The study of thinking machines teaches us more about the brain than we can learn by introspective methods. Western man is externalizing himself in the form of gadgets.
—William S. Burroughs

Howard Zinn’s Final Act of Protest
In his last book, the late, great historian—and former bombardier—examines his troubling actions during W.W. II.
By Micah Uetricht
July 30, 2010, © In These Times
When he died in January at age 87, historian Howard Zinn was still haunted by the ghosts of World War II. He discussed his career as a bombardier often and cited his participation in war as the main catalyst for his opposition to it. He spent much of his post-combat life considering how he had dropped bombs on innocent civilians without asking why—and how to stop bombs from dropping in the future. . . .

Iraq a Complete Failure for the United States
By Amitabh Pal
August 27, 2010, © The Progressive
The United States is ending its combat mission in Iraq, leaving it in a complete mess. On virtually every count, the country is in the doldrums. . . .

Leandro Romagnoli
Leandro Atilio Romagnoli (n. el 17 de marzo de 1981 en Buenos Aires) es un jugador profesional argentino de fútbol. Se desempeña como mediocampista ofensivo en el San Lorenzo de Almagro.
Sus inicios
Romangoli debutó profesionalmente en diciembre de 1998, a los 17 años de edad, con su amado club San Lorenzo de Almagro. En su segunda temporada, era una opción fija en el equipo. De la mano de Romagnoli, San Lorenzo cosechó sus dos copas internacionales del 2000, la Copa Mercosur 2001 y la Copa Sudamericana disputada en 2002. . . .

¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡felicitaciones!!!!!!!!!!

Atlético Madrid se corona Supercampeón de Europa ante Inter
27 de agosto de 2010, © Espndeportes
MÓNACO (EFE) -- El Atlético de Madrid conquistó la primera Supercopa de Europa de su historia con un partido sobresaliente contra el Inter, al que anuló con seriedad defensiva, buen fútbol y talento en ataque para alargar su fiesta en torneos continentales con su segundo título en poco más de tres meses. . . .

Israel military court convicts anti-wall protester
Wed Aug 25, 2010, © Yahoo News
JERUSALEM (AFP) – A military court has convicted the Palestinian organiser of regular protests against Israel's West Bank wall, prompting the European Union to express concern on Wednesday. . . .

Plans for a Koran Burning Show a Gainesville Church's Bigotry
Jason van Boom
July 31, 2010, © Huffington Post
Bigotry is always ugly, and Islamophobia is no exception. The paranoid notion that all Muslims are terrorists reached a new high (or low) with the news that a church in Gainesville, Florida plans to burn a stack of Korans on the anniversary of 9-11. According to the Religion News Service:
A Florida church with "Islam is of the devil" signs in its front lawn plans to host an "International Burn A Quran Day," on the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks this year. . . .

Does Mehlman deserve our understanding?
Ex-RNC chairman out of the closet now, but hasn't clearly split with anti-gay agenda the GOP ramped up on his watch
By Lorraine Berry
Thursday, Aug 26, 2010, © Salon.com
Sometimes, those stereotypes turn out to be true. Namely, that the more homophobic a man is, the more likely he is to be conflicted about his own sexuality. A secure man, the story says, doesn't care what gay men do in their bedrooms. . . .

Cruel confinement
© Humane Society
Factory farms cram egg-laying hens into cages so tiny they can't even spread their wings. Breeding pigs and veal calves are stuffed into cramped individual cages barely larger than their bodies. They can’t walk or turn around. But you can help free animals from these cruel cages. . . .

What is Factory Farming?
© tomorrowbelongstous.com
Intensive, industrialised, factory - they’re all terms that describe modern farming methods. Intensive because as many animals as possible are crammed together in the smallest possible space. Industrialised because feeding, watering and dung clearing are often performed automatically. Factory because the philosophy of mass production is what lies behind it all. . . .

On the Factory Farm
© Vegforlife.com
The majority of farm animals in the United States are now raised on large-scale, industrialized farms. Treated as mere production units, these "food animals" are forced to endure months, even years, of confinement or overcrowding. . . .

