Miércoles, 16 de agosto de 2006

By Simon Jenkins (THE GUARDIAN, 16/08/06):

A stick of lipstick is a killer. A tube of toothpaste is high explosive. Baby's milk is poison. A nailfile is key to mass destruction. For the first time since the Spanish Inquisition a book is a proscribed weapon of war. Such is the infinite delicacy of western society that nothing, absolutely nothing, can be tolerated if it carries the slightest element of risk. Lesser breeds in distant lands can continue their slaughter and mayhem. We may not consort with the great god of chance.

I had once thought that "health and safety" would do for aeroplanes before terrorism did.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Dava Sobel, author of "Longitude," "Galileo's Daughter," and "The Planets," served as the sole non-scientist on the Planet Definition Committee (THE WASHINGTON POST, 16/08/06):

Pluto has become the butt of jokes lately, replacing Uranus as the solar system's laughingstock -- and all because scientists find themselves forced, at last, to come to terms with the meaning of the word "planet."

Tacit definitions have existed since ancient times, when planetai, meaning wanderers, applied to seven moving lights in the sky: the sun, the moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. But telescopes have revealed more objects in the solar system than were dreamt of in ancient philosophy, and new discoveries demand strict, useful terminology that will help astronomers categorize a host of newfound worlds.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Robert J. Samuelson (THE WASHINGTON POST, 16/08/06):

This is an age of glaring contradictions. It's hard to ignore the great disconnect between the rise of terrorism and the relentless advance of the world economy. After Sept. 11, 2001, the reasonable fear was that terrorism and its nasty side effects -- more anxiety, uncertainty and security checks, and higher costs for moving people and cargo -- might cripple economic growth and frustrate the spread of globalization. It hasn't happened. Not yet, anyway.

To be sure, terrorism has exacted some steep costs. Airlines and tourism suffered after Sept. 11; in the wake of last week's foiled bomb plot, that could happen again.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state of EE.UU. (THE WASHINGTON POST, 16/08/06):

For the past month the United States has worked urgently to end the violence that Hezbollah and its sponsors have imposed on the people of Lebanon and Israel. At the same time, we have insisted that a truly effective cease-fire requires a decisive change from the status quo that produced this war. Last Friday we took an important step toward that goal with the unanimous passage of U.N. Resolution 1701. Now the difficult, critical task of implementation begins.

The agreement we reached has three essential components:

First, it puts in place a full cessation of hostilities.…  Seguir leyendo »

By David Ignatius (THE WASHINGTON POST, 16/08/06):

The Lebanon war was damaging for Israel, the United States and, most of all, Lebanon itself. But it may have taught everyone a lesson that will be immensely important to the future of the Middle East: The solutions to the big problems that afflict the region are not military but political.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is getting bashed at home for failing to deliver a quick victory over Hezbollah. But he deserves credit for recognizing the need for a political settlement that enhanced the authority of the Lebanese state. He wisely resisted pressure from his generals to mount a major ground offensive north of the Litani River, understanding that this quest for a decisive military solution would only take Israel deeper into the Lebanese quagmire.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Alice Miles (THE TIMES, 16/08/06):

THE WORLD WIDE WEB had its 15th birthday this month. It is no coincidence that over the same period of time, radical Islamist terrorism has emerged as Western democracy’s deadly new threat. Al-Qaeda and the web are the same age.

Before the web, terrorism remained local. It had to. There were limited physical and secure ways of reaching sympathisers farther afield, of channelling money, of propagandising and recruiting internationally. Before the early 1990s, and al-Qaeda’s move to Sudan, Osama bin Laden’s operations were local, and limited.

Today the Islamist terror network operates internationally through a series of dedicated and sometimes restricted websites; doubtless it uses the web to channel money around the world as well.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Daniel Finkelstein (THE TIMES, 16/08/06):

SO LISTEN, I’ve got another story for you. It’s about a battered old empty suitcase. Perhaps you’ve heard it already, perhaps you haven’t, whatever. But it’s been almost a week since I first became acquainted with it, and I am still trying to make sense of what I’ve heard.

Before I begin, it may help if I explain that if things had worked out differently, I could have been a very wealthy man.

In the late 1970s, towards the end of my grandmother’s life, unrest began to bubble up in Poland, the start of a process that a decade later ended the rule of the Soviet-backed Government.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Mike Brown, a professor of planetary astronomy at the California Institute of Technology (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 16/08/06):

Pasadena, Calif.

