Saturday, September 01, 2007

Correo de Noticias al 1/08/08 (Día de ¿Informe Presidencial? en México)


http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2007/09/01/index.php?section=opinion&article=002a1edi
Editorial
Desapariciones: agravio histórico
El pasado 28 de agosto, la senadora Rosario Ibarra de Piedra anunció la creación de un nuevo Frente Nacional contra la Represión (FNCR) que será presentado oficialmente el próximo 2 de octubre, y cuya demanda principal será el esclarecimiento del centenar de desapariciones forzadas que, según la legisladora, han ocurrido durante los últimos siete años: 65 durante el gobierno de Vicente Fox y más de 30 en la actual administración. Entre las organizaciones que integrarán dicho frente destacan la Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (APPO), el Frente de Pueblos en Defensa de la Tierra de San Salvador Atenco, la Coordinadora Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación (CNTE) y el Comité Eureka.

Desfiladero
Jaime Avilés
jamastu@gmail.com
Mexicanos al grito de Wal-Mart
Televisa tomará el Zócalo el 15 con sus estrellas
Propuesta: que los chuchos devuelvan sus curules
Mandoki llama a una rueda de prensa urgente
Si Vicente Fox afirmaba que su gobierno era “de empresarios, por empresarios y para empresarios”, los senadores y diputados de los tres grandes partidos de México podrían decir que su reforma electoral es “de legisladores, por legisladores y para legisladores”. Muy bien comprenden que si no limpian los escombros del instituto y del tribunal electoral devastados por el golpe del 2 de julio, los comicios de 2009 no tendrán legitimidad y por lo tanto su carrera parlamentaria se irá al demonio.

http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2007/09/01/index.php?section=opinion&article=014o1pol
Los de Abajo
Gloria Muñoz Ramírez
losylasdeabajo@yahoo.com.mx
Ser indio es un delito
Dos heridos de bala, seis presos, más de 30 desalojados, amenazas, persecuciones, heridos y desaparecidos, es el saldo de un mes de hostigamiento gubernamental federal y estatal (militar, paramilitar, policiaco y judicial) en las comunidades indígenas de Chiapas, particularmente en las regiones autónomas zapatistas.

http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2007/09/01/index.php?section=opinion&article=021a1eco
Silvia Ribeiro*
Maíz transgénico y descampesinización
Pese al claro rechazo al maíz transgénico por parte de la gran mayoría de la población, las trasnacionales que controlan el negocio siguen presionando para que se aprueben estos granos en México. Para ello prueban nuevas trampas y mentiras, a ver si alguna resulta. Si no, intentarán otros métodos, como hicieron para lograr que el Congreso apruebe una ley de bioseguridad (la Ley Monsanto) y luego una de certificación y comercialización de semillas, totalmente a su favor y en contra de los intereses nacionales.

http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2160297,00.html
Liquidity crisis
£800m hedge fund bail-out adds to City's jitters over Barclays
Richard Wray and Ashley Seager
Saturday September 1, 2007
The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2160384,00.html
British army chief attacks US as 'intellectually bankrupt' over Iraq
Peter Richards
Saturday September 1, 2007
The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2160170,00.html
Death and desolation after the inferno on road from Artemida
People of the Peloponnese lost relatives, homes and livelihoods in worst disaster for decades to hit their picturesque land
Helena Smith in Athens
Saturday September 1, 2007
The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/sep/01/foodanddrink.ethicalliving

Britons hungrier than ever for organic fare, but rising prices leave bitter taste
.Burgeoning UK market is third largest in Europe
.Popularity of veggie boxes takes industry by surprise
* John Vidal, environment editor
* The Guardian
* Saturday September 1 2007

http://www.guardian.co.uk/slideshow/page/0,,2155027,00.html
Audio slideshow: Poisoned chalice
Oil has been found in the Amazon region of northern Ecuador, but for local residents the discovery has brought problems as well as benefits. Rory Carroll talks to them about living alongside a rapidly developing industry.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/forward2007/story/0,,2159958,00.html
Rhyme and treason
Richard Lea listens as Malawian poet Jack Mapanje tells stories of being imprisoned without charge, the slave trade and hitchhikers on the A59
Friday August 31, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/6973605.stm
New Chinese rules on Dalai Lama
By Michael Bristow
BBC News, Beijing
Communist China has introduced new rules that appear aimed at controlling the selection of the next Dalai Lama, Tibetan Buddhism's spiritual head.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6972901.stm
Chavez to meet Colombian rebels
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has agreed to invite Colombian rebels to discuss a hostage release deal.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/6971651.stm
Brown and Sarkozy in Darfur vow
Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have called for intense action to secure a ceasefire in Darfur.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6970067.stm
Mafia suspects arrested in Italy
Police in southern Italy have arrested more than 30 suspected members of rival Mafia gangs which are linked to the killing of six Italian men in Germany.


http://www.proceso.com.mx/noticia.html?sec=2&nta=53558&nsec=Estados
Asesinada, consejera de Seguridad Pública de Tamaulipas
gabriela hernández
Ciudad Victoria, Tamps., 31 de agosto (apro).- La consejera de la Secretaría de Seguridad Pública de Tamaulipas, Socorro Saleh Mata, apareció asesinada la tarde de este viernes en su casa.

http://www.proceso.com.mx/noticia.html?sec=0&nta=53553
Recupera el gobierno “espacios en poder del narco”
ricardo ravelo
* A unas horas del Informe, el gabinete de Seguridad adelanta reporte
México, D.F., 31 de agosto (apro).- En un hecho sin precedente, el gabinete de seguridad --integrado por los titulares de Gobernación, Marina, Defensa, SSP y PGR-- rindió un prolijo informe de lo que cada entidad ha realizado en la guerra contra el narcotráfico durante los primeros nueve meses de la gestión de Felipe Calderón.

http://www.proceso.com.mx/noticia.html?sec=7&nta=53538&nsec=Cultura+y+Espect%E1culos
México sería otro país si la gente supiera de poesía lo que sabe de fútbol: José Emilio Pacheco
de la redacción
México, D.F., 31 de agosto (apro).- El poeta y escritor, José Emilio Pacheco, afirmó hoy que México sería otro país si las personas supieran de poesía un poquito de lo que saben de futbol.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/01/world/middleeast/01haditha.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin
At Marines’ Hearing, Testament to ViolenceBy PAUL von ZIELBAUER
Published: September 1, 2007
CAMP PENDLETON, Calif., Aug. 31 — A Marine sergeant offered gruesome testimony on Friday against a former squad leader charged with killing 17 Iraqi civilians in Haditha nearly two years ago, suggesting that the defendant, Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, was predisposed to the violence, carried it out ruthlessly and sought to cover it up.

http://www.newstatesman.com/200708300009
Politics
Guns - where are they all coming from?
Martin Bright
Published 30 August 2007
The Conservatives blame Labour for the rise of armed violence. But, as Martin Bright reports, Merseyside's problems can be traced back to a disastrous decision by a former Tory home secretary

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/31/1435243
New FBI Network Allows Instant Wiretaps on Any Communication Device
Wired Magazine is reporting the FBI has quietly built a sophisticated, point-and-click surveillance system that performs instant wiretaps on almost any private communications device. The network allows an FBI agent in New York to remotely set up a wiretap on a cell phone based in Sacramento, California. This would allow the FBI agent to immediately learn the phone's location, then begin receiving conversations, text messages and voicemail pass codes in New York. The surveillance system is called the Digital Collection System Network. It connects FBI wiretapping rooms to switches controlled by traditional land-line operators, internet providers and cellular companies. Experts say the system is far more intricately woven into the nation's telecom infrastructure than previously suspected.

http://www.poresto.net/content/view/14933/1/
Paro nacional
sábado, 01 de septiembre de 2007
Miembros de la Alianza de Tranviarios y trabajadores de la Escuela Secundaria 54 se manifestaron ayer frente a las oficinas de la SEP en la Av. Cuahutemoc, casi con Eje 7 Sur, en el D.F. (Cuartoscuro)

http://www.repubblica.it/2007/09/sezioni/cronaca/confindustria-pizzo/confindustria-pizzo/confindustria-pizzo.html
Deciso dagli industriali siciliani dopo le intimidazioni. Di Pietro d'accordo: ma valga anche per le tangenti
Invocato l'intervento dell'esercito. Mastella: "Sul problema è aperta una discussione"
Confindustria, mossa contro il racket
Espulsione per chi paga il pizzo
L'esecutivo esprime solidarietà agli imprenditori minacciati
Montezemolo telefona al ministro dell'Interno Amato

http://www.repubblica.it/2007/07/sezioni/cronaca/immigrati/capopassero/capopassero.html
Un barcone con 18 immigrati a bordo si è rovesciato nella notte
14 le persone salvate dalla Guardia di finanza. Altri 29 sbarcati a Pozzallo
Naufragio a largo di Siracusa
un morto e tre dispersi


http://www.repubblica.it/2007/08/speciale/altri/2007letteratura/macchiavelli/macchiavelli.html
L'autore del "Principe" scrisse con i registri della scienza e dell'invenzione letteraria
e precorse Galilei per aver scrutato la politica come problemi da sezionare ed analizzare
L'arte politica di Niccolò Machiavelli
nel clima della creatività rinascimentale
Francesco Guicciardini in una lettera del l521 definì l'amico
"extravagante di opinione dalle commune et inventore di cose nuove et insolite"
di LUCIO VILLARI

http://www.corriere.it/Primo_Piano/Cinema/Venezia2007/articoli/ken_loach_precariato.shtml
Applausi per “It’s a free world” alla proiezione per la stampa
Ken Loach, il precariato visto dai padroni
Presentato a Venezia il film del regista britannico: «Lavoratori schiacciati dalla logica del business e del profitto»

http://www.corriere.it/Primo_Piano/Scienze_e_Tecnologie/2007/08_Agosto/31/asteroidi_caprara.shtml
Ma c'è anche chi pensa di far sparare un razzo da una sonda
Così salvaremo la Terra dagli asteroidi
Le principali ipotesi allo studio prevedono, fra l'altro, un trattore gravitazionale e un'esplosione nucleare per cambiarne l'orbita




http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article2917360.ece

The summer that was every bit as bad for wildlife as the coldest winter
By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
Published: 01 September 2007

Some of Britain's most endangered creatures were dealt devastating blows by the monsoon summer which ended yesterday.

