Abril de 2006 (Continuación)

sábado, 29

MundoAmérica,

Por Alain Touraine, sociólogo y director del Instituto de Estudios Superiores de París. Traducción de María Luisa Rodríguez Tapia (EL PAÍS, 29/04/06):

La elección de Michelle Bachelet para la presidencia de Chile ha suscitado reacciones tan entusiastas que es preciso buscar, más allá de los hechos y las personalidades, unas explicaciones que puedan iluminar la situación de otros países, y no sólo en Latinoamérica.

En primer lugar, no se puede separar el nombre de Michelle Bachelet del de Ricardo Lagos, presidente durante los seis últimos años, aclamado al final de su mandato con gritos de "2010" -las próximas elecciones presidenciales- y que conserva una popularidad de más del 70%.…  Seguir leyendo »

EspañaAspectos Generales

Por Miguel Ángel Moratinos, ministro de Asuntos Exteriores y de Cooperación (EL PAÍS, 29/04/06):

En el ecuador de la legislatura, la responsabilidad política y el cumplimiento de la palabra dada requieren analizar el nivel de cumplimiento de los compromisos electorales del Gobierno. Compromisos que se asientan sobre la atención a los intereses ciudadanos y la necesidad de reorientar la acción exterior de España con el fin de afrontar con garantías los retos e incertidumbres de la globalización.

Nuestra propuesta ha sido participar activa y eficazmente en la construcción de la comunidad internacional. Paralelamente, hemos iniciado la renovación de nuestra acción exterior y se dan pasos firmes para modernizar y poner en marcha una Reforma Integral del Servicio Exterior.…  Seguir leyendo »

EspañaModelo de EstadoModelo Territorial

Por Ferrán Requejo, politólogo de la UPF (LA VANGUARDIA, 29/04/06):

El debate en torno al plan Ibarretxe (es un decir) y al Estatut catalán han ratificado en qué país vivimos. Dejémoslo así. Un tema traído a menudo a colación ha sido el de la consideración o no de Catalunya y del País Vasco como realidades nacionales diferenciadas. No está de más, creo, ofrecer algún elemento basado en una perspectiva académica, generalmente mucho más analítica, reposada y, sobre todo, más internacionalizada sobre la cuestión.

En los estudios sobre nacionalismos -estatales y no estatales- de las democracias liberales, las caracterizaciones habituales de las naciones sin Estado en la política comparada (o naciones minoritarias) suelen basarse en criterios teóricos que combinan rasgos objetivos y subjetivos.…  Seguir leyendo »

EspañaNaturaleza

Por José Manuel Sánchez Ron. Miembro de la Real Academia Española y catedrático de Historia de la Ciencia de la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (EL PERIÓDICO, 29/04/06):

El Grupo Socialista ha presentado en el Congreso, a través del diputado verde Francisco Garrido, un proyecto no de ley que apoya una iniciativa que pusieron en marcha en 1993 un grupo de etólogos y científicos, el denominado Proyecto Gran Simio.
La idea detrás de esta empresa es otorgar protección legal y moral, comparable en algunos aspectos a la que poseen los humanos, a los antropoides también conocidos como los grandes simios (chimpancés, gorilas, bonobos y orangutanes).…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea,

Por José Manuel Fajardo, escritor (EL PERIÓDICO, 29/04/06):

Al día siguiente de la larga noche electoral en Italia, llegué a Perugia invitado por una asociación cultural de izquierdas que lleva el elocuente y humorístico nombre de Banana Republic. Cabía esperar encontrarlos en plena fiesta por la victoria de la izquierda y, sin embargo, reinaba una sensación de insatisfacción y el temor a que el Gobierno de Berlusconi aprobara normas que anularan votos y se atribuyera la victoria. Que tales pensamientos se den con apesadumbrada naturalidad en un país de la Unión Europea es chocante y preocupante a la vez. Pero el hasta ahora presidente Berlusconi ya había legislado otras veces en función de sus intereses, de modo que los recelos estaban más que justificados.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo

By Joseph E. Robert Jr., chairman and chief executive of J.E. Robert Companies, a global commercial real estate and mortgage investment firm based in McLean (THE WASHINGTON POST, 29/04/06):

I've had the opportunity to travel to Iraq three times, most recently last month, courtesy of the nonpartisan Business Executives for National Security. On every trip I'm struck by the difference between the Iraq I hear and read about back home and the Iraq I see in person. Iraq defies expectations and easy definition.

