NOTICIAS AL 8/09/07

Switzerland: Europe's heart of darkness?

Switzerland is known as a haven of peace and neutrality. But today it is home to a new extremism that has alarmed the United Nations. Proposals for draconian new laws that target the country's immigrants have been condemned as unjust and racist. A poster campaign, the work of its leading political party, is decried as xenophobic. Has Switzerland become Europe's heart of darkness? By Paul Vallely

Published: 07 September 2007

At first sight, the poster looks like an innocent children's cartoon. Three white sheep stand beside a black sheep. The drawing makes it looks as though the animals are smiling. But then you notice that the three white beasts are standing on the Swiss flag. One of the white sheep is kicking the black one off the flag, with a crafty flick of its back legs.

The poster is, according to the United Nations, the sinister symbol of the rise of a new racism and xenophobia in the heart of one of the world's oldest independent democracies.

A worrying new extremism is on the rise. For the poster – which bears the slogan "For More Security" – is not the work of a fringe neo-Nazi group. It has been conceived – and plastered on to billboards, into newspapers and posted to every home in a direct mailshot – by the Swiss People's Party (the Schweizerische Volkspartei or SVP) which has the largest number of seats in the Swiss parliament and is a member of the country's coalition government.

With a general election due next month, it has launched a twofold campaign which has caused the UN's special rapporteur on racism to ask for an official explanation from the government. The party has launched a campaign to raise the 100,000 signatures necessary to force a referendum to reintroduce into the penal code a measure to allow judges to deport foreigners who commit serious crimes once they have served their jail sentence.

But far more dramatically, it has announced its intention to lay before parliament a law allowing the entire family of a criminal under the age of 18 to be deported as soon as sentence is passed.

It will be the first such law in Europe since the Nazi practice of Sippenhaft – kin liability – whereby relatives of criminals were held responsible for their crimes and punished equally.

The proposal will be a test case not just for Switzerland but for the whole of Europe, where a division between liberal multiculturalism and a conservative isolationism is opening up in political discourse in many countries, the UK included.

SWISS TRAINS being the acme of punctuality, the appointment was very precise. I was to meet Dr Ulrich Schlüer – one of the men behind the draconian proposal – in the restaurant at the main railway station in Zürich at 7.10pm. As I made my way through the concourse, I wondered what Dr Schlüer made of this station of hyper-efficiency and cleanliness that has a smiling Somali girl selling pickled herring sandwiches, a north African man sweeping the floor, and a black nanny speaking in broken English to her young Swiss charge. The Swiss People's Party's attitude to foreigners is, shall we say, ambivalent.

A quarter of Switzerland's workers – one in four, like the black sheep in the poster – are now foreign immigrants to this peaceful, prosperous and stable economy with low unemployment and a per capita GDP larger than that of other Western economies. Zürich has, for the past two years, been named as the city with the best quality of life in the world.

What did the nanny think of the sheep poster, I asked her. "I'm a guest in this country," she replied. "It's best I don't say."

Dr Schlüer is a small affable man. But if he speaks softly he wields a big stick. The statistics are clear, he said, foreigners are four times more likely to commit crimes than Swiss nationals. "In a suburb of Zürich, a group of youths between 14 and 18 recently raped a 13-year-old girl," he said. "It turned out that all of them were already under investigation for some previous offence. They were all foreigners from the Balkans or Turkey. Their parents said these boys are out of control. We say: 'That's not acceptable. It's your job to control them and if you can't do that you'll have to leave'. It's a punishment everyone understands."

It is far from the party's only controversial idea. Dr Schlüer has launched a campaign for a referendum to ban the building of Muslim minarets. In 2004, the party successfully campaigned for tighter immigration laws using the image of black hands reaching into a pot filled with Swiss passports. And its leading figure, the Justice Minister, Christoph Blocher, has said he wants to soften anti-racism laws because they prevent freedom of speech.

Political opponents say it is all posturing ahead of next month's general election. Though deportation has been dropped from the penal code, it is still in force in administrative law, says Daniel Jositsch, professor of penal law at Zurich University. "At the end of the day, nothing has changed, the criminal is still at the airport and on the plane."

With astute tactics, the SVP referendum restricts itself to symbolic restitution. Its plan to deport entire families has been put forward in parliament where it has little chance of being passed. Still the publicity dividend is the same. And it is all so worrying to human rights campaigners that the UN special rapporteur on racism, Doudou Diène, warned earlier this year that a "racist and xenophobic dynamic" which used to be the province of the far right is now becoming a regular part of the democratic system in Switzerland.

Dr Schlüer shrugged. "He's from Senegal where they have a lot of problems of their own which need to be solved. I don't know why he comes here instead of getting on with that."

Such remarks only confirm the opinions of his opponents. Mario Fehr is a Social Democrat MP for the Zürich area. He says: "Deporting people who have committed no crime is not just unjust and inhumane, it's stupid. Three quarters of the Swiss people think that foreigners who work here are helping the economy. We have a lot of qualified workers – IT specialists, doctors, dentists." To get rid of foreigners, which opponents suspect is the SVP's real agenda, "would be an economic disaster".

Dr Schlüer insists the SVP is not against all foreigners. "Until war broke out in the Balkans, we had some good workers who came from Yugoslavia. But after the fighting there was huge influx of people we had a lot of problems with. The abuse of social security is a key problem. It's estimated to cost £750m a year. More than 50 per cent of it is by foreigners."

There is no disguising his suspicion of Islam. He has alarmed many of Switzerland's Muslims (some 4.3 per cent of the 7.5 million population) with his campaign to ban the minaret. "We're not against mosques but the minaret is not mentioned in the Koran or other important Islamic texts. It just symbolises a place where Islamic law is established." And Islamic law, he says, is incompatible with Switzerland's legal system.

To date there are only two mosques in the country with minarets but planners are turning down applications for more, after opinion polls showed almost half the population favours a ban. What is at stake here in Switzerland is not merely a dislike of foreigners or a distrust of Islam but something far more fundamental. It is a clash that goes to the heart of an identity crisis which is there throughout Europe and the US. It is about how we live in a world that has changed radically since the end of the Cold War with the growth of a globalised economy, increased immigration flows, the rise of Islam as an international force and the terrorism of 9/11. Switzerland only illustrates it more graphically than elsewhere.

Switzerland is so stark an example because of the complex web of influences that find their expression in Ulrich Schlüer and his party colleagues.

He is fiercely proud of his nation's independence, which can be traced back to a defensive alliance of cantons in 1291. He is a staunch defender of its policy of armed neutrality, under which Switzerland has no standing army but all young men are trained and on standby; they call it the porcupine approach – with millions of individuals ready to stiffen like spines if the nation is threatened.

Linked to that is its system of direct democracy where many key decisions on tax, education, health and other key areas are taken at local level.

"How direct democracy functions is a very sensitive issue in Switzerland," he says, explaining why he has long opposed joining the EU. "To the average German, the transfer of power from Berlin to Brussels didn't really affect their daily lives. The transfer of power from the commune to Brussels would seriously change things for the ordinary Swiss citizen."

