Mugabe esteve de visita à China

Chinese President Xi Jinping (L front) holds a welcome ceremony for Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe before their talks in Beijing, China, Aug. 25, 2014. (Xinhua/Ding Lin)

BEIJING, Aug. 25 (Xinhua) -- China and Zimbabwe pledged to strengthen friendship and all-round cooperation as Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe visited Beijing on Monday.
The pledge came out of the talks between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Mugabe in the Great Hall of the People.
Calling Mugabe an old friend of China, a renowned leader of Africa's national liberation movement and promoter of Africa's integration, Xi said the traditional friendship between both countries was forged during the two countries' anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism and anti-hegemony wars.
Since the establishment of diplomatic ties 34 years ago, the two countries understood and supported each other on issues regarding each other's core interests and major concern, and helped one another in their development, Xi said.
He said China will continue to adhere to its principles, uphold justice and support Zimbabwe's efforts to safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interests.
"We believe the Zimbabwean people have wisdom and capabilities to handle their affairs very well," Xi added.
The Chinese president urged both sides to maintain high-level exchanges, share experience in inter-party exchanges, governance, reform and opening-up.
China will continue to help train Zimbabwean talents, teach and transfer agricultural technologies to Zimbabwe and help the country to increase food production and agricultural income, he said.
Xi also expressed willingness to participate in Zimbabwe's construction of economic and industrial zones, and vowed to encourage more Chinese companies to invest in the country.
As Zimbabwe will hold rotating presidency of the African Union next year, Xi vowed joint efforts with the country to push China-Africa strategic partnership up to a new stage.
Mugabe, who is on a state visit as Xi's guest, expressed appreciation for China's support and help during his country's anti-colonialism war and struggle for national liberation and independence.
He praised China's fairness in global affairs, as well as its respect and help for African countries.
Zimbabwe is committed to speeding up its economic development, said the 90-year-old, expressing his hope to strengthen cooperation with China and boost Africa-China ties.
After their talks, the two presidents witnessed the signing of several cooperation deals in such areas as food, finance and tourism.
Mugabe is visiting China from Aug. 24-28.

O complexo assassínio de Amílcar Cabral

Praia (Lusa, 8 de Setembro de 2014) – O investigador e professor universitário cabo-verdiano Daniel Santos lança sexta-feira, na Cidade da Praia, o livro “Amílcar Cabral – Um Novo Olhar”, defendendo que Sékou Touré, antigo presidente da Guiné-Conacri, terá sido o “provável mandante” do assassinato.
“O livro veio confirmar que os portugueses nada têm a ver com a morte de Amílcar Cabral. Pelos dados que reúnem, tudo se encaminha para que tenha sido Sékou Touré, antigo presidente da Guiné-Conacri, o mais provável mandante do crime”, revelou Daniel dos Santos, indicando que a obra será apresentada pelo antigo ministro das Infraestruturas de Transportes cabo-verdiano, Armindo Ferreira.
Numa entrevista à agência Lusa, o investigador recordou que no dia em que o “pai” das independências da Guiné-Bissau e de Cabo Verde foi assassinado, Sékou Touré preparou um jantar no seu gabinete para os “40 cabecilhas” que estiveram envolvidos na morte de Cabral, a 20 de janeiro de 1973, em Conacri.

