Espada de Pau

Saturday night. The sound of the accordion escapes the room beneath the white wooden door but the spell cast is all kept inside. In the last room of the tiled corridor of Fábrica do Braço de Prata (Factory of the Silver’s Arm), the characters of bohemian Lisbon enjoy the music of their new best-kept secret.

Indoors the scene is surreal. Mismatching iron-made tables and chairs, looking one hundred years old, share the space with hanging miscellanea imported from a never-happened past. The artist in the centre shows his smiling teeth not getting any younger as he stretches the boisterous French accordion. And the audience of no more than 40 boggling eyes gazes his washed-out sailor hat. Only the cat of glass in the table refuses to turn his head from me.

The Fábrica, to be one-year-old next month, is indisputably Lisbon’s most bizarre bookshop. The building, located in the abandoned East sector of the Portuguese capital, used to be a powder factory producing rifles, cannons and bullets for the armies of a decadent colonial empire. Nowadays, it crafts culture in industrial quantities.

There are books: 40 000 of them asking to be taken off, leafed through and talked about, in the shelves and tables of the room devoted to Nietzsche. There are also petite concerts, independent cinema showings or themed photo-shootings every evening from Wednesday to Sunday, around the other eleven rooms of the converted factory.

The first dozens of the Fábrica’s visitors, dissidents of the predictable Bairro Alto, ended up dragging here certain hundreds. “Today it is a meeting point for nameless artists daring to show their works and starving intellectual Lisbonners who want more than a drink when going out at night”, says José Pinho, one of the owners.

recovered movie

A Nasa’s space craft has performed a successful edgy landing in Mars this night.

Nasa’s Phoenix lander touch down as planned at 2353 GMT on 25 May in the far north of the Red Planet, after a 680-million-km (423-million-mile) journey from Earth.

Now Phoenix will begin a three-month mission to search for ice beneath the Martian surface. (more…)

A Guerra Colonial está na moda. Houve tempos em que só se falava dela de surdina. Hoje todo o cabo raso que serviu além mar tem história para contar. É assim que, para além dos livros de encomenda que enchem os tops das livrarias outros tantos romances de longas páginas jazem nas gavetas como projectos que não passaram disso.
Com Antunes Ferreira foi diferente. Tudo começou com uma crónica postada no seu recém cirado blog, A Treavessa do Ferreira, sobre sua partida para Angola, 40 anos antes, onde serviu dois dos cinco anos do serviço militar.

No Cais de Santos, mais 1784 homens fardados e um “formigueiro de famílias, namoradas, amigos despediam-se com muitas lágrimas à mistura”.

“Os amigos da tropa”, contou o autor ao DN “diziam que tinha muita leitura”. Daí foi um salto até pôr de lado o romance que estava a escrever e dedicar-se a recordar. Angola, Luanda e a mata. As brancas que ficaram para trás. E as pretas que se encontraram pelo caminho. Amigos que morreram no mato os outros que podiam ter morrido.

Foi escrevendo short stories, uma atrás da outra , umas ficcionadas outras reais e vividas – desafio é descobrir quais - e no final a possibilidade de publicar surigu naturalmente.

Morte na Picada retrata uma guerra sem sentido pelas histórias dos soldados e pela boca grosseira dos soldados. Uns que só queriam voltar para casa, outros só queriam ser livres. Acabavam todos à pancada, mais a medo que com raiva.

Numa história dois amigos de infância reconhecem-se apenas no momento em que disparam um contra o outro. A morte é surpresa e presença constante, o ponto final das biografias que se vão seguindo no livro. O sexo anda sempre na cabeça dos soldados.

A Morte na Picada não é mais do que a memória de uma guerra que “começou há quase meio século e já terminou há quase 30 anos, mas ainda hoje continua presente em todos nós”, como disse Joaquim Furtado, jornalista que apresentou o livro.

É narrativa brutal sobre homens que se matam e morrem sem razão. Como no desfecho do livro, quando carrasco e prisioneiro, repartem a refeição e são mortos por quem não soube sonhar com a reconciliação.

