Pelo menos ainda há liberdade de imprensa

Eu me pergunto, às vezes, qual é a do Paulo Henrique Amorim. Eu, como ele, também não gosto da mídia nacional, mas dar voz ao Stedile - e conferindo-o aura de credibilidade e sensatez - é estranho para um economista de formação.

Enfim, pelo menos assim a oposição ao establishment atual tem espaço - e isso é louvável, por mais que se discorde da ideologia.

03/09/2007 18:26h
STEDILE QUER ANULAR PRIVATIZAÇÃO DA VALE


O integrante da direção nacional do MST João Pedro Stedile disse em entrevista a Paulo Henrique Amorim nesta segunda-feira, dia 03, que a Companhia Vale do Rio Doce era uma empresa pública que não poderia ser privatizada (clique aqui para ouvir o áudio).

“Não se tratava de uma estatal qualquer que você vai à Bolsa e vende as ações. Portanto, o Governo Fernando Henrique não tinha o direito de vender um patrimônio que era público. É como se ele vendesse a sua casa”, disse Stedile.

Stedile escreveu um livro em parceria com o Bispo de Jales (SP) com o título “O Resgate da Vale”. O MST organiza um plebiscito nacional no qual os brasileiros podem votar para dizer se são a favor ou contra a anulação do leilão que privatizou a Vale do Rio Doce, em 1997.

A votação pode ser feita até o próximo dia 09 de setembro (domingo), em urnas instaladas em escolas, sindicatos e igrejas. O resultado desse plebiscito será entregue pelos organizadores do movimento ao STJ, STF, Planalto e ao Congresso Nacional em Brasília no dia 25 de setembro.

Stedile disse que se o resultado do plebiscito for em favor da anulação do leilão, o Presidente Lula terá respaldo social e apoio popular para ser coerente com o discurso que adotou no segundo turno da última eleição, quando disse que a privatização da Vale foi um erro.

“Se houver uma grande manifestação popular clara, contundente, que nós brasileiros somos contra essa usurpação que foi feita do patrimônio público, o Governo Lula terá mais força e apoio político, respaldo popular, para tomar uma medida que precisa de muita coragem”, disse Stedile.

Segundo Stedile, o Tribunal Federal de Brasília declarou nulo, em dezembro de 2005, o leilão que privatizou a Vale do Rio Doce. A Companhia recorreu da decisão e agora o processo corre no STJ.

Leia a íntegra da entrevista com João Pedro Stedile.

Paulo Henrique Amorim – Eu vou conversar agora com João Pedro Stedile, que integra a coordenação do nacional do Movimento dos Sem-Terra, o MST, que publicou hoje um artigo no jornal O Globo de título “O Resgate da Vale”, é o livro que ele assina com Dom Demétrio Valentini, bispo de Jales (SP). O artigo tem o propósito de conclamar os cidadão brasileiros a votar num plebiscito no dia 7 de setembro para reverter a privatização da Vale. Como vai, Stedile, tudo bem?

João Pedro Stedile – Não tão bem quanto você, que está abafando com o novo programa da Record. Mas estou aqui enfrentando a conjuntura desse nosso país.

Paulo Henrique Amorim – Por que você quer reverter a privatização da Vale?

João Pedro Stedile – Bom, primeiro, como todos os juristas já nos avisaram, a Companhia Vale do Rio Doce era uma empresa pública que detinha um patrimônio de todo o povo, como ferrovias, terras, concessões de minérios, portos, não se tratava de uma estatal qualquer, que tu vai na Bolsa e vende as ações. Portanto, o governo Fernando Henrique não tinha o direito de vender um patrimônio que era público. Era como se alguém vendesse a sua casa sem consultá-lo. E é isso que ele fez em relação ao povo brasileiro. Segundo, que o leilão foi fraudulento, porque a mesma empresa que fez a avaliação do valor da Vale, a Merril Lynch, uma empresa americana, foi a que também deu consultoria para o Bradesco para depois comprá-la. Então, está caracterizado um conluio, como está provado no processo, num dos 88 processos que o Tribunal Federal de Brasília em dezembro de 2005 declarou nulo o leilão. E, evidentemente, que a Vale recorreu e o processo agora está no Superior Tribunal de Justiça. Então, tem até uma sentença judicial dizendo que o leilão foi fraudulento e não seguiu os trâmites normais. E, terceiro, porque a Vale foi roubada. Ela valia mais do que US$ 100 bilhões e foi vendida por US$ 3 bilhões, porque na época o real valia a mesma coisa (que o dólar). Então, num ano, os novos acionistas recuperam todo o capital investido. Se nós soubéssemos, eu e tu poderíamos fazer uma sociedade e comprar a Vale, porque é um negócio do outro mundo. Você, num ano, recuperar. E quarto: a Vale explora minérios, bens da natureza, que é de todo o povo brasileiro. Então, o lucro desses bens naturais deve regressar ao povo brasileiro. Os R$ 14 bilhões que ela está ganhando por ano não podem ir para os acionistas, têm que ir para o povo. E hoje, você sabe, foco dessa maracutaia feita pelo governo Fernando Henrique Cardoso, 60% dos acionistas com direito ao lucro moram no exterior. Portanto, esse lucro está sendo carreado, roubado, todos os anos, para pagar acionistas que moram em Nova York, nos Estados Unidos, na Europa e não sei aonde.

Paulo Henrique Amorim – Agora, como é que as pessoas vão poder votar?

João Pedro Stedile – Bem, de hoje até o dia 9, domingo que vem, tem milhares de lugares, em 4 mil municípios haverá urnas instaladas em sindicatos, paróquias, pontos de ônibus, e haverá grupos de pessoas militantes de vários movimentos, desde os pastorais da CNBB, como o Dom Demétrio, que é um dos seus coordenadores, os sindicatos, os assentamentos, os colégios, nós estamos mobilizados em equipes para entregar as cédulas para as pessoas e aí as pessoas vão votar: se são a favor ou não da anulação do leilão, como aliás já tem uma sentença judicial. E nós esperamos que aí depois de uns dez dias possamos contar os votos e no dia 25 de setembro iremos a Brasília, numa comissão representativa desses movimentos para entregar ao vivo e a cores, como se diz, para os cinco Poderes: para o STJ – onde corre o processo –, para o STF, para o Poder Executivo, para o Presidente da Câmara, do Senado e do próprio tribunal que já tem essa sentença favorável.

Paulo Henrique Amorim – E se o resultado for a favor da anulação? Qual o efeito disso do ponto de vista prático?

João Pedro Stedile – Do ponto de vista prático representa uma manifestação popular, que vai dar respaldo para que o governo Lula crie vergonha, honre o seu compromisso de campanha, porque ele foi explícito na campanha do segundo turno do ano passado – ele disse claramente no último debate: foi um erro ter privatizado a Vale. Bom, agora, ele tem a oportunidade de ser coerente com a sua tese. Porque, Amorim, nesse processo que o Tribunal Federal deu a sentença anulando, e que a Vale recorreu, o principal réu é o Estado brasileiro. Portanto, se a Advocacia-Geral da União aceitar a tese da sentença, ela pode, então, corroborar para que de fato se anule o leilão. Então, nós achamos que se houver uma grande manifestação popular, clara, contundente, de que nós brasileiros somos contra essa usurpação que foi feita no patrimônio público, o governo Lula terá mais força, apoio político e respaldo popular para tomar uma medida que precisa, cá entre nós, muita coragem.

Paulo Henrique Amorim – Tá ótimo. Agradeço muito. É sempre um prazer falar com um amigo.

João Pedro Stedile – Seria mais ótimo ainda se a Vale for realmente recuperada para o povo brasileiro. Grande abraço.

where-abôuts, and more Premier League

So I haven't had the time to write for a while - been caught up in some wicked work traveling and moving around.
But here goes a quick update since my previous post --

Aug 12 - I was there at the Emirates for Arsenal x Fulham as reported.

Aug 18 - Went to Craven Cottage to witness yet another 1-2 loss by Fulham, this time by an interesting Middlesbrough side. My buddy Martin got us third row seats - I could have spat in Stewart Downing if I wanted to. (I surely did want to, but the huge steward in front of me would probably not think it was such a good idea.)

