Social (Continuación)

ReflexionesSocial

One of the problems with discussing humanitarian intervention is that the term itself means different things to different people. For legal scholars it describes military intervention to come to the aid of people facing acute danger, for humanitarian aid workers it is the impartial distribution of emergency relief.During the 1990s the two activities became increasingly intertwined as military convoys were used to open "humanitarian corridors" to civilians trapped in conflict zones. Aid workers also felt increasingly compelled to speak out about the atrocities that they witnessed. "One cannot stop a genocide with medicines," proclaimed Médecins sans Frontières during the Rwandan crisis of 1994, and a year later others mourned the "well-fed dead" of Srebrenica.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial,

Famously, Margaret Thatcher hated holidays. Even when persuaded to take a brief one in Salzburg, the British prime minister could hardly bear the enforced relaxation. Upon hearing that Helmut Kohl was vacationing at a nearby Austrian lake, she called to request bilateral talks with her German counterpart. Kohl, who couldn't bear Thatcher, claimed to be ill, or so the story goes. She went anyway -- and promptly ran into Kohl, eating a large ice cream at an outdoor cafe.

Fast-forward a couple of decades. Nowadays world leaders vacationing within a 500-mile radius of one another don't have spontaneous meetings, with or without ice cream.…  Seguir leyendo »

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The famous dictator and Nazi regalia enthusiast Adolf Hitler has been in the news again, which just goes to show that everlasting memories of horrendous genocide are almost as effective as being snapped alighting knickerless from a taxi semi weekly as a way of keeping you in the public eye. This time the excuse for trotting out more pictures of Hitler looking as if his milliner’s measuring tape might be a little off is the “discovery” of his record collection. and within it the works of a number of Russian composers and Jewish musicians. There among the Bayreuth Live! recordings and – I’m only guessing here, you understand – self-help tapes, including Seven Habits of Highly Mistaken Lunatics and Polish for Beginners, were recordings of works by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov and others whom he accused of creating “sub-human” music.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Several times a month, a woman calls my office in the middle of the night and leaves long voice-mail messages about how she's the target of a vast, sinister conspiracy. I won't give her name -- obviously, she suffers from a mental illness. The conspiracy she perceives involves the U.S. military, the CIA, interference with her brain waves and constant monitoring by the evil people who, for whatever reason, have decided that her thoughts somehow threaten their nefarious plans. Sometimes she disguises her voice and pretends to be a lieutenant in the heroic resistance against mind control.

She always seems upbeat and energized, and I think I understand why: This must be a great time to be a paranoid.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial,

The men’s 100m at the World Athletics Championships in Japan this month will be won by a black athlete. This is not so much a prediction as a statement of fact. Every winner of the 100m at the championships since the inaugural event in 1983 has been black, as has every finalist from the last eight championships. No white athlete has reached the final of the Olympic Games for more than a quarter of a century. Of the 53 athletes to have ducked under ten seconds, all are black.

There is a natural conclusion to be drawn from all this: blacks have an inbuilt superiority over whites when it comes to sprinting.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocialEuropaUnión Europea, ,

A wave of optimism, almost euphoria is sweeping through France this summer. After several years of déclinologues spreading doom and gloom as unemployment figures rose and household incomes stagnated, suddenly the future seems rosy. The reason quite simply is Nicolas Sarkozy: in a few short weeks he has created his own style of presidency: informal, dynamic, omnipresent.

The French seem bemused, almost proud, that they have finally produced a President who seems capable of anything and who works like a demon to make anything possible. New laws follow one another through parliament so rapidly that one rarely has time to digest them – indeed, with most of France on holiday, cynics claim that this is deliberate: by the time people stagger back to work in September the fabric of their country will be scarcely recognisable.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial,

Oscar Pistorius, the double-amputee South African sprinter who calls himself "the fastest man on no legs," made his 400-meter debut racing against nondisabled runners two weeks ago in Sheffield, England. Unfortunately, the much-anticipated race was anticlimactic. Pistorius was disqualified for running outside of his lane.

