Friday 15 May 2009

f-f-Friday the f-f-Fifteenth

day 18 & losing the plot (not a laughing matter!)
Up, Down.

Silhueta de Rio de Janeiro tirado de Pão de AçúcarSilhueta de Rio de Janeiro tirado de Pão de AçúcarSilhueta de Rio de Janeiro tirado de Pão de Açúcar
Corrina Corrina

Corrina, Corrina,
Gal, where you been so long?
Corrina, Corrina,
Gal, where you been so long?
I been worryin' 'bout you, baby,
Baby, please come home.

I got a bird that whistles,
I got a bird that sings.
I got a bird that whistles,
I got a bird that sings.
But I ain't a-got Corrina,
Life don't mean a thing.

Corrina, Corrina,
Gal, you're on my mind.
Corrina, Corrina,
Gal, you're on my mind.
I was in love thinkin' of you,
I just can't keep from crying.


        Bob Dylan, 1962.
 William Featherston, No One Asked Me To Dance

no, no, this is really really REALLY middle-aged (or even elderly) angst ... Mila shares personal symmetry and i am pining for things lost so long ago it makes no nevermind, Abishag found too late, humming 'Querida, querida' with my morning coffee, and the whole thing so pathetic and so laughable, and the microcosm/macrocosm in the news so pathetic and so laughable that i couldn't be bothered, just didn't want to entirely forget

and there is a tree out my window but the camera focusses on the dirty pane that cannot be opened so i have to go out (!) to get the picture, i thought of taking a few maybe like a time lapse over the next few days until it is fully leafed (leaved?) oh you know what i mean ... don't you?

Tree on Lee Avenue, 09-05-15Backbench, 09-05-14, the aliens would not be happy with Rusty

Afterwards, Mulroney handler Robin Sears accused two reporters of causing his boss to cry.

A furious Sears confronted CBC The Fifth Estate senior editor Harvey Cashore and Globe and Mail reporter Greg McArthur, accusing them of giggling like "fucking schoolchildren" during Mulroney's testimony and issued a vague threat, saying, "if I were you, I wouldn't continue."

Mulroney's team sent out a news release, quoting him as saying: "They were carrying on like a pair of schoolchildren. It just got to me."

No reporters were seen laughing during Mulroney's testimony and Cashore and McArthur adamantly denied doing so. "Never happened," Cashore said. "It's not a laughing matter."

(reported in the Toronto Star)

Brian MulroneyBrian Mulroney, Milica PivničkiBrian Mulroney, Robin SearsHarvey Cashore, CBCGreg McArthur, Globe and Mail


before any of this i read this article in Notícias da Amazônia, and the phrase, "quer que o governo federal regularize a situação de cinco mil famílias," sent a shiver down my spine, regularizar was one of those words that took me a long long time to learn to pronounce, it sits at the daemonic edge 'da burocracia brasileira', along with fiscalização, i never heard the pun to say burrocracia, burocracia is a straight phonetic adoption of french bureau i suppose, burro means stupid, of course it is not stupid, hydroelectric is better than coal right? who can argue?

Stanley Kubrick, 2001 - A Space Odysseythis is a narrower ledge than last time, because there is no continuous positive feedback, i mean not none but not much, best thing so far was a care package of laughing smiles and it is sooo important i am almost afraid to call and ask for more, before i remember becoming almost complacent about it, at least continually thankful, but this is a single file thing, all good

Stanley Kubrick, 2001 - A Space Odysseynarrow it may be ... but, and this is a total surprise to me, i am finding tiny things each day which hold me on the line, went all the way to a big store today looking for pattes de cochon, got there and the pretentious 'meat manager' said he could order them for me, doh! so, came back to the local and ... lo and behold, they had some! so i whispered the story in the ear of one of the deli-counter women and she smiled, and then at checkout when i smiled at her she smiled back with a kind of relief in her face, a kind of relief that said, "oh, i know you are going to make me feel better," and i thought, "ok then, i will dive deeper and come up drier ..." and damned if i didn't too, right off that waggon seat!

and everyone remembers the final few scenes in 2001, A Space Odyssey, where he lives out several aeons in an empty room ...


Silhueta de Rio de Janeiro tirado de Pão de AçúcarSilhueta de Rio de Janeiro tirado de Pão de AçúcarSilhueta de Rio de Janeiro tirado de Pão de Açúcar


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Mulroney wells up, blames the media, Richard J. Brennan & Les Whittington, May 14, 2009.

Emotional day on stand features bitterness, self-pity and accusations.

OTTAWA– Brian Mulroney teared up during his second day of testimony before a public inquiry, a rare moment of emotion he blamed on a pair of giggling journalists.

Mulroney, 70, was describing the trauma he suffered in 1995 when news broke that the RCMP considered him a suspect in a fraud investigation of a $1.8 billion sale of Airbus aircraft to Air Canada in 1988.

"All of a sudden, out of the blue, I'm a criminal," he declared yesterday at the inquiry probing his business dealings with German-Canadian businessman Karlheinz Schreiber.

"This had serious consequences and it was extremely difficult" for his family, said the former Progressive Conservative prime minister, who veered from bitterness to self-pity on the witness stand.

"You'd think that this kind of thing would be limited to the parents ... Nicholas was 10 years and he would ... ," said Mulroney, speaking of one of his sons, before trailing off as he began weeping.