Switzerland has the toughest naturalisation rules in Europe. To apply, you must live in the country legally for at least 12 years, pay taxes, and have no criminal record. The application can still be turned down by your local commune which meets to ask "Can you speak German? Do you work? Are you integrated with Swiss people?"

It can also ask, as one commune did of 23-year-old Fatma Karademir – who was born in Switzerland but who under Swiss law is Turkish like her parents – if she knew the words of the Swiss national anthem, if she could imagine marrying a Swiss boy and who she would support if the Swiss football team played Turkey. "Those kinds of questions are outside the law," says Mario Fehr. "But in some more remote villages you have a problem if you're from ex-Yugoslavia."

The federal government in Berne wants to take the decision out of the hands of local communities, one of which only gave the vote to women as recently as 1990. But the government's proposals have twice been defeated in referendums.

The big unspoken fact here is how a citizen is to be defined. "When a Swiss woman who has emigrated to Canada has a baby, that child automatically gets citizenship," Dr Schlüer says. But in what sense is a boy born in Canada, who may be brought up with an entirely different world view and set of values, more Swiss than someone like Fatma Karademir who has never lived anywhere but Switzerland?

The truth is that at the heart of the Swiss People's Party's vision is a visceral notion of kinship, breeding and blood that liberals would like to think sits very much at odds with the received wisdom of most of the Western world. It is what lies behind the SVP's fear of even moderate Islam. It has warned that because of their higher birth rates Muslims would eventually become a majority in Switzerland if the citizenship rules were eased. It is what lies behind his fierce support for the militia system.

To those who say that Germany, France, Italy and Austria are nowadays unlikely to invade, he invokes again the shadow of militant Islam. "The character of war is changing. There could be riots or eruptions in a town anywhere in Switzerland. There could be terrorism in a financial centre."

The race issue goes wider than politics in a tiny nation. "I'm broadly optimistic that the tide is moving in our direction both here and in other countries across Europe, said Dr Schlüer. "I feel more supported than criticised from outside."

The drama which is being played out in such direct politically incorrect language in Switzerland is one which has repercussions all across Europe, and wider.

Neutrality and nationality

* Switzerland has four national languages – German, Italian, French and Romansh. Most Swiss residents speak German as their first language.

* Switzerland's population has grown from 1.7 million in 1815 to 7.5 million in 2006. The population has risen by 750,000 since 1990.

* Swiss nationality law demands that candidates for Swiss naturalisation spend a minimum of years of permanent, legal residence in Switzerland, and gain fluency in one of the national languages.

* More than 20 per cent of the Swiss population, and 25 per cent of its workforce, is non-naturalised.

* At the end of 2006, 5,888 people were interned in Swiss prisons. 31 per cent were Swiss citizens – 69 per cent were foreigners or asylum-seekers.

* The number of unauthorised migrant workers currently employed is estimated at 100,000.

Thirty years: difference in life expectancy between the world's rich and poor peoples

By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor

Published: 07 September 2007

Life expectancy in the richest countries of the world now exceeds the poorest by more than 30 years, figures show. The gap is widening across the world, with Western countries and the growing economies of Latin America and the Far East advancing more rapidly than Africa and the countries of the former Soviet Union.

Average life expectancy in Britain and similar countries of the OECD was 78.8 in 2000-05, an increase of more than seven years since 1970-75 and almost 30 years over the past century. In sub-Saharan Africa, life expectancy has increased by just four months since 1970, to 46.1 years.

Narrowing this "health gap" will involve going beyond the immediate causes of disease – poverty, poor sanitation and infection – to tackle the "causes of the causes" – the social hierarchies in which people live, the Global Commission on the Social Determinants of Health says in a report.

Professor Sir Michael Marmot, chairman of the commission established by the World Health Organisation in 2005, who first coined the term "status syndrome", said social status was the key to tackling health inequalities worldwide.

In the 1980s, in a series of ground-breaking studies among Whitehall civil servants, Professor Marmot showed that the risk of death among those on the lower rungs of the career ladder was four times higher than those at the top, and that the difference was linked with the degree of control the individuals had over their lives.

He said yesterday that the same rule applied in poorer countries. If people increased their status and gained more control over their lives they improved their health because they were less vulnerable to the economic and environmental threats.

"When people think about those in poor countries they tend to think about poverty, lack of housing, sanitation and exposure to infectious disease. But there is another issue, the social gradient in health which I called status syndrome. It is not just those at the bottom of the hierarchy who have worse health; it is all the way along the scale. Those second from the bottom have worse health than those above them but better health than those below."

The interim report of the commission, in the online edition of The Lancet, says the effects of status syndrome extend from the bottom to the top of the hierarchy, with Swedish adults holding a PhD having a lower death rate than those with a master's degree. The study says: "The gradient is a worldwide occurrence, seen in low-income, middle-income and high-income countries. It means we are all implicated."

The result is that even within rich countries such as Britain there are striking inequalities in life expectancy. The poorest men in Glasgow have a life expectancy of 54, lower than the average in India. The answer, the report says, is empowerment, of individuals, communities and whole countries. "Technical and medical solutions such as medical care are without doubt necessary. But they are insufficient."

Professor Marmot said: "We talk about three kinds of empowerment. If people don't have the material necessities – food to eat, clothes for their children – they cannot be empowered. The second kind is psycho-social empowerment: more control over their lives. The third is political empowerment: having a voice."

The commission's final report, to be published next May, will identify the ill effects of low status and make recommendations for how they can be tackled.

In Britain a century ago, infant mortality among the rich was about 100 per 1,000 live births compared with 250 per 1,000 among the poor, a rate similar to that in Sierra Leone

Infant mortality is still twice as high among the poor in Britain, but the rates have come down dramatically to 7 per 1,000 among the poor and 3.5 among the rich. Professor Marmot said: "We have made dramatic progress, but this is not about abolishing the rankings – there will always be hierarchies – but by identifying the ill effects of hierarchies we can make huge improvements."

A ray of hope from the street vendors of Ahmedabad

The women street vendors of Ahmedabad, India, have peddled their wares for generations, rising at dawn to buy flowers, fruit and vegetables from wholesalers in the markets before fanning out across the city. They frequently needed to borrow money, faced punitive rates of interest and were routinely harassed and evicted from their vending sites by local authorities.

They were a typical example of disempowered women, prey to the evils of debt, loss of livelihood and ill health, until they campaigned to improve their status.

With help from the Self-Employed Women's Association of India (Sewa), the vegetable sellers and growers set up their own wholesale vegetable shop, cutting out the middlemen who had exploited them. They also organised childcare, set up a bank for credit and petitioned for slum upgrading.

To overcome possible health crises, when poor women frequently had to sell their possessions to raise money for treatment, Sewa set up a health insurance scheme for them.

Emboldened by their links with Sewa, the vegetable sellers campaigned for the local authority to recognise them formally and strengthen their status by issuing street vending licences and identity cards, giving them security of employment. The campaign started in Gujarat and went all the way to the Supreme Court, attracting international attention.

The Big Question: Will APEC's climate-change deal amount to anything more than hot air?

By Kathy Marks, Asia-Pacific Correspondent

Published: 07 September 2007

Why are we asking this now?