Juan Carlos Menseguez
Juan Carlos Menseguez (born 18 February 1984 in Córdoba) is an Argentine football forward who plays for San Lorenzo.
Menseguez started playing football for River Plate in Buenos Aires at the age of 15. Before making his debut for River Plate he was sold to German club, Wolfsburg.
In the summer of 2007, Menseguez signed for Argentine team, San Lorenzo. On 2 February 2009, Menseguez moved to West Bromwich Albion on loan, with a view to making the deal permanent. He scored his debut goal after coming on as a substitute to secure a 3-0 league victory for West Brom against Sunderland. The club released him at the end of the season on 1 June. After his spell at West Brom, he returned to San Lorenzo as no offers were made for a permanent transfer to the Premier League. . . .

Ron Paul to Sunshine Patriots: Stop Your Demagogy About The NYC Mosque!
August 20, 2010, © ronpaul.com
Congressman Ron Paul today released the following statement on the controversy concerning the construction of an Islamic Center and Mosque in New York City:
Is the controversy over building a mosque near ground zero a grand distraction or a grand opportunity? Or is it, once again, grandiose demagoguery?
It has been said, “Nero fiddled while Rome burned.” Are we not overly preoccupied with this controversy, now being used in various ways by grandstanding politicians? It looks to me like the politicians are “fiddling while the economy burns.” . . .

EE UU deja de pagar a España por el accidente nuclear de Palomares
RAFAEL MÉNDEZ
23/08/2010, © El País
Estados Unidos ha dejado de pagar la factura del accidente de Palomares. Este año, por primera vez en más de 40 años, Washington no ha pagado la vigilancia de la contaminación por plutonio ni los análisis de sangre a los 1.500 habitantes de la pedanía de Almería sobre la que en 1966 cayeron cuatro bombas nucleares. Los 403.000 dólares (unos 314.000 euros) que pagaba anualmente EE UU han sido asumidos por España, que ve cómo la Casa Blanca endurece su postura sobre Palomares justo cuando debía acometerse la limpieza definitiva. . . .

'I know I am but summer to your heart'  
I know I am but summer to your heart,
And not the full four seasons of the year;
And you must welcome from another part
Such noble moods as are not mine, my dear.
No gracious weight of golden fruits to sell
Have I, nor any wise and wintry thing;
And I have loved you all too long and well
To carry still the high sweet breast of Spring.
Wherefore I say: O love, as summer goes,
I must be gone, steal forth with silent drums,
That you may hail anew the bird and rose
When I come back to you, as summer comes.
Else will you seek, at some not distant time,
Even your summer in another clime.
—Edna St. Vincent Millay

Vacation, All He Ever Wanted
by Avenging Angel
Sun Aug 22, 2010, © Daily Kos
Among the latest claims of Republican mythmakers is that Barack Obama is not only a secret Muslim, but one who takes too many days off.  Of course, the charge is hardly new.  In May 2009, the Republican National Committee sneered, "Have a great Saturday evening - even if you're not jetting off somewhere at taxpayer expense."  Seven months later, Republicans, despite President Bush's identical behavior after the December 2001 Shoe Bomber episode, decried Obama's refusal to cut short his Hawaii holiday after the Underwear Bomb plot.  And now, the Washington Post reports, the GOP is asking of the man who succeeded the all-time presidential vacation record holder, "Does President Obama deserve a vacation?" . . .

Fishing on the Susquehanna in July  

I have never been fishing on the Susquehanna
or on any river for that matter
to be perfectly honest.

Not in July or any month
have I had the pleasure--if it is a pleasure--
of fishing on the Susquehanna.

I am more likely to be found
in a quiet room like this one--
a painting of a woman on the wall,

a bowl of tangerines on the table--
trying to manufacture the sensation
of fishing on the Susquehanna.

There is little doubt
that others have been fishing
on the Susquehanna,

rowing upstream in a wooden boat,
sliding the oars under the water
then raising them to drip in the light.

But the nearest I have ever come to
fishing on the Susquehanna
was one afternoon in a museum in Philadelphia

when I balanced a little egg of time
in front of a painting
in which that river curled around a bend

under a blue cloud-ruffled sky,
dense trees along the banks,
and a fellow with a red bandanna

sitting in a small, green
flat-bottom boat
holding the thin whip of a pole.

That is something I am unlikely
ever to do, I remember
saying to myself and the person next to me.