This technical misstep only postpones the inevitable.

By contesting the notion that a disabled runner cannot, and should not, compete with nondisabled runners, Pistorius has challenged preconceived ideas not only of sport but of what it means to be human.

Since Pistorius petitioned to compete with nondisabled runners, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), track and field's global governing body, has prohibited the use of technological aids such as springs and wheels.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial,

Last year's investigation into the blood-doping ring run by a Spanish doctor led a number of optimists (I was one) to predict that the resulting clearout of big names might mean the "cleanest" Tour de France since the early 1990s, when the suspected widespread use of EPO began. Such hopes were dashed, however, after the leader, Floyd Landis, tested positive for high testosterone levels in the final days of the race. He disputes the ruling, and the 2006 Tour has no official winner.

And now the 2007 race has lost its leader, with Michael Rasmussen sacked under a cloud of suspicion - just a day after one of the favourites, Alexandr Vinokourov, tested positive for blood-doping and left the race in disgrace.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial,

Read the 1933 Times Editorial on Mein Kampf

Seventy-four years ago this week, The Times started serialising the worst book ever written. Adolf Hitler had dictated Mein Kampf in Landsburg Prison in 1924, while incarcerated for his attempted putsch against the German Government. The book would not be published in Britain until October 1933, but this newspaper obtained the rights to run exclusive extracts four months earlier.

The Times explained that it was publishing this vile, anti-Semitic rant on the grounds that “readers will find it illuminating as a psychological revelation [which] will show how Hitler came to hate the Jews”.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial,

No one should be surprised by the news that federal officials are investigating whether Tim Donaghy, a referee for the National Basketball Association, bet on N.B.A. games and may have used his position to manipulate game scores so that he or his associates could profit from their wagers. David Stern, the commissioner of the N.B.A., characterized Donaghy as “an isolated case,” but this both misrepresents history and misses the point.

Stern may be correct that Donaghy is the only bad apple in the current crop of N.B.A. refs, but sports betting scandals are fairly common. They are the result of persistent economic incentives that can be traced to the structure of sports gambling markets.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows arrived at our house last weekend, all 759 pages -- two copies to be shared by my wife and three daughters. I'm missing the party, but only because of this summer's addiction to Anthony Trollope -- luxuriating at present in the 841 pages of "Can You Forgive Her?" with a mere 3,643 pages left to complete the sextet of the Palliser novels.

If ever there were a summer for escapist literature, this is it. The news of the real world is so bleak that it's a blessing to retreat for a while into the imagined worlds of fiction.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial

Hay milagros, aunque nos resulta difícil creer en ellos. Sí, también para los incrédulos hay ocasiones en las que milagro es la única palabra que puede explicar un acontecimiento o suceso. Así lo sienten las miles de personas que recientemente se acercaron a zorear (como se llama en la tradición judía al peregrinaje a las tumbas de los santos) a La Extranjera, La Ghriba.

El milagro del respeto y la convivencia sucede cada año, al principio del verano, en la isla tunecina de Djerba, un oasis situado en el golfo de Gabes. Allí peregrinan mujeres judías y musulmanas, allí se juntan, unas con pañuelos y otras sin él, todas con el rostro enrojecido por la emoción y muchas con el pelo encrespado por la brisa del Mediterráneo.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial

La discriminación contra la mujer es un fenómeno que se observa en diferentes sociedades desde tiempos remotos. Sea cual sea el continente, este hecho social ha estado presente y se refleja a través de una variedad de actitudes cuyo denominador común es el trato de desigualdad en el que se confina a la mujer en relación con el varón.