Amílcar Cabral e Sékou Touré

“As pessoas já estão identificadas. Só falta oficializar quem mandou matar Amílcar Cabral”, prosseguiu o investigador cabo-verdiano, dizendo que a obra, de 600 páginas e sem prefácio, serve para “reavivar a memória” e fazer uma “rotura” de tudo o que já se escreveu sobre Cabral.
A morte de Cabral nunca foi devidamente esclarecida, havendo dúvidas sobre os mandantes do crime que o vitimou, reinando também o silêncio dos antigos companheiros no Partido Africano de Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde (PAIGC), cuja sede durante a luta de libertação (1963/74) estava precisamente em Conacri.
Vários livros já deram pistas sobre o contexto que levou à morte de Cabral, como os do jornalista e investigador português José Pedro Castanheira, do historiador guineense Julião Soares Sousa, dos escritores são-tomense Tomás Medeiros e angolano António Tomás, mas todos são inconclusivos sobre um envolvimento de Portugal ou do PAIGC.
Sabe-se apenas que o autor dos disparos que o vitimaram foi Inocêncio Kani, guerrilheiro do PAIGC entretanto falecido, alegadamente a mando de outro alto dirigente do então movimento independentista, Morno Touré, em conluio com Mamadou Ndjai, chefe da guarda de Cabral.
Daniel Santos recordou que o livro lhe ocorreu em 2001, quando começou a pensar em escrever uma dissertação de mestrado, que veio a coincidir com Amílcar Cabral e tinha como título “A Questão Colonial – O Contributo de Amílcar Cabral”.
“Quando fui defender a minha dissertação de mestrado, dei conta que havia a necessidade de se fazer um livro como este, porque todo o debate que se centrou durante a arguição da tese foi sobre a vida de Amílcar Cabral. Houve a necessidade de se aprofundar mais”, indicou, dizendo, porém, que o livro, escrito há dois anos, tem pouco a ver com a dissertação de mestrado.
Segundo Daniel Santos, a obra é diferente de tudo o que já se escreveu sobre Cabral e, em termos de metodologia, faz uma “rotura completa”, uma vez que se afasta do “individualismo metodológico” para se centrar no “pluralismo metodológico”, ou seja, cruza várias fontes, deixando o público tirar as suas próprias conclusões.
Para o investigador, que reivindicou ser o primeiro cabo-verdiano a escrever um livro sobre Amílcar Cabral, a obra servirá também para promover um “debate cívico, franco, pedagógico, académico, muito humilde e sem amarras” sobre Cabral, sem perder de vista o contexto em que viveu e se moveu.

Amílcar Cabral e o seu presumível assassino Cani à direita na Rússia

“Valeu a pena fazer esta caminhada e apresentar aos cabo-verdianos, partidos políticos, investigadores, jornalistas e professores um livro que não foi feito a pensar em agradar a este ou aquele, mas que seja útil a quem o leia”, mostrou.
Para o autor, Amílcar Cabral continua uma “figura marcante e emblemática” na história da Guiné-Bissau e de Cabo Verde, uma pessoa com “defeitos e virtudes”, defendendo ser necessário colocá-lo “no lugar que conquistou por mérito próprio”.
O investigador cabo-verdiano diz que tem “muitas coisas na gaveta” e que já escreveu 90% de outro livro sobre a história das ideias políticas do fundador do Partido Africano para a Independência de Guiné e Cabo Verde (PAIGC).
Daniel dos Santos, 57 anos, nasceu na Cidade da Praia, é jornalista – não está em exercício -, politólogo e professor nas universidades Lusófona de Lisboa, Jean Piaget e Instituto Superior de Ciências Jurídicas e Sociais (ISCJS), as duas últimas em Cabo Verde.

Scotland, the Brave

Campaigners in the battle for Scotland's future say the referendum result is too close to call with less than two weeks until the vote.

The Yes camp claims to have the "big momentum" behind it, while opponents of independence insist they will win.

It comes as one poll put Yes Scotland narrowly ahead for the first time.

Responding to the poll, UK Chancellor George Osborne pledged that in the next few days there would be a plan for more powers for the Scottish Parliament.

Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond branded the suggestion a "panicky" bribe, coming after thousands of people had already voted by postal ballot.

With just 11 days of campaigning left, both sides are stepping up their bids for the wavering voters who could yet sway the result.

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On 18 September voters will be asked the Yes/No question: "Should Scotland be an independent country?"

The final push for votes comes as a a YouGov poll for the Sunday Times suggested that, of those who have made up their mind, 51% planned to back independence, while 49% intended to vote no.

The poll of 1,084 people, carried out between 2 and 5 September, is the first and only serious study to put the Yes campaign ahead.

The cross-party Better Together campaign - which supports the Union - had previously retained a lead in polls, often reaching double digits.

However, a separate poll for the Yes Scotland campaign put the pro-Union camp four points ahead - by 52% to 48% - when undecided voters were excluded.

Pollsters Panelbase questioned voters between 2 and 6 September.

Writing in the Sunday Mirror, former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown appeared to blame the Conservative Party for the closeness of the battle.