The effect on wildlife of the weeks of incessant rain and the unprecedented floods which followed was so acute that some species are likely to have suffered local extinctions – and isolated populations may never be able to be re-established.

From water voles to swallowtails, from partridges to bumblebees, species which are rare, declining or even just grimly hanging on suffered catastrophic losses, especially of their young, right across the country.

When the full picture is eventually assessed, Britain's wettest summer on record may be found to have had an effect as damaging as the 20th century's worst winter, 1963 – when millions of wild creatures died in a landscape that was snowbound for two-and-a-half months, and some species, such as the Dartford warbler, were brought to the brink of extinction in the country as a whole.

It is far too soon for a full statistical picture of summer 2007 to emerge, and the evidence of what has happened to wildlife is largely anecdotal – but the anecdotes are all pointing in the same direction.

Take birds, and one of Britain's rarest species, the bittern – the brown, long-legged relative of the grey heron which nests in the reedbeds of East Anglia.

Bitterns are counted by the number of males that are "booming" – making the low, far-carrying call that attracts the female. Within the past 20 years there were as few as 11 booming males in all of the country, but strenuous conservation efforts had this spring brought that up to more than 50.

Then disaster struck. After 2007's wonderfully warm April, cold and rain swept in during the early May Bank Holiday weekend. At Minsmere, the flagship reserve of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in Suffolk, five bittern nests were washed away, and the young birds died in the low temperatures. "It was cold and wet right across the bittern's breeding range," said Mark Avery, the RSPB's director of conservation. "One wet cold weekend dealt a devastating blow to one of Britain's rarest birds."

But it wasn't just bitterns. Two of Britain's most rapidly-declining farmland birds, the lapwing and the grey partridge, have also suffered terribly from the washout summer. Paradoxically, the lapwings were hard hit by the hot April, because the dried ground was too hard for them to dig out the invertebrates to feed their chicks. But then they were dealt a double whammy by the downpours which followed, and when rivers such as the Severn burst their banks in areas such as Gloucestershire, many nests in the riverside meadows were washed away and the chicks drowned.

The effect of the cold and wet on the grey partridge, which from being a common and familiar bird has declined by nearly 90 per cent in Britain as a whole and is now extinct in many parts of the countryside, was so lamentable that the Game Conservancy Trust issued a special warning notice about what had happened. "Urgent conservation action needs to be taken by all those with a responsibility for managing the British countryside," it said.

As with birds, so with mammals, and what may seem at first sight to be a curious victim of a wet summer – the water vole. Ratty of The Wind in the Willows was once common but now, because of the depredations of wild American mink, is our most endangered wild animal. The swollen river levels are thought to have drowned many water voles in their burrows.

But the toll taken may be locally very high, according to Brian Eversham, of the Bedfordshire Wildlife Trust. "It's because many of the water vole populations are now small and isolated," Mr Eversham said. "If they are wiped out in an area, there may well be no other nearby population to recolonise it." Perhaps the worst-affected wildlife sector of all this summer has been invertebrates, comprising insects, spiders, worms and other creepy-crawlies. The warmth of April gave butterflies in particular a fantastic start – 11 British species recorded their earliest-ever emergence dates – but the deluges and cold that followed did real damage.

Britain's most spectacular species, the rare swallowtail, appears to have had a very poor breeding year in its only home, the Norfolk Broads, where flooding has reduced the availability of the insect's food plant, milk parsley, and also appears to have drowned many caterpillars. But other uncommon species have also suffered badly, such as the Duke of Burgundy, where in some areas it was raining for its entire month-long flight period – meaning mating is much less likely to take place.


http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article2901009.ece

Extreme conditions: What's happening to our weather?
This summer is set to be the wettest ever. It's the latest in a series of broken records which suggest climate change is here already.
By Michael McCarthy
Published: 28 August 2007

Britain is just a few showers away from recording a record wet summer, at the climax of the most remarkable period of broken weather records in the country's history. All of the smashed records are to do with temperature and rainfall - the two aspects of the climate most likely to be intensified by the advent of global warming.

While no specific event can be ascribed directly to climate change, the sequence of events is strongly suggestive of a climate that is now unmistakably altering before our eyes.

Furthermore, the pattern of increasing heat and wet weather has been visible in the same period all around the globe, with temperature and rainfall records broken in many other countries, from Australia (record drought) and India (record monsoon rains) to Greece (record forest fires).

Yet in the UK alone, in the past 14 months we have experienced the hottest July, the hottest April and the wettest June since records began. We have seen the hottest autumn and the hottest spring, and the second-hottest winter. We have also seen the hottest single month, and - by a considerable margin - the hottest single 12-month period.

Now we are on the brink of seeing the soggiest British summer as a whole - defined as June, July and August - since records were first kept for the United Kingdom in 1914. By Friday morning of last week, the average rainfall in Britain since the beginning of June was 356.6mm - just over 14 inches - and nudging up to the record of 358.4mm, set in 1956. It is increasingly likely a new record will be set if there is any significant rainfall between now and Saturday.

Even if there is none, summer 2007 has already passed the second-wettest summer mark (which previously was 1985, with a rainfall of 342.7mm). And the three months from May to July have easily broken the record for rainfall for that period.

The significance of these records is that they are actually occurring in the real world - rather than in the forecasts generated by computer mathematical models of the global climate.

That marks a major shift. For the initial decade of the climate change problem (from the first report of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1990), the effects of global warming, such as extreme heatwaves and downpours, were seen as future events which the climate models predicted. They were thus much easier for sceptics to dismiss.

But, in recent years, extreme and record-breaking real events, entirely consistent with global warming predictions, have started to mount up - beginning with the remarkable heatwave of August 2003, which caused 35,000 excess deaths in France and northern central Europe.

That episode, the first event whose severity was ascribed by scientists directly to climate change, only just caught Britain with its edge.

But even so, it broke the UK's air temperature record on 10 August 2003, pushing it for the first-time ever over 100F, to 101.3F, or 38.5C. The previous record (set in 1990) was 98.8F or 37.1C. Thus the jump to the new record was 2.5F, or 1.4C - an absolutely enormous leap.

Some of the records of the past 14 months which we detail today are of similar astonishing dimensions. In particular, April 2007 and the summer just ended produced quite unprecedented weather for Britain - with quite unprecedented effects.

April was so warm (contributing to the warmest spring on record) that the natural world was put completely out of sync: swifts arrived (from Africa) a month early, as did the hawthorn flowers - known as May - which prompted suggestions they should be renamed April blossom.

And summer was so wet that it produced the worst flooding Britain has ever seen - with the two catastrophic "extreme rainfall events" of 24 June and 24 and 20 July, which did the damage, each being of a severity likely only once in 200 years, or even longer.

The climate has a natural variability which means that extreme weather has always occurred throughout the years. But the occurrence of all these extremes together, in such a short period, suggests that we are witnessing something quite new in the climate of Britain.

The 2nd hottest winter

The winter of 2006-07 (counted as December, January and February) was the warmest on record in the northern hemisphere since records began in 1860, according to US scientists; in Britain it was the second-warmest since records for the whole country began in 1914. It had some perverse effects, especially on the UK's hedgehogs, which were fooled by the warmth into having extra litters, thinking it was still early autumn; the young then died when the cold finally did arrive because they had had insufficient time to put on weight for hibernation, said the British Hedgehog Preservation Society.

The hottest April

The creamy-white flowers of the hawthorn bush have, for centuries, been an infallible sign in England that the month of May has arrived - the average date was about 11 May - but in April 2007, such were the astonishingly high temperatures, they came out three weeks early. April this year became - in effect - the new May. Swifts arrived back from Africa in the middle of the month, when they would normally get here at about the end of May's first week. The month was also the hottest April ever recorded in Britain.

(Almost) the wettest summer

The rainfall of this summer has been unprecedented. We are a few millimetres away from a record, taking summer as June, July and August, but the record for the period May, June and July has already been smashed. The floods that this summer's rain caused were the worst in recorded British history and caused perhaps £3bn worth of damage, leaving more than a third of a million people without drinking water, nearly 50,000 people without power and thousands more homeless. At the height of the flooding, scientists announced that a link between global warming and rainfall patterns in recent decades had been established for the first time.

