Viajar? Sim! Muito! AGORA!!!

Caro leitor,

Desde já agradeço a atenção de estar a ler os meus escritos. Com tanta literatura disponível é de prezar que tenha escolhido oferecer uns minutos da sua vida a ler o que eu tenho para dizer. Estou a escrever estas linhas esticado no meu sofá Ikea novo no meu apartamento de solteirão em Bruxelas. E estou a escrever este texto precisamente porque sinto a necessidade de partilhar os meus pensamentos com alguém. Claro que posso ligar a um dos meus amigos e fazê-los ouvir o que tenho para dizer, mas em boa verdade, a grande vantagem que o estimado leitor para mim representa é precisamente o facto de não me conhecer. Os meus amigos, esses, já me conhecem bem e duvido seriamente que ainda tenham paciência para me dedicar o mesmo nível de atenção.

Há uma ideia que me tem apertado o espírito nas últimas semanas. Uma pequena introdução é agora necessária: acabei há uns dias de ler o livro “O Mundo é Fácil” escrito pelo Gonçalo Cadilhe. O livro tem como objectivo incentivar o jovem leitor a esquecer os seus medos e arregaçar mangas, viajando pelo Mundo fora num processo de descoberta do que o rodeia mas também num processo de auto-descoberta. O livro foi-me dado pelos meus pais no Natal de 2010. Os meus pais são possuidores de uma sabedoria sem limites e quiseram que eu “aprendesse” também a viajar, que eu conhecesse quem seguiu o seu sonho e fez das viagens um modo de vida e uma forma de ganhar a vida. Confesso que assim que li as primeiras linhas do livro achei que se iam confirmar os meus preconceitos – mas quem é este gajo para me ensinar a mim o que é viajar, há-de ser um puto surfista com mania que escreve umas baboseiras sobre as viagens que teve a sorte de fazer. Essa ideia foi no entanto desaparecendo com o passar das páginas, à medida que os capítulos se desfolhavam em frente aos meus olhos. Talvez por uma ironia que é difícil de explicar, o grande avanço que dei ao livro aconteceu no aeroporto de Zaventem, enquanto esperava pelo voo que me ia levar de casa a casa, ou seja, de Bruxelas a Portugal. O que escrevo não pretende ser uma crítica literária – tenho grandes dúvidas sobre os comentários dos especialistas que descrevem a experiência tão pessoal que é a leitura de um bom livro – mas sim uma partilha com o estimado leitor do efeito que teve em mim a leitura do “Mundo é Fácil”.

Pelos vistos também eu faço parte do público-alvo deste livro. Porque também eu quero viajar, também eu me sinto limitado pelos meus medos, e também eu estou à espera que as coisas aconteçam quando talvez devesse ser eu a forçar a acção. Mas agora decidi que já chega. Não espero mais. Não tenho mais medo. Tenho agora 29 anos, e o tempo não dá indicações de ter intenções de parar de passar! Tenho um bom emprego em Bruxelas, a fazer algo para o qual até tenho algum jeito. Mais que isso, tenho um grupo de amigos que são a minha família aqui distante de casa, são quem me conhece aqui e são o meu apoio nas boas e nas menos boas alturas. Resumindo, tenho uma vida agradável e estável. E aqui é que está o meu problema com a minha vida: é demasiado estável! Muito sinceramente o meu mês de Março foi igual ao mês de Novembro. E quer-me parecer que o Maio que se aproxima não vai ser particularmente diferente. Claro que é fácil ir-me deixando arrastar pela monotonia e pela letargia, é a decisão mais confortável. Mas isso é precisamente o que eu tenho feito nos últimos tempos, tenho fugido a tomar decisões radicais e tenho aceite o que vem na minha direcção.

