saudi Arabia will be pumping 800,000 bpd by the end of September, Saudi's Naimi said, perhaps giving it flexibility above its official 10.5 million bpd capacity.

Kuwait and Algeria also are adding extra volumes of about 300,000 bpd combined soon, their oil ministers said.

OPEC put off a decision on raising its official $22-$28 price target. Another meeting is planned for December 10 in Cairo to review output policy when a new price target could be settled. Some want a $5 increase in a range centered on $30 a barrel.

- Reuters

Global indifference fosters Sudan crisis

BY MORTON ABRAMOWITZ AND SAMANTHA POWER
Morton Abramowitz is a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and former president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Samantha Power is author of "'A Problem From Hell':

September 15, 2004

What has all the attention on the suffering in Darfur achieved? It has helped persuade governments to feed the starving refugees, but it has not improved the security of the people of Darfur.

When the flurry of interest was aroused four months ago, some 100,000 people were refugees in Chad and more than a million were displaced inside Darfur, unable to escape Sudan. Today those numbers are thought to have increased to 200,000 and 1.5 million, respectively. The estimate of 30,000 dead has risen to 50,000. Villages in Darfur are still being attacked by Sudanese planes and Janjaweed militia forces, and women in refugee camps who fetch firewood are still assaulted daily. The uprooted are destined to remain wards of the international community.

Why has the world, with all its outpourings and Security Council deliberations, failed to tackle the Darfur problem?

The main answer is straightforward enough: Major and minor powers alike are committed only to stopping killing that harms their national interests. Why take political, financial and potential military risks when there is no strategic or domestic cost to remaining on the sidelines?

Why is there no such cost? First, because not enough people are dying. Recent history has set the bar extremely high for concern in Africa. In Congo, where an estimated 3 million people have died over the past six years, the media and Congress have largely stayed home, and other governments have gladly taken their cue of indifference. Although the previous civil war in Sudan took some 2 million lives, it was allowed to continue for almost 20 years. And in Rwanda, of course, where about 800,000 were murdered, nothing was done.

Second, because the delivery of humanitarian aid lets us off the hook. After an unpardonable delay, the world overcame Sudan's obstructionism to get food, medicine and plastic sheeting into Darfur. This has helped reduce the death toll, but it is a stopgap solution that keeps the media at bay and allows lawmakers and policy-makers to do good deeds while avoiding the political problem at the heart of Darfur's destruction: Khartoum's sins and, to a lesser degree, a rebel movement emboldened by the belief that the United States is on its side.

Third, the existence of the UN Security Council hides the crux of the problem: Countries do not want to do what is necessary to prevent large-scale loss of life in messy, complex Africa. Crises such as Darfur require urgent action, and states are well aware that the Security Council cannot act urgently. It is not by accident that they throw the problem into the labyrinth of UN deliberations, which allows them to play the role of good international citizens while the Security Council, with its built-in vetoes from Russia and China and its built-in opposition from rotating members such as Pakistan and Algeria, prevents any serious action against sovereign nations.

The international system is broken, at least when it comes to Africa. There is a moral and political void when it comes to coping with catastrophes in Africa.

Darfur shows that dedicated advocacy can move democracies to denounce atrocities and provide generous humanitarian help. What the earnest advocacy rarely does is propel the powerful to stop the killing. Righteous clamor must reach a high enough pitch that politicians in democratic states are persuaded to do a difficult thing: Take domestic political risks in pursuit of policies that do not serve their immediate interests, that can be financially costly and that provide no clear-cut exit strategies.

- Newsday

O Ocaso da Razão

Os imbecis e os cobardes desculpam sempre os terroristas… . Até quando?

No mundo livre são tudo vantagens. Inauguram-se mesquitas a um ritmo alucinante e toleram-se “templos” nos quais se “oferecem” cursos grátis de ódio à cultura cristã ocidental. Quantas igrejas católicas se constroem no mundo árabe? E o que dizer do respeito pelo cristianismo no mundo islâmico?

Quem se levanta contra estes desmandos?

Ainda agora, durante a matança dos inocentes na Ossétia do Norte um dos bárbaros terroristas despejou um carregador da sua arma nas mãos de uma mulher só porque ela era cristã.

O mundo livre está a perder a guerra por cobardia.

Com horror e a partir do terror, escrevo submerso na mais completa raiva, numa ira infinita, revoltantemente triste, e sobretudo “acorrentado” na minha (in)capacidade de indefeso homem livre.

Enojado, leio que alguns apontam culpabilidades ás forças especiais russas pela matança das inocentes crianças e adultos ossetas.