The 21 members of APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) are holding their annual summit in Sydney this week. With the world's top three greenhouse gas polluters (China, the US and Russia) present, climate change is high on the agenda. The subject has been discussed at bilateral talks between the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, and President George Bush, and at a meeting yesterday between Mr Bush and the Chinese President, Hu Jintao. On Sunday, when the forum wraps up, leaders will issue a "Sydney Declaration" on combating climate change.

Isn't APEC supposed to focus on trade?

Yes, and there have been plenty of ministerial-level discussions about tariffs, trade barriers and unfair subsidies. But other regional topics, including security and military cooperation, always come up at APEC gatherings, while trickier issues – allegations that the Chinese military has hacked into the Pentagon's computer network, for instance – hover in the background. Mr Howard wants APEC 2007 to be remembered as the summit that agreed a new global strategy for tackling climate change.

But isn't Howard a climate-change sceptic?

He was, for more than a decade. Australia is one of only two industrialised nations – the other being the US – that has declined to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Mr Howard pooh-poohed last year's landmark report on global warming by the British economist Sir Nicholas Stern and he refused to meet Al Gore when the latter visited Australia to promote his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth.

But with his country now in the grip of the worst drought on record, Mr Howard has belatedly woken up to the reality of climate change on his doorstep. There is also an election pending, and the Prime Minister, who is languishing in the polls, has realised that many Australians care deeply about this issue. The APEC summit, as well as raising Mr Howard's international profile, is an opportunity for him to convince voters that he really cares, too, and wants to act.

How can a Kyoto refusenik provide leadership?

Mr Howard considers Kyoto a flawed and outdated tool for addressing climate change, since it does not require India and China, two of the world's biggest polluters, to cut emissions. He has called the treaty "top-down, prescriptive, legalistic and Eurocentric", and said it "simply won't fly in a rising Asia-Pacific region".

Instead, Mr Howard wants a new global framework that embraces China, India and the US, to take effect when the first phase of Kyoto expires in 2012. Australia was the driving force behind the establishment of a regional group, the Asia-Pacifc Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, which focuses on the development and transfer of clean energy technology, but sets no caps on carbon emissions. Australians remain the biggest per capita energy consumers on the planet.

Are other APEC members willing to play ball?

The main obstacle is China, which is opposed to a declaration committing its signatories to setting energy efficiency targets. President Hu yesterday reiterated his view that the United Nations is the best forum to tackle climate change, and that wealthy nations should bear a greater share of the responsibility for cutting global emissions.

China's perspective is shared by other developing APEC member nations, including Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, which place a priority on domestic economic growth. The Malaysian Trade Minister, Rafidah Aziz, said yesterday that APEC "is not the place to discuss the whys and wherefores of climate change', while the Philippines President, Gloria Arroyo, declared that APEC should not be usurping the UN's key role. As for Mr Bush, he has sung the praises of nuclear power, and also of Mr Howard, praising him for his "leadership on climate change".

So what is the Sydney Declaration going to say?

With the split between rich and developing nations as entrenched as ever, the wording of the final statement is still being hammered out by officials. But Australia, which has most to gain from a declaration of substance, only wants member countries to agree to commit themselves to "aspirational" targets. Those targets would be aimed at improving energy efficiency, increasing forest cover in the region and accelerating the exchange of clean energy technologies.

The declaration is not expected to include any long-term goals for reducing carbon emissions, nor will it be in any way binding. That falls far short of Mr Howard's goal, pre-APEC, of setting out a new vision for a post-Kyoto framework. It also makes his prediction that the summit would be "one of the most important international gatherings of leaders to discuss climate since the 1992 Rio Conference" sound decidedly hollow.

What does Sydney think of the Declaration?

Sydneysiders are unimpressed with all things APEC, since their laid-back harbourside city has been transformed into a fortress, thanks to a 9ft high fence that effectively cuts the city centre in two. Businesses located inside the three mile-long barrier – dubbed the Great Wall of Sydney, or the Rabble-Proof Fence – are suffering losses; tourist landmarks including the Opera House have been temporarily off-limits, helicopters whir constantly overhead, and the traffic is a nightmare.

Where does this leave prospects post-APEC?

On 24 September the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, will host a conference of a hundred heads of government in New York. Three days later, a gathering in Washington, organised by Mr Bush, will bring together the leaders of the world's 15 biggest economies, along with UN and European Union representatives. Both will feed into a meeting in December on the Indonesian island of Bali of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change – the key UN negotiating body, which agreed the Kyoto Protocol in 1998.

All of these talkfests have the same aim: to thrash out a framework to replace Kyoto. But the same north-south split witnessed in Sydney will have to be overcome. As one Philippines delegate at APEC said yesterday: "We sleep on the same bed, but we have different dreams."

So are those hoping for decisive action going to be disappointed?

Yes...

* 'Aspirational' targets don't mean anything. Only unequivocal commitment counts

* In spite of all the rhetoric, the gulf between the developed and developing world remains

* APEC countries remain more concerned about economic growth than about climate change

No...

* Australia needs to associate itself with real progress on climate change, if only for domestic political reasons

* China, which recently overtook the US as the world's biggest polluter, is at least willing to talk

* Even an agreement on energy efficiency targets is a step in the right direction

Two oil executives in shares investigation

By Karen Attwood

Published: 07 September 2007

Shares in the oil and gas exploration company Max Petroleum were suspended yesterday after the company announced that two key executives were under investigation in relation to their share option dealings.

Chief executive Steve Kappelle and chief operating officer Ole Udsen have both been suspended "pending an investigation onto potential breaches of their employment contracts involving the undisclosed receipt of share options".

"The scope of the investigation, however, will not be limited to these matters," the company said. Executive chairman Jim Jeffs and other board members have taken on extra duties for the duration of the inquiry.

The AIM-listed company's share price has been volatile in recent weeks and has fallen from 190p to around 100p in August. It is thought a number of hedge fund investors pulled out in the midst of the credit crisis. Yesterday, its shares closed at 110p, giving Max Petroleum a market capitalisation of £357m.

Although the company could not give further detail on the investigation, the market speculated that the options related to Roxi Petroleum, a group backed by many of the same investors as Max Petroleum, and is Kazakh-focused. The executives were promoted to their current positions in March last year. Mr Kappelle is London-based, while Mr Udsen works at the company's Kazakhstan offices in Almaty.

A spokesman said the inquiry should not impact exploration licences or usual activities.

Max Petroleum was founded in April 2005 with the target of growing into an independent oil and gas exploration and production company, initially focused on Kazakhstan. As of last month, the company was producing 1,800 barrels of oil a day.

Its Almaty office employs 170 staff. The company has been the subject of several bid rumours, and earlier this year it was thought the Russian gas giant Gazprom was running the slide rule over the company.