Sin embargo, la lucha de la mujer para conseguir la igualdad de género ha llevado progresivamente a la adopción de diversos instrumentos jurídicos en defensa de sus derechos. A ello han colaborado también diferentes encuentros internacionales celebrados con una agenda bien centrada en la mejora de la condición de la mujer.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial

Se están dando en la población mundial tres procesos de transición excepcionales. Antes del año 2000, los jóvenes siempre fueron más numerosos que sus mayores, pero desde hace algunos años se está produciendo el fenómeno inverso. Hasta el 2007, los habitantes de las zonas rurales eran más numerosos que los de las zonas urbanas, pero en los próximos años va a ocurrir lo contrario. Desde el 2003, la mayoría de los habitantes del mundo vive en regiones o países donde la tasa de fecundidad es inferior a 2,1 hijos por mujer, esto es, la cifra que permite una estricta sustitución de las generaciones.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial,

Cuando se trata de saber si hay que regular la economía y cómo debe hacerse, las sociedades occidentales encuentran siempre una historia de teoría liberal en la que basarse. Pero cuando se trata de inmigración, no hay mucha teoría a la que recurrir. Como resultado, tanto en Europa como en Estados Unidos gran parte del debate está dominado por voces no liberales, y la más insistente proviene de políticos que prometen proteger la integridad cultural de la patria contra la supuesta degeneración del extranjero.

La xenofobia es una respuesta no liberal por parte de la derecha hacia la inmigración, pero el multiculturalismo representa prácticamente lo mismo por parte de la izquierda.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial

Of all the bogeys you might have thought well and truly nailed in the past decade or so, the population control movement seemed most obviously to have a stake through its heart. At a time when we – I mean, anyone over 35 – are all horribly conscious that there won’t be enough taxpayers to support us in gin and cigarettes in our old age, the very last thing we need to worry about is excess population growth. On the contrary: as seen from the dinner party circuit, the real crisis is the difficulty for female graduates in getting anyone to breed with.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial,

El pasado 26 de abril, el secretario general de las Naciones Unidas nombró Alto Representante para la Alianza de Civilizaciones a Jorge Sampaio, quien, mes y medio más tarde, entregó a Ban Ki-moon el Plan de Aplicación de esta iniciativa. Se ha abierto con ello una nueva etapa, una vez que en diciembre pasado Kofi Annan presentó ante la Asamblea General de la ONU el Informe de Recomendaciones elaborado por el Grupo de Alto Nivel.

El nombramiento del doctor Sampaio es una excelente noticia. Proporciona a la Alianza un inestimable valor añadido porque culmina el proceso de su institucionalización, da brillo a su imagen y fortalece su ya sólida credibilidad.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial

So here we are: at the end of the “Harry Potter” decade. The books have been printed and are under lock and key. (Presumably.) J. K. Rowling has made her choices. Harry is either going to live or die. Severus Snape is either evil or good — or maybe a little bit of both. Ginny will stick with Harry, and Ron will hook up with Hermione. Or not. Eager readers still have to wait a fortnight or so for answers to these questions. Which is why the Op-Ed page asked four writers and one artist to fill the void and draft “Harry Potter” endings of their own.…  Seguir leyendo »

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This week marks the beginning of a period of double ecstasy for Harry Potter junkies, myself included. I have spent years trawling the internet to peruse other fans' tributes and theories, and now it's time for the fifth film and seventh book - to be followed by a few weeks' stunned absorption of whatever revelations JK Rowling unleashes as, in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, she finishes off the story that became a phenomenon that became a mythology.

That said, I'm expecting the film - the Order of the Phoenix, which opens here tomorrow - to be a letdown. A mainstream cine-juggernaut calculated to succeed all over the world could never do justice to the combined complexity of Rowling's vision and my own fantasies.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial

En México y en otros muchos países hay enormes diferencias entre ricos y pobres. Mientras algunos magnates perciben sumas estratosféricas al día, hay muchos que sólo disponen de lo indispensable para sobrevivir y aun no faltan quienes, en pobreza extrema, con frecuencia no tienen ni para comer.

No sólo en lo económico se dan tales contrastes; también se presentan en campos como los de la educación, la salud y otros. En tanto que unos completan los ciclos que van de la primaria hasta los profesionales y de posgrado, muchos no reciben siquiera la educación básica y vegetan sin preparación para afrontar la vida.…  Seguir leyendo »