who is wise enough to do better than fate? (versão 0.03)

1918-1919, Oxford

[...] who is wise enough to do better than fate? At the end of that term I went to stay with a friend and on arriving at his home I was met by the most beautiful girl I had ever seen - his sister...
She was intelligent and, as I say, beautiful: I was immature and inexperient...
My hand trembled when the holidat came to an end and I said goodbye.

"It's awful you must go", she said.
"perfectly priceless", I blurted out.
"What?" she replied astonished.

I nooded speechlessly to her dress which she had worn particularly for me. Her dismay turned to a joyful laugh.
Later there came a box of wild roses, freshly gathered. Then she came to London to study massage. We met. Irresponsible to the end, I proposed and was accepted;
she could not be expected to see through all the war-hero trapping. (p.17-18)

W.R. Bion, “all my sins remembered ”











Londres, 4 de Junho de 1940

The British Empire and the French Republic, linked together in their cause and their need, will defend to the death their native soils, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength, even though a large tract of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule.

We shall not flag nor fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France and on the seas and oceans; we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be; we shall fight on beaches, landing grounds, in fields, in streets and on the hills.

We shall never surrender and even if, which I do not for the moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, will carry on the struggle until in God's good time the New World with all its power and might, sets forth to the liberation and rescue of the Old.

W. Churchill, depois de Dunquerque.

18 de Fevereiro de 1943, Berlim

I ask you: Are you ready to follow the Führer as the phalanx of the homeland, standing behind the fighting army and to wage war with wild determination through all the turns of fate until victory is ours?

Third: The English maintain that the German people have no desire any longer to accept the government's growing demands for war work.

I ask you: Are you and the German people willing to work, if the Führer orders, 10, 12 and if necessary 14 hours a day and to give everything for victory?

Fourth: The English maintain that the German people is resisting the government's total war measures. It does not want total war, but capitulation! (Shouts: Never! Never! Never!)

I ask you: Do you want total war? If necessary, do you want a war more total and radical than anything that we can even imagine today?

14-15 de Fevereiro de 1945, Dresden e Hamburgo

[...]




























res na Alemanha, 1933

as a result of thousands of years of social and educational distortion, masses of people have become biologically rigid and incapable of freedom. They are not capable of establishing peaceful coexistence.

As cynical and hopeless as these two succinct sentences may sound, they contain the answer to the three above questions. No one wants to acknowledge the truth they contain, or even listen to them. No democratic statesman would know what to make of it. Every honest man knows it. All dictators have built their power on the social irresponsibleness of masses of people.
[...]
In the masses of people themselves there is a retarding power which is both reactionary and murderous and which thwarts the efforts of the freedom-fighters again and again. This reactionary power in masses of people appears as a general fear of responsibility and fear of freedom.

Wilhelm Reich. Mass psychology of the fascism





Peconic, Long Island, August 2nd 1939

Sir:
In the course of the last four months it has been made probable -through the work of Joliot in France as well as Fermi and Szilard in America - that it may become possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium,by which vast amounts of power and large quant- ities of new radium-like elements would be generated.

Now it appears almost certain that this could be achieved in the immediate future.

This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable - though much less certain - that extremely power-ful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed. However,such bombs might very well prove to be too heavy for transportation by air.

Primeira carta de Albert Einstein para Roosevelt

Because of Einstein’s stature, Roosevelt promptly authorized the Manhattan Project.

“The release of atomic energy has brought into the world the most revolutionary force since pre-historic man’s invention of fire… Had I known that the Germans would not succeed… I never would have lifted a finger. I made one mistake in my life… when I signed that letter to President Roosevelt advocating that the bomb should be built. But perhaps I can be forgiven…”

Albert Einstein, no final da sua vida.



The early students of the Marshall Plan saw it as an unmitigated success of American generosity. Criticism of the Marshall Plan, however, became prominent among historians of the revisionist school, such as Walter LaFeber, during the 1960s and 1970s. They argued that the plan was American economic imperialism, and that it was an attempt to gain control over Western Europe just as the Soviets controlled Eastern Europe. Far from generosity, critics argued, the plan was the result of the United States' geopolitical goals.

Kilgore: Smell that? You smell that? Lance: What? Kilgore: Napalm, son. Nothing in the world smells like that. [kneels] Kilgore: I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 hours. When it was all over, I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' dink body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like... victory.

In fact, there are many authoritarian regimes like today's China and Singapore, or Chile under General Pinochet, that have been able to develop and modernise quite successfully.

Economic development is not driven simply by good economic policies; you need to have a state for people to live in that can guarantee law and order, property rights, a rule of law, and political stability before you can have investment, growth, commerce, international trade, and the like. Taking advantage of globalisation, as India and China have done in recent years, requires above all having a competent state that can carefully set the conditions for exposure to the global economy.

Fukuyama

London, Wednesday, 16 November 2005 (BBC)

The US has now admitted using white phosphorus as a weapon in Falluja last year, after earlier denying it.

The substance can cause burning of the flesh but is not illegal and is not classified as a chemical weapon.

The US initially said white phosphorus had been used only to illuminate enemy positions, but now admits it was used as a weapon.

BBC defence correspondent Paul Wood says having to retract that denial is a public relations disaster for the US.

Professor Paul Rogers, of the University of Bradford's department of peace studies, said white phosphorus could be considered a chemical weapon if deliberately aimed at people.

He told the BBC: "It is not counted under the chemical weapons convention in its normal use but, although it is a matter of legal niceties, it probably does fall into the category of chemical weapons if it is used for this kind of purpose directly against people."

Washington is not a signatory to an international treaty restricting the use of the substance against civilians.