Pois bem, sinto agora dentro de mim um grande desejo de mudança, de excitação, de aventura, de dúvidas, de perguntas e de respostas. Quero sair, enfrentar o desconhecido, ir por onde ainda não andei, ver o que há por aí nesse Mundo fora. Estou decidido a deixar o meu emprego, a deixar os meus amigos e tirar uns meses de “férias”. A ideia de acordar e não ter que vestir o fato e ir ao escritório começa a tomar conta de mim, também por começar cada vez mais a parecer uma ideia realizável. Apaixona-me não ter horários, não ter responsabilidades, não ter que prestar contas a ninguém que não a mim mesmo. Quero fazer uma grande viagem de descoberta, descobrir o Mundo mas mais que isso descobrir-me a mim também, saber quem sou, do que sou capaz, quais são os meus limites. E não tenho medo, quando voltar a realidade onde vivo hoje ainda vai cá estar, os meus amigos ainda me vão receber de braços abertos, e vou de certeza encontrar um outro sítio onde possa trabalhar. Mas o momento não é de respostas, é de perguntas. E eu tenho duas: Quando vou partir? E para onde? Assim que souber, descanse o estimado leitor, será dos primeiros a saber!!

ANC, Bruxelas, 27 Abril 2011

Obama, to Nobel or not to Nobel?

So, obviously the big news of the day was the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to Barack Obama. I’ve spent the whole day thinking about it and I keep finding hard to make up my mind on it. 

I think that we need to first try to understand what we mean by Peace. The basic definition is obviously the absence of war, the ending of a conflict. And when we think of war we think of soldiers killing each other and a few others on the way. Clearly Obama has not brought peace to the World in that basic sense. It was under his Presidency that the US expressed its intent of pulling out of Iraq and actually started doing so. On the other hand, it is now being discussed in the White House and in the Senate, the upgrade of the American forces based in Afghanistan, the other war-zone where the US are present. The decision is yet to be made between sending more troops or giving them more and better guns, none of the options being a prospect of having peace any closer.

But Peace must be more than just that. Many of the World’s conflicts are not active wars where soldiers kill each other and a few others on the way on a daily basis. The most obvious case being the Middle East issue, of course. There, Obama has sent a very clear signal by appointing a special representative to bring all the sides to the negotiation table in order to find a long-awaited solution. Yes, you can argue that he has expressed his full support for Israel, a bit counter-productive I must say, but that is just the American official position and it was not expected to change. His speech in Cairo was made of words, not actions, but words like “understanding”, “tolerance”, “peaceful co-habitation”. One single speech made more for the West-Arab relations than 8 years of Bush’s actions from the White House.

Iran, North Korea, Burma, Cuba. All cases of non-democratic governments which, in one way or the other, constitute threats to their own people and to the rest of Humanity. One can argue that Obama has not taken dramatic measures to remove dictators from power or to persuade them to change policies. But his predecessor had this bad habit of identifying enemies and then grab a few Marines and oust them from power. It didn’t work that well, did it?... So, let’s trust that Obama’s way of dealing with them, through International forums and trusting regional powers to give a hand, is a better way of doing it, even if less media-friendly.

Nuclear. Today’s anti-Obama comments seem to forget the impact of his anti-nuclear positions. It was Obama who decided to remove the controversial anti-missile shield from Poland and Czech Republic that made the Russians angry (then again, what doesn’t make the Russians angry?...) It was Obama who went to the UN, the World Peace meeting place by excellence, and made a speech about the need to eradicate nuclear weapons and prevent their spreading to other countries. I say that’s a good thing!

When it comes to Environment, Obama has been pushing the US to behave as the global leader they want to be perceived as. During the reaction to the crisis some measures went against green principles like the huge financial helps given to the car industry. But this can be seen as the less of two evils, the other evil being sending millions of people to unemployment. The Copenhagen summit is approaching and even if there are doubts about Obama’s willingness to commit the US with a strict set of environmental protection measures, I think he is still widely regarded as an opportunity for the US to slowly change their environmental policies.

The argument against the choice of Obama as this year’s Nobel Peace Prize is that he was just doing his job! And damn, that is a good argument. Let’s face it, Bush screwed it all up a bit, didn’t he? He took so many wrong decisions and made things so messy that the next guy only had to make things right again. What should strike us as odd here is not that Obama cares about the rest of the World, that he doesn’t start wars, that he recycles, etc... but the fact that the guy before did nothing of the above!! Fine, give him a “well-done-Mr.-President Award” for doing what he is supposed to, but not a Nobel Prize!! It reflects the state of World politics when a World leader is awarded the highest international prize (debatable, I know...) for doing the right thing.