«Ma la verità cristiana non si impone come un potere esterno»

Papa: «Scienza atea minaccia per l'umanità»

«Se si perde riferimento a Dio le conoscenze della scienza possono diventare terribile minaccia e portare a distruzione del mondo»

STRUMENTI

VERSIONE STAMPABILE

I PIU' LETTI

INVIA QUESTO ARTICOLO

VIENNA (AUSTRIA) - Un duro attacco, inusitato nei toni. Se si perde il riferimento a Dio, «le grandi e meravigliose conoscenze della scienza diventano ambigue: possono aprire prospettive importanti per il bene, per la salvezza dell'uomo, ma anche - lo vediamo - diventare una terribile minaccia, la distruzione dell'uomo e del mondo». Lo ha detto il Papa nell'omelia della messa al Santuario di Mariazell in Austria.

«In passato c'è stata qualche resistenza e ci siamo sentiti soli»

Futuro Ue: «A volte l'Italia si è sentita sola»

Videoconferenza di Napolitano a Cernobbio: l'Unione Europea è viva e vegeta, ma serve maggior coraggio

Con lui sul palco della serata conclusiva ci sarà Stefania Sandrelli

L'omaggio di Venezia a Bernardo Bertolucci

Il regista, che sarà premiato con il "Leone d'oro del 75°", accolto da una standing ovation in Sala Grande

La coppia è seguita dagli studi legali che si occuparono di Carlo e Diana

Henry «gira» 15 milioni alla moglie Claire

Il divorzio più caro della storia del football

L'attaccante del Barcellona innamorato di un'attrice spagnola. L'annuncio della separazione dopo il trasferimento dall'Arsenal

Desfiladero

Jaime Avilés
jamastu@gmail.com

La semana entrante

Desde hoy, todos a la feria del Zócalo

El martes, con AMLO en San Lázaro

La noche del viernes, lunada histórica

Los de Abajo

Gloria Muñoz Ramírez
losylasdeabajo@yahoo.com.mx

Zona de tolerancia

Un movimiento de trabajadoras sexuales organizadas se opone a la construcción de una zona de tolerancia promovida en Apizaco, Tlaxcala, por el presidente municipal Reyes Ruiz Peña. Este proyecto, indican, “es violatorio de todo los derechos de los trabajadores y trabajadoras sexuales”, pues “disfraza” la explotación sexual encabezada por supuestos empresarios y profundiza el tráfico de todo tipo en un espacio propicio para la delincuencia.

Immanuel Wallerstein

La analogía de Vietnam

George W. Bush está mostrando tanto desesperación como mala fe al invocar la analogía con Vietnam para justificar la presencia continuada de Estados Unidos en Irak. Durante mucho tiempo, el gobierno de Bush negó la analogía. Hizo esto por obvias razones. Lo que la mayoría de la gente recuerda de Vietnam es que Estados Unidos fue derrotado, y esta derrota resultó en el debilitamiento del poderío estadunidense en el mundo.

Editorial

Golpismo televisivo

Ante las propuestas legislativas para eliminar la propaganda política pagada en los medios electrónicos, el poder de facto de la televisión y la radio comerciales ha respondido con una campaña de hostigamientos, presiones, amenazas y chantajes contra legisladores federales, y ha emprendido una cruzada de desinformación y envenenamiento de la opinión pública. En un esfuerzo por torpedear los cambios previstos a la legislación electoral, la Cámara Nacional de la Industria de Radio y Televisión (CIRT), encabezada por el duopolio televisivo y hablando en nombre de “los mexicanos”, se ha pronunciado contra la necesaria moralización de la autoridad electoral y contra la remoción de los consejeros del IFE que, con su actuación turbia y parcial, llevaron a ese organismo a una sima de desprestigio.

En vivo y con orquesta

Si bien el concierto de Carlos Santana en Montreux ocurrió el 15 de julio de 2004, apenas llega a México y algo similar ocurre con otro devedé de valía inconmensurable: Queen. Live in Japan. 1985, un concierto impresionante realizado en el Estadio Nacional Yoyogi de aquel país y que presenta a ese grupo inglés, que es una impronta, en toda su plenitud.

Juan Gabriel lo inmortalizó al componerle el tema homónimo en 1980

Derriban el mítico bar Noa Noa; construirán ahí un estacionamiento

Dañado por un incendio, el famoso salón permaneció abandonado desde 1994

Rubén Villalpando (Corresponsal)

Ilán Semo

Baudrillard y lo político

“En todas partes –escribe Jean Baudrillard en La seducción, o los abismos superficiales– se intenta producir sentido, hacer significar el mundo, hacerlo visible. Sin embargo, el peligro que corremos no es su carencia: al contrario, el sentido nos desborda y perecemos en él. Cada vez caen más cosas al abismo del sentido, y cada vez hay menos que mantengan el encanto de la apariencia.” ¿No es acaso paradójico que Baudrillard haya terminado sus días con una visión casi opuesta a la que en los años 60 lo alentó a emprender una crítica a la sociedad de consumo como un “espectáculo interminable de las apariencias”? ¿No era la crítica a la sociedad moderna como un “fatigoso intercambio de apariencias” lo que derrotaba cualquier intento de producir sentido?

New generation of 'disappeared' brings anguish to streets of Rio

Today's victims are poor residents targeted not by military dictators but by vigilante gangs and drug traffickers

Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
Thursday September 6, 2007
The Guardian


Denise Alves Tavares shows a photo of her son Douglas Roberto, 16, who was allegedly kidnapped by drug traffickers from a rival slum. Photograph: Douglas AustralFoto

The fireman's cry bellowed across the wasteland. "Over here, over here! Can you smell it?"

He crouched down on the litter-strewn riverbank and plunged a four-pronged hook into the murky water, quickly latching on to something beneath the surface. Grimacing, he hauled the hook back from the water - attached to a yellowing, apparently human, ribcage.

Denise Tavares, a local woman searching for her missing 16-year-old son, had been observing the scene from a distance. "My son, my son," she began to wail.

Article continues

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Seconds later a stunned silence fell on the crowd as the hook was pulled again from the swamp. Clinging to the carcass was not a human head, but the putrefying skull of a large dog.

Without a trace

Rio de Janeiro is a city of missing people. Since police records began in 1993, more than 10,000 people have vanished without trace here, while human rights activists say many more disappearances have gone unreported.

Recent reports in the Brazilian press suggested that at least 7,000 of these cases were related to killings carried out by drug traffickers, death squads and corrupt police officers.

Each week dozens of mothers such as Ms Tavares trawl city morgues, police stations and occasionally clandestine graveyards seeking information about their missing children.

But like Ms Tavares' son Douglas, who was seized from his home in December 2005 and never heard of again, many are never found. Instead they join the vast and growing register of Rio de Janeiro's "desaparecidos" - "the disappeared".

The expression was coined in South America during the military dictatorships of the 1960s and 70s. About 3,000 people disappeared at the hands of Augusto Pinochet's regime in Chile, while Argentina's military junta is said to have "disappeared" between 11,000 and 30,000 opponents.

Brazil had its political desaparecidos too. Around 485 political activists vanished or were killed during the 1964 military regime. This week, the government published an official report outlining systematic torture, rape and disappearance of activists during the two-decade dictatorship.

Now, 22 years after the end of military rule, Rio de Janeiro is home to a new generation of desaparecidos, even greater in scale.

"The number of impoverished youths murdered or 'disappeared' in recent years should have put Brazil in the dock at the international court [of justice] in the Netherlands," the social activist Yvonne Bezerra de Mello wrote recently in one Rio newspaper.