April's scarcely-believable warmth turned spring 2007 (defined as March, April, and May) into the hottest on record. Perhaps the most remarkable visible effect of this in the natural world was the emergence of British butterflies: no fewer than 11 species broke their records for early appearances. The chalkhill blue, for example, was seen in Sussex on 16 May; normally it would appear in the first week of July. The speckled wood, normally visible at the end of March, was seen in Cornwall on 16 January, seven weeks early.

The wettest June

It started to rain heavily in the second half of May but, in June, the downpours really got into their stride, culminating in the "extreme rainfall event" of 24 June, which was so heavy in parts of the North of England that it brought catastrophic flooding to places where they were entirely unexpected, such as Doncaster and Hull, and began the disturbing flood summer (counties bordering the river Severn had their turn in July). With rainfall in some areas more than 250 per cent above normal, it was the wettest June in UK Met Office records.

The hottest month

July 2006 gave us a heatwave that produced temperatures not seen since August 2003, when the UK's air temperature record was broken. It reached a peak on 19 July when the temperature at Wisley, Surrey, hit 36.5C, or 97.7F, beating a record that had lasted since 1911; some thought the all-time record would be broken. But even though the peak of 10 August, 2003, was not reached (101. 3F, or 38.5C) the month taken as a whole was the hottest ever recorded in Britain.

The hottest autumn

Autumn in 2006 was a golden time, with its astonishing warmth extending through September and October into late November, when cherry trees were in blossom in Devon, and raspberries were fruiting in Northumberland. It broke the seasonal record for Britain with its mean temperature for the three months of 12.6C (or 54.6F). Perhaps the most remarkable example of the exceptional season was that holly berries were fruiting in mid-October, six weeks early- prompting fears there would be none left for Christmas.

The hottest single 12 months

At the end of April this year, the Met Office announced the previous 12 months, taken together (the end of April 2006 to the end of April 2007), had been the hottest 12 months ever to have occurred in Britain, with a provisional mean temperature of 10.4C. The previous record (March 1997 to April 1998) was 9.7C. That leap of nearly three-quarters of a degree is huge and should make everybody consider whether a major shift in Britain's climate is now becoming visible. It is by no means unreasonable to answer that question with a "yes".


http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2917333.ece

FBI spied on King's widow for years
By Jen Wainwright
Published: 01 September 2007

Newly released documents show that FBI agents spied on the widow of Martin Luther King for several years after he was shot dead in 1968.

The documents, which include an intercepted letter written by Coretta Scott King and various memos sent to FBI headquarters, reveal federal agents' fears that Ms Scott King would continue the work of her late husband. That she could try "to tie the anti-Vietnam movement to the civil rights movement" was of particular concern.

After tailing her movements for four years, the government closed its file on Coretta Scott King with a statement that "no information has come to the attention of Atlanta which indicates a propensity for violence or affiliation of subversive elements."

For those closely connected with Martin Luther King, the leading light of the civil rights movement, the close surveillance of his widow comes as no great shock. The Rev Joseph Lowery, former president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (which he co-founded with King in 1957), said: "The FBI kept a microphone everywhere they could where the SCLC was concerned."

J Edgar Hoover, the FBI director at the time, "hated Martin Luther King and everything that the SCLC stood for," Mr Lowery added.

A lieutenant of King's, Andrew Young, has expressed rather more surprise at the actions of the government agency, saying that Coretta Scott King had "the makings of a saint". "I don't know what they were expecting to find," he said.


http://news.independent.co.uk/sci_tech/article2917344.ece

Facebook takes protest into whole new world
By Emily Dugan
Published: 01 September 2007

Social networking has taken on a radical new edge after a Facebook campaign forced HSBC bank to reverse plans to cancel interest-free overdrafts to new graduates.

A raft of new protest zones have been rolled out on the site as grassroots social and political groups discover that they have a potent new weapon at their disposal.

No longer do eco-warriors have to rely solely on sit-ins and protests. Anti-poverty campaigners now have a platform that allows them to constantly update their message. And local activists can tackle issues such as supermarket expansion plans without leaving their living rooms. Today's revolts are mounted from the mousepad.

Recent groups established on Facebook have shown that the networking site is losing its vacuous image, with users keen to flex their political muscle.

HSBC this week announced it was "not too big to listen to the needs of customers", after thousands of Facebookers signed up daily to the site "Stop the Great HSBC Graduate Rip-Off". Students across the country had been calling for a boycott of the bank. The U-turn comes as a warning sign to other institutions, governments, organisations and individuals. For now virtually no issue goes unnoticed on social networking sites.

Appeals to save local services coexist with campaigns for human rights and appeals for the return of Madeleine McCann.

Ben Allen, 26, who runs a Facebook group which campaigned to save a section of Camden Market from being replaced with a purpose-built complex containing chain stores, said that he thought the web was empowering people who would not ordinarily protest.

"It makes it easier for those who were never going to take to the streets, and empowers people to vote with their clicks rather than their feet," he explained.

Like many Facebook activists, Mr Allen is part of the generation for whom protesting has been a relatively alien concept. "I'm no Che Guevara", said the music PR, "I've never actually been to a protest, but networking sites make it easier. At its peak my group had more than 20,000 members, and that's because its so much easier just to click to support a cause".

Steve Huff, an American networking site expert, said the phenomenon has been noticeable on the other side of the Atlantic for some time. "It's a trend that I've noticed over here especially in the last year, where people all over the country form online groups to campaign for a single issue", he said. "I'm not sure yet that they do achieve change", said Mr Huff, "but I would like to think that something can be achieved, if only in establishing a connection between people."

While the majority of Facebook groups, such as "the biggest group hug", or the popular "petition to revoke the independence of the United States of America", are still fairly pointless, serious campaigns for social issues are on the rise.

But, in a sign that Facebook is not likely to shake its navel-gazing image, its most popular campaigning group yet is the one to keep the site going. Formed during a lawsuit against the site's founders, it attracted more than a million members.

The campaigns

* "Please help! They're trying to knock down Camden Market!!!" – 18,776 members. One of several that sprang up after Camden council published plans to demolish a portion of the Victorian stables in favour of a mall-style complex. Planning permission has been granted, but members have been encouraged to write to No 10.

* "Save the British Library!" – 2,321 members. This group sprang up following the Government's consideration of funding cuts to the library. A link to an online petition shows almost all members have signed in disapproval. The group has been running since January, but there are several others dedicated to keeping membership free.

* "Object to the Tesco depot" – 416 members. Plans to build a Tesco warehouse the size of Heathrow's proposed Terminal 5 in rural Hampshire, near Andover, have angered the local community. With a link to a local council petition, the group urges users to complain directly to the council.

* "Against Dublin Dog Ban" – 83 members. After 11 breeds of dogs that were considered a public danger were banned from housing estates in Dublin, this local group was formed to petition Dublin City Council to revoke the decision. The banned species category included bull terriers and alsatians.

Friday, August 31, 2007

Correo de Noticias al 31/08/07


http://www.corriere.it/Primo_Piano/Economia/2007/08_Agosto/31/mutui_bush.shtml

Per sostenere il maggior numero di proprietari di casa
Crisi dei mutui, pronto il piano di Bush
Si tratterà di un prospetto di riforma del programma di assicurazione della Federal Housing Administration


http://www.corriere.it/Primo_Piano/Sport/2007/08_Agosto/30/sorteggi_champions.shtml

Il verdetto delle urne di Montecarlo che fissa i gironi della prima fase
Champions: bene il sorteggio per le italiane
Milan con il Benfica, Inter con il Psv Eindhoven, la Roma ritrova il Manchester United, la Lazio gioca con il Real Madrid


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6971370.stm

2007 'probably wettest UK summer'

Torrential rain across the UK is likely to mean the summer of 2007 becomes the wettest since rainfall records began in 1914, Met Office figures suggest.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6971652.stm

Bomb scare at Mexico skyscraper

More than 10,000 people have been evacuated from a skyscraper in Mexico after police found a handmade explosive device in a car parked in the building.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6971564.stm
US targets Colombia traffickers
The US Treasury has frozen the assets of four Colombian paramilitary members, accusing them of drug trafficking.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6896056.stm
Drugs scourge takes hold in Argentina
By Daniel Schweimler
BBC News, Buenos Aires
Whichever figures you read, they're alarming.
The United Nations says the increase in the use of cocaine paste, or paco, in Argentina has risen by 200% in the past couple of years. Other agencies put the figure as high as 500%.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6970643.stm
US economy receives growth boost
The US economy grew at an annual rate of 4% in the second quarter, a better performance than first thought.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6969703.stm
Scandal-hit senator urged to quit
A US Republican senator who pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct after his arrest in a men's toilet has come under increasing pressure to resign.

http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2159625,00.html
Barclays admits borrowing hundreds of millions at Bank's emergency rate
· 'Technical breakdown' in clearing system blamed
· Pound falls as news swirls around money markets
Ashley Seager, Larry Elliott and Julia Kollewe
Friday August 31, 2007
The Guardian

http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2159631,00.html
UK bosses: are they worth the money?
· Evidence scant that big salaries stop brain drain
· British managers 'are not in the premier league'
Mark Milner and Ashley Seager
Friday August 31, 2007
The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/aug/31/climatechange.food
Global food crisis looms as climate change and population growth strip fertile land
. 'Ignorance, need and greed' depleting soil
. Experts warn competition will lead to conflict

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2159579,00.html
Why sci-fi still has a future
Ridley Scott thinks sci-fi films have entered a black hole. Maybe he's not watching the right ones, says Paul Howlett
Friday August 31, 2007
The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2159582,00.html
What next for the sexual revolution?
Critics say that third-wave feminism has failed the generation of women who have grown up in its wake, but that's simply not true, argues Deborah Siegel
Friday August 31, 2007
The Guardian

Thursday, August 30, 2007

The importance of doubt


John Cornwell struggled with his faith for two decades before finally returning to Christianity. Here he explains why Richard Dawkins, and all those who believe religion is the root of all evil, completely fail to understand what it means to believe



Thursday August 30, 2007
The Guardian


It is a year since Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion prompted a torrent of adulation and anguished riposte. The crucial issue he raised is not so much that religious believers can morph into violent extremists (which they patently can), but what is to be done about it. Dawkins thinks that religion is irrational, because it means accepting truths without logic and evidence; and dangerous, because such systematic irrationality can lead to extreme acts of violence. So hideously irrational and dangerous is the disease of faith, he claims, that faith instruction to the young is worse than paedophile abuse. Dawkins wants to rid the world of religion.