But he did! And that, my friends, is already something. And I guess the Chemistry Nobel Prize Award winner, or the Literature Nobel Prize Award winner also got their recognition for doing their job. In fact, they all got it for doing their job better than others!

And Obama is by far better than others. His election was a landmark to the World. Even basic Anti-Americans must recognize that the election of one single man has the power to inspire the World. And here is it is what I think justifies the Nobel Peace Prize to Mr. Obama: his power to inspire. Millions followed his campaign both in and out of the US. Yours truly here spent the election night wide awake in a fully packed hotel in Brussels following the counting of the votes and felt like a winner when the victory was clear! I followed live his acceptance speech, and his UN speech! Had I done that before in my life? No. Have I done it with any other politician? No way! Obama inspires people, inspires them through words, for sure, but eventually actions will follow the words. I think this is the AWARD OF HOPE, the Prize that awards faith, belief, positivity, commitment and above all hope that the World of tomorrow is a better World than today’s.

So I think I just made up my mind. Barack, dude, well done and congratulations on the Prize!!! But don’t forget, we will all be watching you (live or not) and will demand from you to transform all those words into actions and all that hope into global happiness! 

ANC 09/10/2009 Brussels

Economic crisis = political consequences!

What is happening in my country is seriously worrying me and the fact that I currently live abroad does not and should not reduce in any way the impact the recent events have on my life. Portugal was never seen as a booming economy, as an exporter or goods, or as a technology and innovation hub. We have a fairly old fashioned economy, still very based in production of a few basic products but above all based on services.

I felt the need now to write about what is worrying me. I really don’t know right now what is going to happen in the near future, and that is what is worrying me. I am no psychic but most of the times one can predict what will happen in a country in the coming couple of years. In Portugal that is a very difficult hunch right now. Here in Brussels I have heard a lot of people in the past few years expressing concern about the economic situation in Portugal and what may happen to us – what they don’t know is that we have always been in a crisis! Since I remember I hear in the news that our economy is not doing very well and that we risk collapsing. Even after joining the EU, when we experienced a short but real economic boom, there were alarms about the lack of structural reforms and the cement-based economy. So this new “crisis” shouldn’t be new or alarming, just another one. But this time it feels different.

Greece and Ireland. I’m the first to admit I know nothing about economy or finance. I don’t know why the Greek economy collapsed or why the Irish had to be bailed-out. I am actually embarrassingly proud that my country was not the first to go down the drain, even the Celtic Tiger went down before we did! But it’s becoming very clear that is a matter of time until us too have to be rescued by the IMF and the EU. Again, I’m not sure about two things: rescued from what?! And rescued by whom?! The media at home don’t bother explaining what the loan packages would include, that’s too complicated, they focus their attention on the catchy titles of “IMF will own us” or “Portugal will be ruled from Brussels”, etc. People at home don’t seem to be that afraid of any international intervention, or at least not afraid of the consequences of it. It’s more a pride thing, no one likes having others coming and telling us how to do things!...

Yesterday there was a general strike in Portugal. According to Unions, 3 million people went on strike. I will not write now about my opinion on this strike or my position on the benefits of it. My point here is just one: shouldn’t there be political consequences from a general strike where 3 million out of 10 million protest against the government?! The government said last night that the numbers were fake – according to the government only 20% of people went on strike (quite different from the 80% put forward by Unions). What this tells me is that the government is lying. Really, 20%?! I can’t help but feel like these reactions are comparable to those of an authoritarian government where the leader gets elected by 98% of the population! The same day the strike against the proposed austerity plan was taking place, the government announced that the reductions of salaries would have one exception: companies where the majority stakeholder is the state! Please, don’t these people have ANY sense of reality? How can you ask all of the population to accept tax increases and wage reductions and then allow an exception for “yourself”?!? From a distance and from reading the news and following the statements of the prime-minister and his ministers I honestly get the feeling that it’s all a big joke. The government must be taking the piss!