"We are worse than Bosnia or Serbia," she added, describing the situation as a "hidden genocide".

Today's desaparecidos are not political activists or leftwing dissidents. According to Roberto Cardoso, the head of Rio's homicide squad, they are largely impoverished residents of the city's "deprived communities". Victims of rampant crime and chronic insecurity, they are vanishing off the map in droves.

Many are executed and incinerated by drug traffickers or the vigilante gangs that control a number of Rio's poorest districts. Others have reportedly been the victims of the police themselves.

Authorities admit that official figures are unreliable since many disappearances are simply never reported.

Speaking from his seventh-floor office in central Rio, Mr Cardoso said he had no idea how many bodies were buried in clandestine cemeteries. "I don't know. It is difficult to know. There must be a lot of them, especially in the middle of the banditry, because nobody even complains."

Robson Fontenele, an inspector from the missing persons unit of Rio's homicide squad, said that the number of desaparecidos rose sharply after the end of Brazil's dictatorship in 1985.

He argued that with the return of civilian rule, criminals sought to hide their crimes from the authorities. The result was an explosion in the number of clandestine cemeteries where thousands of anonymous Brazilians are believed to have been buried.

"In the old days the crook would kill somebody and put their body on the street corner," said Inspector Fontenele, who has worked in homicide for 22 years. "Things have changed. Today it isn't interesting for the traffickers to put 10 or 20 bodies at the entrance to the shantytown, or for the mafia bosses to act like Al Capone during prohibition.

"[Their] secret [is that] ... without material [proof] there is no crime."

Inspector Fontenele said that operations to locate clandestine cemeteries in Rio's shantytowns were rare because of the risk of triggering a shoot-out with drug gangs.

Mr Cardoso insisted Rio's police were working hard to reduce the number of disappearances and murders. But he said that the presence of heavily armed drug gangs and the lack of information made it "difficult" for the police to solve many cases.

"We have to be careful," he said of the increasing levels of violence. "If we don't pay attention we'll wake up one morning and won't be able to do anything about it any more. I think most people don't realise the scale, or don't understand, what is going on."

Graphic images

The much-hyped release next month of Tropa de Elite (Elite Squad), a film about Rio's special forces police that has been billed as "City of God 2", may change all that.

The film is expected to feature graphic images of the "microwave", an improvised grave made out of car tyres in which drug traffickers frequently incinerate their victims' bodies.

Inside Rio's most violent shantytowns, at least, such practices are no secret. "Twenty-nine, 30, I don't know. Only Jesus knows," one drug trafficker, armed with a gold-plated Uzi submachine gun, said recently when asked how many people he had killed.

It was a rainy Wednesday afternoon in central Rio and in the corridor outside court room two, Ms Tavares was waiting to give evidence in a homicide hearing against the man who allegedly ordered the killing of her son.

Nearly two years after her son vanished his body has still not been found. The only partial explanation she received came in the form of two witness statements, indicating that drug traffickers had chopped off her son's nose and fingers before stabbing him to death.

"I'm just really, really lost," she said, cradling her head in her hands.

Duran Duran - The Wild Boys

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... como a Rosita Alvires.

http://film.guardian.co.uk/breach/story/0,,2155636,00.html

Breach - the true story

Guardian Unlimited

For anyone who thought the golden age of espionage ended when the Berlin Wall came down, it must be quite alarming to find that things are as hot as they ever were in the hidden world of covert operations.

The current atmosphere between the British and Russian governments has been strained by the events surrounding the murder of Alexander Litvinenko and the purported discovery of communications equipment concealed in a piece of fake rock in Moscow. Meanwhile the cinemas are full of tales of spies on the run, spies losing their memories and spies being hunted down by other spies, but not all these thrillers are the product of an overactive imagination - Breach, in cinemas August 31, brings to the big screen the story of one double agent's calculated betrayal over 15 years and the investigation that led to his eventual capture.

On February 18 2001, former FBI agent Robert Hanssen was arrested, charged with selling top secret documents and information to the Soviet Republic and, latterly, to the Russian government. It was said that by the time of his arrest Hanssen had received more than $1.4m in cash and diamonds for the information he had passed over to the KGB. In July of 2001 he pleaded guilty to 15 separate charges of espionage, and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Hanssen's story is retold in Breach, which follows the internal investigation and surveillance that led to his arrest. Written and directed by Billy Ray, whose previous film Shattered Glass was widely acclaimed by critics, Breach brings Hanssen to the big screen - and embodies him with a cold, angry intelligence courtesy of Oscar winner Chris Cooper.

The story deals with the final weeks of the chase to unmask the spy - but what led to the eventual sting? And how had this unassuming family man managed to systematically steal information across so many FBI departments, completely unheeded, for quite so long?

Hanssen, born in Chicago in 1944, studied Chemistry and Russian in college and subsequently began training as a dentist, before switching to accountancy because he "didn't like spit all that much". After graduating, he followed his father's career path into the Chicago Police Department, where he worked as an internal affairs investigator - gaining many of the skills that would later aid him as a spy. By 1976 he was recruited by the FBI, and in 1981 he relocated to their head office in Washington, DC.

It was here that Hanssen - calling himself only 'B' - made an approach to a Kremlin representative and started passing on valuable secrets. These included the names of three KGB agents on the FBI payroll - information which eventually led to two of them being executed.

Between 1985 and 2001 he continued to sell state secrets, in what the commission set up to investigate his betrayal described as "possibly the worst intelligence disaster in US history".

By the time he was caught, evidence against Hanssen was as thrilling as any spy novel - intricate details of the 'dead drops' that 'B' used to communicate; messages left with packing tape that would covertly indicate whether the drop had been made; the money deposited in secret accounts or even in cash, taped beneath a bridge in a park in the suburbs outside Washington.

In the end, it took a team of 500 agents to put together the pieces of the puzzle. But the sting itself was made possible by a young FBI employee by the name of Eric O'Neill: in January 2001 Hanssen was moved to a new post - a post created specifically in order to watch him. O'Neill was brought in as his aide, and finally got the evidence to catch his superior just two months before Hanssen was due to retire.

It is these last tense weeks of the case that are examined in the film, with Ryan Phillippe playing the young, inexperienced but fiercely loyal and ambitious O'Neill to Cooper's tightly-wound Hanssen. Alongside the main narrative, the wider implications of deceit and betrayal of country, family and colleagues are all played out. O'Neill takes on the case knowing almost nothing about Hanssen, and is drawn into a dangerous investigation involving espionage, pornography and murder. The building intensity as events unfold is captured perfectly in the film, which will have you on the edge of your seat as O'Neill has a series of close calls while trying to obtain the evidence needed to confirm Hanssen's guilt.

At the end of it all, Hanssen - who escaped the death sentence - remains aloof. Apart from his own ego, there seems little that motivated him to turn on his country; just the need to support his wife, Bonnie, and their six children - and, of course, the intellectual game of it all.

"I could have been a devastating spy, I think," he told agents questioning him after his arrest. "But I didn't want to - I wanted to get a little money and get out of it."

... el mural de Rivera.