Morte na Picada - online shoping

Travessa do Ferreira - blog

Antunes Ferreira

Hugo Coelho

Jornalista

Portugal risks to lose a say on European foreign policy if it does not increase its defence expenditures, the minister of Defence warned yesterday in Lisbon during a conference on the “The Treaty of Lisbon and the Future of European Integration”.

Speaking on the day of the 58th anniversary of the Shuman declaration - the embryo of the European Union Severiano Teixeira said the Treaty of Lisbon has made the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFCP) the new driving force of the UE and said that Portugal must assume its responsibilities to stay on the lead of the European platoon.

“There is a choice to be made”, the minister said. “If Portugal is to be in the frontline of the European integration process, we must recognize that, once the period of budget consolidation is over, we need to increase our Defence budget up to the levels of our partners and allies”. (more…)

There were no troops to be seen when the deafening sound of bullets was first heard.

The soldiers, courageously covered behind the tank, hiding in the smoke of grenades, were slowly coming to war.

To one of them, the courage, the tank and the smoke altogether were not shield enough. He fell down, hit in a leg by a terrorist bullet fired from the occupied buildings ahead and even the tinoni of the ambulance was not loud enough to kill the cries of pain.

He was the single casualty, a feigned-one, of the Engineering Unity 4’s preparation exercise for the mission in Lebanon that took place yesterday in the Regiment of Infantry 13, in Vila Real. (more…)

Manuel ?, 59, departed for Mozambique young with his eyes set on the family’s construction business. He arrived well, but from the country he only saw the war, before a mine exploded in his hands.

Since then, he has been fighting a different war. This time, it is about the rights of disabled soldiers.

Yesterday, he demonstrated from the Military Hospital of Estrela to the Assembly of Republic with an army of 1 500 men. Some were blind, like him. Others were deaf, mutilated or paralytic. (more…)

Great documentary on a MDC supporter killed by the soldiers loyal to Robert Mugabe.
The second round of Presidential elections was finally announced. The opposition, MDC, who won the first round, is still in the run but fears the intimidation campaign the army is doing in favour of Robert Mugabe Mugabe.

Video : Zimbabwe political cleansing

A judge will rule today whether the electoral commission in Zimbabwe should be forced to release the presidential election results.

Morgan Tsvangira, leader of the opposition party, MDC, claims to have won the contest with more than 50% of the votes and accuses the government of keeping the ballots to rig the election’s outcome.

“They had custody of the ballot boxes for two weeks and they must have stuffed them with their votes,” MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa said.

African leaders meeting this week in Lusaka to discuss the political deadlock in Zimbabwe urged the government to release the results kept for more than two weeks.

Mugabe ignored his counterparts and ordered the recounting of the parliamentary ballots which result had already been published.

The parliamentary election saw Mr Mugabe’s Zanu-PF lose its majority.

But the majority could be recovered if Zanu-PF is awarded just nine of the 23 seats subject to a recount.

Quiet diplomacy

The meeting of Southern African Development community was expected to force Mugabe to compromise and break the political deadlock in Zimbabwe.

But the outcome was far from positive.

Mugabe refused to attend the meeting and his party refused to accept its advise.

Zimbabwean President counted with the help of the South African President PR, Mbeki, who visited Harare to say there is no political crisis in Zimbabwen democracy.

Military intimidation

While the results are unknown Mugabe military forces are reported to be intimidating the population who voted for the opposition.

A reporter from the Guardian reported Zanu’s forces are menacing the population to vote for Mugabe in the second round of the election or else they will be killed.

Without even publishing the results, the regime claims the MDC failed to win with more than 50% meaning it has to go for a second round.

The MDC refuses (video) to run for a second round. The opposition party fears the population will feel the menace from Mugabe’s forces and vote for the regime.

Mugabe rules over Zimbabwe for 20 years since independence from the UKe profile .

Mugabe’s profile

Morgan Tsvangira’s profile

Zimbabwe’s political crisis in pictures (Guardian)