He suggested the Better Together camp was finding it "difficult" to win over Scots because of anger over coalition policies - including changes to housing benefit and tax cuts for the wealthy.  BBC

Não esqueçamos os ameríndios

Today there are more than half a million Indians in the United States and millions more elsewhere in the Americas. Still trying to cope with adjustment to white civilization, they are in all stages of development, from the most primitive to the most sophisticated. In the United States, they still speak more than 100 different languages. Economically they range from pauperism to affluence. A few have made money from oil and other natural sources found on their lands, but many thousands live at near-starvation levels. Some are educated and completely assimilated in white society; many live in nearly complete isolation from non-Indian Americans. Relocation programs have taken hundreds of Indians to work in cities; thousands of others cling to the security of their reservations, hoping to gain education and assistance necessary to develop the resources of their lands and become self-sustaining. Generally, the Indians are still proud of their traditions and heritage, and many of them resist giving them up or allowing them to be submerged or corrupted by white civilization. But Indians generally also recognize that their standards of living must be raised. Without giving up their unique cultural heritage, they have organized into tribal councils to try to help the federal government settle on long-range programs of education, health services, vocational training, resource planning, and financial credit that will assist them to solutions of the problems that have beset them for so many sad decades. Nowadays, there exist about 300 federal reservations in the United States, with a total of 52,017,551 acres held in trust by the federal government, the large majority west of the Mississippi. There are also 21 state reservations, most of these in the East. Some reservations are restricted to one tribe, others are jointly held. Some reservation land is owned, rented and occupied by non-Indians. The largest reservation is held by the Navajo tribe. Although the reservations are sovereign nations, the People are also considered U.S. citizens. In the contemporary relationship between the federal government and federally chartered tribes, as it has reached the present through a number of historical stages, the United States Congress with its powers to ratify treaties and regulate commerce is the trustee of the special Indian status. The trusteeship involves protection of Indian property; protection of Indian right to self-government; and the provision of services necessary for survival and advancement. In the commission of its trusteeship, Congress has placed the major responsibility for Indian matters in the Department of Interior and its subdivision the Bureau of Indian Affairs. In addition to the central office in Washington D.C., the BIA maintains regional offices in 12 states, mostly in the West, with agencies on particular reservations as well. Many Native Americans have positions in the BIA, but relatively few are at the highest positions. Indians are free to live anywhere. It is estimated that one-third to one-half of the Indian population in the United States now lives in cities. The greatest concentration of urban Indians, about 60,000, are found in the Los Angeles - Long Beach area of California. Other cities with large Indian populations are San Francisco - Oakland in California, Tulsa and Oklahoma city in Oklahoma, New York City and Buffalo in New York, Phoenix and Tucson in Arizona, Minneapolis - St. Paul and Duluth in Minnesota, Seattle - Everett in Washington, Rapid City in South Dakota, Denver in Colorado, Milwaukee in Wisconsin, Portland in Oregon, Albuquerque in New Mexico, and Nome, Bethel and Barrow in Alaska. On the positive side of the Native North American situation, Indian art is enjoying a renaissance. First in the realm of Indian arts and crafts, where many Indians, using traditional techniques and forms, have found reliable markets among both tourists and serious collectors; and second, in the realm of fine arts, where Indian painters and sculptors, in a burst of new esthetics that blend the traditional with the modern, have developed international reputations. Native North American culture in both the United States and Canada is a national treasure. Its renewal is everyone’s renewal. In Mexico the Indians called indígenas - estimated 15 percent of the total population - are direct descendants of the Aztec, Maya and other ancient civilizations. Some are small groups living in self-sufficient isolation, others occupy large territories. While it is convenient for the sake of categorization to lump all Indians together, Mexico’s native peoples are characterized by linguistic and cultural differences that can be very distinct. The status of indígenas in today’s Mexico, unfortunately, is not much better than it was during the colonial era. Poverty is a chronic, debilitating fact of life for more than three-quarters of the country’s Indian communities. Life is very hard for "Mexico’s most forgotten people", as many indígenas refer to themselves, but their concerns have garnered international attention and forced ongoing government negotiations. In Peru about half of the population is Indian, descendants of the Incas. These people still practice their own language, culture and religion. Their situation in the Peruvian society is similar to "Mexico’s most forgotten people". Indians everywhere represent heroic and romantic historical figures who held out, through skill and courage, against overwhelming forces. They also represent beings who were in tune with themselves, one another, and nature. Balance and harmony are concepts often applied to Indian ways of life, as well as to Indian inner life. For societies alarmed by ecological damage from modern technologies, Indian coexistence with the natural environment serves as a model for survival.

Moçambique: Reconciliação Frelimo/Renamo

Mozambique rivals Dhlakama and Guebuza sign peace deal

The two men warmly embraced after signing the peace deal

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Mozambican President Arnando Guebuza has signed a peace deal with ex-rebel leader Afonso Dhlakama, who on Thursday emerged from two years in hiding.

