Agosto de 2006 (Continuación)

By David Ignatius (THE WASHINGTON POST, 30/08/06):

TEHRAN -- Drivers here play a high-risk game of chicken at every intersection. They barge into the frantic stream of traffic and you think there's going to be a crash for sure. But at the last moment someone usually gives way, and a collision is avoided.

Watching President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at a news conference here Tuesday, I had the same mesmerizing anxiety as a passenger in a Tehran taxi. He has moved boldly -- recklessly, it seems to Americans -- into the international traffic flow. He keeps revving his motor, and it looks as if he and the West might be heading for a dangerous crackup over Iran's nuclear program.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Jon A. Krosnick, a professor of communication, political science and psychology at Stanford (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 30/08/06):

THE crash of a Comair jet in Kentucky on Sunday ended the longest safety streak in aviation history: it’s been almost five years since a passenger died in a commercial airline jet accident in the United States.

Crashes are actually very crude gauges of the safety of air travel because they remain so rare. We must pay attention instead to the little events that happen every day in the skies and on the ground that very, very slightly increase the risk of another disaster.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Naomi Klein (THE GUARDIAN, 30/08/06):

The Red Cross has just announced a new disaster-response partnership with Wal-Mart. When the next hurricane hits, it will be a co-production of Big Aid and Big Box. This, apparently, is the lesson learned from the US government's calamitous response to Hurricane Katrina: businesses do disaster better."It's all going to be private enterprise before it's over," Billy Wagner, emergency management chief for the Florida Keys, currently under hurricane watch for tropical storm Ernesto, said in April. "They've got the expertise. They've got the resources." But before this new consensus goes any further, perhaps it's time to take a look at where the privatisation of disaster began, and where it will inevitably lead.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Simon Jenkins (THE GUARDIAN, 30/08/06):

Villa owners arriving on the island of Corsica this summer had a rude shock. Many found their "second homes" blown to bits. The separatist Corsican National Liberation Front (FLNC) had broken a ceasefire declared last year after losing a referendum on more autonomy for the island. In recent weeks, bombings have risen from two a month to five a night. The buildings are empty and usually new, and the nervous authorities are reluctant to condemn the mounting destruction.

Corsican nationalists complain that newcomers have driven up land prices tenfold in eight years. With local people ageing and the young escaping to mainland France, villages are becoming like the Var in Provence, half-deserted second-home economies.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Des Browne, secretary of state for defence. Response to 'Soldiers are paying with...' (THE GUARDIAN, 30/08/06):

Michael Moriarty's article on these pages is liberally scattered with accusations against British politicians and military commanders about operations in Afghanistan (Soldiers are paying with their lives for this incompetence, August 29).Moriarty claims that both I and the chief of the defence staff have "acknowledged" that force levels and equipment in Afghanistan are insufficient. This is untrue. In Afghanistan - as in every other campaign - the longer the operation goes on, the more we learn, and that includes learning about what we need and responding accordingly.…  Seguir leyendo »

Por Ilia Galán, profesor de Estética en la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid y director de la revista Conde de Aranda. Estudios a la luz de la francmasonería (EL PAÍS, 29/08/06):

Tiene razón el abad de Montserrat, Josep María Soler, cuando, en una entrevista publicada por este periódico el pasado domingo, declara: "Un sector de la jerarquía católica tiene nostalgia del nacional-catolicismo". Al finalizar el pasado curso político, el cardenal Rouco Varela se mostraba muy preocupado por la reforma del Estatut de Cataluña y por la unidad de España e intentaba que los obispos se pronunciaran colectivamente sobre el asunto. Pero muchos cristianos católicos se preguntaron entonces y se preguntan hoy: ¿qué tiene que ver la doctrina de Cristo con la unidad de España, la de Yugoslavia o la del Reino Unido?,…  Seguir leyendo »

Por Santiago Carrillo, ex secretario general del PCE y comentarista político (EL PAÍS, 29/08/06):

En medio de los ardores del verano, cuando las gentes descansan en las playas de un año de trabajo y la opinión pública está desmovilizada, nos ha sorprendido el brutal ataque de Israel contra un Líbano que apenas empezaba a levantar cabeza, tras años de una historia infernal que le asoló.