Aug 19 - Flew to Toronto.

I'd been to Canada before, but not in summer. Pretty interesting. Amazed at the politeness of Canadians, at the number of beggars on the streets, and at some distinctive traits of Canadian accent - words such as "abôut", "any-ow" and so on.

Aug 23 - Flew to Montreal.

Aug 24 - Back to Toronto.

This past weekend I could also watch two full EPL games on TV (god bless it's not ppv anymore) - two hard-fought 1-0 wins, Arsenal beating Man City and Man United beating Spurs.

Anyway, just as an update, and before I forget, some notes on what I've seen so far of Premiership:

Positively impressed me:

- Man City is awesome to watch. Elano is playing as a creative attacking midfielder just like Diego used to be in his old Santos of 2002. Micah Richards is the future of English defence. Schmeichel junior is a lot like his dad. Uefa Cup for them is a concrete possibility.

- Wigan is not so bad as I first thought. Valencia-Landzaat-Scharner-Koumas is actually a pretty balanced line of four - the latter, especially, is impressive.

Confirmed my expectations:

- Chelsea looks even more cohesive this year. SWP-Lampard-Essien-Malouda, yet another outstanding line of four. Can't see where Ballack will fit. Makelele is already second reserve (behind Mikel)

- Liverpool are title contenders for sure. Torres is 10x better than Morientes, Voronin is 10x better than Fowler. Just not sure we have enough cover for centre-back if Carra is out for a while and Paletta was sold.

- Everton and Blackburn continue to be strong, well-led squads.

Disappointed me:

- Sunderland is well-organized but have no quality whatsoever. I mean, Dwight Yorke is the central midfielder for Christ's sake.

- Fulham is an absolute blunder. Watched them twice at the stadium - wouldn't put money on their staying up. What is odd is that the line-up doesn't look that bad - Smertin, Davis, Healy, Kamara, McBride.... but, well, they suck.

- Arsenal hasn't solved their front-of-goal problems. They pass and pass and pass but still take too much time to shoot. Both games I watched from them could've been 6-0 if not for their chronic procrastination.

First weekend of action!!!!

An addict on English football like me can only rejoice at the chance of being in the UK for the opening day of the season. I have practically drowned on TV specials, newspaper and maazine reviews, and countless snapshot conversations all over the tube, the taxis, the bars, and so on. Plus I can watch Match of the day at BBC - a personal favorite, with all the goals and best chances of all matches.

Even better, I could join my buddy Martin to a match - we went to the majestic Emirates Stadium to watch Arsenal x Fulham. An absolutely amazing venue, and a fitting match.

Fulham took a shock lead after a mishap from Lehmann, but it was always clear that Arsenal would eventually turn the game around. Rosicky and Hleb were especially entertaining, with good bal control and also creating effective chances - but Arsenal still lacked a proper finisher. Van Persie was a bit complacent and offside many times.

I was yearning to see Nicklas Bendtner in action - he's probably going to be a source of goals for them in the season - but he only got in at mid-second half. By then, Arsenal dominated thoroughly, but were taking a lot of time to kill off Fulham. Still the goal t seemed like a matter of time, and it came through a penalty and a good interplay by Hleb.

Next weekend there is Liverpool x Chelsea at Anfield, and expectations are high, given both clubs's showings this weekend. Both played fresh 4-4-2, with true wingers and an attacking stance in the lines of four (Pennant-Gerrard-Alonso-Riise and WrightPhilips-Essien-Lampard-Malouda). Let's see if neither comes back to the stifling midfield battles from last year.

In other teams - really excited about Man City`s prospects. Apparently Elano had a fantastic match - I`ve seen the highlights and he bursted forward at will, as Santos fans are accustomed. Will this be Sven`s revenge year? Let's see.

Anyway, for a warm-up it was an awesome weekend. I wonder why people still find it strange I`d reather follow the EPL rather than the Brazilian Championship.

My team of the round (to compare with Garth Crooks's team tomorrow at BBC):

Hahnemann (Reading)

Corluka (Man City)
McShane (Sunderland)
Toure (Arsenal)
Onuoha (Man City)

Elano (Man City)
Gerrard (Liverpool)
Rosicky (Arsenal)
Malouda (Chelsea)

Pizarro (Chelsea)
Martins (Newcastle)

My very first 07-08 Premiership amateur punditry

Oh there it comes. Another Premiership season ahead. A season that comes with an aura of excitement after some hectic transfer market action, which brought massive changes to team lineups and perspectives.

I could write and write on the topic, but I found out that as much as I would like to delve endlessly into every single team's perpectives, I'd rather keep it simple and then just justify my predictions.

First thing I'd like is to split the teams into some distinguishable groups.

Title challengers
Man United
Chelsea
Liverpool

Uefa Cup sure, CL possible: good squads + great managers = nice football, but no title challenge
Tottenham
Arsenal

Uefa Cup contenders: good end of last season, cohesive squad under competent coach, may have good runs in FA/Carling Cup too
Everton
West Ham
Aston Villa
Portsmouth
Blackburn
Sunderland

Uefa Cup hopefuls: question mark coaches, question mark player gel, whatever can happen
Man City
Newcastle
Bolton

Relegation fighters: look depleted from last season
Reading
Middlesbrough
Fulham
Wigan

New boys in town: might scrape their stay, but will probably go down
Birmingham
Derby


My personal guess for the end of the championship - with some of bias of course.

1. Liverpool
2. Man United
3. Chelsea
4. Tottenham
5. Arsenal
6. Sunderland
7. Newcastle
8. Aston Villa
9. Everton
10. Blackburn
11. Man City
12. West Ham
13. Portsmouth
14. Bolton
15. Reading
16. Middlesbrough
17. Birmingham
18. Fulham
19. Derby
20. Wigan

FA Cup final: Man United x Sunderland

Carling Cup final: Arsenal x Tottenham

Uefa Champions League: Man United

Uefa Cup: Bayern Munich

sherrybaby

I have just watched this excellent film starring my current favorite young actress, Maggie Gyllenhaal. A harsh, raw, yet touching story about an ex-con, recovering addict, and single mom, struggling with life.

Deep, dense characters living less-than-ordinary lives, and a direct, camcorder-like photography immerse the viewer in the world of working-class suburban America. A world in which nobody's perfect, everyone acknowledges it; a world in which waking up and going through the days seem an uphill task in itself.

Hats off to Maggie's intense acting, and to the fitting soundtrack of Dana Fuchs's acoustic songs - that, like the movie, swings from hope to depression and then back to hope. Like most of people's lives, by the way.

Win-win

Changing a bit from my usual sources - now this is from the NY Times.

And changing a bit from my usual themes as well - this is about technology. Something really cool that might just be about to kick in.

I tried to summarize the article but (1) got no time for that right now (2) it's really well written and I think it's worth to go through it. Just as it was when I pasted the Gore Vidal interview months ago.

July 5, 2007
IPhone-Free Cellphone News
By DAVID POGUE

Man, oh man. How’d you like to have been a PR person making a cellphone announcement last week, just as the iPhone storm struck? You’d have had all the impact of a gnat in a hurricane.

But hard to believe though it may be, T-Mobile did make an announcement last week. And even harder to believe, its new product may be as game-changing as Apple’s.

It’s called T-Mobile HotSpot @Home, and it’s absolutely ingenious. It could save you hundreds or thousands of dollars a year, and yet enrich T-Mobile at the same time. In the cellphone world, win-win plays like that are extremely rare.

Here’s the basic idea. If you’re willing to pay $10 a month on top of a regular T-Mobile voice plan, you get a special cellphone. When you’re out and about, it works like any other phone; calls eat up your monthly minutes as usual.

But when it’s in a Wi-Fi wireless Internet hot spot, this phone offers a huge bargain: all your calls are free. You use it and dial it the same as always — you still get call hold, caller ID, three-way calling and all the other features — but now your voice is carried by the Internet rather than the cellular airwaves.