Then I blinked and moved on
to other American scenes
of haystacks, water whitening over rocks,

even one of a brown hare
who seemed so wired with alertness
I imagined him springing right out of the frame.

—Billy Collins

How the "ground zero mosque" fear mongering began
By Justin Elliott
Monday, Aug 16, 2010, © salon.com
A group of progressive Muslim-Americans plans to build an Islamic community center two and a half blocks from ground zero in lower Manhattan. They have had a mosque in the same neighborhood for many years. There's another mosque two blocks away from the site. City officials support the project. Muslims have been praying at the Pentagon, the other building hit on Sept. 11, for many years. . . .

REMEMBER ME
When my day comes and I'm gone
To the place where I truly belong
Don't cry for me, wish I'm still here
Just smile everytime you remember me,

To those who share my tears and joy
Kept memories that can't be destroyed
Never let your eyes fool you and weep
Just be happy everytime you remember me,

I have nothing to give in this world
Except some words that I wrote
Wanting from you all when you read
just feel joy every time you remember me,

Time will make some people forget
As if we hadn't even met
In a dark grave I will be
While few people are remembering me.
—Mirna Riad

Beirut synagogue restored to glory, despite tensions with Israel
17.08.10, © Haaretz.com
The main Jewish prayer house in the Lebanese capital has been renovated beautifully, demonstrating tolerance for places of worship, although there is still residual anger in the country over its conflict with Israel. . . .

EAST OF CARTHAGE: AN IDYLL
Look here, Marcus Aurelius, we’ve come to see
your temple, deluded the guards, crawled through a hole
in the fence. Why your descendent, my guide and friend
has opted for secrecy, I don’t know. But I do know
what to call the Africans, passport-less, yellow-eyed
who will ride the boat before me for Naples, they hope.
Here the sea curls its granite lip at them and flings a winter
storm like a cough, or the seadog drops them at Hannibal’s
shores, where they’ll stand stupefied like his elephants.
What dimension of time will they cross as the Hours loop
tight plastic ropes round their ankles and wrists?
What siren song will the trucks shipping them back
to Ouagadougou drone into their ears? I look at them
loitering, waiting for the second act of their darkness
to fall. I look at the sky shake her dicey fists.
One can be thankful, I suppose, for not being one of them,
and wrap the fabric of that thought around oneself
to keep the cold wind at bay. But what world is this
that makes our lives sufficient even as the horizon’s rope
is about to snap, while the sea and sky ache to become
a moment to peel itself like skin off fruit, and let us in
on its sweetness as we wait, smoking or fondling provisions,
listening to the engine’s invocational purr. In an hour
that will dawn and dusk at once, one that will stretch
into days strung like beads on the horizon’s throat,
they will ride their tormented ship as the dog star
begins to float on the water, so bright and still,
you’d want to scoop it out in the palm of your hand.
—Khaled Mattawa

Noam Chomsky: Why Wikileaks Won’t Stop the War
by Noam Chomsky
August 13, 2010, © media-ocracy.com
The War Logs—a six-year archive of classified military documents about the war in Afghanistan, released on the Internet by the organization WikiLeaks—documents a grim struggle becoming grimmer, from the U.S. perspective. And for the Afghans, a mounting horror. The War Logs, however valuable, may contribute to the unfortunate and prevailing doctrine that wars are wrong only if they aren’t successful—rather like the Nazis felt after Stalingrad. . . .

SIMPLE QUESTIONS
Are these birds or caravans
swimming through the air?
Neither the blueness nor those seated on beds in warm rooms will say.
Are these houses in a mirage or Bedouins
fleeing from ancient winds?
The sand and foxes alert for centuries will follow their trails.
Are these shadows of a city or a quavering flute?
A scene and visions emerge from its darkness.
—Ashur Atwebi

Petraeus’s New Offensive: Preparing the Way for Obama to Retract the Withdrawal Pledge
By Matthew Rothschild
August 16, 2010, © The Progressive
General David Petraeus is in the midst of his Afghanistan offensive.
But it’s not against the Taliban; it’s against those in Congress, and those of us in the public, who oppose the ongoing—and escalating—Afghan war. . . .