Obituary

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Joseph McCarney

A philosopher with a new angle on Marxism

Andrew Chitty
Thursday September 6, 2007
The Guardian

Joe McCarney, who has died in a car crash aged 66, was a unique voice in the resurgence of Marxist theory in Britain which began in the 1970s. In three meticulously argued books, and many papers, he developed a distinctive perspective on the thought of Marx and Hegel and its relevance to the present.

A member of the editorial collective of the journal Radical Philosophy from 1976 to 2001, he produced his first book, The Real World of Ideology, in 1980. In it, Joe argued that for Marx, ideology simply meant any thought that serves a class's interests in its struggle with other classes. By contrast, the prevalent view of ideology as a set of illusions that arise spontaneously from the structures of society was symptomatic of a contemporary western Marxism that had retreated altogether from the idea of class struggle.

Article continues

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In Social Theory and the Crisis of Marxism (1990), Joe proposed that western Marxism largely understood itself as a "critical theory of society" whose purpose was to show that capitalism failed to match up to some moral or rational standard. This was a concept utterly alien to Marx, who saw his social theory as articulating the consciousness that was developing within the working class of its own intolerable situation, a consciousness that would ultimately lead it to overthrow capitalism, without any need for a moral critique. It was this Hegelian concept of social theory, shared by Marx, Engels, the Hungarian George Lukacs and Lenin, that Marxists needed to recover and develop. Controversially, Joe added that today Marxists must look to the oppressed masses of the third world as the agent of revolution.

As Joe acknowledged, his arguments here depended on an underlying confidence that history was pushing towards socialism, or, in Hegelian terms, that the rational was becoming real. It was perhaps this that led him to his Hegel on History (2000), a lucid exposition of Hegel's idea of history as the emergence of human freedom.

The eldest of six children, Joe was born and brought up on the Curragh in County Kildare. Educated at St Joseph's academy in Kildare, he was the first in his family to go to university, and began studying commerce at University College Dublin. However, after a year there, he spent a year in England, where he sold bibles door to door and worked as a bus conductor. Back at UCD, he graduated in 1964 with a first in politics and history, writing his thesis on the Irish labour movement. He then worked as a secondary school teacher in England before taking a philosophy MA at Warwick University (1966-68).

In 1969 he became a philosophy lecturer at what is now London South Bank University. Joe's lectures were beautifully constructed and he inspired enormous respect from his students, to whom he in turn was intensely committed.

Joe took early retirement from South Bank in 2000, and had completed several chapters of a book on the relationship between Hegel and Marx when he died. His work is united by a deep concern for social justice and freedom, and an implicit conviction that capitalism must eventually be superseded by a society that can realise those aims, or as he once put it, by "a truly human society, one that does not, by its nature, systematically obstruct the attempts of the mass of its members to cope with the burdens of being human".

In 1986, Joe moved with his family to Lewes, East Sussex, where he unobtrusively became a pillar of the local community, and even of the local church. He was a lover of poetry, film, chess, horse racing, and later golf. Although in some ways very private, he was a courteous, warm and generous man with a dry, self-deprecating wit, a raconteur capable of developing friendships with an astonishing variety of people. Above all, he was devoted to his wife Christine, their children Alice and Harry, his daughter from a previous marriage, Kathleen, and his young granddaughter Rose, who survive him.

· Henry Joseph McCarney, philosopher and teacher, born June 19 1941; died August 1 2007

La sua carriera è andata in crescendo a partire dagli anni Settanta

Lirica in lutto, è morto Luciano Pavarotti

Il tenore si è spento a Modena all'età di 71 anni. Da tempo lottava contro un tumore al pancreas. La conferma dal suo manager

MODENA - Il mondo della lirica è in lutto. Luciano Pavarotti è deceduto questa mattina a Modena alle 5 del mattino. Lo ha confermato con una email all’agenzia di stampa Associated Press il suo manager, Terri Robson. «Il Maestro - si legge nella nota - ha combattuto a lungo una dura battaglia contro un cancro al pancreas che alla fine gli ha tolto la vita. Mantenendo l’approccio che ha caratterizzato tutta la sua vita e il suo lavoro, è rimasto positivo fino all’ultimo istante della sua malattia». Pavarotti, 71 anni, era nato a Modena il 12 ottobre 1935. E' stato il tenore più famoso al mondo degli ultimi trent'anni. La sua è stata una vita tutta dedicata alla lirica.

LA MALATTIA - Operato per il tumore al pancreas l'anno scorso, Pavarotti aveva avuto nei mesi scorsi un peggioramento mentre si trovava nella sua casa sulle colline di Pesaro e l'8 agosto era stato ricoverato con difficoltà respiratorie e febbre alta. Dopo la degenza, che si era prolungata più del previsto, era tornato a casa, ma a Modena, seguito dai medici del dipartimento di oncologia.

L'ULTIMO SALUTO DAL WEB - Dopo che i media di tutto il mondo hanno dato l'annuncio della morte, il sito Internet ufficiale dell'artista è stato preso d'assalto dai navigatori dei cinque continenti, al punto che in più occasioni è risultato inaccessibile. La normale navigazione è stata sospesa dal webmaster e l'home page è stata sostituita da una pagina bianca con un'immagine sorridente di Pavarotti affiancata da un suo pensiero sulla musica: «Penso che una vita nella musica sia una vita ben spesa ed è quello a cui ho dedicato la mia vita» (■ Guarda)

I GUAI COL FISCO - Negli ultimi anni Pavarotti era balzato agli onori delle cronache non solo per le proprie prestazioni artistiche ma anche per alcune grane fiscali che aveva avuto negli anni Novanta. Il 28 luglio 2000 patteggiò infatti con l'erario il pagamento di 25 miliardi di lire a chiusura di un lungo duello con gli agenti delle tasse. Quando si presentò nell'ufficio dell'allora ministro delle Finanze, Ottaviano Del Turco, per consegnargli un assegno a dieci cifre, davanti a decine di fotografi e operatori tv, commentò ironicamente: «Mi sento più leggero nell'animo e non solo...». La prescrizione lo mandò poi assolto nel processo che lo vedeva imputato di dichiarazione infedele dei redditi.

... principessa.

Fidel Castro Ruz

Los superrevolucionarios

Leo cuidadosamente todos los días las opiniones sobre Cuba de agencias tradicionales de prensa, incluidas las de los pueblos que formaron parte de la URSS, las de la República Popular China y otras. Me llegan noticias de órganos de prensa escrita en América Latina, España y el resto de Europa.

El cuadro es cada vez más incierto ante el temor de una recesión prolongada como la de los años que siguieron a 1930. El gobierno de Estados Unidos recibió el 22 de julio de 1944 los privilegios otorgados en Bretton Woods a la potencia militar más poderosa, emitir el dólar como moneda internacional de cambio. La economía de ese país estaba intacta después de la guerra, en 1945, y disponía de casi 70 por ciento de las reservas en oro del mundo. Nixon decidió unilateralmente, el 15 de agosto de 1971, suspender la garantía en oro por cada dólar emitido. Con eso financió la matanza de Vietnam en una guerra que costó más de 20 veces el valor real de las reservas en oro que le quedaban. Desde entonces la economía de Estados Unidos se sostiene a costa de los recursos naturales y los ahorros del resto del mundo.