These phones hand off your calls from Wi-Fi network to cell network seamlessly and automatically, without a single crackle or pop to punctuate the switch. As you walk out of a hot spot, fewer and fewer Wi-Fi signal bars appear on the screen, until — blink! — the T-Mobile network bars replace them. (The handoff as you move in the opposite direction, from the cell network into a hot spot, is also seamless, but takes slightly longer, about a minute.)

O.K., but how often are you in a Wi-Fi hot spot? With this plan, about 14 hours a day. T-Mobile gives you a wireless router (transmitter) for your house — also free, after a $50 rebate. Connect it to your high-speed Internet modem, and in about a minute, you’ve got a wireless home network. Your computer can use it to surf the Web wirelessly — and now all of your home phone calls are free.

You know how people never seem to have good phone reception in their homes? How they have to huddle next to a window to make calls? That’s all over now. The free router is like a little T-Mobile cell tower right in your house.

Truth is, the HotSpot @Home phones work with any Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) router, including one you may already have. But T-Mobile’s routers, manufactured by D-Link and Linksys, have three advantages.

First, you turn on the router’s encryption — to keep neighbors off your network — by pressing one button, rather than having to fool with passwords. Second, these routers give priority to calls, so that computer downloads won’t degrade your call quality. Third, T-Mobile’s routers greatly extend the phone’s battery life. The routers say, in gadgetese, “I’m here for you, any time,” just once, rather than requiring the phone to issue little Wi-Fi “Are you there?” pings every couple of minutes.

T-Mobile was already a price leader in the cellphone game. But the HotSpot @Home program can be extremely economical, in four ways.

SAVING NO. 1 It’s not just your calls at home that are free; you may also get free calls at your office, friends’ houses, library, coffee shops and so on — wherever Wi-Fi is available. You can access both unprotected and password-protected Wi-Fi networks (you just enter the password on the phone’s keypad).

The phone has a built-in Search for Networks feature. Once you select a wireless network, the phone memorizes it. The next time you’re in that hot spot, you’re connected silently and automatically.

There’s one big limitation to all this freeness: these phones can’t get onto any hot spot that require you to log in on a Web page (to enter a credit card number, for example). Unfortunately, this restriction rules out most airports and many hotel rooms.

There’s one exception — or, rather, 8,500 of them: T-Mobile’s archipelago of hot spots at Starbucks, Borders and other public places. In these places you encounter neither the fee nor the Web-page sign-in that you would encounter if you were using a laptop; the words “T-Mobile Hot Spot” simply appear at the top of your screen, and you can start making free calls.

The cool part is that, depending on how many calls you can make in hot spots, the Wi-Fi feature might permit you to choose a much less expensive calling plan. If you’re a heavy talker, you might switch, for example, from T-Mobile’s $100 plan (2,500 minutes) to its $40 plan (1,000 minutes). Even factoring in the $10 HotSpot @Home fee, you’d still save $600 a year.

SAVING NO. 2 T-Mobile’s billing system isn’t smart enough to notice handoffs between Wi-Fi and cellular networks. So each call is billed according to where it begins. You can start a call at home, get in your car, drive away and talk for free until the battery’s dead.

The opposite is also true, however; if you begin a call on T-Mobile’s cell network and later enter a Wi-Fi hot spot, the call continues to eat up minutes. If HotSpot @Home catches on, therefore, the airwaves will reverberate with people coming home and saying, “Hey, can I call you right back?”

SAVING NO. 3 When you’re in a hot spot, T-Mobile has no idea where you are in the world. You could be in Des Moines, Denmark or Djibouti. So this is a big one for travelers: When you’re in a hot spot overseas, all calls to United States numbers are free.

SAVING NO. 4 T-Mobile’s hope is that you’ll cancel your home phone line altogether. You’ll be all cellphone, all the time. And why not, since you’ll now get great cell reception at home and have only one phone number and voicemail? Ka-ching: there’s an additional $500 a year saved.

Have T-Mobile’s accountants gone quietly mad? Why would they give away the farm like this?

Because T-Mobile benefits, too. Let’s face it: T-Mobile’s cellular network is not on par with, say, Verizon’s. But improving its network means spending millions of dollars on new cell towers. It’s far less expensive just to hand out free home routers.

Furthermore, every call you make via Wi-Fi is one less call clogging T-Mobile’s cellular network, further reducing the company’s need to spend on network upgrades.

In principle, then, HotSpot @Home is a revolutionary, rule-changing, everybody-wins concept. But before you go canceling lines and changing calling plans, consider a few small flaws.

At the moment, you have a choice of only two phones: the Nokia 6086 and Samsung t409. Both of these are small basic flip phones (both $50 after rebate and with two-year commitment). They sound terrific; over Wi-Fi, in fact, they produce the best-sounding cellphone calls you’ve ever made. But the screens are small and coarse, and the features limited. Fortunately, T-Mobile intends to bring the HotSpot @Home feature to many other phones in the coming months.

The Wi-Fi sucks power, too; these phones get 6.5 hours of talk time on the cell network, but only 4 hours over Wi-Fi.

Finally, T-Mobile eventually intends to price the service at $20 a month, or $30 for family plans. Only people who sign up during the introductory period (now through an unspecified end date) will be offered the $10 price, or $20 for families.

Even at the higher price, you could still come out ahead. With HotSpot @Home, T-Mobile has taken a tremendous step into the future. Most phone companies cower in fear when you mention voice calls over the Internet (Skype, Vonage and so on). After all, if the Internet makes the price approach zero, who will pay for phone service?

But T-Mobile has found a way to embrace and exploit this technology to everyone’s benefit. The result is a smartly implemented, technologically polished, incredibly inexpensive way to make over your phone lifestyle.

E-mail: Pogue@nytimes.com

Lamentable

I echo Jon's words below. Suffering is already so intense and we still have to cope with this absurd handling of the situation.

Disaster wrapped up in farce
ft.com, Jul 23 2007
Jonathan Wheatley

It is hard to decide which of the government’s actions following the worst disaster in Brazilian aviation history most typified the inadequacy of its response to a crisis that has lasted for at least ten months.

Was it the failure of president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to appear in public until three days after the accident, or to issue any statement at all within the first four hours (his message of condolence arriving after, for example, that of president Néstor Kirchner of Argentina)? São Paulo state governor José Serra went to the scene immediately, following the rescue work and talking to the press. Surely, Mr Lula da Silva should have done the same.

Was it the repeated denial of responsibility by Walter Pires, the minister of defence who is in charge of civil aviation, who should have departed after last September’s mid-air collision between a Gol Boeing 737 and an executive jet in which 154 people died, but who has been kept in the job?

Was it the sight of leaders of Anac, the civil aviation regulator, being given medals for services to air travel by vice president José Alencar three days after the accident, instead of the reprimands or dismissals they deserve?

Or was it the spectacle of Marco Aurelio Garcia, the president’s special advisor, caught on camera celebrating the television news of a possible mechanical fault in the crashed aircraft, that potentially deflected some of the responsibility away from the government?

Whatever the true cause of the accident, it was a disaster waiting to happen. Aircraft have been slipping around on the runways at São Paulo’s city centre airport for months, before and after they underwent repairs this year. The dissatisfaction of air traffic controllers with their equipment and their military commanders is notorious. While passenger terminals have been smartened up around the country, passenger safety has been neglected. The desperate need in Brazil for more effective government has never been clearer.

Jonathan Wheatley is a FT correspondent in São Paulo

Mourn

I never felt like crying before over a public accident.
Not for Darfur.
Not for Gaza.
Not for Iraq.
Not when reading about the near destruction of Flandres in World War I. The same Flanders that hosted me no nicely for the past 2 months.

But I must confess I cried when I read about the accident in Congonhas.

A flight I've taken so many times.

People whose routines look so much like mine.

Un pesto

I watched the Copa América final in an Irish Pub in Belgium, together with a couple of Argentine friends, some local Brazilians I met on the spot, and the (Belgian) waiter of a restaurant I like, who has lived in Niteroi and claims to support Botafogo. He was by a lot far the noisiest chap in the pub, screaming heavily-accented "Só dá Brasil", "É nóis" and a number of "Juiz ladrão" at each small foul at Brazil's half (we made many).