Who has the right to judge?
By Leonard Pitts Jr.
Sunday, August 15, 2010, © St. Louis Dispatch
He had no right to judge.
That, in a nutshell, is the gist of last week's uproar over a ruling by Vaughn Walker. Walker is the federal judge, originally appointed by Ronald Reagan and generally regarded, according to the Associated Press, as "a conservative with libertarian leanings," who struck down Proposition 8, California's ban on same-sex marriage. . . .

Our Mosque Madness
By MAUREEN DOWD
August 17, 2010, © New York Times
Maybe, for Barack Obama, it depends on what the meaning of the word “is” is.
When the president skittered back from his grandiose declaration at an iftar celebration at the White House Friday that Muslims enjoy freedom of religion in America and have the right to build a mosque and community center in Lower Manhattan, he offered a Clintonesque parsing. . . .

Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.
—William S. Burroughs 

Getting to the truth of Pat Tillman's death
By Michael Ordoña
August 18, 2010, © The Los Angeles Times
It was an inspiring story of selfless heroism: A stubbornly patriotic football player walked away from fame and a multimillion-dollar contract when he joined the Army immediately after Sept. 11, 2001. It was also a story whose tragic ending brought a nation to tears and inflamed wartime passions: Spc. Pat Tillman had charged up a hill in Afghanistan under "devastating enemy fire," according to his Silver Star citation, and was killed defending his fellow Rangers.
The problem with the story was that much of it just wasn't true. . . .

United States of Islamophobia?
By Arsalan Iftikhar
August 13, 2010, © cnn.com
(CNN) -- Almost everybody has heard about the protests against the mosque and Islamic center planned to be built about two blocks from ground zero in Manhattan. But most people are still unaware that these anti-Muslim political campaigns are spreading throughout our beloved country as a new wave of Islamophobia hits. . . .

Penetrating Aether: The Beat Generation and Allen Ginsberg’s America
by Sean Wilentz
August 16, 2010, © The New Yorker
Aaron Copland’s first important musical project after Billy the Kid was to write the score, in 1939, for a film by the innovative director Lewis Milestone, made from John Steinbeck’s novella about hard-luck migrant workers in California, Of Mice and Men. Copland had been trying to break into film work since 1937 but was still known in Hollywood as a composer of modernist art music and hence was considered too difficult for American moviegoers. . . .

Ayesha Siddiqa: My country needs help, not disapproval
An Anglophile writer says Britain could pay a heavy price for showing little understanding of Pakistan's history and current plight
Sunday, 15 August 2010, © The Independent
Why is the world not responding to Pakistan's current turmoil caused by the floods? Millions have been rendered homeless and hit by food scarcity. There is also now the fear of epidemics in flood-affected areas. Yet, the world does not seem too eager to come to Pakistan's rescue. Is it, as Pakistan's ambassador to the UN, Hussain Haroon said, because of the disenchantment caused by David Cameron when he criticised Pakistan as a source of terrorism? Or could the international community, particularly the European Union, not care less about a state which seems incapable of looking after itself? . . .

THE GREATER CATS

The greater cats with golden eyes
Stare out between the bars.
Deserts are there, and the different skies,
And night with different stars.
They prowl the aromatic hill,
And mate as fiercely as they kill,
To roam, to live, to drink their fill;
But this beyond their wit know I:
Man loves a little, and for long shall die.

Their kind across the desert range
Where tulips spring from stones,
Not knowing they will suffer change
Or vultures pick their bones.
Their strength's eternal in their sight,
They overtake the deer in flight,
And in their arrogance they smite;
But I am sage, if they are strong:
Man's love is transient as his death is long.

Yet oh what powers to deceive!
My wit is turned to faith,
And at this moment I believe
In love, and scout at death.
I came from nowhere, and shall be
Strong, steadfast, swift, eternally:
I am a lion, a stone, a tree,
And as the Polar star in me
Is fixed my constant heart on thee.
Ah, may I stay forever blind
With lions, tigers, leopards, and their kind.

—Vita Sackville-West

Our language has a way of turning women into men
Robert Fisk
Saturday, 14 August 2010, © The Independent
A week ago, in my front-page story on the Hiroshima commemoration, I planted a little trap for our sub-editors.
I referred to Vita Sackville-West as a "poetess". And sure enough, the sub (or "subess") changed it – as I knew he or she would – to "poet". Aha! . . .