La teoría del crecimiento continuo de la inversión y el consumo, aplicada por los más desarrollados a los países donde la inmensa mayoría es pobre, rodeada por lujos y derroches de una exigua minoría de ricos, no sólo es humillante sino también destructiva. Ese saqueo y sus desastrosas consecuencias es la causa de la rebeldía creciente de los pueblos, aunque muy pocos conozcan la historia de los hechos.

Las inteligencias más dotadas y cultivadas se incluyen en la lista de recursos naturales y están tarifadas en el mercado mundial de bienes y servicios.

¿Qué ocurre con los superrevolucionarios de la llamada extrema izquierda? Algunos lo son por falta de realismo y el agradable placer de soñar cosas dulces. Otros no tienen nada de soñadores, son expertos en la materia, saben lo que dicen y para qué lo dicen. Es una trampa bien armada en la que no debe caerse. Reconocen nuestros avances como quienes conceden limosnas. ¿Carecen realmente de información? No es así. Les puedo asegurar que están absolutamente informados. En determinados casos, la supuesta amistad con Cuba les permite estar presentes en numerosas reuniones internacionales y conversar con cuantas personas del exterior o del país deseen hacerlo, sin traba alguna de nuestro vecino imperial a sólo 90 millas de las costas cubanas.

¿Qué aconsejan a la revolución? Veneno puro. Las fórmulas más típicas del neoliberalismo. El bloqueo no existe, pareciera una invención cubana.

Subestiman la más colosal tarea de la revolución, su obra educacional, el cultivo masivo de las inteligencias. Sostienen la necesidad de personas capaces de vivir realizando trabajos simples y rudos. Subestiman los resultados y exageran los gastos en inversiones científicas. O algo peor: se ignora el valor de los servicios de salud que Cuba presta al mundo, donde en realidad, con modestos recursos, la revolución desnuda el sistema impuesto por el imperialismo, que carece de personal humano para llevarlo a cabo. Se aconsejan inversiones que son ruinosas, y los servicios que aportan, como el alquiler, son prácticamente gratuitos. De no haberse detenido a tiempo las inversiones extranjeras en viviendas, habrían construido decenas de miles sin más recursos que la venta previa de las mismas a extranjeros residentes en Cuba o en el exterior. Eran además empresas mixtas regidas por otra legislación creada para empresas productivas. No había límites para las facultades de los compradores como propietarios. El país suministraría los servicios a tales residentes o usuarios, para lo cual no se requieren los conocimientos de un científico o un especialista en informática. Muchos de los alojamientos podían ser adquiridos por los órganos de inteligencia enemigos y sus aliados.

No se puede prescindir de algunas empresas mixtas, porque controlan mercados que son imprescindibles. Pero tampoco se puede inundar con dinero el país sin vender soberanía.

Los superrevolucionarios que recetan tales medicamentos ignoran de forma deliberada otros recursos verdaderamente decisivos para la economía, como es la producción creciente de gas, que ya purificado se convierte en una fuente inestimable de electricidad sin afectar el medio ambiente y aporta cientos de millones de dólares cada año. De la Revolución Energética promovida por Cuba, de vital y decisiva importancia para el mundo, no se dice una palabra. Llegan todavía más lejos: ven en la producción cañera, un cultivo que se sostuvo en Cuba con mano de obra semiesclava, una ventaja energética para la isla, capaz de contrarrestar los elevados precios del diesel que derrochan sin freno los automóviles de Estados Unidos, Europa occidental y otros países desarrollados. Se estimula el instinto egoísta de los seres humanos, mientras los precios de los alimentos se duplican y triplican.

Nadie ha sido más crítico que yo de nuestra propia obra revolucionaria, pero jamás me verán esperar favores o perdones del peor de los imperios.

3 de septiembre de 2007, 8:36 P. M.

Texto distribuido por Prensa Latina

Ex agente de la CIA subastará cabello del Che

REUTERS

Gustavo Villoldo, ex agente de la CIA que participó en la captura de Ernesto Che Guevara en Bolivia, subastará un mechón de cabello que logró cortarle al legendario líder guerrillero antes de su asesinato, el 9 de octubre de 1967. El Che fue victimado en una escuela la localidad rural boliviana de Higuera, y al día siguiente su cuerpo fue trasladado a Vallegrande, donde Villoldo era asesor estadunidense del ejército boliviano.

“Lo estoy haciendo por el bien de la historia y para cerrar (el tema). Esta es una pieza única”, afirmó Villoldo sobre al álbum de recortes que también subastará y que incluye un mapa usado para seguir al mítico guerrillero. “Guevara es, diría yo, la figura más reconocida del mundo… Para mí una parte de su cabello, sicológicamente para mí, significa que corté uno de los símbolos de la revolución, el cabello largo”.

Sostuvo que espera que el álbum de recortes, sea vendido en 7 millones de dólares cuando llegue el 25 de octubre a la casa de subastas Heritage Auction Galleries, en Dallas. Agregó que la evidencia de ADN puede ser extraída de la hebra y ésta podría ser comparada con la información genética de miembros sobrevivientes de la familia del Che.

Villoldo es un ex veterano de la invasión de Bahía de Cochinos y se le identifica como uno de los oficiales a cargo de disponer del cuerpo de Guevara, después de exhibirlo al mundo, para corroborar su muerte

El ex agente de la CIA afirmó que subastará los cabellos y otros objetos que retenía como reliquias desde la misión del ejército boliviano y la CIA hace 40 años.

... una puñalada trapera.

George Orwell: a paranoid rebel with tattoos on his knuckles

Gordon Bowker
Wednesday September 5, 2007
The Guardian

According to some of his friends, George Orwell was paranoid. In the mid-30s he thought Catholics were spying on him; during the Spanish Civil War he thought communists were shadowing him. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Winston Smith, relentlessly scrutinised by Big Brother, embodies that sense of persecution.

But Orwell's paranoia, it seems, was justified. The Soviet secret police were watching him in Barcelona in 1937, and now, thanks to documents just released, we know he was also under surveillance by Special Branch and MI5 as early as 1929, while living "down and out" in Paris. Interestingly enough, unlike his many rightwing critics, British spies concluded that he was not a Communist, despite having "advanced" and "unorthodox" opinions.

The detail in these reports is fascinating - a passport photograph of him sporting a strange-looking Hitler moustache while serving as an Imperial policeman in Burma in 1927; an offer of work by the forerunner of the Daily Worker while in Paris. Another document notes that he had tattoo marks on the backs of his hands - not evident from published photographs.

Adrian Fierz, son of the friend who helped Orwell find his first publisher, spotted the tattoos and asked about them. "They were," he recalled, "blue spots the shape of small grapefruits - one on each knuckle."

As this information was on Orwell's 1927 passport it can be presumed he acquired the tattoos in Burma. He was never a properly "correct" member of the Imperial class - hobnobbing with Buddhist priests, Rangoon prostitutes and British drop-outs. As Orwell himself noted, rebellious Burmese tribesmen thought tattoos gave magic protection from British bullets, and, as he himself grew more rebellious, perhaps he felt in need of his own protection against official hostility. The tattoos were probably a sign to members of the British establishment in Burma that he was not "one of them" - an attitude he sustained throughout his writing career. That attitude, highly fruitful for his writing, was also what made him a suspect to the intelligence authorities.