I could write and write about the game - the grittiness of Josue, the precision of Julio Baptista's passing and finishing, and Dunga's brilliant substitution putting Daniel Alves on - but I'll resort to pasting selected comments from Rob Smyth's live coverage of the game at Guardian Unlimited. Enjoy.

1 min Off we go. It's ridiculously hot - about 100 degrees, with the game kicking off at 1705 local time. It'll probably be a more languorous game as a result, which will certainly suit Seba: he has an excuse not to do running!

GOAL! Brazil 1 Argentina 0 (Baptista 4) Julio Baptista has just scored an absolute belter. He ran onto a long, diagonal pass to the left corner of the box from Elano, fronted up the last man Ayala, pushed the ball inside and then just screamed it across goal and into the top corner. Not bad for a fat lad. A superb goal and, yet again, Argentina have to come from behind.

9 min Riquelme hits the post. That was sublime football: Messi got to the byline on the left, drilled it flat to the far post to Veron, who headed it down really smartly for Riquelme, 12 yards out, to spank it on the bounce with his left foot. Doni was well beaten by it smacked off the face of his right-hand post.

20 min A laughably overambitious glory pass from Veron, slashing it right to left, goes straight into Doni's arms. That's £28.1m, right there.

24 min Brazil have been the better side - much more authoritative - and they're having a fairly decent spell of possession at the moment. Tevez still hasn't kicked the ball. "Argentina really do look like the fakers they have been excepting the Maradona years since Passarella hung up his boots," said Gary Naylor. "Had Titus Bramble showed The Beast the only place he could score, we would all point and laugh, but because it's Ayala, we all shake our heads, unable to comprehend. Veron and Riquelme? To select one might be unfortunate - to select two smacks of carelessness." All fair points. A proper journalist would have told you that Ayala's defending on the goal was really poor. I'm not, and didn't.

39 min Veron simply doesn't bother to track the left-back Gilberto, who bursts into the box and drives it low across the face, forcing Heinze to sidefoot it wide of his own post.

GOAL! Brazil 2 Argentina 0 (Ayala og 40) Well. Well. Well. A really slick move led to Alves being released on the right, and he curved in a lovely cross between keeper and defenders at which Ayala, not knowing who was behind him, had no choice but to throw himself. But he was stretching desperately and all he could do was ram it past Abbondanzieri at the near post. It wasn't Ayala's fault really - he had to play it - but it's left Argentina up a creek with no paddle salesmen in sight.

44 min Argentina's burgeoning frustration manifests itself in a deserved booking for Mascherano for beheading some Brazilian. Then, seconds later, he hacks down another Brazilian, a foul for which he might conceivably have received a second yellow.

Half-time chit-chat "Is it time to re-assess Argentina's World Cup 2006?" says Gary Naylor. "They were a bit fortunate to beat Cote D'Ivoire 2-1; then beat an uninterested, disintegrating Serbia and Montenegro, a side who tackled as though playing a testimonial; then drew 0-0 with Holland. Into the knock-out phase, and a very fortunate 2-1 extra time win over Mexico, before going out to Germany on penalties (abjectly). The heirs of unlucky losers Holland 74 or Brazil 82 - don't make me laugh!"

52 min What Brazil have done very well today is the Makelele foul - enough to disrupt a dangerous mate, made to look sufficiently clumsy and innocent to preclude a booking - and there's another on Messi.

56 min Two Makelele fouls on Riquelme fouls in the space of a minute have Riquelme waving imaginary cards at the referee. Brazil's tactic hasn't been edifying but it's so very effective.

57 min Argentina are gone. I hadn't really put 2+2 together before but, as was pointed out in the first half, this golden generation, while blessed with wonderful talent, are damned by the fact that they are almighty bottlers.

58 min Veron makes the first tackle of his career, which so shocks Alex that he squares up to him. Veron flounces a bit and then retreats.

59 min The first substitution: the splendid Pablo Aimar is on for Cambiasso, so now we have three midfield playmakers to go with Brazil's three watercarriers.

More praise for the God-like Juan Veron "Is Veron a Zelig-like figure, always lurking around great events, but not actually part of them?" says Gary Naylor. "I've never - repeat never - seen him have a good game or even look like a footballer." Now that's unfair. He was brilliant against Maccabi Haifa in 2002.

GOAL! Brazil 3 Argentina 0 (Alves 69) Brazil seal the Copa America with a superb goal. Vagner Love led a counter-attack, running at the defence 30 yards out, and slid a perfectly weighted ball inside the left-back (who was actually Riquelme) for Alves to drive it superbly across goal and into the far side-netting. It was a wonderful pass, and a splendid, precise finish from a difficult angle.

75 min Argentina really have been feeble. They make Graeme Hick and Thierry Henry seem like rough-track warriors. Tevez, who has been dreadful, is booked for a petulant hack. Even Messi has gone missing since they went 2-0 down. "Doesn't this Brazil team look so much better without past-it prima-donnas Ronaldinho, Ronaldo and Roberto Carlos?" says Gary Naylor. "This lot plus Kaka would be an impressive outfit."

78 min Riquelme, an exquisite footballer but a total bottler, thrashes one miles over from 25 yards.

86 min Argentina are so shellshocked that they can't even summon the freedom of the damned, and Brazil continue to repel them with ease. "Is Gary Naylor suggesting that Ronaldinho is nothing without the passes he gets from Deco and that most teams have worked this out?" says Alec Cochrane. "Whereas Kaka forced into widening his game by playing in a defensive league has now surpassed the buck toothed one? Including winning his team a European Cup almost singlehandedly?" That's not fair: Bolo Zenden played a bloody big part in Milan's European Cup win.

Full time: Argentina 0 Brazil 3 Congratulations to Brazil and especially their coach Dunga, who completely outsmarted his opposite number Coco Basile. Brazil were the better side from the moment Julio Baptista welted a screamer in the fourth minutes, and they richly deserve their victory against lily-livered opponents who paid the price for being a ramshackle shower of dreamers. Thanks for your emails. It's been extemporaneous.

Eulogy to Fopp

I just read that Fopp music store has gone bankrupt and closed down.

No wonder - they sold CDs and books at bargain prices. My friend Martin introduced me to it, taking me for a stroll at the Tottenham Court Road branch in London last year. I left it with a £5 double Fela Kuti CD (excellent) and a £6 three-disc box set with Van Morrison's first three albums, arguably two of my best purchases last year. Oh and a £3 book, The Undercover Economist, which I didn't bother finishing.

They claim tastes are changing and people don't buy CDs anymore. Too bad - I still prefer albums to isolated songs. I like to listen to them from beginning to end, trying to figure what message the artist wanted to convey. I admit I did a lot of downloading from Bit Torrent and the like, but recently I've been much more keen on walking into a store, browsing around, testing, and leaving with a disc. You can't top that - the means are as pleasant as the ends.

Anyway, farewell to Fopp. All that's left is Virgin and HMV. And Fnac. God bless us.

Shame on us

Just read these at the FT. Seriously, you guys at the Congress, it's getting ridiculous.

I highlighted the most outrageous bits.


Calheiros affair a scandal too far
By Jonathan Wheatley in São Paulo
Published: July 5 2007 00:37 | Last updated: July 5 2007 00:37

The saga of Renan Calheiros, the president of Brazil’s Senate, has stretched the credulity of ordinary Brazilians already inured to scandal in politics.

By the senator’s own admission, an employee of a construction company carrying out large public works dependent on budget amendments under Mr Calheiros’s control, every month for two years delivered cash payments of about R$12,000 ($6,284, €4,616, £3,116) to a former journalist with whom the long-married senator was having an affair and by whom he has a three-year-old daughter.

Mr Calheiros says that makes him guilty of nothing. To prove his innocence he says the money was his. The paperwork he produced to substantiate this claim was shown to be false by high-profile television reports: people to whom he claimed to have sold high-priced cattle, for example, denied ever dealing with him.
Yet Mr Calheiros continues to defend himself, describing press reports as attacks on the Senate.