For me as a business executive, these visits provide a firsthand look at the largest U.S. reconstruction effort since the Marshall Plan.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica,

By Mark Feldstein, director of the journalism program at George Washington University, was an investigative correspondent for CNN in Washington. His book "Poisoning the Press: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson and the Rise of Washington's Scandal Culture" will be published next year (THE WASHINGTON POST, 29/04/06):

In an earlier life I spent 20 years as an investigative reporter, getting subpoenaed and sued in the United States, and censored and physically harassed in other parts of the globe. But when I switched careers to academia, I thought such scrapes would come to an end. I was wrong.

On March 3 two FBI agents showed up at my home, flashing their badges and demanding to see 25-year-old documents that I have been reading as part of my research for a book I'm writing about Jack Anderson, the crusading investigative columnist who died in December.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica,

By Tim Roemer, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 29/04/06):

AMERICANS have clearly had enough of the Bush administration's record: 7 in 10 say the nation is headed in the wrong direction. But with the 2006 Congressional elections fast approaching, Democrats must not get so irrationally exuberant that they lapse into old, bad habits.

In January, President Bush's adviser Karl Rove outlined the issues he believes will lead Republican candidates to victory in November: national security, the economy and taxes, and the courts. Democrats cannot allow Republicans to define the terms of the debate. Instead, they should take a page from history and from a different Karl.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoÁfrica

By Jeffrey D. Sachs, the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, is the author of "The End of Poverty." (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 29/04/06):

AMERICANS have a perfect retort to Osama Bin Laden's call for expanding the terrorism war to Sudan. We should respond by showing our abiding concern for the plight of Africans by helping to save millions of children who are at risk of death from disease. In honoring the sanctity of the lives of the least among us we have the best chance to defeat the ideologies of hate.

A campaign by the American Red Cross, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Unicef, the United Nations Foundation and the World Health Organization gives us just the right opportunity.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesDemocracia

By Mary Beard, a professor of classics at Cambridge University (THE GUARDIAN, 29/04/06):

In 427BCE the people of Athens voted, democratically, to put to death the entire adult male population of the town of Mytilene and to throw into slavery the women and children - thousands in all. As a punishment for changing sides in the great war between Athens and Sparta, this was brutal even by the permissive rules of ancient warfare. The next day the voters got cold feet.Meeting again, they reversed the decision, and sent a second message to their commander in the field, cancelling their earlier orders.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica,

Bush Enters Anthem Fight on Language.By Jim Rutenberg (New York Times).

WASHINGTON, April 28—President Bush has never been shy about speaking Spanish in public, and he is known to love all kinds of music: country, folk and even Tex-Mex style rock. But one thing you will not find on his iPod: "Nuestro Himno," the new Spanish version of the national anthem that was released on Friday as part of the growing immigrants' rights movement.

Asked at a news briefing in the Rose Garden on Friday whether he believed the anthem would have the same value in Spanish as it did in English, Mr.…  Seguir leyendo »

EspañaCultura y Ciencia,

By Colm Tóibín. His novel The Master (Picador), was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 2004. His radio series, God, History, Fantasy and Reason - A Journey through Spanish History and Music, begins tomorrow at 3.30pm on Radio 3 (THE GUARDIAN, 29/04/06):

Picasso was in Paris when Guernica was bombed. The devastating air attack on the Basque town on April 26 1937 was widely reported. The following day, George Lowther Steer wrote in the Times: "Guernica, the most ancient town of the Basques and the centre of their cultural tradition, was completely destroyed yesterday by insurgent air raiders. The bombardment of the open town far behind the lines occupied precisely three hours and a quarter during which a powerful fleet of aeroplanes ...…  Seguir leyendo »

viernes, 28

ReflexionesIslam y Mundo ÁrabeMundoOriente Próximo

By David Ignatius (THE WASHINGTON POST, 28/04/06):

It's a truism that all conflicts end eventually. But how do you resolve a confrontation with an adversary that appears unable or unwilling to negotiate a settlement? That's a common problem that runs through the West's battles with militant Islam.