The example came a couple of days ago from Ireland. The government announced the entrance in the country of international help (IMF+UE). Then it announced an austerity plan and budget that will make life much more difficult to the Irish population but that seems necessary. And then the government resigned. That is the only decent and honourable thing to do! The mistakes have been done, the solution, even if temporary has been found, now accept your responsibilities and resign! Allow the people to assess the government’s work and performance – reward it or punish it – by calling for elections. When 3 million people protest against a set of policies, against a certain political orientation, against the plans for the future, it seems obvious to me that people want change!! I’m not saying the opposition will do better, I’m not campaigning for any party, I want this to be clear. All I’m saying is that there should still exist honour and sense of responsibility in politics, that politicians have to be held accountable for their decisions and that ultimately the people must have a saying about their own future. Right now that is not the case in my country. The usual excuse to keep things as they are is that the markets need stability. Markets?! Stability?! 3 million people went on strike because of the current situation, I don’t want it to continue/stabilize! And neither do them!

Enough of using scapegoats, enough of coward attitudes. Portugal must change and must do it now! Portugal must take its future in its own hands! All we need is to believe more in ourselves, we can do it too, and I feel that moment is coming soon!  

ANC, Brussels, 25/11/2010

Enough Change

My point when writing this is to share my concern about what is happening in the world, today the 1^st of February 2001. But before that allow me say to one other thing:

God bless CNN!

I haven’t been this excited about watching the news since 1991, and I missed this feeling! I remember as a kid trying to understand what was going on and watching all those brown tanks rolling around in Kuwait and the night shots of green thingies flying across the skies of Baghdad. That was fun then! Now I’m back at following the news via CNN - Hala Gorani is the new Amanpour – and reading the news obsessively to know the latest developments. My take here is not to address the political dimension of what is happening in the Middle East, but more to share with you my general views on the events of the past weeks.

I am amazed about the power of the people. There is something genuinely gratifying in seeing people risking more than their lives for the common good. Maybe it is the communist in me speaking, but I feel touched when I see on TV all those people demonstrating on the streets, risking being jailed or even killed. They could stay home, they could protect their possessions, but they feel in them the need of being part of what is happening, they feel it is their role and mission to be together with others and to fight together. When individuals become a group of people who speak at the same voice and move as one, there is no possible way of ignoring it. I remember watching people who got stuck behind the Iron Curtain for decades saying ENOUGH, I saw the Timorese people coming to the streets to say ENOUGH. And they won because they were right.

Now, I don’t know what will happen next in the Middle East. I just saw Mubarak saying he won’t run in the next elections but I doubt that will be enough to send one million Egyptians back home. Ben Ali left Tunes and to be honest I don’t know how long it will take until the Tunisians have their requests properly addressed. All I know is that I feel the winds of change blowing. Today there were reports that people were taking the streets of Damascus and Amman asking for change. People in Yemen and Sudan are also together in saying ENOUGH.

This brings me to my point. My concern is how much information can we process and deal with? How much change can we support and relate to until we lose interest and focus on the latest football transfers? I fear that we lose track of what is happening and let some of the much-needed change fall short of its purposes. I haven’t heard anything in the news about Sierra Leone. As far as I know Gbagbo is still playing President there, resisting the popular will and the UN´s call for him to step down. I haven’t heard anything about the results of the South Sudan referendum where 99% of the people chose to start their own new country. For the past days I haven’t heard anything about the new government in Tunisia and their plans to bring stability and progress to the country. And what about Haiti, Afghanistan or Burma?... It seems we can only deal with one crisis at a time and as soon as a new crisis unfolds, we move along and send all the reporters there to cover the fresh news.

I understand that it is impossible to keep people informed about all that is happening in the World at a given time. But if we are serious at supporting these popular movements of change, we have to be able to remember all those who risk all they have for the greater good. If we believe in change, we have to be able to maintain the focus on the places where people are struggling to keep the winds of change blowing strong. Whenever and wherever people ask for change and say ENOUGH, we need to be able to remember them with more than organized marches in our capitals. It is also up to us to read the news and be informed about the next episodes of these revolutions rather than being satisfied at watching only the pilot episode. Change does not happen from one day to another and I can only hope that we (myself included) can understand this and keep an eye open on what is now old news.


ANC, Brussels, 01/02/2011