Brazilian Senate president under pressure to quit
By Jonathan Wheatley in São Paulo
Published: July 4 2007 19:33 | Last updated: July 4 2007 19:33


(...)


[The case] marks the continuation of an almost unbroken string of corruption allegations that have dogged Mr Lula da Silva’s administration since May 2005. When the scandals first erupted, they caused serious damage to Mr Lula da Silva’s popularity ratings. But recent polls suggest voters no longer associate the president with corruption, or expect nothing better of their politicians.

Mr [Fernando] Gabeira said the result was a culture of lawlessness. “People don’t believe in citizenship, in the collective life. They just seek individual advantage. Corruption undermines capitalism because it destroys trust.”

“For those with access to good lawyers, impunity is almost guaranteed,” said Walter Fanganiello Maierovitch, a former senior security official. “But in poor areas, the police arrive with guns blazing and the population is caught in the crossfire.”

Politicians are especially privileged. Once elected, deputies and senators may only be tried by the Supreme Court, which has never convicted a single one. An estimated 30 per cent of those in Congress have criminal proceedings open against them; many seek office to avoid prosecution.

(...)


Leading politicians have appeared content to see the likes of Mr Calheiros enjoy their impunity. Mr Lula da Silva was recently seen slapping him on the back.

More extraordinary was a declaration of support from Tarso Genro, a close presidential aide and former champion of probity. “For the good of the country and of our institutions I want Renan to be innocent,” he said. “This is what all of us and all the Brazilian people want.”


DO WE WANT RENAN TO BE INNOCENT?????? GIVE US A BREAK.

What I'm listening to

I had long been a huge Velvet Underground fan, but only recently acquired Lou Reed's solo album Transformer.

It's raw, harsh, shocking.

It's reality.

It's amazing.

I'm hooked.

Newest addiction

I have to say that I cannot spend a day without reading Gideon Rachman's blog on the FT. Excellent writing, simplifying a very complicated subject that is International Affairs.

The piece on Christopher Hitchens from last week is particularly interesting. Made me read through Hitchens's amusing Wikipedia profile. What a character.

A true classic

The Guardian published the original report from the 1970 World Cup final in its website. While it proves very interesting reading, I have to admit that what really caught my attention was the post I attach below, from a reader called HarperSmythe.

Once again, the blog comments are better than the actual post. Once again, I praise the beauty of the world wide web as a means of communication and expression, as I did a while ago. Once again watching the goals in YouTube is a brilliant complement. And as much as Carlos Alberto's goal has achieved artwork status, I can't get enough of watching the 2-1 by Gerson.

Well, thank you "HarperSmythe". And let me take the liberty of publishing this.


No one has yet posted some churlish comment about how they hate Brazil, its fans, etc. (something I see often on this site) -- or how lousy we are now (which we are).

I can only thank the Guardian CiF for this. The 1970 and the 1982 team means so much to us. Since then we've had glimpses of greatness with certain individual players, but it's never been the same. It was the defeat in 1982 (and esp. after our poorest world cup in 1990) that started our national football on the road toward becoming more like the harder game in Europe and turning our backs on creating magic and beauty on the pitch. The vision of the CBF today is a suffocating one, whereas the Argentines still keep to their traditions.

In 1970 I was 10 years old and my family had emigrated to the US in 1964. We lived in a Portuguese/Brazilian enclave in Massachusetts. At that time it was very difficult for us to keep track of football (any football, not just Brazilian) but we'd usually manage to get some radio or TV coverage. But in 1968 some members of my family had decided they just couldn't stand the torture any more of figuring out how to follow the wc from the US, so they decided to plan ahead and save, take some time off, fly to Brazil and watch it with family there. My mother couldn't afford the trip but at the very last minute one of my uncles saw how much I wanted to go and bought my mother and I tickets. She spent 3 years paying him back.

In Rio, my mother's side of the family had no TV sets (tho their neighbors had) but my father's side in Sao Paulo did. They were all black and white of course. We visited both the Rio and Sao Paulo families and watched various games with lots of family and friends around. I had the time of my young life.

For the final, we were in my father's home town of Piedade (interior of Sao Paulo) and we saw the final in a large church hall and 2 small TV sets. Several radios were there too. Lots of Brazilian flags, lots of drink and food. About 50-60 people were there, with dozens more milling around outside. We loved the entire squad but Gerson & Carlos Alberto were my family's particular heroes because of the clubs they had played for and where they were from originally. Some people brought the Italian flag since many of us were descendants of Italian immigrants.

I remember the reaction of everyone around me after the second Brazilian goal. One minute there was loud talking and drinking, the next moment it was as if everyone lost their voice--it felt like a hush that would last forever, and then suddenly the loudest cheer I'd ever heard. My favorite uncle and aunt both turned to me, hugged and kissed me, and shouted "Brazil's going to win!" The game was a blur to me, I just remember Brazil scoring, Pele jumping around in joy and that second goal. I do not remember sleeping at all that night. I don't remember seeing anyone sleep that night.

We all loved the '82 squad too but the emotional attachment we have for the 1970 squad is in a category all its own. To this day, these guys make us cry. It was Pele's last wc. I once visited Carlos Alberto's school in Rio and saw him give a talk about how much the Brazilian game has lost because clubs refuse to train small, weaker kids who have skill and technique in favor of recruiting tall athletes with less skill on the ball. He still had his sense of joy in the game.

I watched him train a group of young kids (boys and girls), telling them that they should "kiss the ball, embrace it, show that it is safe only with you." I got choked up listening to him. Once in Rio in a restaurant I saw Jairzinho with his wife. I almost broke into tears. My boyfriend and I were about to leave and we tried not to look too much but Jairzinho looked at us and gave us a huge smile. I said something like "we will always love you" and left very quickly.

In 1970, Deus foi Brasileiro sim (God was Brazilian).

Bayerischer Sommertag

Things to do in Munich on a summer day:

Go to Englischer Garten and drink loads of beer under the sun,


Chat the afternoon away to catch up with a German friend


And of course ride back on the local pride, Bayerische Motoren Werke!!!

A sign of the ages

The title in the last post was actually an attempt to quote this great song. You can actually hear its first 15 seconds clicking on this link, then pressing Play besides the song title. Depressing, yes.

A sign of the ages
Gil Scott-Heron

It's a sign of the ages
Markings on my mind
Men at the crossroads
At odds with an angry scab

There can be no salvation
There can be no rest
Until all old customs
Are put to the test

The gods are all angry
You hear from the breeze
As night slams like a hammer
Yeah, and you drop to your knees

The questions can't be answered
You're always haunted by the past
The world's full of children
Who grew up too fast

Yeah, but where can you run
Since there ain't no world of your own
And you know that no one will ever miss you, yeah yeah yeah
When you're finally gone

So you cry like a baby, a baby
Or you go out and get high
But there ain't no peace on Earth, man
Maybe peace when you die, yeah

It's a sign of the ages...

Close up on a hi-res Photo of myself taken last weekend in Holland.

They call it too much white hair where I come from.

The most important moments in science

From Guardian Technology, today.

A sample:

"At this conference on the future and converged technology in Oxford, we were asked to think about five moments in history that have really driven technological convergence.

Here is what I came up with another member of the group:
1) Agriculture. I'm in the process of reading Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, an amazing book that covers a huge sweep of history. With agriculture and surplus food production, people are freed to pursue specialisation that includes everything from political systems to professional armies.
2) Printing Press. It's simple but oh so critical with the sudden mass dissemination of knowledge.
3) Healthcare as science with the development of the disease model and the development of antibiotics all the way to the discovery of DNA.
4) World War II It helped rally resources to develop or refine technologies including radar, computing, rocket science, the jet engine and atomic energy/weapons.
5) Internet I guess it seems too obvious. But it has enabled so much else. "

I personally liked a list a guy called countingcats wrote on the comments section.

Japan!