What are the prospects for wiping religion off the face of the earth? Stalin attempted, in vain, to eliminate religionists by working them to death or hanging them. Hitler starved and gassed them. Dawkins wants to eliminate belief with a dollop of science. While his book has no doubt offered encouragement to convinced atheists, there is scant evidence that he is discouraging even the lukewarm believers, let alone enthusiasts. Yet if it is unrealistic to rid the world of religion, surely there is a third, well-tried way, which is to tame religion of its excesses by encouraging believers to respect, and to coexist with, all those they regard as dissidents and heretics, as well as agnostics and atheists. The fact that religionists already do this in vast numbers, in many parts of the world, notably most of Europe and North America, brings us to what I see as not so much a flaw as a vacuum in Dawkins' thinking: he simply does not get the point of pluralist societies under secular auspices. Nor does he credit believers with the capacity to be pluralists and democrats, even though members of the great world religions have contributed to the formation and preservation of pluralism, and resistance to its opposite - totalitarianism - in the modern period. Dawkins' failure to accept that religious believers are capable of respect, a healthy measure of doubt and latitude of imagination, needs examination. But first, here's a believer who had doubt and imagination in abundance.

Not long before his death in 1991, I was sent by a newspaper to Antibes in the south of France to quiz Graham Greene about his religious beliefs. His faith, on the surface, seemed to be a mix of superstition, guilt and scepticism, spiced with Catholic orthodoxy. He thought it only natural to hope for an afterlife, but heaven sounded boring and hell implausible "because God is supposed to be infinitely merciful". And he admitted to uttering a prayer whenever his plane came in to land. He said he had met John Paul II, whom he thought an unpleasant dogmatist, in his dreams: "Instead of dispensing communion wafers he was giving out ornate Italian chocolates."

So which central doctrine, I asked Greene, enabled him to describe himself as a Christian? He said that he started writing fiction while working as a reporter on a provincial newspaper. So he felt he had an intuition, "as good as any Glaswegian chief sub-editor", to distinguish between fact and fiction. When he read the story in John's gospel of the two disciples racing each other to the empty tomb after Christ's body had disappeared, he felt that it was "authentic reportage". It was this, he went on, that "enabled me to doubt my doubt about the resurrection". Doubt my doubt! What is more, he saw the resurrection less as a literal historical fact and more as a powerful symbolic notion that could be reinterpreted from age to age. It was clear that Greene's resistance to dogma, whatever its origins, underpinned his attitude towards politics as well as religion. He was as scathing of the atheistic persecution of religion in Mexico in the 1930s as he was criticial of Franco's campaign, under Catholic auspices, in the Spanish civil war.

As someone who had wavered between agnosticism and atheism for two decades, before having returned queasily to Christianity, I empathised with Greene's faith as "doubt of doubt" as opposed to faith as certitude. Faith is a journey without arrival, complicated by false turns, breakdowns, dead ends and wheel-changes. Faith, like love, is seldom entirely constant; nor is it irrevocable. While frequently assailed by doubt, faith is open to provisional, symbolic interpretations (most Christians outside the American bible belt do not take the book of Genesis literally). Those who pursue a religious vocation are not spared vicissitudes of faith and doubt, any more than card-carrying atheists. Mother Teresa, the Albanian nun who worked for the poor in Calcutta, left letters in which she spoke of her doubts right up to her death: "Where is my faith?" she once wrote to a confidant. "Even deep down ... there is nothing but emptiness and darkness. If there be a God - please forgive me." By the same token, Professor AJ Ayer, the most ardent atheist of his day, proclaimed that he believed in an afterlife following a near-death experience in 1988 when he was clinically dead for four minutes. After a few days, and an outcry from the atheists' society, of which he was the president, he partially recanted: "What I should have said is that my experiences have weakened, not my belief that there is no life after death, but my attitude towards that belief." Doubt of doubt.

And yet, Dawkins is as reluctant as any evangelical fundamentalist to recognise the importance of an element of doubt, or doubt of doubt, in religious faith, or to accept that much of the content of religious faith is metaphorical, poetic and symbolic rather than factual in a scientific sense. He is convinced that faith is in all circumstances absolute, seamless, literal. This implausible understanding of what it means to believe gives his case against religion its sensationalist, emotive edge; by the same token it robs his solution - what do we do about extremism? - of any feasibility.

Dawkins nourishes a disturbing contempt for religious believers. Here are some of the descriptions he applies to them: "malevolent ... vicious, sadomasochistic and repellent ... dodgy, perniciously delusional ... sanctimoniously hypocritical ... cockeyed ... " At the heart of his book, he makes a distinction between what he calls "mild religion" and "extreme religion". But both, he maintains, are equally capable of prompting acts of extremism, such as suicide bombing, in religion's name. "The take-home message," he writes, "is that we should blame religion itself, not religious extremism - as if there were some kind of terrible perversion of real, decent religion." Then he asserts: "I do everything in my power to warn people against faith itself, not just against so-called 'extremist' faith. The teachings of 'moderate' religion, though not extremist in themselves, are an open invitation to extremism."

Through the excited syntax he is declaring that if you go to church, synagogue, mosque or temple only once a year, you are just as liable to perpetrate fanatical deeds on the basis of faith as an al-Qaida terrorist. Faith, mild or extreme, is a mental state, Dawkins argues, that involves an open invitation to hatred and violence.

While religious belief may be sufficient to explain some extreme acts, it does not explain all extreme acts. Fundamentalism is as likely to be found in the qualitative conclusions of science as in religion. Under Hitler, it was the science-based ideology of racial hygiene that led to the first concentration camps - based on the recommendation that certain groups were in need of quarantine. Stalin's ideology saw the implementation of socio-biological principles based on Lamarck - the inheritance of acquired characteristics - legitimising strategies of enforced collectivisation of agricultural labour, and ruinous systems of agricultural production. Biologists who refused to believe in the inheritance of acquired characteristics landed in jail. It is not religion alone and of itself that leads to fundamentalism and its social consequences, but an insistence from any ideological source that only one set of convictions should prevail.

The oppression and violence that invariably attends fundamentalism and totalitarianism, whatever its origins, are precisely the result of a withdrawal of respect for the nay-sayers, dissidents and heretics. The Catholic church was patently capable of oppression of heretics in countries where Catholicism had a monopoly, right up to the papacy of John XXIII. It was Pope John who in 1960 insisted, even in the case of Soviet communism, that "one should respect the person even if one does not respect his or her convictions". The very last decision of the reforming Second Vatican Council, which Pope John initiated in 1962, approved a crucial and unprecedented document on religious freedom, insisting on the basic human right of all to hold values and beliefs of their own choosing. One is perfectly entitled to proclaim: "Well, better late than never!" But it shows that even the most dogmatic of the world's religions, if encouraged, can discover a latent propensity towards pluralism in the ideal of non-judgmental universal love.

Dawkins claims, however, that religious believers deserve neither respect nor rights in any circumstances. One of his constant explanations for the spread and lethal nature of religion is based on the idea of cultural traits transmitted by what he calls "memes", items of information that behave like viruses. He writes of those "afflicted with the mental virus of faith, and its accompanying gang of secondary infections". The idea of religious believers as disease carriers is not trivial, for it suggests a contrast between the disease and the theoretically healthy body of society, along with the necessity for antidotes.

Religious memes, he writes, go around together from brain to brain in mutually compatible gangs: "These gangs will come to constitute a package, which may be sufficiently stable to deserve a collective name such as Roman Catholicism ... it doesn't much matter whether we analogise the whole package to a single virus." The shocking aspect of this notion is its depersonalisation, reinforced in an alarming chapter which claims that Jews, and indeed Jesus Christ, did not teach love thy neighbour as thyself and that the 10 commandments - including thou shalt not kill - applied only within the Jewish group.