President Guebuza hailed the deal to end a low-level insurgency as "a very important day for our people".
Mr Dhlakama agreed but also accused the government of "intolerance", the AFP news agency reports.
The head of Renamo, which fought a 1975-1992 civil war, says he will contest next month's elections.

Afonso Dhlakama said he wanted to end the "one-party state" in Mozambique

Frelimo and Renamo fought a bitter 15-year civil war

Despite recent progress, many Mozambicans remain stuck in poverty

He has contested every poll since the civil war ended but has always lost.
Mr Dhlakama flew into the capital Maputo on Thursday accompanied by diplomats, after a deal to end the conflict was agreed last month.
After signing the deal, he said he hoped it "can bring to an end the one-party state", AFP reports.
"After the beautiful dream of two decades ago when peace seemed to be for always, we saw a systematic concentration of power in the hands of those in power... many are in this room," he said, drawing gasps and mutters from the audience, according to AFP.
The Renamo leader went into hiding in October 2012, after accusing the government of breaking the terms of the 1992 peace deal.
The conflict threatened the economic progress Mozambique had made in recent years.
Presidential and parliamentary elections are due on 15 October.
Mr Guebuza is stepping down after serving two terms and former Defence Minister Felipe Nyusi will be the candidate of the governing Frelimo party.   BBC

É preciso desbravar Fobos e Marte

Segundo estudiosos como Robert Jastrow, deve existir à volta da Terra uma multidão enorme de sistemas solares habitados. O Universo deve ser abundante em formas de vida, dimensões e níveis de inteligência, mas a nossa angústia é que ainda não conseguimos contactar devidamente com outros planetas habitados.
O melhor procedimento de eventuais exploradores de Marte, um dos nossos vizinhos, que estaremos talvez em vias de alcançar, deverá ser parar primeiro em Fobos, seu satélite, para lá obter o combustível necessário à descida no solo marciano.
Fobos parece ser extraordinariamente valioso na exploração do sistema solar; e por isso seria bom se norte-americanos, russos e chineses, entre outros, se unissem para daqui a uma dúzia de anos saber muito mais de Fobos e de Marte.
Aqui fechados, nesta Terra tão traiçoeira, que tantos desgostos nos tem dado, ansiamos o dia em que seja possível ver homens e mulheres alcançar Fobos, Marte e Europa, satélite de Júpiter.
Se alcançar tais paragens é coisa para uma viagem de nove meses ou de um ano e meio, poderemos recordar que também as viagens de Vasco da Gama e de Fernão de Magalhães foram muito longas; e nem por isso deixaram de se fazer.
Toda a missão tem os seus riscos, mas não é por eles existirem que nós vamos ficar por aqui parados, de braços cruzados, sem ir a Fobos, a Marte, à Europa ou a Titã, satélite de Saturno, para ficar a saber mais do sistema em que vivemos. Se por acaso lá haverá micróbios, vermes, plantas. São curiosidades que nos atormentam; e que cremos que ao longo dos próximos 20 anos irão interessar cada vez mais a um número crescente de pessoas.
As deslocações às zonas de Marte, de Júpiter e de Saturno deverão constituir um pequeno prelúdio a viagens maiores, que nos aproximem da estrela Alfa, da constelação de Centauro (foto), da estrela de Barnard, a seis anos-luz de distância, e da estrela Tau, da constelação da Baleia, que fica a 12 anos-luz. Para ver se por lá haverá formas de vida inteligente.
É preciso acabar com o marasmo da nossa vida actual e tentar encontrar inteligências que possam existir noutros pontos da Via Láctea; e mais além, muito mais além.
Navegar, pelo Universo, é preciso. Ficar aqui parado, a ver futebol, é um disparate.
Jorge Heitor   3 de Setembro de 2014

Camarões negoceiam com o Boko Haram

More reports say Yaoundé is negotiating with Boko Haram, as a prominent MP reports on the condition of the hostages

The government sent a ruling party MP, Abba Boukar Malla, to negotiate with the jihadist militia Boko Haram for ransoms for the hostages they seized in a raid on Kolofata village on 27 July, Africa Confidential has learned. But all contact with Boukar Malla, who has acted as an intermediary with the militants before, was lost until he was 'released' by Boko Haram on 26 August. He brought 'good news', he told the press, that Françoise-Agnès Ali, wife of the top minister and confidant of President Paul Biya, Ahmadou Ali, and other hostages were safe and well. The government denies negotiating with Boko Haram or paying ransoms.
Africa Confidential