This article from today's edition of the FT might seem like none-of-our-business, but I see it as not only interesting information but also a good brush-up on macro-economic principles. Plus, it's a simple and well-written non-fiction essay. Copyrights and congrats to them, obviously.


To treat Japan as an economic curiosity looks ever more odd
By Chris Giles, Economics Editor

Published: June 15 2007 03:00 | Last updated: June 15 2007 03:00
(link)

For more than a generation Japan has been a rich country with the second largest economy in the world. But it has always been treated as an exception.

In the 1970s and early 1980s other advanced economies viewed Japanese annual rates of 4.5 per cent growth with envy, since others in the Group of Seven leading industrial nations could manage little over 2 per cent. In the late 1980s, the continued Japanese expansion was greeted with startled awe and Japan's future domination of the global economy seemed assured. An asset boom gave rise to incredible calculations: the land value of the Imperial Palace grounds in central Tokyo was notionally worth more than the entire state of California.

But it did not last. The bursting of the asset price bubble in 1990 ushered in Japan's "lost decade" when property values fell by as much as 80 per cent and economic growth slid to the bottom of the G7 league as the country moved in and out of recession. Prices in general began to fall, heightening the debt burden of companies. As deflation stalked the land, Japan's economy became regarded as a basket case, with zombie companies kept alive by equally insolvent banks, staggering government inefficiencies financing roads going nowhere, crippling public debt and a looming demographic time bomb.

With such differences in performance, "except Japan" has been the watchword of economic comparisons. The "except Japan" argument has three strands: the country's economic performance is radically different from other rich countries; its culture is so weird and the concerns of its population so unique that the latest global reform ideas are inapplicable; and the political system is so opaque that reforms could not be implemented anyway.

All three are increasingly wrong, according to many of the country's most forward-looking thinkers.

Fukunari Kimura, economics professor at Keio University, says the most serious misconception of Japan is that "it is not normal". He points to its steady recovery over the past five years, the longest growth spurt in Japan's postwar history, and how similar its recent trade integration with developing Asia has been to that undergone by other rich countries such as the US.

The Japanese economy is indeed much more normal now than it has been for decades. The recovery has been long by Japan's standards but not particularly vigorous. With annual real growth rates in gross domestic product of between 1.5 per cent and 2.5 per cent since 2003, Japan is now back in the middle of the G7 pack - it outpaced the eurozone and the US in the first quarter of this year. More important, the economy now seems able to grow at these steady but uninspiring rates, just like other advanced countries.

Even though interest rates at 0.5 per cent are much lower than in Europe or the US, after adjusting for inflation the real rate of interest faced by companies and households is similar - positive and low. Wage growth has also lagged behind corporate profits, just as in every other G7 country.

Household savings rates have been low and fallen in most G7 countries as consumers have taken advantage of greater access to credit, low interest rates and the expectation of continued steady growth. Japan is no different. While in 1990 its households were the misers of the world, squirreling away 15 per cent of their incomes, by 2005, the household savings rate had fallen to 3.1 per cent.

Moreover, almost every issue of public concern in today's Japan is the same as prevails in other advanced countries. Rising income and regional inequalities, the fairness of pension reforms and how to retain women (especially mothers) in the labour market are at the top of the domestic political agenda.

Fear of China's rising economic power haunts Japan as it does the US and the eurozone. As elsewhere, the concerns are misplaced, according to Chi Hung Kwan of the Nomura Institute of Capital Markets Research, who points out that Japan's exports to the US are not even in competition with those from China, since the two countries produce radically different products, something that Japan shares with the eurozone. Rather, in common with the rest of the G7, the success of Chinese low-wage sectors has benefited Japan greatly, through falling import prices, while Japanese export prices have risen.

There are are, of course, exceptions to all this normality. Japan's inflation rate is negative, although the sustained growth of the economy is expected to return it to positive territory next year. The rise in the number of elderly relative to young people is more acute than elsewhere. The country remains difficult for foreign investors, with few takeovers of Japanese entities - the cumulative stock of foreign direct investment as a share of GDP stands at 3 per cent in Japan, in comparison with 22 per cent in the US and 37 per cent in the UK.

Japan's labour market has changed radically for the young, who work on flexible contracts, but not for those who started work before the 1990s.

The weakness of the yen, too, is sometimes difficult to explain, especially given Japan's huge trade surplus. But the most convincing and verifiable cause is that Japanese households are beginning to ditch their previous unusual bias for holding all their savings domestically.

The Japanese diversification of household savings shows another weakness in the "except Japan" argument. Japan, like most other countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, is feeling its way towards further reform. Monetary policy is now based on an inflation target. The OECD last week showed that a series of pension reforms since 1990 has already cut the generosity of the Japanese public pension system by 15 per cent, pretty much the same as in most other large advanced economies.

Maternity and childcare rights have improved markedly, with the aim of changing companies' and women's wary attitude to childbirth. The government's innovation strategy is centred on opening Japan to foreign influences, not finding the next technological gizmo.

The speed of change will be driven by politics and slow demographic shifts. But the need for reforms and the inevitable obstacles along the way to make the economy more dynamic provide the same challenge that faces every other G7 country.

More Charlotte

As promised... more on this highly addictive singer.

Here are links to the videos of 5:55, The Songs That We Sing, and The Operation.

Let yourself be caught by her.

Please sign up here...

...against the horrible London 2012 logo.


http://www.gopetition.co.uk/petitions/change-the-london-2012-logo.html

Late but fun

I should have posted this link to a flickr album of last New Year's Day party in New York City earlier. Some pics are really great. Thanks Arun!

someone else's thoughts on the Wembley match

A quick browsing through my blog shows that, as much as I try to post once a week, there are some weeks in which I am either not creative or not with much available time - and then I resort to copying / pasting. Indeed, I reckon two thirds of whatever I ever posted in here was not "original content". Shame on me.

Still one can't blame me for stealing others's ideas, since I always make it very clear all the sources which I use in the posts. And it's not any different now, as I was trying to figure what I would write about England 1 - 1 Brazil last night at Wembley. I just exchanges a couple of emails with my friend and 'sanity checker' Tomas about it, and I guess I won't do better than pasting here what he wrote about the game.

Which is a fair analysis, anyway. So here you go.

> bonjour dude,
>
> for what it's worth, i thought the football last night was pretty shit. i
> was also fairly amused by many english commentators claiming that england
> had played well and desreved the win, despite the facts that brazil had a
> perfectly good goal ruled offside in the first half, and that ledley king
> should clearly have been sent off about 5 mins later for hacking wagner love
> when he was in on goal. i hate second choice steve. if you look ate the side
> he's playing now, it's essentially exactly the same as the one sven played,
> except steve has a far more naive understanding of tactics and is generally
> a fair deal shitter. so, well done the english FA. also, i don't understand
> why frank lampard is still seen as a choice, let alone an automatic choice.
> he was rubbish much of the season for locomotiv west london, and i can't
> remember a game in which he has played well/controled a game for england.
> so, i'm jumping happily on the 'lampard out' bandwagon. also, wes brown -
> what's the point. give up and draft someone from the under 21s instead. at
> least they might be good one day. wes will never get there, and it's
> apparent to everyone apart from the man with the brightest teeth in the
> stadium.
>
> oh, yeah, and i though brazil were fair, no better.
>
> what i'm obviously wiating for now is for you to tell me that you didn't
> see it.

I did Tom, and I agree with you.

A cinq heures cinquant-cinq

I came to Paris to spend the long weekend, and rented a car to wander around. I had learned from my previous stint in France that driving around Paris (instead of taking the subway) is a priceless pleasure - you get stuck in traffic, that's a fact, but you're surrounded by so many mesmerizing pieces of sculpture and architecture that it feels like a stroll in an art gallery. As I say, in Paris, I don't care about getting lost (which I often do), cause there's always a pleasant new scenery to look at from the car window.

Yet another thing I recall from when I lived in France is that the joys of Parisian wanderings are enhanced by a fitting soundtrack. I used to drive from Fontainebleau to Paris, stuck for ages in A6 and the Périférique, but to the tune of chansons françaises like "L'Eté Indien", "L'Envie d'Aimer" and "En Se Retrouvera" it felt like touring, not commuting. This weekend, though, I found myself with a rental car, but no soundtrack.