Dawkins parallels his viral analogies, moreover, with sinister medical analogies. "In the history of the spread of faith," he writes, "you will find little else but epidemiology and causal epidemiology at that." He refers to believers as "faith sufferers", and to himself and like-minded associates as "we doctors". Much as I am convinced that Dawkins deplores the ideology of nazism, the precedents of such medical analogies, applied to certain religious and racial groups, have hardly been innocuous in the history of the 20th century.

Nazi ideology subscribed from the very outset to the idea of the German people as a type of anatomy subject to bacilli. It harped on the introduction of undesirable extraneous influences on the healthy societal body, the Volkskorper, behaving like pathogens; analogies of cures, surgery and purging naturally followed. As early as 1925 Hitler lamented the fact that the state did not have the means to "master the disease" that was penetrating the "bloodstream of our people unhindered". Such ideas, bogus as they were pernicious, referred to the leadership as "healers". By the mid-1930s the ideological bio-political content of nazism merged with Nazi medical science. The Nazi plenipotentiary Dr Gerhard Wagner wrote of the volkisch body being in need of "cleansing", while the language of "immunity" and "radical therapy" became routine.

Dawkins' recourse to the analogies of disease and medicine is, of course, entirely well meant, and I know him to be a man of the most liberal sympathies, but has he considered the far-reaching consequences of similar metaphors employed by far less well-meaning figures? It was only to be expected that a bold thesis that condemned religion en masse would have profound socio-political implications. Dawkins is a brilliant natural historian, whose science books I have celebrated in a string of reviews. The God Delusion has been criticised for trespassing clumsily in the realms of theology; but my own objections are more in the ambit of socio-politics. Put bluntly, The God Delusion is liable to persuade religious fundamentalists that a pluralist secular society is every bit as hostile to the practice of faith as they ever thought it to be. By urging the elimination of religion in the name of all that civil society holds dear, Dawkins is inviting fundamentalists to be even more fundamentalist. His book, then, is a counsel of despair as well as an incitement to the very thing he deplores and seeks to remedy.

· John Cornwell is director of the Science and Human Dimension Project at Jesus College, Cambridge. His book Darwin's Angel: An Angelic Riposte to the God Delusion is published in hardback by Profile on September 6, priced £9.99.




Martin Luther King (1929 - 1968)

Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King ©

King was an American clergymen, Nobel Peace Prize winner and one of the principal leaders of the American civil rights movements.

King was born on 15 January 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. His father was a Baptist minister, his mother a schoolteacher. Originally named Michael, he was later renamed Martin. He entered Morehouse College in 1944 and then went to Crozer Religious Seminary to undertake postgraduate study, receiving his doctorate in 1955.

Returning to the South to become pastor of a Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, King first achieved national renown when he helped mobilise the black boycott of the Montgomery bus system in 1955. This was organised after Rosa Parks, a black woman, refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white man - in the segregated south, black people could only sit at the back of the bus. The 382-day boycott led the bus company to change its regulations, and the supreme court declared such segregation unconstitutional.

In 1957 King was active in the organisation of the Southern Leadership Christian Conference (SCLC), formed to co-ordinate protests against discrimination. He advocated non-violent direct action based on the methods of Gandhi, who led protests against British rule in India culminating in India's independence in 1947.

In 1963, King led mass protests against discriminatory practices in Birmingham, Alabama where the white population were violently resisting desegregation. The city was dubbed 'Bombingham' as attacks against civil rights protesters increased, and King was arrested and jailed for his part in the protests.

After his release, King participated in the enormous civil rights march on Washington in August 1963, and delivered his famous 'I have a dream' speech, predicting a day when the promise of freedom and equality for all would become a reality in America. In 1964 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1965, he led a campaign to register blacks to vote. The same year the US Congress passed the Voting Rights Act outlawing the discriminatory practices that had barred blacks from voting in the south.

As the civil rights movement became increasingly radicalised, King found that his message of peaceful protest was not shared by many in the younger generation. King began to protest against the Vietnam war and poverty levels in the US. He was assassinated on 4 April 1968 during a visit to Memphis, Tennessee.


Papa: «Piromani, criminali contro l'umanità»
Benedetto XVI condanna duramente le «azioni criminose» di coloro che accendono incendi



Piromani_Criminali_Papa_Corriere


E invita a pregare per le vittime
Papa: «Piromani, criminali contro l'umanità»
Benedetto XVI condanna duramente le «azioni criminose» di coloro che accendono incendi
STRUMENTI
ROMA - Benedetto XVI condanna duramente le «azioni criminose» dei piromani, che con il loro «irresponsabile comportamento» «mettono a rischio l'incolumità delle persone e distruggono il patrimonio ambientale, bene prezioso dell'intera umanità». Il pontefice condanna gli atti criminali ma si esprime con toni pacati, molto diversi da quelli del vescovo di Locri, monsignor Bregantini che aveva addirittura auspicato la scomunica per i piromani. Il Papa ne ha parlato in un appello al termine dell'udienza generale, in cui ha invitato «a pregare per le vittime» sia delle inondazioni in Asia che dei «disastrosi incendi in Grecia, in Italia e in altre nazioni europee».

PREOCCUPAZIONE - «In questi giorni - ha detto il Papa ai fedeli riuniti in Piazza San Pietro -, alcune regioni geografiche sono devastate da gravi calamità: mi riferisco alle inondazioni in alcuni Paesi orientali, come pure ai disastrosi incendi in Grecia, in Italia e in altre nazioni europee». «Davanti a così drammatiche emergenze - ha aggiunto, interrotto dall'applauso della folla -, che hanno causato numerose vittime e ingenti danni materiali, non si può non essere preoccupati per l'irresponsabile comportamento di taluni che mettono a rischio l'incolumità delle persone e distruggono il patrimonio ambientale, bene prezioso dell'intera umanità». «Mi unisco - ha concluso Benedetto XVI - a quanti giustamente stigmatizzano tali azioni criminose e invito tutti a pregare per le vittime di queste tragedie».

30 agosto 2007



... We didn't start the fire.




Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Land that was once used to grow food is increasingly being turned over to biofuels. This may help us to fight global warming - but it is driving up food prices throughout the world and making life increasingly hard in developing countries. Add in water shortages, natural disasters and an ever-rising population, and what you have is a recipe for disaster. John Vidal reports

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2157823,00.html

The looming food crisis



Land that was once used to grow food is increasingly being turned over to biofuels. This may help us to fight global warming - but it is driving up food prices throughout the world and making life increasingly hard in developing countries. Add in water shortages, natural disasters and an ever-rising population, and what you have is a recipe for disaster. John Vidal reports

Wednesday August 29, 2007
The Guardian

The mile upon mile of tall maize waving to the horizon around the small Nebraskan town of Carleton looks perfect to farmers such as Mark Jagels. He and his father farm 2,500 acres (10m sq km), the price of maize - what the Americans call corn - has never been higher, and the future has seldom seemed rosier. Carleton (town motto: "The center of it all") is booming, with $200m of Californian money put up for a new biofuel factory and, after years in the doldrums, there is new full-time, well-paid work for 50 people.

But there is a catch. The same fields that surround Jagels' house on the great plains may be bringing new money to rural America, but they are also helping to push up the price of bread in Manchester, tortillas in Mexico City and beer in Madrid. As a direct result of what is happening in places like Nebraska, Kansas, Indiana and Oklahoma, food aid for the poorest people in southern Africa, pork in China and beef in Britain are all more expensive.

Challenged by President George Bush to produce 35bn gallons of non-fossil transport fuels by 2017 to reduce US dependency on imported oil, the Jagels family and thousands of farmers like them are patriotically turning the corn belt of America from the bread basket of the world into an enormous fuel tank. Only a year ago, their maize mostly went to cattle feed or was exported as food aid. Come harvest time in September, almost all will end up at the new plant at Carleton, where it will be fermented to make ethanol, a clear, colourless alcohol consumed, not by people, but by cars.

The era of "agrofuels" has arrived, and the scale of the changes it is already forcing on farming and markets around the world is immense. In Nebraska alone, an extra million acres of maize have been planted this year, and the state boasts it will produce 1bn gallons of ethanol. Across the US, 20% of the whole maize crop went to ethanol last year. How much is that? Just 2% of US automobile use.

"Probably hasn't looked any better than it looks right now," Jerry Stahr, another Nebraskan farmer, told his local paper recently.

Jagels and Stahr are part of a global green rush, one of the greatest shifts that world agriculture has seen in decades. As the US, Europe, China, Japan and other countries commit themselves to using 10% or more alternative automobile fuels, farmers everywhere are rushing to grow maize, sugar cane, palm oil and oil seed rape, all of which can be turned into ethanol or other biofuels for automobiles. But that means getting out of other crops.

The scale of the change is boggling. The Indian government says it wants to plant 35m acres (140,000 sq km) of biofuel crops, Brazil as much as 300m acres (1.2m sq km). Southern Africa is being touted as the future Middle East of biofuels, with as much as 1bn acres (4m sq km) of land ready to be converted to crops such as Jatropha curcas (physic nut), a tough shrub that can be grown on poor land. Indonesia has said it intends to overtake Malaysia and increase its palm oil production from 16m acres (64,000 sq km) now to 65m acres (260,000 sq km) in 2025.

While this may be marginally better for carbon emissions and energy security, it is proving horrendous for food prices and anyone who stands in the way of a rampant new industry. A year or two ago, almost all the land where maize is now being grown to make ethanol in the US was being farmed for human or animal food. And because America exports most of the world's maize, its price has doubled in 10 months, and wheat has risen about 50%.