Algo começa a não fazer sentido: os imbecis e os cobardes desculpam sempre os terroristas.

Os números avolumam-se de matança em matança. Nova Iorque, Bali, Casablanca, Madrid, e agora, de novo a Rússia, depois de há uma semana os mesmos monstros terem abatido dois aviões comerciais pouco depois de terem descolado de Moscovo.

Se em 2001 fomos todos norte-americanos, e se mais recentemente fomos todos espanhóis, sou agora, devemos ser agora, todos, OSSETAS.

Não nos iludamos com as palavras dos falsos profetas do diálogo pois estes são os mensageiros da Morte. Da morte mais horrenda e cobarde.

É a III Guerra Mundial, e o mundo livre aceita com generosidade a entrada de comandos terroristas no seu seio: a Al-Qaeda, dizem. E por trás da al-Qaeda quem está? Só Bin Laden? Quantos Bin Laden? Quantos Zarqawis?

Por trás, cobardemente, está o terrorismo islâmico. E por trás deste quem se acoberta?
Estão aqui, sabe-se quem são, mas os interesses e as “rendinhas” diplomáticas toldam as vistas do mundo ocidental.

Um facto é irrefutável: o Islamismo em Nova Iorque, em Bali, em Madrid, e agora na escola massacrada por terroristas tchetchenos, a maioria deles árabes. Deve começar-se por aqui.

No mundo ocidental tudo é compreensão, é tudo respeito, é tudo concessões. Véus nos colégios, crucifixos retirados, ataques ao cristianismo, subvenções ao islamismo, autorizações para os imãs semearem ódio e violência contra as sociedades que os acolheram. E o terrorismo?

O culpado do ataque a Nova Iorque é Bush. O culpado da chacina de Bali é o turismo. O culpado da tragédia de Madrid, indubitavelmente Aznar. O culpado do inferno de Beslan, inquestionavelmente Putin.

O que é aterrador é que os terroristas nunca são os culpados, cambada de cretinos, imbecis? Toynbee escreveu há alguns anos que o ocidente viveria dentro em breve a III Guerra Mundial por causa da imigração e do terrorismo.

E aí está ela. Cuidado, democracias liberais ocidentais. Muito cuidado, países do mundo (ainda) livre. Estamos a uma passo, um pequeníssimo passo de estalar, como consequência da nossa entorpecente benevolência, gera o ódio nas nossas sociedades.

Os Le Pen multiplicam-se a um ritmo quase clónico em cada nação europeia. Eles já aí estão. Na Alemanha, em França, em Espanha, em Portugal, e não esqueçamos que só dez, número pequeno, dez le Pens podem destroçar a harmonia do mundo ocidental tal como a conhecemos hoje e a estrita prática e observância do sistema democrático.

Não há que classificar os terroristas. São todos, sem qualquer excepção, sem qualquer desculpa, imundos, cobardes, perversos, miseráveis, fanáticos, são não-humanos.

Ninguém no seu perfeito juízo fica imune a duzentos, DUZENTOS - 200, cadáveres de crianças inocentes. Esses cadáveres despertam-nos a todos, pesam-nos a todos, atormentam-nos a todos. A não ser claro aos cobardes e imbecis que proclamam laudativamente os benefícios do diálogo com estes monstros. Estes duzentos inocentes massacrados a sangue-frio ensombram-nos no que nos resta de consciência.

Eles fazem-me ferver o sangue. É certo que os terroristas ganharam este primeiro round. Venceram em Nova Iorque, em Bali, em Madrid, e de que maneira, e, agora, voltaram a ganhar na Rússia, num colégio de Beslan, na Ossétia do Norte.

Basta!

Jorge Pereira da Silva

3 Anos - Tributo aos que partiram

«De inteligência superior e bondade»

Aos 58 anos
Morreu o Presidente do Tribunal Constitucional
Luís Nunes de Almeida

Figura máxima do órgão fiscalizador do cumprimento da Constituição desde Abril de 2003, faleceu esta madrugada (06/09/2004) em Saragoça, Espanha, vítima de ataque cardíaco.

O bastonário da Ordem dos Advogados, José Miguel Júdice, recorda como um homem de «inteligência superior e bondade» o Presidente do Tribunal Constitucional Luís Nunes de Almeida.

Contactado pela Agência Lusa, Júdice contou ter recebido a notícia da morte de Nunes de Almeida com «um choque muito profundo», e sublinhou o contributo do magistrado na cidadania e justiça portuguesas.

