calvisson-leblon

  I am transfixed by the political upheaval which is taking place in a great western country.    A large segment of the political establishment comforted by an equally large section of the population is watching in a state of ecstasy bordering giddiness their leader’s indiscriminate assault on core democratic institutions.    Make America Great Again, MAGA is morphing into a monstruous scavenger which feeds on the dismembered federal institutions, world trade, foreign alliances and basic moral values.   In parallel, under the guise of curbing the “woke” ideology, the leader and his tech goons have launched a free speech crusade, aims of which is to suppress diverging viewpoints, fact checking and to fire dissenters.     The leader’s illiberal hegemony is based on a zero-sum game thinking. One cannot resist drawing parallels with past European events.   Respectively in 1923 and 1933, two charismatic strong men, Benito Mussolini and Adolph...

  In Rio these days, one must watch one’s mouth because many Cariocas can overreact when the Hollywood Oscar race is mentioned.   The unexpected, best film nomination of Ainda estou aqui ( I am Still Here) unleashed media and social media delirium and a novel and unusual patriotic storm.   When speaking of the Oscar nominees, one must choose one’s words carefully.   To date, four million people have seen the film.   It is quite extraordinary that a serious-minded film could surpass popular mass media fares.    For a reason that does not make much sense to me, some Brazilian (toxic) fans have targeted the French movies Emilia Peréz as the mortal rival to their Oscar success and have trashed the performance of its leading “lady” Karla Sofia Gascón. I’m still here is about a happy middle-class family broken by the military dictatorship which ruled Brazil for twenty years (1964-85).   In 1971, the father Rubens Paiva, a former left-wing politici...