El pretexto para el ataque era todavía más banal que el utilizado por Bush para invadir Irak: dos soldados israelíes habían sido secuestrados por Hezbolá. En un contexto en el que Israel secuestra a diario no ya a soldados, sino a ministros del Gobierno palestino y los mantiene en prisión, el argumento resultaba un desatino cruel y grotesco a la vez.…  Seguir leyendo »

Por Ramón Luis Valcárcel Liso, presidente de la Comunidad Autónoma de la Región de Murcia (EL MUNDO, 29/08/06):

España es hoy, gracias al esfuerzo de todos, un país admirado en el plano internacional por su modelo democrático, su crecimiento económico y su desarrollo social. Hace casi tres décadas, al amparo del espíritu político de la Transición, la Constitución de 1978 abrió las puertas a una idea de nación solidaria y vertebradora en lo social, en lo económico, en lo político, en lo territorial y en lo institucional. Nacía, en consecuencia, un Estado fuerte y firme, libre y próspero, capaz de compaginar diversidad y solidaridad de una forma justa y equilibrada.…  Seguir leyendo »

Por Eduard Vinyamata, profesor de Conflictología, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (LA VANGUARDIA, 29/08/06):

A nadie interesa que Cuba vea quebrado su futuro. No interesa al Gobierno cubano ni a los cubanos que se identifican con la revolución, ya que, poco o todo acabarían perdiendo. Tampoco interesa al Gobierno de Estados Unidos contribuir a procesos desestabilizadores de consecuencias imprevisibles en su vecindario; Cuba cuenta con aliados en Latinoamérica. Tampoco interesa a la mayor parte de los cubanos en la emigración o en el exilio contribuir a destruir la patria que reivindican. La inmensa mayoría desearía poder viajar a Cuba sin el peso del embargo ni de cualquier restricción en sus derechos.…  Seguir leyendo »

Por José Varela Ortega (ABC, 29/08/06):

Relatos de dos ciudades (II)

A mis amigos García Lorca y Montesinos,

en homenaje a la elegancia en el perdón.

Veo la maldad de esa época y de la anterior

expiar sus culpas y desaparecer al fin.

Ch. Dickens.

EL futuro empezó en el congreso de Múnich de 1962, en que se reunieron para un ejercicio de concordia democrática españoles del interior y del exilio, antiguos «rojos» escarmentados y viejos franquistas, arrepentidos con una triste victoria (Prieto) en que se hicieron un daño a sí mismos (Azaña) infinitamente mayor que el que deseaban destruir (Prieto).…  Seguir leyendo »

Por Vicente López-Ibor Mayor, ex consejero de la Comisión Nacional de Energía (ABC, 29/08/06):

LA capacidad de iniciativa y el espíritu de reforma no es sólo un atributo característico del progreso y los valores humanos (como magistralmente desarrollara en su «Teoría de los sentimientos morales» Adam Smith), sino condición necesaria del avance económico y social. Traducido a la escena política europea, el éxito de la construcción comunitaria debe, en mi opinión, sus mejores logros a la combinación de una clara y continuada iniciativa política con el espíritu de reforma y apertura económica. Dos ejemplos sintetizan lo anterior: la creación de un mercado interior como ámbito de expresión de las libertades de circulación intracomunitarias y la vertiginosa consolidación del euro, como moneda de Europa.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Jennifer Moses, a writer who lives in Baton Rouge (THE WASHINGTON POST, 29/08/06):

It is a source of unending perplexity in Louisiana that so far America has spent some $320 billion in Iraq for nation-building, whereas in New Orleans, homeowners have so far seen precisely zero.

Not that there isn't talk. A federally funded program with the Disneyfied name of "The Road Home" is due to start distributing thousands of dollars to uninsured homeowners . . . eventually. Additional billions have been poured into the coffers of the Army Corps of Engineers, whose design flaws caused the city's levees to rupture in the first place, and through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which, according to a just-released report, awarded more than 70 percent of its contracts through a no-bid or limited-bid process.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Eugene Robinson (THE WASHINGTON POST, 29/08/06):

NEW ORLEANS If you haven't been here, you can't really understand what happened to this city one year ago. Both words and pictures are inadequate; no elegy is poignant enough, no lens able to capture the full breadth and depth. Spike Lee's film "When the Levees Broke" probably comes closest, but even after four hours you feel the movie has just sketched the outlines.