The effect on agriculture in the UK is price increases all round. "The world price [of maize] has doubled," says Mark Hill, food partner at the business advisory firm Deloitte. "In June, wheat prices across the US and Europe hit their highest levels in more than a decade. These price hikes are likely to trigger inflation in food prices, as processors are forced to pay increased costs for basic ingredients such as corn and wheat."

UK flour millers, for example, need 5.5m tonnes of wheat to produce the 12m loaves sold each day in the UK. The majority of this wheat is grown in the UK, and in the last year milling wheat prices moved from around £100 a tonne to £200 a tonne. Hovis raised the price of a standard loaf from 93p to 99p in February and has said more increases are on the way. In France, consumers have also been warned that their beloved baguette will become more expensive.

The era of cheap food is over, says Hill. World commodity prices of sugar, milk and cocoa have all surged, prompting the biggest increase in retail food prices in three decades in some countries. "Meat, too, will cost more because chicken and pigs are fed largely on grain," says Hill. "And while anyone growing grains will be better off, dairy and livestock producers may well struggle in this environment."

But the surge in demand for agrofuels such as ethanol is hitting the poor and the environment the hardest. The UN World Food Programme, which feeds about 90m people mostly with US maize, reckons that 850m people around the world are already undernourished. There will soon be more because the price of food aid has increased 20% in just a year. Meanwhile, Indian food prices have risen 11% in a year, the price of the staple tortilla quadrupled in Mexico in February and crowds of 75,000 people came on to the streets in protest. South Africa has seen food-price rises of nearly 17%, and China was forced to halt all new planting of corn for ethanol after staple foods such as pork soared by 42% last year.

In the US, where nearly 40 million people are below the official poverty line, the Department of Agriculture recently predicted a 10% rise in the price of chicken. The prices of bread, beef, eggs and milk rose 7.5 % in July, the highest monthly rise in 25 years.

"The competition for grain between the world's 800 million motorists, who want to maintain their mobility, and its two billion poorest people, who are simply trying to survive, is emerging as an epic issue," says Lester Brown, president of the Washington-based Worldwatch Institute thinktank, and author of the book Who Will Feed China?

It is not going to get any better, says Brown. The UN's World Food Organisation predicts that demand for biofuels will grow by 170% in the next three years. A separate report from the OECD, the club of the world's 30 richest countries, suggested food-price rises of between 20% and 50% over the next decade, and the head of Nestlé, the world's largest food processor, said prices would remain high as far as anyone could see ahead.

A "perfect storm" of ecological and social factors appears to be gathering force, threatening vast numbers of people with food shortages and price rises. Even as the world's big farmers are pulling out of producing food for people and animals, the global population is rising by 87 million people a year; developing countries such as China and India are switching to meat-based diets that need more land; and climate change is starting to hit food producers hard. Recent reports in the journals Science and Nature suggest that one-third of ocean fisheries are in collapse, two-thirds will be in collapse by 2025, and all major ocean fisheries may be virtually gone by 2048. "Global grain supplies will drop to their lowest levels on record this year. Outside of wartime, they have not been this low in a century, perhaps longer," says the US Department of Agriculture.

In seven of the past eight years the world has actually grown less grain than it consumed, says Brown. World stocks of grain - that is, the food held in reserve for times of emergency - are now sufficient for just over 50 days. According to experts, we are in "the post- food-surplus era".

The food crisis, Brown warns, is only just beginning. What worries him as much as the new competition between food and fuel is that the booming Chinese and Indian populations - the two largest nations in the world, with nearly 40% of the world's population between them - are giving up their traditional vegetable-rich diets to adopt typical "American" diets that contain more meat and dairy products. Meat demand in China has quadrupled in 30 years, and in India, milk and egg products are increasingly popular.

In itself, this is no problem, say Brown and others, except that it means an accelerated demand for water to grow more food. It takes 7kg of grain to produce 1kg of beef, and increased demand will require huge amounts of grain-growing land. Much of this, of course, will need to be irrigated. "Water tables are now falling in countries that contain over half the world's people," Brown points out. "While numerous analysts and policymakers are concerned about a future of water shortages, few have connected the dots to see that a future of water shortages means a future of food shortages."

New figures from the World Bank, he says, show that 15% of the world's present food supplies, on which 160 million people depend, are being grown with water drawn from rapidly depleting underground sources or from rivers that are drying up. In large areas of China and India, the water table has fallen catastrophically.

Scientists are becoming increasingly alarmed. Earlier this year, water specialists from hundreds of institutes around the world published the biggest ever assessment of water and food. Their conclusions were chilling. With the earth's water, land and human resources, it would be possible to produce enough food for the future, they said. "But it is probable that today's food production and environmental trends will lead to crises in many parts of the world," said David Molden, deputy director general of the International Water Management Institute.

Climate change, meanwhile, is leading to more intense rains, unpredictable storms, longer-lasting droughts, and interrupted seasons. In Britain, the recent floods will result in a shortage of vegetables such as potatoes and peas, and cereals such as wheat. This comes on top of a 4.9% rise in food prices in the year to May - well over consumer price inflation - and a 9.6% hike in vegetable prices.

Britain can get by, but elsewhere climate change is proving disastrous. "I met leaders from Madagascar reeling from seven cyclones in the first six months of the year," Josette Sheeran, new director of the World Food Programme, told colleagues in Rome recently. "I asked them when the season ends and was told that such questions are becoming more difficult to answer. Farmers know that predictable patterns in weather are becoming a thing of the past. How does the global food supply system deal with such changing risk?"

The answer is: with ever greater difficulty. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that rain-dependent agriculture could be cut in half by 2020 as a result of climate change. "Anything even close to a 50% reduction in yields would obviously pose huge problems," said Sheeran. Within a week, Lesotho had declared a food emergency after the worst drought in 30 years and greatly reduced harvests in neighbouring South Africa pushed prices well beyond the reach of most of the population.

All this is far too gloomy, say other analysts and politicians. Earlier this year, Brazil's president, Luiz Lula, told the Guardian that there was no need for world food shortages, or any destruction of forests to grow more food at all. "Brazil has 320m hectares [3.2m sq km] of arable land, only a fifth of which is cultivated. Of this, less than 4% is used for ethanol production ... This is not a choice between food and energy."

Others say that the food price rises now being seen are temporary and will fall back within a year as the market responds. Technologists pin their faith on GM crops, or drought- resistant crops, or trust that biofuel producers will develop technologies that require less raw material or use non-edible parts of food. The immediate best bet is that countries such as Argentina, Poland, Ukraine and Kazakhstan will grow more food for export as US output declines.

Back on the great plains, meanwhile, ethanol fever is running high. This time last year, there were fewer than 100 ethanol plants in the whole United States, with a combined production capacity of 5bn gallons. There are now at least 50 more new plants being built and over 300 more are planned. If even half of them are finished, they will help to rewrite the politics of global food.




... one ZOMBIE user, buddy?



Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Estructuras Empresariales Electorales.

¡Puchas! Desde la última glaciación que no padecía de distracciones como la de hoy. Dejénme y les cuento porque luego se me acusa de que hago muchos paréntesis. Pues nada, que resulta que he ido a la lavandería universitaria y he vertido blanqueador a toda mi ropa de color, sí toda esa exclusiva de diseñador, la madre que me parió, ¡cómo si el dinero me sobrara en estos días! No, no, si no les estoy pidiendo préstamos, ya sabeis que mi dignidá no tiene precio. Pa’ acabar pronto, no les alcanza ni con la Mastercard esa, no insistáis, ostias.

A propósito, ya que os hablo de blanqueadores. Una malsana idea anda rondando mi cabeza últimamente. Ya sabemos que todos las grandes carteles que manejan en estos días los estupefacientes y trata de personas (vaya eufemismo para no mencionar prostitución, carambas) se manejan como grandes corporaciones. Eso lo publicó el Ravelo en PROCESO debe haber sido a finales de 2002, que es cuando llegué al Sureste Inglés. Tomemos como ejemplo al Cartel del Golfo (con tal de no herir susceptibilidades innecesariamente) y su “alicaído” Osiel, que tomó el puesto de García Abrego, ¿o no? De manera que si hay un tropiezo el organigrama se reacomoda y modifica de ser necesario de acuerdo a las necesidades del mercado. Además cuentan con tecnología de punta en armamento, telecomunicaciones, transportes, RECREACION y ahí le paro pues se les va a antojar. Con lo que no han podido lidiar es con la naturaleza HUMANA, parece que también su cucharón es medio necio como el mío. Acabo de leer que hasta los meros meros capos se enamoran de la mesma; es más el otro día me contó “El Profe” que, cuando deveras cayó en desgracia el Rafael Caro Quintero (que tiene a su favor en su biografía, y no me canso de repetirlo, que ofreció pagar la deuda externa si lo liberaban, igualito que el titular de la Secretaría del Trabajo, ¡ah no! eso censúrenlo), fue cuando se le ocurrió la puntada de secuestrar a la hija o sobrina (vaya asté a saber) del Gobernador de Jalisco. Asos, no pues de que pega hasta el más pintadito resbala.