What If We Google "Democracy" And Get "Oligarchy"?
John Nichols
August 15, 2010, © The Nation
Why would anyone get mad at Google?
It's the beach from which most us step off to surf the World Wide Web.
We tap a few words in a box -- which is framed by a whimsical drawing -- and instantly we have found that recipe for madeleines, that definition of antidisestablishmentarianism, the truth about where Barack Obama was really born, the nearest bowling alley and a life partner. . . .

As Gibbs Attacks Progressive Critics, ACLU Says Obama White House Enshrining Bush-Era Policies
August 12, 2010, © Democracy Now
As White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs attacks progressives for comparing President Obama’s polices to George W. Bush’s, we look at a new ACLU report on how the Obama administration is permanently enshrining into law many of President Bush’s most controversial policies. The report, "Establishing a New Normal," warns: "There is a very real danger that the Obama administration will enshrine permanently within the law policies and practices that were widely considered extreme and unlawful during the Bush administration." . . .

A man may devote himself to death and destruction to save a nation; but no nation will devote itself to death and destruction to save mankind.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Guantánamo: A Prison That Stains US Moral Authority
August 13, 2010 by the Independent/UK, © CommonDreams.org
The barbed wire fences of Guantánamo's infamous Camp X-Ray have been reclaimed by tropical vegetation and the detainees have been released from their steel shackles. But, as our series of special reports this week highlights, there are still 176 men held in custody in open defiance of the rule of law at the US naval base in Cuba where they have little hope of release. Their continuing detention, eight months after Barack Obama's self-imposed deadline for closing the camps, is an ongoing affront to international law and critically weakens America's moral authority. . . .

¡PARÁ, RAMÓN! SOS EL TÉCNICO DE SAN LORENZO DE ALMAGRO. SI ALGÚN DÍA TE QUIEREN PARA LA SELECCIÓN SEGURO QUE TE AVISARÁN. A VER SI PODÉS GANAR UNOS PARTIDOS PARA NOSOTROS PRIMERO, CHE. PARA QUE LO TENGAS CLARO, EL ESCUDO MÁS GRANDE ES EL TUYO AHORA, EL OTRO NO:

Lorenzo (mártir)
San Lorenzo fue uno de los siete diáconos de Roma, ciudad donde fue martirizado en una parrilla en 258. En latín se llamaba Laurentius (‘laureado’). Los Actos de san Lorenzo se perdieron en la época de Agustín de Hipona, quien en uno de sus sermones acerca del santo (Sermo 302, de Sancto Laurent) admite que su narración no provenía de recitar las Actas del santo (como solía hacer Agustín en sus sermones) sino de la tradición oral. Esa tradición sitúa el nacimiento de Lorenzo de Roma en Huesca, en la Hispania Tarraconensis. Cuando en 257 Sixto fue nombrado papa, Lorenzo fue ordenado diácono, y encargado de administrar los bienes de la Iglesia y el cuidado de los pobres. Por esta labor, es considerado uno de los primeros archivistas y tesoreros de la Iglesia, y es el patrón de los bibliotecarios. . . .

The greatest enemy of individual freedom is the individual himself.
—Saul Alinsky

If words fall into disrepair, what will substitute? They are all we have
Tony Judt
Monday 9 August 2010, © The Guardian
I was raised on words. They tumbled off the kitchen table on to the floor where I sat: grandfather, uncles and refugees flung Russian, Polish, Yiddish, French and what passed for English at one another in a competitive cascade of assertion and interrogation. Sententious flotsam from the Edwardian-era Socialist Party of Great Britain hung around our kitchen promoting the True Cause. I spent happy hours listening to central European autodidacts arguing into the night: "Marxismus", "Zionismus", "Socialismus". Talking, it seemed, was the point of adult existence. I have never lost that sense. . . .

Bad Day: Origins of a Guerrilla Western
Featuring: Dave Alvin, Michael Blake, Kevin Costner and John Doe
(LOS ANGELES, CA – July 20, 2010) – Early Punk goes Cowboy! Almost 25 years after it was filmed, the Queen of L.A. Punk, X singer Exene Cervenka, and music video director Modi Frank, known for her groundbreaking music videos such as “Mountain Song” by Jane’s Addiction, present their previously unreleased cowboy satire “Bad Day” featuring legendary X front man John Doe, Grammy Award winner Dave Alvin, Oscar-winning writer Michael Blake, and with a comedic performance by Academy Award winner, Kevin Costner. . . .