LAST year, two colleagues and I announced that we had found an unknown body slightly larger than Pluto in the far reaches of our solar system. Since then, astronomical confusion has reigned on Earth and, depending on whom you ask, our solar system has 8, 9, 10 or, shockingly, 53 planets.

Next week, the International Astronomical Union, which oversees astronomical rules and conventions, will vote on a strict definition of “planet.” The result of that vote is hard to predict, but soon, we’ll likely lose a planet we’ve gotten to know for the past 76 years, or gain at least one more.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Irshad Manji, a fellow at Yale University, is the author of “The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith.” (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 16/08/06):

New Haven

LAST week, the luminaries of the British Muslim mainstream — lobbyists, lords and members of Parliament — published an open letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair, telling him that the “debacle” of both Iraq and Lebanon provides “ammunition to extremists who threaten us all.” In increasingly antiwar America, a similar argument is gaining traction: The United States brutalizes Muslims, which in turn foments Islamist terror.

But violent jihadists have rarely needed foreign policy grievances to justify their hot heads.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Madeleine Bunting (THE GUARDIAN, 16/08/06):

One could almost feel sorry for them. A minister like Ruth Kelly is wrenched from her bucket-and spade holiday on a rainy British beach with the kids to launch yet another push to "engage" with Muslims and to step up efforts to "tackle" extremism. A ministerial tour of nine cities to meet Muslims is announced.It's all designed to sound energetic and purposeful. We pay fat cabinet salaries and we want our politicians to sound like they are earning them. But in truth, beneath the rhetoric - an odd verbal combination of rugby tackles and romantic engagement - is a profound confusion in government policy as to what to do about British-grown Islamist terrorism, apart from large amounts of surveillance and frequent use of detention.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Suzy Wighton, a public-health coordinator in Aberdeen (THE GUARDIAN, 16/08/06):

I remember watching in horror the BBC reports of the massacres in Lebanon in the autumn of 1982. My family and I watched open-mouthed, transfixed by images of dead Palestinian families and the awful suffering on the streets of the Sabra refugee camp. Over the past five weeks I have again sat at home in Scotland, watching the TV rigid with shock at appalling crimes being committed in Lebanon and Gaza by the Israeli air, land and sea assault.

In 1985, after completing a tropical nursing course, and galvanised by my earlier travelling experiences in the occupied West Bank, I found the London office of Medical Aid for Palestinians and Dr Swee Chai Ang, a surgeon who had survived the massacre of Sabra and Shatila.…  Seguir leyendo »

Por Henry Kamen, historiador británico y autor, entre otros libros, de Nacimiento y Desarrollo de la Tolerancia en La Europa Moderna (EL MUNDO, 16/08/06):

La amenaza terrorista de los últimos días en el Reino Unido muestra la fragilidad de cualquier sociedad que afirma ser multicultural. Cuando una cultura existe dentro de otra, ¿qué identidad tiene un ciudadano? ¿A qué cultura dirige su lealtad? No es sorprendente que una de las primeras declaraciones de un ministro británico esta semana fuera un ruego a los grupos culturales del país a mantener buenas relaciones unos con otros. Cuando una sociedad pasa de ser monocultural -como lo era la inglesa en los años 50- a pluricultural -como lo es hoy-, se crean enormes problemas que no parecen de fácil solución.…  Seguir leyendo »

Por Antonio Papell, escritor (ABC, 16/08/06):

EL inefable Maragall, siempre abrumado con un linaje que lo agobia y sobrepasa, está escalando verdaderas cimas de frivolidad ideológica en estas felices postrimerías de su declinante ciclo político. Atento a su entronización en la historia, que sin duda hará la debida justicia a tanto derroche de inanidad, ha querido escenificar con primorosa petulancia la entrada en vigor del Estatut el pasado día 9 de agosto. Y lo ha hecho, como es conocido, en Sant Jaume de Frontanyá, el municipio menos poblado de Cataluña, en la hermosa comarca del Berguedà, con un inflamado discurso en el que, entre otras sandeces, ha enunciado la frívola teoría del Estado residual.…  Seguir leyendo »

Ayer falleció en Madrid Carlos Luis Álvarez, Cándido, figura esencial del periodismo español en las últimas décadas cuya pluma estuvo estrechamente ligada a la Casa de ABC, donde comenzó su fértil carrera y donde empezó a fraguarse su pasión por este viejo oficio de contar las cosas. Reproducimos el último artículo remitido para esta Tercera que tantas veces ocupó.