Afterwards, Mulroney handler Robin Sears accused two reporters of causing his boss to cry.

A furious Sears confronted CBC The Fifth Estate senior editor Harvey Cashore and Globe and Mail reporter Greg McArthur, accusing them of giggling like "f---ing schoolchildren" during Mulroney's testimony and issued a vague threat, saying, "if I were you, I wouldn't continue."

Mulroney's team sent out a news release, quoting him as saying: "They were carrying on like a pair of schoolchildren. It just got to me."

No reporters were seen laughing during Mulroney's testimony and Cashore and McArthur adamantly denied doing so. "Never happened," Cashore said. "It's not a laughing matter."

Cashore and McArthur led the coverage of questionable financial dealings during the Mulroney years.

Mulroney has long complained of being unfairly pilloried by the media over the years despite the fact the RCMP found no evidence of wrongdoing in connection with the Airbus deal. In 1997, Mulroney was awarded a $2.1 million settlement after he took the federal government to court for defamation in the Airbus probe.

But the Airbus saga only looms in the background of the current probe, headed by Justice Jeffrey Oliphant, which is focused on Mulroney's ties to Schreiber, with respect to a proposal in the early 1990s by Bear Head Industries to build German-designed armoured vehicles in Canada. Schreiber was chair of Bear Head Industries, a subsidiary of Thyssen AG.

Schreiber says he paid Mulroney $300,000 to lobby for the project in 1993-94. He claims the deal was struck just before Mulroney stepped down as prime minister, although the money didn't change hands until later.

Schreiber eventually sued Mulroney for not living up to his part of the deal, but has dropped the suit.

Mulroney has admitted taking $225,000 from Schreiber but says he violated no federal ethics rules. He says his lobbying was confined to foreign leaders whose countries might have provided export markets for Thyssen.

Yesterday, Mulroney recounted how he accepted large sums of cash from Schreiber without hesitation in Montreal and New York, and then stashed the money away.

In both cases – in a Montreal coffee shop in 1993 and in a New York hotel room in 1994 – Schreiber handed over legal-sized envelopes filled with $75,000 in thousand dollar bills. The commission has previously heard that Mulroney received another $75,000 at Mirabel airport.

Mulroney explained why he didn't pay taxes until several years later on the $225,000 he says he received in total from Schreiber, saying he considered the payments to be "retainers" that didn't need to be declared for tax purposes right away.

Mulroney told the inquiry that, after later reporting the money to authorities, he paid $112,000 in taxes. The payments were made in 2000.

He went on to testify that Elmer MacKay, a friend and former PC cabinet minister, told him in the fall of 1999 that Schreiber might cause trouble over taxes.

"I had no income tax problem, but I got the impression that Mr. Schreiber was going to try and see if he couldn't create one for me," Mulroney told the inquiry.

Elaborating on why he took money from Schreiber, Mulroney told the inquiry he took it upon himself to use his international contacts to explore the possibility of worldwide sales of Thyssen's armoured military vehicles.

Mulroney repeated his earlier admission that taking cash from Schreiber was a "significant error in judgment." It's a mistake "that I deeply regret and one for which I have paid dearly," he said.

Mulroney also accused Schreiber of trying to "blackmail" him in a May 8, 2007 letter in which Schreiber threatened to blow the whistle on Mulroney's alleged dealings with Airbus if he didn't help him fight extradition to Germany.

Mulroney testifies again today.


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Carlos Minc promete para a próxima semana licença definitiva de instalação da usina de Jirau, Yara Aquino, 15/05/2009.

Local: Brasília - DF
Fonte: Agência Brasil - EBC
Link: http://www.agenciabrasil.gov.br/

O ministro do Meio Ambiente, Carlos Minc, informou ontem (14) que a licença de instalação definitiva da Usina Hidrelétrica de Jirau sairá na próxima semana. A usina será construída no Rio Madeira, que banha os estados de Rondônia e do Amazonas.

Carlos Minc disse que, na próxima semana, irá a Rondônia se reunir com o governador do estado, Ivo Cassol. O governador propôs recentemente uma permuta ao governo federal para que a instalação da Usina Hidrelétrica de Jirau possa ser viabilizada pelo governo do estado.

Cassol quer que o governo federal regularize a situação de cinco mil famílias que estão assentadas há mais de 15 anos em uma área de preservação ambiental federal. Em troca, propõe ceder ao Ministério do Meio Ambiente uma reserva estadual.

Após se reunir na semana passada com o presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva e o ministro de Minas e Energia, Edison Lobão, o governador de Rondônia foi questionado sobre o que aconteceria se a permuta não for realizada. Cassol respondeu: "Aí, também não sai Jirau".

O ministro Carlos Minc disse, no entanto, que as famílias permanecerão em parte da reserva, assim essa questão não irá interferir na construção de Jirau. "O estudo é sólido, é uma boa hidrelétrica, e se você não fizer energia renovável, vamos fazer mais centenas de térmicas a óleo e carvão e a matriz energética fica mais suja", disse o ministro.

Sobre a Usina Hidrelétrica de Belo Monte, Carlos Minc informou que as audiências públicas para discutir o licenciamento ambiental devem ser iniciadas em julho, e que o leilão para construção da hidrelétrica está previsto para outubro.

Down.

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