A flock of doidos

COMO FAZER, nos EUA, um filme cujos personagens são bichos da megafauna do Pleistoceno, onde aquela palavrinha com "e" vira e mexe aparece e sem ofender ninguém no Kansas? A Fox tem uma resposta: faça Ice Age 2. A animação do brasileiro Carlos Saldanha é a prova definitiva de que o conservadorismo religioso do Bible Belt/National Mall pode até ter perdido a batalha de Dover, mas ganhou a guerra cultural americana no lugar que interessa: a indústria do entretenimento.

O filme é inteiro desenvolvido sobre o seguinte argumento: o sertão vai virar mar. A Era do Gelo está acabando por causa do tal aquecimento global (o do Pleistoceno, calma), e o lar dos bichinhos simpáticos como as macrauquênias, dentes-de-sabre, gliptodontes e mamutes vai ser inundado ("flood", em inglês, traduz tanto "inundação" quanto "dilúvio"). Uma tartaruga-profeta meio picareta avisa a bicharada que há um barco a três dias de caminhada dali que pode salvar a pele de todo mundo.

Sim, você já viu essa história antes.

A coisa não pára por aí. A história tem como vilões um mosassauro (who the fuck ordered a mosasaur?) e um Metriorynchus. Que são, ah, bom, do Cretáceo. "Eu não disse, meu filho, que os humanos conviveram com os dinossauros?", apontarão as mamães do Kansas.

Fora a referência menos sutil aos Pearly Gates quando o Scrat "morre" e os paredões de gelo se abrindo e deixando passar uma luz épica, avermelhada. Olha, pode me chamar de paranóico, mas em tempos de dobradinha Bush/Murdoch eu não duvido de mais nada.

Ainda bem que meus filhos não estudam mais nos EUA e podem aproveitar as boas piadas de Ice Age 2 sossegados.

Bem feito!

DA REUTERS:

"A horrific cyclone ripped roofs off buildings across Australia’s northeastern coast Monday, packing winds up to 290 kph (180 mph) that kept emergency workers holed up inside despite pleas for help from terrified residents.Hundreds of tourists and thousands of residents were bunkered down inside resort hotels and homes as Tropical Cyclone Larry _ one of Australia’s strongest in decades _ smashed into the coast about 100 kilometers (60 kilometers) south of Cairns.Power was cut to up to 50,000 homes, and Prime Minister John Howard said he was ready to deploy troops to the region to help the mopping-up effort."

(A Austrália é um dos dois países do mundo industrializado que se recusaram a assinar o Protocolo de Kyoto)

My Precious

EU O DESEJAVA ardentemente havia 15 anos. Eu era pouco mais do que uma criança. Ele ignorava completamente. O tempo passou, a vida deu voltas, tomamos caminhos distintos. Cheguei a achar que eu o havia esquecido para sempre.

Uma década e meia depois, nós nos reencontramos. Eu hoje sou um adulto, separado, dois filhos. Ontem coloquei as mãos nele pela primeira vez. O encaixe foi perfeito. A sintonia também. E não resisti: levei-o para casa. Passamos a tarde no sofá, só nós dois. E já estou ansioso para voltar para ele.

Não, leitor: você não está lendo uma versão "B" de Brokeback Mountain. "Ele" é um Ibanez SR 400, captação ativa, quatro cordas, azul metálico. Lindo. Som cristalino. Tem tantos potenciômetros que até agora eu não aprendi a regulá-lo. Ajuste finger/slap. Sim, custou o olho da cara. Uma temeridade. Sim, é muito baixo pra pouco baixista. Mas e daí?

Loucura nuclear

REPRODUZO, ABAIXO, mais um artigo de Bob Herbert no NYT sobre, claro, a política externa do grande timoneiro George W. Bush. Herbert inventou um nome para todo mundo que não faz parte da administração americana: "the reality-based community".
A peça me lembra muito os últimos momentos da campanha petista à presidência, quando Lula foi achincalhado por ter falado uma bobagem qualquer contra o tratado de não-proliferação de armas nucleares. Lembra também as polêmicas declarações do ex- ministro Roberto Amaral sobre a bomba atômica. E me faz concluir que ambos estavam certos.




The key to understanding the Bush administration and its policies is contained in the widely cited New York Times Magazine article, ‘‘Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush ’’ by Ron Suskind.

That’s the article in which Suskind described how a senior Bush adviser contemptuously dismissed the community that most of us live in, ‘‘the reality-based community.’’
The times have changed and reality isn’t what it used to be. As the adviser explained, ‘‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.’’

This mad-hatter thinking was on display again last week. President Bush, who used specious claims about a nuclear threat to launch his disastrous war in Iraq, agreed to a deal _ in blatant violation of international accords and several decades of bipartisan U.S. policy _ that would enable India to double or triple its annual production of nuclear weapons.

The president turned his back on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (dismissed, like reality-based thinking, as passe) and moved the world a step closer to an accelerated nuclear arms race in Asia and elsewhere. In the president’s empire-based, otherworldly way of thinking, this was a good thing.

For decades, U.S. law and the provisions of the nonproliferation treaty have precluded the sale of nuclear fuel and reactor components to India, which has acquired an atomic arsenal and has refused to sign the treaty. Bush turned that policy upside down last week, agreeing to share nuclear energy technology with India, even as it continues to develop nuclear weapons in a program that is shielded from international inspectors.

The attempt to stop the spread of nuclear weapons beyond the five original members of the so-called nuclear club _ the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China _ has not been perfect by any means. But it hasn’t been bad. Back in the 1960s there was a fear that before long there might be dozens of additional states with nuclear weapons. But so far the spread has been held to four _ Israel, India, Pakistan and most likely North Korea.

A cornerstone of the nonproliferation strategy has been the refusal to share nuclear energy technology with nations unwilling to abide by the provisions of the nonproliferation treaty. Last week George W. Bush decided he would change all that by carving out an exception for India.
Presidents from both parties _ from Richard Nixon through Bill Clinton _ had refused to make this deal, which India has wanted for more than three decades.

‘‘It’s a terrible deal, a disaster,’’ said Joseph Cirincione, the director for nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment. ‘‘The Indians are free to make as much nuclear material as they want. Meanwhile, we’re going to sell them fuel for their civilian reactors. That frees up their resources for the military side, and that stinks.’’

With Bush undermining the nonproliferation treaty, critics are worried that it’s only a matter of time before other bilateral deals are made _ say, China with Pakistan, which has already asked Bush for a deal similar to India’s and been turned down.

‘‘We can’t break the rules for India and then expect other countries to play by them,’’ said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., who is one of the leading opponents of the deal, which will require congressional approval.

In the early 1960s, President John F. Kennedy, a member in good standing of the reality-based community, tried to convey the menace posed to mankind by nuclear weapons. ‘‘Today,’’ he said, ‘‘every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.’’

Today, in 2006, as Markey reminds us, terrorists as well as rogue governments are racing to get their hands on nukes.

‘‘We’ve had a consensus for a generation,’’ he said, ‘‘that the world will cooperate to restrict the spread of these nuclear materials. If this consensus breaks down, then we increase exponentially the likelihood that the catastrophic event that Kennedy warned about will, in fact, occur.’’