The most pressing instance is Iran's drive to become a nuclear power. The United States and its allies still talk as if it will be possible to stop the Iranian nuclear program short of war, through a combination of sanctions and diplomatic negotiations. But the Iranians push ahead, seemingly oblivious, and the ruling mullahs act contemptuous of the West's threats and blandishments.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo

By Gerard Baker (THE TIMES, 28/04/06):

AMID THE DISCORDANT daily buzz and hum of diplomatic traffic, much of the world seems to think it now hears the distinct and ominous tones of a march to another war in the Middle East. From the Pentagon they have picked up the insistent timpani of unattributed investigative reporting; from the White House, they figure, shrill political trumpets proclaim a presidency desperate to save itself from political oblivion. From the wings they can hear a rogues’ gallery of neocon caricatures playing the theme tune from Dr Strangelove. Out of Tehran grows ever louder the basso profondo of theocratic defiance.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea,

By Ben Macintyre (THE TIMES, 28/04/06):

ONE DAY, towards the end of my final year at university, I was tapped on the shoulder by a friendly don and asked if I, ahem, would like to meet an acquaintance of his, nudge, who was linked to the Foreign Office, wink, but outside the normal channels, if I knew what he meant. I most certainly did. For months, I had been assiduously cultivating the air of a potential spook by looking even more furtive than usual. I had read every word of John le Carré. I had even bought a faintly sinister trilby.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalSalud Pública

By Henry I. Miller, a doctorand a fellow at the Hoover Institution, headed the Food and Drug Administration's Office of Biotechnology from 1989 to 1993 (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 28/04/06):

Last week, the Food and Drug Administration staked out its position on the long-standing controversy over the medical use of marijuana — and made a lot of people smoking mad. The F.D.A. endorsed a multi-agency study that found that "no animal or human data supported the safety or efficacy of marijuana for general medical use." This came as an affront to those who claim that cannabis is an appropriate treatment for ailments from nausea and vomiting to muscle spasticity and intractable pain.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoÁfrica

By Raffi Khatchadourian. He traveled to Chad in 2005 for the International Reporting Project at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 28/04/06):

EVER since Chad gained independence 46 years ago, it has been a world-class model of political dysfunction. In the 1970's, Chad's president, François Tombalbaye, compelled civil servants to renounce Western customs, undergo a tribal initiation rite known as yondo and profess belief in a nationalist creed he called Chaditude. He was executed in 1975. In the 1980's, a rebel leader named Hissène Habré led an army to the presidential palace and seized power.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial

By Wilkins Micawber, writing under a pseudonym, is a recovering alcoholic (THE GUARDIAN, 28/04/06):

The most irritating thing about Stanton Peele, the American addiction expert interviewed in Society Guardian, is that he is right (Addictive personality, April 12). But he uses his very reasonable analysis of the state of the "treatment" marketplace as a foundation for a curiously determined attempt to debunk the "myth" of Alcoholics Anonymous and other programmes.I am myself an alcoholic; I drank alcoholically for 20 years, went into treatment and remained clean for 10 years, seven of them without AA. I relapsed two years ago, and would not wish on anyone the hell of the month I drank for.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesDemocracia

By Jonathan Steele (THE GUARDIAN, 28/04/06):

here is an ABC of how to promote undemocratic regimes. The leader of country A will be George Bush's guest today after recently supervising a parliamentary election that was widely considered not to have been free and fair. The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which sent the usual team of observers, described it as "not meeting international standards".The incumbent leader had tight control over the media, and used state-funded TV to highlight his alleged achievements while ignoring or denigrating his opponents. His police were brutal and broke up rallies. "There were restrictions on the freedom of assembly, as well as harassment, intimidation, and detentions of some candidates and their supporters," as the OSCE put it.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea,

By Simon Jenkins (THE GUARDIAN, 28/04/06):

There is nowhere on earth more British than 77° south 166° east. On the shores of Ross Island in Antarctica stand three wooden huts intact from one of the classic episodes of British history, the race to the south pole between Scott and Shackleton. Two of the huts, Shackleton's at Cape Royds (1908) and Scott's at Cape Evans (1911), are still full of their icebound supplies left in case of either's return.

Both men, the moody, dedicated Scott and the charismatic Shackleton, endured intense privation on their way to their respective failures. Scott was beaten to the pole by the Norwegian Amundsen and Shackleton failed to make his second, transantarctic crossing.…  Seguir leyendo »