There are harder problems in life than that, I know, and that one was easily solved as I stepped into my long-time favourite Fnac store at the Forum Les Halles mall and headed for the "Noveau" shelves. I spotted Charlotte Gainsbourg' debut album, "5:55", which I had read about somewhere, and decided to give it a try. After listening to it some 3 or 4 times in one day, I got completely addicted and can't let it go.



I wouldn't be able to label it, honestly - something like mood music with virtuoso pianos mixed to electronic drum beats - but it is marked, above all, by Charlotte's delicate voice, whispered in a way that lend the songs an intimate and sexy edge. It sounds like she in a room, looking through a window in a rainy afternoon, while her lover takes a nap in the bed.

Lyrics that talk about love and worship to the lover accentuate the sensuality, like in "Everything I cannot see", the "poppiest" track. But the lyrics of the title song (and arguably best track) dwells on a different level - "5:55" talks about subconscience, about being half-awake and half-asleep at the same time. It is a song I would like to wake up to every day.

Given my enjoyment on the first 24 hours of ownership of this album, expect plenty more about it in the days to come in this page.

And you'll never walk alone....

When you walk through a storm
Hold your head up high
And don't be afraid of the dark
At the end of the storm
Is a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of a lark

Walk on through the wind
Walk on through the rain
Tho' your dreams be tossed and blown
Walk on, walk on
With hope in your heart
And you'll never walk alone
You'll never walk alone

the game.

Full stop.

Everyone is talking about the midfield battle - but with both teams probably fielding three defensively minded midfielders each, I actually think it'll be a match decided on the sides. Especially given Finnan's outstanding season.

I predict a 2-1 Liverpool victory. Milan up front in first half with Kaka.Second half Milan is all on counter-attack but we draw through a Stevie G belter from outside, and seal sixth trophy with a header from substitute Peter Crouch, in a cross coming from the right - either by Finnan or Pennant.

Oh, crystal ball, crystal ball,...

Lunch with Gore Vidal

I am probably infringing some sort of copyright law by pasting here this extremely amusing interview with Gore Vidal, published in this weekend's edition of the Financial Times , but, anyway.

I'd feel worse by preventing people from freely reading this. And honestly, I guess so would Mr. Vidal.


Lunch with the FT: Gore Vidal
By Victor Mallet

Published: May 18 2007 18:51 | Last updated: May 18 2007 18:51

Gore Vidal is ensconced in his wheelchair in a corner of the Mandarin Grill, Martini at his elbow, by the time I run up the stairs of Hong Kong’s most venerable hotel to meet him. Daren Simkin, his young assistant, has got there before me with his charge and is nursing a beer on the far side of the table.

I am eager to know what the famously witty Vidal is really like, but his clothes - grey suit, Paisley tie - and his imperturbably regal manner, disturbed only by a loose quiff of white hair, give nothing away. His first words do not help. As if to put the journalist interviewer at ease, Vidal launches unprompted into a series of reminiscences about his late friend Gavin Young, correspondent for the Observer during the Vietnam war. ”He was absolutely fearless because he was drunk all the time,” drawls Vidal.

Somewhat nonplussed - I never knew Young - I turn the conversation to Hong Kong. ”The one thing I most hate in the world is shopping,” Vidal replies promptly. ”I have no interest in retail goods. What draws most people here repels me.” I think we are going to get on.

The 81-year-old American writer has a curious reputation among Europeans born a generation later: he is the famous author that people feel they ought to have read but usually have not. I had struggled to find his works in Hong Kong, but in Melbourne I was luckier and found him represented in almost every section of a bookshop, including history, politics, fiction and biography.

Vidal the author thus resists pigeonholing. Vidal the political and social commentator is easier to pin down. Scion of a political family and a failed politician himself, he can be guaranteed to be colourfully scathing about George W. Bush and to defend liberal values: among other achievements, he wrote The City and the Pillar (1948), one of the first post-war novels to deal with homosexuality.

The author is in town to publicise Point to Point Navigation, his new memoir, at the Hong Kong International Literary Festival. He orders half a dozen oysters, a Bloody Mary and Dover sole, while I opt for an artichoke soup, the sole and a glass of wine.

Vidal explains that he is taking a break from campaigning in the US for the Democrats, although campaigning against the Republicans would be a more accurate description, given his low opinion of both sides. Surely, I ask, President Bush cannot be as stupid as many foreigners believe?

Vidal is adamant that he is, that the American right effectively staged a coup d’etat after 9/11, that there is a constitutional crisis in which the republic has been replaced by an empire, and that there is a case for impeaching Bush. ”Once you’re imperial you have an emperor and once you have that you’re finished,” he says, recalling his recent reading of Aristotle’s Politics. ”And that has been our condition, taken advantage of by a bunch of sleazy gas and oil hustlers.”

If there is one thing that incenses Vidal about his fellow Americans it is ignorance. Bush, he says, ”knows nothing and he doesn’t want to know anything. He has no curiosity. Have you watched him speak? That little-boy face, mouth ajar, dazed eyes. The rumour round Washington is that he’s gone back to drinking. Well, thank God, he might make a little more sense. A group of us each vowed we would send him a bottle of whisky, but I think it’s heroin probably that he would need.”

He pauses briefly to ask the chef, who has approached our table with an amuse-gueule of truffled lobster and avocado, if he remembers Gavin Young. The young Scotsman is even more bemused than I.

Then it is back to politics, the crisis facing America and the folly of detention without trial. ”A few weeks ago, the administration got rid of Magna Carta and habeas corpus... That is Mr [Alberto] Gonzales, our Attorney-General, who thinks he’s Attorney-General of Mexico. Where he belongs. No, that is not a racist remark. But it’s on the edge.”

This offensive remark is deliberate, calibrated. Vidal sometimes gives the impression of trying too hard to deliver the perfect bon mot for a dictionary of quotations. I can almost see him placing inverted commas around his own words. Asked a little later whether he wants to be remembered as a writer or a political figure, he explicitly offers me something to quote: ”I couldn’t care less how I’m remembered. People who go in for posterity have none.” By the evening, speaking from a stage at the University of Hong Kong, Vidal has polished his answer to the posterity question. ”As far as I can tell, posterity has done nothing for me. I’m going to do nothing for it.”

But Vidal the lunchtime orator is beginning to warm up as his oysters arrive. Not for nothing did Howard Austen, his recently deceased friend of more than half a century, call him Me Me.

”Since I’ve known most of the American historians, I never took seriously anything they wrote. Therefore I wrote 20 novels based on American history because I wanted it to be accurate,” Vidal says. ”I address the crisis facing us, that we are the most hated nation on earth, and I am one of the big explainers of what we have done. Other writers can’t do it because they don’t know anything about the history of the United States, much less Islam, Saladin, Genghis Khan, Mao Zedong.”

He interrupts his self-praise briefly with praise for his Bloody Mary (”Bliss, absolute bliss, fresh tomato”), before returning to his theme. ”I said [Bush] would be the most hated president in our history. It didn’t take much prescience to do that, and still people come up to me in airports and say, ’How did you know that about him?’ And I always say, ’By the pricking of my thumbs, I can tell that evil this way comes.’ Americans are very superstitious” - Vidal is joking now, after his misquotation from Macbeth - ”and I am a witch.”

So is Bush stupid, or evil? Surely there’s a difference? ”He has acted in an evil way is the most I can say about him. Anybody who has killed hundreds of thousands of people in the Middle East is an evil man. If he was suddenly called up at Nuremberg, which I would love to see happen, he’d say, ’I don’t know. They didn’t tell me that.’”

Do any of the likely presidential candidates offer more hope? ”Nobody’s any good. Hillary’s the brightest.” Barack Obama? ”He’s pretty... he could very well sweep the election. The country is so anti-black and is dying to vote for one as a form of redress.”