NO me entusiasma la tesis de Schopenhauer según la cual el despotismo es mucho menos de temer que la anarquía y que, descontada la imposibilidad de encontrar el centro al no ser igual de malas y peligrosas esas dos desviaciones, cualquier Constitución debe alejarse más de lo anárquico que de lo despótico.…  Seguir leyendo »

Por Gilles Kepel, profesor en el Instituto de Estudios Políticos de París (EL PAÍS, 16/08/06):

Los atentados recientemente desarticulados en Londres debían golpear y desencadenar el caos simultáneamente en Reino Unido y Estados Unidos, los cada vez más aislados socios en la llamada "guerra global contra el terrorismo". Fueran o no su motivación inicial los acontecimientos bélicos de este verano en Oriente Próximo, el apocalipsis iba a llover sobre Londres y Washington justo cuando las dos capitales estaban siendo denunciadas por toda la opinión pública árabe por su apoyo a la ofensiva militar israelí en Líbano. La abortada ofensiva terrorista iba a estar, pues, cargada de simbolismos, aunque todavía haya muchas incógnitas sobre los ataques y la identidad de los terroristas.…  Seguir leyendo »

Por Francisco J. Laporta, catedrático de Filosofía del Derecho de la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (EL PAÍS, 16/08/06):

Acabo de dar un curso a profesores de enseñanza primaria sobre esa nueva materia denominada educación para la ciudadanía. En el desbarajuste de gritos y concentraciones que han acompañado a la discusión de la nueva ley de educación, a nadie se le ha ocurrido decir a los responsables de su enseñanza en qué iba a consistir aquello. Las peleas políticas y las manifestaciones callejeras, como cualquiera pudo sospechar desde el principio, no versaban en realidad sobre cómo se educaba a los chicos, sino sobre cómo se repartía el dinero y el poder.…  Seguir leyendo »

Por Luis Rojas Marcos, profesor de psiquiatría de la Universidad de Nueva York (EL PAÍS, 16/08/06):

Hace unas semanas, el famoso actor australiano Mel Gibson fue detenido por conducir borracho y a 160 kilómetros por hora en Malibú, la lujosa ciudad costera de California. Los policías encontraron una botella de tequila a medio consumir en su automóvil. Durante el forcejeo del arresto, Gibson soltó una sarta de improperios antisemitas del tenor de "los judíos son los responsables de todas las guerras en el mundo", profirió groserías machistas contra una mujer policía y amenazó al oficial encargado de su detención con tomarse la revancha.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Johnjoe McFadden, professor of molecular genetics at the University of Surrey and editor of Human Nature: Fact and Fiction (THE GUARDIAN, 16/08/06):

In the summertime, when the weather is fine, we often head for "home". To many this isn't where we live but where we were brought up. There is something comforting about returning to the bosom of our homeland. But how deep are our roots? Family trees tend to wither into uncertainty beyond a few hundred years. To go back further we need tools that dig deeper. Remarkably, our DNA carries a record of our ancient past that has been used to examine the movement of people all over the world.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Agnès Poirier, the author of 'Touché, a French woman's take on the English' (THE GUARDIAN, 16/08/06):

Despite the scorching heat, two million flag-waving French people have swarmed the Champs Elysées to acclaim le sauveur de la nation. Suddenly the ground starts shaking as tanks roar down the avenue. Propelled on one of them, the new president of France, wearing dark glasses, is waving weakly. His name: Jacques Chirac. How could it go so horribly wrong, wonders the rest of France, watching at home.It all began on June 13 2006 when José Bové, the sheep farmer, anarchist and anti-junk-food crusader announced he was running for president.…  Seguir leyendo »

Inayat Bunglawala es secretario general adjunto del Consejo Musulmán de Gran Bretaña (EL MUNDO, 16/08/06)

Los sospechosos habituales han formulado sus protestas habituales. Después de las detenciones de 24 musulmanes británicos por conspirar presuntamente para derribar aviones, desde determinados sectores se ha hecho correr la voz de que la población musulmana debe poner orden en su propia casa.

Por ejemplo, The Daily Telegraph ha publicado un editorial bajo el título Sólo los musulmanes pueden poner fin a esta infamia. Ahora bien, a efectos prácticos, ¿qué es realmente lo que se quiere decir con este tipo de fraseología? ¿Es que el periódico no cree que los musulmanes estén aportando ya su grano de arena?…  Seguir leyendo »