· Gordon Bowker is the author of George Orwell, published by Abacus.

¿Pool o Carambola?

El mundo debe andar (de) patas pa’ arriba. Cuando parecía que todo estaba planificado y bajo estricto control, el factor aleatorio toma el control de la partida. Pues nada, que el Domingo he ido a relajarme un poco, y como ya saben que uno de mis pasatiempos es el Pambol, fui al bar de la uni a wachar los resumenes de los partidos, y me encuentro con la sorpresa de que el jogo bonito domina la liga premier tío. El Liverpool y el Arsenal están al tope de la tabla de posiciones, mientras que el Man U y los BLUES de Stamford Bridge andan arrastrando feamente la cobija.

Para festejar el inusitado acontecimiento –aunque mis finanzas no viven sus mejores días- pido una pint de “Golden JACKAL” y al dirigir la mirada al fondo del bar me topo con las mesas de billar. Involuntariamente regreso la temprana infancia cuando mi papá era afecto a ese juego. Gurdaba en ese entonces las bolas sobre una repisa, en el mismo cuarto en el que un día mis hermanos y yo anticipadamente encontramos los regalos navideños que pretendían estar muy bien OCULTOS. En MEXICO mientras tanto, parece que gracias a una sesión de asesoría –que les aseguro no va a ser gratuita- el primer mandatario acaba de llevar a cabo una jugada de fantasía, que muy bien podría calificarse de tres bandas.

¿Quién es en realidad el ganón de la elección en Veracruz? ¿Quiénes perdieron el PAN, el Yunque, el PANAL? ¿Forman en realidad tándem estos dos últimos? ¿Deveras persisten membresías o lealtades? Espero en todo caso que después de la estela de derrotas consecutivas el Yunque haya aprendido bien la lección: la PROPAGANDA ya no basta para ganar elecciones, eso si damos por sentado que en todos estos inútiles espectáculos circenses alguien gana en forma legítima. Una supuesta anquilosada aplanadora TRICOLOR ha hecho añicos a tal parejita. Si mi hipótesis de la consejería de diván en la boda de la sobrina es cierta, entonces, por favor, ilumínenme sus mercedes: ¿Qué va a pedir a cambio el cabeza de bola 8 por esta estrategia ganadora, para aplacar por igual a la orquesta y la primera profesora del país?

Por otra parte, aunque intente transmitirse y repetirse ad infinitum una imagen triunfal del “capitán” de ese barco fantasma llamado MEXICO, el espectador no se traga el anzuelo. Me sorprende que muchas veces los lectores de los periódicos tengan mejores lecturas políticas que los supuestos analistas, uno de ellos en el espacio de correos de uno de los pocos medios impresos independientes mencionaba que a Ugalde no le debería extrañar que sea uno de los chivos expiatorios en estos recientes juegos de poder. En realidad no hay fidelidades sino complicidades. Y es que ya no importa el partido con el que se teja la alianza lo que urge es la tan ansiada legitimidad. Para conquistarla, venga de ‘onde venga, toda ayuda es bienvenida. Aunque, parece que a los expertos también les pasó desapercibido que el Junior de la Fuente anduvo muy hiperactivo en días pasados. ¿No se hablaba que el rector era el “relevo ideal” del grupito de magnates del palco de honor del estadio MEXICO ’68 para la PRESIDENCIA interina? ¿Quiénes realmente estaban enviando estos mensajes cruzados? Pero lo más importante, ¿porqué? Parece que la única lealtad del remedo de dictador en México no se da en la política, esa la va a encontrar asté en un negocio que está dejando mucho, pero mucho más billelle. Pregunten cómo les ha ido a los PRIMOS con tales inversiones en la “liberada” Afganistán.

Ya pa’ terminar les quiero avisar que aunque ciertos analistas de los más picudos hablan de desconsuelo y derrota, ustedes no se achicopalen, aguanten un poco más. Les quiero repetir que, al final no es la polaca la que va a derrocar a ese mal gobierno, no os desesperéis, los baturros caminan por la acera de enfrente. En todo caso, sí se puede comp@s. Averigüen cómo es que les fue con el proyecto del Club de Golf en Tepoztlán. ¡Ah! Antes que se me olvide, a los grandes empresarios del más boyante negocio nacional, humildemente quisiera sugerirle que si quieren re-invertir sus ganancias observen a los grandes oligarcas RUSOS exiliados en la Gran Bretaña. Yo creo que los del GOLFO podría comprar acciones del FC DALLAS, y los Culichis del CHIVAS USA, o si se quieren ver más chic (o cool dirían por esos lares) de LA Galaxy con el Capitán AMERICA como atractivo. Bueno, yo nomás decía, si no quieren pus no.

M@rcarambola;

Norwich, G(ran) B(illar);

5/9/07

P.D.POPULISTA. "...Recorría todas las ciudades y aldeas, enseñando en las sinagogas de ellos y predicando el evangelio del reino, y sanando toda enfermedad y toda dolencia en el PUEBLO..." - Mateo 9:35 (Casiodoro de Reina, 1569).

P.D.ORINEGRA. "... son tus campiñas PETROLERAS un PRIMOR/miles de OBREROS allí encuentran protección/por las riquezas que tienes en derredor/eres ORGULLO de TODITA la NACION..." - TAMPICO HERMOSO (Samuel M. Lozano).

P.DALTIPLANA. "... Did you exchange a walk-part in a WAR for a LEAD ROLE in a CAGE?..." - Wish you were here (PINK FLOYD).

P.D.COLMENAR. "... Yo sé que soy de tu agrado/no niegues en darme el sí/que yo te he ofrecido a ti un matrimonio SAGRADO..." – Como abeja al PANAL (Juan Luis Guerra).

P.D.BROZA. ¿Quieren que les cuente un CUENTO?

Pilona Feminista (Amable aportación de una cuata de MONCLOVA):

Cuando Dios creó a Adán y Eva les dijo:

>>Sólo me quedan dos regalos:
Uno es el arte de hacer pipi de pie...y... entonces Adán se adelantó y gritó: ¡¡Yo!!!, ¡¡¡Yo!!!, >¡¡¡Yo!!!,
Yo lo quiero, por favor... Señoooor, ¡¡porfaaa, >porfaaa!!!, mire
que me facilitaría la vida sustancialmente.

Eva asintió, y dijo que esas cosas no tenía importancia para ella.
Entonces Dios le dio a Adán el regalo y éste empezó a gritar de
alegría.

Corría por el jardín del Edén y hacía pipi en todos los
árboles y arbustos, corrió por la playa haciendo dibujos con su
pipi >en la arena...
En fin, no paró de lucirse.

Dios y Eva contemplaban al hombre loco de felicidad y
Eva preguntó Dios: ¿Cuál es el otro regalo?

Dios contestó:
Cerebro Eva, cerebro... y es para ti...!!!

… la Telaraña.