Ahora, ya sabemos que los que dizque le hacen a la “Polaca” le entran al negocito de moda en el país del cuerno de la abundancia, y algunos hasta han sido balconeados de fea manera, pero me preguntaba tú, ¿apoco no hay “empresarios” metidos en estos inversiones de altos dividendos? Olfato no les falta, pus hasta el Citibank ‘tá metidísimo, lo sabemos nosotros que leemos más que el FAMA. Espero que me retroalimenten en esos chismes que mis informantes “involuntarios” no me han surtido. Al parecer ya no hay BARRERA alguna entre los diferentes grupos: empresarios, políticos y capos comienzan a tener el mismo linaje. ¿Ahora resulta que se avecina una escisión entre los azulillos? Quesque la gente del billelle le entró la preocupación por las clases más desfavorecidas y pues, ya saben, Samaritana que es su alma, se ofrecen gustosos a formar una nueva mafia, perdón, partido.

Güeno, en eso de llamarlas mafias no coincido mucho con el maestro, yo más bien las BAUTIZARIA como franquicias. Sí, no me encaren, digánme si no. ¿Qué no se levantan revisando el precio del mercado accionario? ¿Qué no preparan encuestas para conocer el sentir de su clientela? ¿No es cierto que contratan expertos en imagen para captar más incautos, perdón, potenciales consumidores? ¿Apoco es un misterio que pagan en CASH los mejores espacios en horario triple A para vender mejor sus plataformas de campaña? ‘Tonz, si van a estar involucrados en el nuevo partido de los “desposeídos” los BIMBOS y los CARSOS, ¿van a ofrecer entre sus servicios credenciales de elector RECARGABLES? ¿Prepararán un “ejército” de repartidores de votos con la CARITA FELIZ tipo el Papa móvil? Mmm.

Algo les falla a los analistas políticos que ya han sido rebasados. Miren ustedes, se los platico nomás porque son mis consen, y los tengo en alta estima. No quiero darles clases gratuitas de moral, pero reflexionen y me dirán si tengo o no razón. En cuanto llegó el Neoliberalismo todo es “vendible”. Hoy estaba mirujeando en la caja idiota las noticias y mencionaban que parte de los incendios forestales tanto en el Peloponeso como en SICILIA fueron provocados por fanáticos a la piromanía. ¡Rediez con estos figli di CANE! Generación del MTV, myspace y demás. Por ello la progenitora prostituye a la hija sin siquiera parpadear, el padre introduce al vástago en el negocito, y todos los etcéteras imaginables.

El mismo esquema mercantilista se repite hasta la náusea en las estructuras empresariales electorales, perdonen sus MERCEDES, quise decir partidos políticos. Por ello, si por ahí se dice que el PRD es hijo del PRI, a lo mejor después de la última convención le nace un nieto. El PAN está en proceso de parto de un heredero, eso si no contamos al Yunque que se convirtió en su padrote. El PANAL es más bien un engendro del Demoño. El Submarino amarillo es ciertamente un caso interesante, ha aprendido a lograr acuerdos subacuáticos, ya que con esto del “DEAN” estamos todos anegados, pero debo advertirle que espero su coraza esté fabricada de aleaciones completamente inoxidables, porque el fluido en que se desplaza no lo soporta ni el mejor proctólogo.

No ha de pasar mucho tiempo en que como las grandes corporaciones que les mencionaba, recuerden que algunos se hacen llamar empresarios, comiencen a tejer alianzas estratégicas para introducirse en los mercados emergentes. ¡Ah! Pero no os confundais, por que aquí aplica, como afirma otro de mis maestros, la ley anti-Darwiniana: Only the WEAK survive. Los miembros de estos carteles empresario-políticos desprecian los movimientos de masas que ya quisieran otros países muchísimo más “civilizados” que el Mexicano. Y sin embargo una variable inesperada está a punto de entrar en la ecuación económica global. Una que los expertos de mente unidireccional no llegan a comprender, y que va a cambiar radicalmente el panorama mundial. Al tiempo.

M@rCEO;

Norwich, G(ran) B(ursátil);

29/8/07.

P.D.FRATICIDA. "... y cada uno peleará contra su hermano, cada uno contra su prójimo; ciudad contra ciudad, y reino contra reino..." - Isaías 19:2 (Casiodoro de Reina, 1569).

P.D.RCP. "...Nobody said it was easy/No one ever said it would be this hard..." - The Scientist (Coldplay).

Coldplay - The Scientist

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P.D.PRO-CHUCHA. "...busco el delirio del ANOCHECER/grito a una LUNA ilumíname/asesina el SOL/ni luz ni calor..." - Una Noche Más (Konsumo Respeto).

P.D.TEMPLARIA. "...hay quien sueña con CRUZADAS contra INFIELES en guaridas..." - Gira la LUNA (Luis Eduardo Aute).

P.D.PIPA_Y_GUANTE. "...He doesn't look a thing like JESUS/But he talks like a gentleman/Like you imagined when you were young..." - When you were young (The KILLERS).

P.D.GRIEGA. "Por el amor de una mujer/jugué con fuego sin saber/que era yo quien me quemaba..." - Por el amor de una MUJER (Julio Iglesias).

PILONA CACHORRILLA:

Entonces ella (La mujer CANANEA) vino y se postró ante él, diciendo:

- ¡SEÑOR, socórreme!

Respondiendo él dijo:

- No está bien tomar el PAN de los hijos y echarlo a los PERRILLOS.

Y ella dijo:

- Sí SEÑOR; pero aun los PERRILLOS comen de las MIGAJAS que caen de la mesa de sus amos.

Mateo 15: 25-27. (Casiodoro de Reina, 1569).

... traíganme a esa FLACA.

Aunque el Partido de la Revolución Democrática no se fracturó durante su X Congreso Nacional, sigue vigente la confrontación entre la línea negociadora y los sectores que se aglutinan en torno de Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Por ahora debaten qué actitud asumir ante el gobierno de Felipe Calderón, concretamente en su primer informe de gobierno... Más difícil aún se ve el desafío que viene: que extingan su encono antes de la elección de su nueva dirigencia el próximo año.



Acuerdos de cristal...



ROSALIA VERGARA

MEXICO, DF

/AGOSTO 25, APRO

En su X Congreso Nacional Extraordinario, los delegados perredistas defendieron dos estrategias aparentemente irreconciliables:

Las corrientes Nueva Izquierda (NI, conocida como Los Chuchos), Alianza Democrática Nacional (ADN) y Movimiento por la Democracia, del senador Pablo Gómez, representaron la tendencia negociadora, mientras que el Frente Político de Izquierda, afín al "presidente legítimo" Andrés Manuel López Obrador, que se opone a todo trato con Calderón, así sea un debate el día del primer informe presidencial.

Aun cuando en dicho Congreso, que se llevó a cabo del jueves 16 al domingo 19 en el hotel Sheraton de la ciudad de México, el PRD llegó a algunos acuerdos para definir su línea política, la reforma estatutaria, el programa y los principios partidistas, el investigador de El Colegio de México, Jean Francois Prud’homme --especializado en el estudio de este partido-- considera que sólo es una solución temporal.

"El asunto de la no confrontación o no cooperación con el gobierno o las instituciones (federales) se planteará hasta la elección del nuevo presidente del PRD", prevé Prud’homme, ya que los coordinadores parlamentarios del PRD, el senador Carlos Navarrete (de NI) y el diputado Javier González Garza (Movimiento por la Democracia), "en algún momento deberán buscar influir en la agenda legislativa" y no sólo "votar propuestas de confrontación con el gobierno".

Debido a ello, "habrá múltiples ocasiones para que resurja esto (la confrontación interna). Se hará todas las veces que el PRD deba asumir una participación en el Legislativo, habrá tentación de negociar para que se incluyan puntos de vista de las bancadas, porque en el fondo es el papel de los legisladores y será la ocasión para que el grupo que no está a favor de la cooperación con el gobierno se vuelva a manifestar".

Por lo mismo, destaca el investigador, "la tensión interna estará presente hasta la renovación de la dirigencia en marzo de 2008".

Por lo pronto Alejandro Encinas, de la facción lopezobradorista, y el líder de Los Chuchos, Jesús Ortega, coinciden en que el balance general del congreso es positivo, aunque ya se advierte el desgaste de la vida interna del partido.

Tanto Encinas, ex jefe de Gobierno capitalino, como Ortega, coordinador del Frente Amplio Progresista (FAP) que incluye al PT, Convergencia y el PRD, son considerados los aspirantes más fuertes a dirigir el partido.

A punto de la fractura

La polarización interna del PRD afloró en la reunión plenaria del domingo 19. Primero, por un acuerdo entre corrientes se planteó un resolutivo que pedía la "sustitución del llamado ‘informe presidencial’ por un debate parlamentario y republicano entre poderes sobre el estado de la nación, en el marco de un nuevo régimen político".

Sin embargo, el secretario de Comunicación perredista, Gerardo Fernández Noroña, propuso añadirle a ese resolutivo la frase: "manteniendo nuestro rechazo a debatir con quien usurpa la Presidencia de la República".

Entonces el congreso se dividió entre quienes gritaban "es un honor estar con Obrador" y otros que corearon porras al PRD. Los senadores Pablo Gómez y Carlos Navarrete argumentaron en contra de la inclusión de la frase, misma que defendieron el propio Fernández Noroña y el secretario de Desarrollo Social del gobierno capitalino, Martí Batres.