As the inevitable anniversary commemorations take place, the people of New Orleans can point to the progress they're making toward recovery, house by house, block by block. An occasional visitor like me, though, is struck by how much of the city remains in ruins, and is saddened by how much of it seems gone forever.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Micah Zenko, a research associate at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government (THE WASHINGTON POST, 29/08/06):

How long until Iran becomes a nuclear weapons state?

The current best guess of American intelligence agencies is found in a classified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) completed last summer: "Left to its own devices, Iran is determined to build nuclear weapons," it says, yet it is unlikely that Iran could produce enough highly enriched uranium for a bomb before "early to mid-next decade."

Senior Bush administration officials, lawmakers in both parties and analysts out of government are increasingly skeptical of the Iran NIE.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Michael Chertoff, the U.S. secretary of homeland security (THE WASHINGTON POST, 29/08/06):

Imagine that our troops in Afghanistan raided an al-Qaeda safe house and captured a computer containing the cellphone numbers of operatives in Europe. Wouldn't it be important to know whether one of those cellphone numbers was used to book a transatlantic flight? Unfortunately, today our ability to make that connection remains limited: Information that terrorists readily share with travel agents cannot easily be shared throughout the United States government. That needs to change.

Information sharing and intelligence gathering are some of our most important tools in the global war on terrorism.…  Seguir leyendo »

By George Monbiot (THE GUARDIAN, 29/08/06):

Challenging a Nobel laureate over a matter of science is not something you do lightly. I have hesitated and backed off, read and reread his paper, but now I believe I can state with confidence that Paul Crutzen, winner of the 1995 prize for chemistry, has overlooked a critical scientific issue.Crutzen is, as you would expect, a brilliant man. He was one of the atmospheric chemists who worked out how high-level ozone is formed and destroyed. He knows more than almost anyone about the impacts of pollutants in the atmosphere. This is what makes his omission so odd.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Michael Moriarty, a former British army officer who has been working in Afghanistan for a private security firm (THE GUARDIAN, 29/08/06):

The British army is now engaged in intense combat in Afghanistan - the fiercest sustained fighting it has experienced in 50 years, according to Nato's British commander in the country. As acknowledged by the defence secretary and the chief of the defence staff, force levels and equipment are insufficient to meet the demands of a mission that has never been clearly articulated to the public. This sorry state of affairs reflects badly on all concerned, highlighting failures in political and military leadership.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Neil Clark (THE GUARDIAN, 29/08/06):

As the entry of Bulgaria and Romania into the European Union edges closer, condescension towards eastern Europeans and their countries of origin grows into a crescendo. The double standards could not be more glaring. Both Bulgaria and Romania are routinely portrayed as backward, mafia-ridden hell-holes that will infect the rest of the continent come January 1. But is the political system in either country so much more corrupt than in Berlusconi-tainted Italy or cash-for-honours Britain?

We can also witness this unappealing chauvinism in the way eastern European migration is covered in the tabloid press. Eastern Europeans are castigated for flooding into Britain, yet very few people stop to ask why so many people (427,000 have left for Britain since 2004) are leaving the region where they grew up and have friends and family.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Jabari Asim (THE WASHINGTON POST, 28/08/06):

Just a year ago, I watched -- riveted -- as television cameras captured the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Like most Americans, I grew dependent on the compelling testimony of eyewitnesses and survivors of the legendary storm, supplemented by dramatic newspaper and Internet dispatches. I took it all in from the comfort of my easy chair, far from the danger and disorder.

David Dante Troutt's encounter with the hurricane began in similar fashion. An author and a professor of law at Rutgers University, Troutt's latest book is "After the Storm: Black Intellectuals Explore the Meaning of Hurricane Katrina."…  Seguir leyendo »

Por Óscar Arias Sánchez, presidente de la República de Costa Rica (EL PAÍS, 28/08/06):

En su tercer discurso inaugural, Roosevelt nos decía que "la aspiración democrática no es una simple fase reciente de la historia humana. Es la historia humana". Sin democracia, la libertad -y con ella la posibilidad de desarrollar su destino único y trascendente- no es más que un espejismo. Y no sólo la libertad individual, también la estabilidad política, el bienestar económico, la justicia social y todas aquellas cosas que definen a una comunidad en la que vale la pena vivir.

A estas alturas de la historia está demostrado que no se pueden perseguir fines nobles con medios innobles, que de la opresión no germina nunca la libertad y que una dictadura puede satisfacer las necesidades más básicas de las personas, pero no las más importantes, como el respeto a su dignidad.…  Seguir leyendo »