The arrival of the two Dover soles for Vidal and me, and a giant ribeye steak for Daren, marginally lightens the mood at the table. US politics, I suggest, seem a bit depressing. ”More than a bit,” replies Vidal, then adds in mitigation: ”Perfect asparagus.” But does he have anything cheerful to say about the world, Mandarin Grill aside? Was he always this dyspeptic?

”I wrote a book called The Golden Age, which was about 1945 when we all got out of the army. There was a burst of energy in all the arts and I thought finally America’s going to develop a civilisation, and how wonderful it is to be at the beginning of it. And then we didn’t. The Korean war started, and we’ve been in war ever since. That cooled my sincerity about optimism.”

Vidal may be an egotist but he has carefully avoided talking about his own feelings. I suggest cautiously that he seems rather British in the way he conceals his emotions. He puts it down to class, not country. We talk about how Jackie Kennedy was criticised for not weeping at her husband’s funeral and about the film The Queen, in which Helen Mirren (another old friend) plays Queen Elizabeth as she comes under fire for not grieving publicly at the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.

I venture that the most moving part of his latest book is his description of Austen’s death, a chapter that ends with the nurse weeping and the tearless Vidal writing: ”I envied him - the WASP glacier had closed over my head.” So he would like to weep, but cannot? ”Yes,” he concedes. ”I feel like it, but I don’t, I can’t. People who weep, I envy. After all, I spent most of my life in Italy... They get rid of everything, they weep all the time.”

Neither religion (he is appalled by it and is a fan of the atheist Confucius) nor sex (he claims he never did it with friends anyway) provides much comfort for the ageing Vidal, famous for advising people never to miss a chance to have sex or appear on television. ”It’s a joke, but my jokes are taken literally because I come from a literal country,” he says. ”Aids has disabused me of the values of casual sex.”

Dessert arrives, followed by cognac for him and calvados for me. Simkin hurriedly passes a pill to the diabetic Vidal as his spoon hovers over a sugary hazelnut creme brulee. As the restaurant empties, our two-and-a-half-hour lunch drifts pleasantly on with anecdotes from Vidal about a beautiful Indian Maharani in Jaipur, a bridge-playing British diplomat in Mongolia and a Hennessy brandy heiress.

Later that day - when talking at the university - he says something that I recognise as quintessential Gore Vidal. Asked about the greatest moment of his life, he replies: ”The one thing Cassandras like to be is right. The numerous times I’ve been able to say, ’I told you so’ - that is joy.”

At lunch I ask him whether he regrets not going to university after the war. ”Are you crazy? Would you rather be a published author, lecturing at Harvard, than going to Harvard?” he replies. ”All my ex-classmates were majors in the air force, that sort of thing, and there they were, juniors at Harvard. I went up there to speak, and half the audience were people I’d been at school with a few years before - and the waves of hatred that I felt coming up towards me from the audience! It was the highest moment of my life.”

It is, of course, another Gore Vidal joke. But, like a lot of his jokes, it is laced with venom, arrogance and a hefty dose of truth.

Victor Mallet is the editor of the FT’s Asia edition.

Mandarin Grill, Hong Kong

6 oysters
1 x artichoke soup
1 x organic salad
2 x Dover sole
1 x Australian ribeye steak
2 x hazelnut creme brulee asparagus, mashed potato
1 x apple crumble
1 x dry Martini
1 x Bloody Mary
2 x glasses of Sauvignon Blanc
1 x Tsingtao beer
1 x cognac
1 x calvados
mineral water
coffee

Total: HK$4,273.50 (₤277.93)

Genesis

It has been almost 3 years now since Sebastião Salgado launched a project called Genesis. In it, the famous photographer wanted to go to all sorts of remote corners of the planet, and give us a glimpse of what life used to be before mankind took over and started changing nature.

In that journey, he has so far taken astonishing pictures of Antarctica, Patagonia, Galápagos, Xingu, Namibia, Sudan, Rwanda, and, latest, Kamchatka peninsula in Russia. A selection of some of these pictures can be found at the Guardian.

All of the trademark black-and-white stills are jaw-dropping. Like these penguins gathering on an iceberg in Antarctica.

Allez le rouge et blanche

Yesterday night I stood on the Kop, holding my red scarf, and sung "You'll Never Walk Alone", as the home players ran around the field thanking the supporters for their intensive cheering during the electrifying Cup semi-final that had just ended.

No, I wasn't at Anfield. No, I'm not fantasizing on it either.

I was invited by my friend Jan to watch his team, Standard de Liege, play Anderlecht on the second leg of the demi-finale of Coupe de Belgique. Standard had won the first leg away 0-1, a surprise result given that Anderlecht is the current league leader and constant Champions League participant.

Besides eating French fries with mayonnaise in the rain while drinking a couple of pints of Jupiler, I watched a very entertaining match with a fantastic atmosphere. Unfortunately I didn't take my camera, so I will illustrate with some pics from Standard's website.



First half

Standard played on a 4-4-2 with a midfield a la anglaise - relying heavily on the industry of their central midfielders, Belgian teenagers Defour and Fellaini. Their strategy consisted of exchaging side passes in the opposition midfield till it reached one the team's two most skilled players - right midfield Sergio Conceição and centre forward Jovanovic.

Backed not only by the relentless chant of the self-called Kop, but also by noteworthy performances of their almost flawless centre-backs (Brazilian Dante, former Juventude player, and Senegalese Sarr), Standard pushed forward, and should have scored on the first half. But actually only Jovanovic showed some willingness to shoot, the others being a bit too reluctant when near the area.

Anderlecht was keeping it tight with a line of three in the midfield, right in front of the back line. And though the three up front were always ready to launch counter-attacks, their most dangerous player was Argentine right-midfield Biglia - who a couple of times cauught Standard's left back lost in marking and appeared to shoot.

Second half

Anderlecht endured till the break but were surprised by a goal at minute 46. I was surprised as well - I heard the crowd yell but I was actually still at the toilet at the time. When I sat, I saw an Anderlecht onslaught - they had nothing to lose anyway - which ended up in a goal by minute 60.

Standard's coach then reacted by taking off Jovanovic's partner in attack (Lukunku, an ineffective tall centre-forward) and replacing him with Portuguese elder Sá Pinto. Guess what, it worked. He helped regain midfield in a time when Anderlecht was regaining confidence. And, most importantly, he earned a penalty "from heaven" when stealing the ball from a centre-back and stopped by the keeper.

The subsequent goal was cold water to Anderlecht but sparked the Kop. From then on, Standard fans were more worried about coordinating the Mexican wave and the Ole chant.

The fans

Liege is in a French-speaking part of Belgium, and hence the chants were another foray into my learning of français. Not that they were too elaborate:

"Hey! Hey! Tous ensemble, tous ensemble!"

"Allez les rouges... allez les rouges... allez le rouge et blanche..."

And also some other chants that I couldn't really understand. Best one was a sequence of sentences uttered by one side of the stadium, and repeated 3 seconds later by the other, that ended up with a massive "Ole ole" chant.



The stadium resembled La Bombonera - tall, steep stands, with ribbons, flags and banners flying, as you can see in the pic above. I was on a seat in the third floor, but the side of the field, not in the Kop. By the way that is one thing I was likened to Standard - they look up to Liverpool, with the stands, the nonstop cheering, and the playing of You`ll Never Walk Alone in the End. Unbelievable.

Saturday, last home match of the season against Club Brugge (who Standard will play in the Cup final, in 10 days) - I'm there!!! Tous ensemble, tous ensemble!!!

Indulging in mainstream tourism

When traveling on leisure, I try to avoid becoming a tourist stereotype. I consider myself past the stage of being a camera-toting vacationer, taking all sorts of pictures to post on fotolog to my mama. And I guess I've also grown a bit old and picky for the rough nights that generally accompany the "off-the-beaten-track" journeys - which, generally, are full of camera-toting vacationers anyway.

Still, it is hard not to indulge myself on a bit of mainstream sightseeing when I had one afternoon to walk around a city as nice as Brugge. Especially when in company of my friends Nicolas and Carolina, camera-toters to the core, but in a way that makes it seem quite a cool thing to do.

So here you have myself striking a pose over one of Brugge's many canals.