«Foi decisivo em momentos importantes da justiça portuguesa», considerou, elogiando o seu trabalho à frente do Tribunal Constitucional, e em concreto a capacidade de tornar a instituição «hoje em dia nuclear para a defesa dos direitos fundamentais».

O bastonário disse ainda que a memória de Luís Nunes de Almeida está associada a duas características «que raras vezes surgem juntas, uma inteligência superior, acutilante, e bondade».

A notícia chegou via comunicado do governo de Aragão, que sublinhou os infrutíferos esforços do pessoal médico para salvar Luís Nunes de Almeida.

A caminho de França, onde anualmente profere conferências sobre Direito Constitucional, Luís NUnes de Almeida sentiu-se mal durante a noite e a sua mulher ligou para os serviços de emergência pedindo uma ambulância, mas o pessoal médico nada pode fazer para o salvar, especifica a nota.

Luís Nunes de Almeida tinha passado o domingo com a mulher em visita a vários locais da cidade de Calatayud, hospedando-se no hotel do antigo mosteiro cistercense em Saragoça.

O cadáver foi trasladado para a morgue de Calatayud, de onde seguirá para Portugal, segundo a mesma nota.

Luís Nunes de Almeida sofria de problemas cardíacos há vários anos e já tinha sido submetido a um bypass.

Natural de Lisboa, Luís Nunes de Almeida era presidente do órgão fiscalizador do cumprimento da Constituição desde Abril de 2003, ao fim de 20 anos como juiz conselheiro do TC, 14 dos quais na Vice- Presidência.

Considerado próximo da área do PS, partido pelo qual foi deputado à Assembleia da república, Luís Nunes de Almeida foi igualmente advogado e gestor de empresas privadas, assistente do Instituto Superior de Economia e do Instituto Superior de Ciências do Trabalho e da Empresa, e vogal da Comissão Constitucional.

- VISAOONLINE

Jardim em flor, jardim de impossessão,
Transbordante de imagens mas informe,
Em ti se dissolveu o mundo enorme,
Carregado de amor e solidão.

A verdura das arvores ardia,
O vermelho das rosas transbordava
Alucinado cada ser subia
Num tumulto em que tudo germinava.

A luz trazia em si a agitação
De paraísos, deuses e de infernos,
E os instantes em ti eram eternos
De possibilidades e suspensão.

Mas cada gesto em ti se quebrou, denso
Dum gesto mais profundo em si contido,
Pois trazias em ti sempre suspenso
Outro jardim possível e perdido.

- Jardim Perdido, Sophia de Mello B. Andersen

Cerco

ANGOLA: Opposition demand independent electoral commission

LUANDA, 2 Sep 2004 (IRIN) - Angolan opposition parties warned the government on Thursday that they would not take part in preparations for elections unless an independent national electoral commission was created.

Setting out their own calendar of events required before holding a national poll, UNITA and seven other parties insisted that it was still possible to hold a ballot next year, earlier than the September 2006 election date favoured by the ruling MPLA party.

"The MPLA has said 2006, but we still maintain 2005 is possible. We have enough time to do all the things necessary to have elections by the end of 2005 or early in 2006," said UNITA spokesman Adalberto Costa Junior.

"But it's not only the election date - we have other differences: we think a national commission should organise all the processes, but the MPLA proposes part of it be organised by the government," he said.

Adding that the independent commission should include representatives from all parties, as well as civil society and the church, Costa Junior said such an independent body was "absolutely central" to a transparent, free and fair electoral process.

"Opposition parties will not participate in the electoral preparations without an independent commission," he said on the sidelines of a news conference to present the timetable.

The government has said it needs to complete several tasks, including revamping the constitution and building an electoral register, before a poll takes place.

The opposition parties will present their calendar to the government at the end of this month, in which they recommend creating an electoral legislative package within four months and forming an independent electoral commission within five months.

"The proposed electoral timetable presented today contains the tasks necessary to secure the right of citizens to elect their representatives in an electoral process of maximum transparency," the parties said in a statement.

The opposition groups also argued that creating a new constitution was not essential to elections.

"We've passed the land law, the petroleum law with this old constitution. Why do we need a new one for elections?" asked Luis Fernandes do Nascimento, secretary general of the FpD (Frente para a Democracia) party.

"We will continue to discuss the new text ... but it would be possible to hold elections under the current constitution," Costa Junior agreed.

The last general election was held in 1992, but was rejected by the then rebel movement, UNITA, which returned to war against the ruling MPLA. The 27-year civil conflict finally ended in April 2002.