NI y Movimiento por la Democracia ganaron la votación respectiva, lo que provocó el enojo de 180 delegados (del total de casi 2 mil), entre los que estaban Fernández Noroña, Batres, Dolores Padierna, Armando Quintero y Clara Brugada, quienes acusaron a sus contrarios de traidores y se retiraron del congreso con sus simpatizantes.

Ya sin la mayoría de esos votos contrarios, las corrientes predominantes aprobaron el documento de línea política y sometieron a votación los estatutos, el programa y los principios que regirán al partido. En total hicieron 14 modificaciones importantes.

Así mismo decidieron formar un nuevo Comité Político Nacional y aprobaron una cláusula de paridad de género en las candidaturas a puestos de dirección partidista y de elección popular.

Entre otros acuerdos tomados de esa forma, se ratificó que el PRD es un partido de "izquierda socialista", se especificó que la elección de su próximo dirigente será a padrón cerrado y se hizo el compromiso de apoyar la credencialización para la Convención Nacional Democrática (CND), el movimiento social que encabeza López Obrador.

Sin embargo, el X Congreso Nacional Extraordinario estaba roto. En un intento por atenuar las consecuencias, el senador Carlos Navarrete pidió aprobar de último momento un resolutivo especial acordado en los pasillos por él, Encinas --quien se quedó en la sesión-- y el actual presidente nacional del PRD, Leonel Cota Montaño.

El texto, escrito a mano en una hoja de papel, dice: "El X Congreso Nacional se pronuncia por rechazar el debate en la sesión del Congreso de la Unión el 1 de septiembre próximo, propuesto por Felipe Calderón. Los legisladores del PRD no aceptarán la presencia en la tribuna del Congreso de quien no cuenta con la legitimidad que sólo da una elección limpia".

El lunes 20, después de la reunión con López Obrador, los dirigentes del partido le quitaron la fecha del 1 de septiembre para dar a entender que nunca habría diálogo con Calderón. Pese a todo Saúl Escobar, quien redactó los nuevos postulados de la línea política, siguió sosteniendo que no se había modificado nada de lo acordado en la plenaria.

En la lectura de miembros del Frente Político de Izquierda, este resolutivo especial implica que efectivamente no habrá debate con Calderón, pero también suponen que el presidente legal se sujetará a la aprobación de una eventual reforma del Estado en el Congreso de la Unión, a fin de crear la figura de jefe de Gabinete. Si el cargo recayera en el senador priísta Manlio Fabio Beltrones, especulan, la nueva línea política aprobada por Nueva Izquierda le permitiría al PRD participar en "un debate entre poderes" en el marco de un "nuevo" régimen político.

Miembros del Frente como Martí Batres y Dolores Padierna consideran que NI reculó en este acuerdo porque implicaba un alto costo político en la lucha por la dirigencia del PRD, en marzo de 2008.

Alejandro Encinas opina distinto. En entrevista vía telefónica, realizada el jueves 23, asegura que el resolutivo especial es un acuerdo sólido y que muestra la definición política congruente adoptada por el partido tras la elección presidencial de 2006. Por lo tanto, dijo, ese punto no está sujeto a ningún acuerdo adicional, "es tajante".

Para Ortega, entrevistado el viernes 24, también por teléfono, ambos dirigentes permanecieron fuera de la ciudad toda la semana... esta interpretación es incorrecta. Y agrega que es "miserable" lo que han difundido "Batres y Fernández Noroña": "la locura" de que en el programa del partido se plantea la figura de gabinete porque Beltrones ocuparía el cargo. "Es una estupidez, una calumnia. No existe información de eso, es una vulgar calumnia", reitera Ortega.

Otro punto de discordia fue la autocrítica del partido respecto de la elección presidencial. La discusión versó en asumir errores durante la campaña; asumir cuestionamientos a las estructuras paralelas que se crearon como apoyo del partido, es decir, las Redes Ciudadanas; la movilización postelectoral y la creación de la Convención Nacional Democrática.

Ortega admite que en el congreso del PRD hubo dos posturas "tremendamente encontradas" en los temas mencionados, aunque coincide con Encinas en que al final llegaron a acuerdos para la línea política, y en ésta debe fincarse la unidad "de acción" del partido.

Ninguno de ellos habla de desunión. Para Encinas, la salida de delegados del congreso es el reflejo de que "se agotó el sistema de corrientes y grupos de interés en la vida del partido". Por su parte, Ortega atribuye esa actitud a la intolerancia de esos militantes "que así se comportan siempre".

Con todo, insisten en que el PRD está cohesionado porque se lograron avances en la definición de su línea política, en la reforma de sus estatutos, en el programa y en los principios. Según ellos, se avanzó también en la modernización del partido, que habría confirmado su carácter socialista y democrático.

Entre los pendientes, Alejandro Encinas destacó el fortalecimiento de la línea institucional, la reglamentación de la actividad de las corrientes internas y que se apliquen los estatutos. Para Ortega, falta decidir sobre los planes para enfrentar procesos electorales, iniciar los procedimientos de afiliación y preparar el proceso para elegir a los presidentes estatales y al nacional del PRD.

El papel de los medios

El miércoles 22, en una inusual inserción pagada en el diario La Jornada, Jesús Ortega criticó a columnistas y caricaturistas de ese diario, cuyos nombres no mencionó, pues dice que "en lugar de contribuir a la reflexión y análisis, como elementos de la democracia, no informan con veracidad y profesionalismo y están actuando en razón de sus identidades con algunas corrientes y expresiones del PRD".

El coordinador del FAP se quejó de que las opiniones de esos "columnistas y caricaturistas tienen destinatario. En lugar de informar se transmiten posiciones políticas y se envían posicionamientos políticos que no tienen relación con la situación y el debate interno del PRD".

El propio López Obrador, al iniciar los trabajos del congreso el jueves 16, introdujo el tema. Como lo ha hecho desde la campaña de 2006 y luego en numerosos actos de protesta, el "presidente legítimo" reiteró su postura sobre los medios de comunicación:

"La mayoría, con muy pocas y honrosas excepciones, han sido reducidos a instrumentos de control y manipulación de la opinión pública. ¿Dónde está el derecho a la información, la equidad, la pluralidad y el profesionalismo que deben caracterizar a los medios de comunicación? La libertad de expresión no consiste en que algunos tengan derecho a externar sus opiniones, es que la crítica sea patrimonio colectivo".

Encinas y Ortega coinciden que los medios de comunicación deben transformarse y garantizar el derecho a la información fidedigna; el derecho de réplica y actuar con responsabilidad social. "No queremos una prensa uniforme, sino diversificada, plural que no se someta a los designios de los dueños de los medios o del Estado", especifica Encinas.

El lunes 20, Encinas y Ortega leyeron los resolutivos finales del congreso, incluyendo el especial ya sin fecha.

En el documento, el PRD se define como una organización de izquierda, plural, socialista y democrática; ratifica su integración en el FAP, su participarán en la movilización social pacífica, en la lucha electoral y en los espacios institucionales.

De igual forma, reconocerá el programa de la Convención Nacional Democrática; no avalará a Calderón como presidente "bajo ninguna circunstancia y no habrá diálogo ni negociación alguna con él"; apoyará a sus legisladores con una nueva agenda; defenderá el patrimonio nacional en materia energética. También evaluará a los gobiernos surgidos de sus filas y crea el Comité Político Nacional, así como un Secretariado Nacional de 15 miembros.

Para el académico Jean Francois Prud’homme, no obstante esos acuerdos y cambios de estrategia, el PRD deberá superar su confrontación interna, de lo contrario seguirá perdiendo elecciones "y sería terrible que perdiera Michoacán", la tierra natal de Calderón y bastión político perredista.

Y en efecto, en vísperas del primer informe de gobierno de Felipe Calderón hay posturas encontradas en el PRD. Para definir lo que harán el 1 de septiembre en San Lázaro, los diputados federales y senadores perredistas se reunieron en Morelia y Uruapan del jueves 23 al sábado 25. De forma extraoficial manifestaron que están buscando acuerdos con las otras fracciones parlamentarias para que Calderón entregue su informe por escrito y se retire del recinto legislativo.

En la mañana del mismo jueves Luis Sánchez Jiménez, vocero de la fracción perredista en la Cámara de Diputados, anunció a la prensa que impedirán a Calderón dar un mensaje el 1 de septiembre. Sin embargo, el senador Carlos Navarrete no estuvo de acuerdo y, con base en el resolutivo del Congreso, esa misma tarde aclaró desde Uruapan que no aceptarán la presencia de Calderón en la tribuna, pero eso "es muy diferente a decir que no permitiremos" que dé su mensaje.

El senador y también líder de Nueva Izquierda, René Arce, matizó: "Calderón nunca va a tener de nuestra parte un reconocimiento de legitimidad, aunque nosotros tenemos que reconocer que en la realidad es el presidente legal".

Lo único cierto hasta el momento es que el PRD prepara una concentración en el Zócalo capitalino para el 1 de septiembre a las 17:00 horas, y anunció que el "presidente legítimo" ofrecerá su primer informe el 20 de noviembre.



... PIMPollo.