Há duas olimpíadas, Portugal não estava a ganhar muitas medalhas e o pessoal, zangado, descarregou num dos nossos melhores atletas por ele ter dito… a verdade: que de manhã as suas pernas não funcionavam bem e que a experiência dos Jogos Olímpicos era fantástica mesmo só pela participação. Não sei se se lembram, mas a indignação foi tanta que o puseram de volta para casa com um bilhete comprado expressamente para o efeito. Essa foi a crónica que então escrevi, e uma das minhas de que mais gosto. Para mim, Marco Fortes é até hoje o símbolo do espírito olímpico injustiçado. *** Oh meu Zeus, meu Zeus, vejam como estou indignado. Estou indignado, indignadíssimo!, com Marco Fortes, atleta português do lançamento do peso. Ao comentar o seu fraco desempenho nos Jogos Olímpicos, Marco Fortes reconheceu que o seu corpo não responde tão bem de manhã: “De manhã é para estar na caminha – eu queria esticar as pernas mas elas só queriam estar na caminha.” Que é isto?! Em toda a minha vida, só ouvi um português dizer que “de manhã não funciono”: Sousa Franco. E foi preciso ter sido ministro das Finanças duas vezes, presidente do Tribunal de Contas – um homem sério, portanto -, para poder afrontar esse tabu. Mas Marco Fortes fez pior:

A minha crónica de ontem no Público é sobre o que tem feito a UE e não sai nos jornais portugueses. “Esta realidade, porém, esconde uma outra em que os cidadãos têm mais poder do que imaginam. Não há muitas regiões do globo em que um cidadão individual possa levar uma companhia como a Facebook ao Tribunal de Justiça da UE (depois de uma longa via sacra pelos tribunais nacionais, como aconteceu com o jovem austríaco Max Schrems) e ganhar o caso. Pela primeira vez, também, grupos de cidadãos em França e na Alemanha tentam levar a Volkswagen ao mesmo tribunal, no que seria na prática um primeiro exemplo de “ação coletiva” europeia. O acesso à justiça europeia e a democratização das instituições da UE são as reformas de que precisamos para recuperar o poder que perdemos e até ganhar aquele que nunca tivemos: o de vergar as multinacionais através da cidadania europeia. Difícil, mas possível.” Leia a crónica completa em A esperança da audácia  

1 – Mais duas universidades nacionais na lista das melhores do mundo (Samuel Silva) A Universidade de Lisboa tem sido a melhor portuguesa neste ranking desde há dois anos quando, pela primeira vez, foi apreciada como uma única instituição – após o processo de fusão com a Técnica de Lisboa. Desta feita, aparece entre o 151º e o 200º lugar, melhorando em relação ao ano passado, em que aparecia no intervalo 201º-300º. A lista de Xangai só discrimina as posições das instituições até ao centésimo lugar. A partir daí, as instituições aparecem colocadas em grandes intervalos. https://www.publico.pt/…/mais-duas-universidades-nacionais-… 2 – From Burmese Dissident to Mystifying Politician (Shirin Ebadi) I’m sure it is a responsibility that my fellow Nobel peace laureate—a woman who was under house arrest off and on for more than two decades—takes very seriously. Yet those of us who spoke up for Aung San Suu Kyi those many years when her human rights were being violated—including His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu—are deeply pained that she won’t extend the same respect for human rights to Burma’s more than one million Rohingya. http://www.wsj.com/…/from-burmese-dissident-to-mystifying-p… 3 – In 2002, Donald Trump Said He Supported Invading Iraq (Andrew Kaczynski) “We still don’t know what Iraq is up to or whether it has the material to build nuclear weapons. I’m no warmonger,” Trump wrote. “But the fact is, if we decide a strike against Iraq is necessary, it is madness not to carry the mission to its conclusion. When we don’t, we have the worst of all worlds: Iraq remains a threat, and now has more incentive than ever to attack us.” https://www.buzzfeed.com/…/in-2002-donald-trump-said-he-sup… 4 – Trump adviser Al Baldasaro: Hillary Clinton should be shot for treason, not assassinated ( Shira Schoenberg ) Baldasaro said his comments were in accordance with U.S. law establishing the death penalty for treason. He suggested that Clinton’s use of a private email server could be considered treasonous.”That’s aiding and abetting the enemy by those emails on letting (out) names of Secret Service special agents, our veterans, on those emails,” Baldasaro said. http://www.masslive.com/…/trump_adviser_al_baldasaro_hil.ht… 5 – Alleged sighting of Farage at German embassy sparks citizenship speculation (Jon Henley) Witte also said she overheard Farage, a prominent campaigner in Britain’s referendum vote to leave the European Union, apologising to an official for not having a particular document with him, saying: “As you might have noticed I’ve been a bit busy lately”. http://www.theguardian.com/…/facebook-post-of-farage-sighti… 6 – How Safe Are We? (John Mueller, Mark Stewart) Are we safer?” might be the most common question asked about terrorism, but it is the wrong one. A better place to begin is with this question: “How safe are we?” https://www.foreignaffairs.com/…/united-states/2016-08-15/h…  

1 – Still in the grip of the Great War (economist.com) “For the first time, but not the last, the organisation and technology of sophisticated industrial societies were seamlessly and lethally joined. The war destroyed empires (some quickly, some more slowly), created fractious new nation-states, gave a sense of identity to the British dominions, forced America to become a world power and led directly to Soviet communism, the rise of Hitler, the second world war and the Holocaust. The turmoil in the Middle East has its roots in the world it spawned. As Fritz Stern, a German-American historian, put it, the conflict was “the first calamity of the 20th century, the calamity from which all other calamities sprang”.” http://www.economist.com/…/21599798-first-world-war-was-def…? fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/ed/stillinthegripofthegreatwar 2 – Questions all Jeremy Corbyn supporters need to answer (Owen Jones) “In the weeks before Corbyn’s victory, I wrote a long detailed suggested strategy for his leadership to follow. Was it all right? No, I am just one flawed human being with my own flawed ideas. I do think it was essentially the right strategy (well duhh, that’s why I wrote it). When it became clear such a strategy was not going to be put into practice, I fell into despondency. The most important advice I could give was that first impressions were critical: most people are not losers like me who take a daily interest in politics. They might look up at their TV sets, see who this new leader of the Labour party is, and if they don’t like what they see: well, a bad first impression is very difficult to shift. If you do not define yourself, you will be defined by your opponents.” https://medium.com/…/questions-all-jeremy-corbyn-supporters… 3 – Why Khizr Khan Is Paul Ryan’s Worst Nightmare (Conor Friedersdorf) “But few expected that his initial comments would be an attack on Khizr Khan’s wife, who stood beside her husband for emotional support but did not herself deliver a speech. “If you look at his wife,” Trump said on ABC, as if it had anything to do with the matter at hand, “she was standing there. She had nothing to say. She probably—maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say. You tell me.” http://www.theatlantic.com/…/why-khizr-khan-is-pau…/493796/…