Steal This Movie
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
August 7, 2010, © The New York Times
I just saw a remarkable new documentary directed by Shlomi Eldar, the Gaza reporter for Israel’s Channel 10 news. Titled “Precious Life,” the film tracks the story of Mohammed Abu Mustafa, a 4-month-old Palestinian baby suffering from a rare immune deficiency. . . .

Open Letter To Kansas School Board
I am writing you with much concern after having read of your hearing to decide whether the alternative theory of Intelligent Design should be taught along with the theory of Evolution. I think we can all agree that it is important for students to hear multiple viewpoints so they can choose for themselves the theory that makes the most sense to them. I am concerned, however, that students will only hear one theory of Intelligent Design. . . .

Hiroshima and the Myths of Empire
By Gary G. Kohls, MD
July 29, 2010, © Consortiumnews.com
Since the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, millions of Americans have not wanted to address honestly the horror of that moment. Many were willing to swallow the post-war propaganda about the destruction of the city as necessary to avert the even worse death and devastation from a full-scale U.S. invasion of Japan.  .  .  .

Worse than not realizing the dreams of your youth, would be to have been young and never dreamed at all.
—Jean Genet

October Surprise Cover-up Unravels
By Robert Parry
August 6, 2010
Not to belabor a point, but some die-hard defenders of the October Surprise cover-up continue to insist that there is real evidence debunking the now overwhelming case that Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign interfered with President Jimmy Carter’s negotiations to free 52 American hostages then held in Iran. . . .

Congressman Kucinich and Dylan Ratigan discuss the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on MSNBC

Mongolian neo-Nazis: Anti-Chinese sentiment fuels rise of ultra-nationalism
Alarm sounds over rise of extreme groups such as Tsagaan Khass who respect Hitler and reject foreign influence
Tania Branigan
Monday 2 August 2010, © The Guardian
Their right hands rise to black-clad chests and flash out in salute to their nation: "Sieg heil!" They praise Hitler's devotion to ethnic purity. . . .

Lessons from the Godfather: Interview with Gene Sharp
interview by Jeff Severns Guntzel 
July-August 2010, © Utne Reader
When political scientist Gene Sharp published his three-volume study The Politics of Nonviolent Action in 1973, his dream was to seed global grassroots nonviolent movements. . . .

I just trust people and they sense everything's gonna be alright.
—Gregory Corso

Picture Perfect
Phony wildlife photography warps nature and is rarely revealed
by Ted Williams, from Audubon  
July-August 2010, © Utne Reader
One day last December, before noon in the Glacier National Park ecosystem of northwestern Montana, I encountered two wolves and two cougars. What were the chances of that? . . .

Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.
—Jack Kerouac

Banned in Belarus
by Natalia Leshchenko, from Transitions Online 
July-August 2010, © Utne Reader
A book on paranoia disappears. Two days after it hits Minsk bookshops and Belarus’ Internet retailers, it is suddenly “unavailable.” It is as if the book never existed. But it does, and free electronic versions of the elusive novel are now spawning on the Net. . . .

How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think.
—Adolf Hitler

__________

Querido Ramón,
Volviste. Bien. Dejaremos atrás el día que te fuiste, pero no hace falta empezar con la boludez de postularte para la selección antes de jugar el torneo local. Aunque vas ordenando el equipo poco a poco, te falta un poco de humildad para ser digno de nuestro San Lorenzo de Almagro. Dejate de joder y seguí trabajando nomás. Luego hablamos de tu carrera internacional si te parece.
Guido.
__________

The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest.
—Henry David Thoreau

Climate Bill, R.I.P.
Instead of taking the fight to big polluters, President Obama has put global warming on the back burner
By Tim Dickinson
Jul 21, 2010, © Rolling Stone
A comprehensive energy and climate bill – the centerpiece of President Obama's environmental agenda – is officially dead. Take it from the president's own climate czar, Carol Browner. "What is abundantly clear," she told Rolling Stone in an exclusive interview on July 8th, "is that an economy-wide program, which the president has talked about for years now, is not doable in the Senate." . . .

If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.
—Henry David Thoreau

WikiLeaks Founder Says "Evidence of War Crimes" in Afghan War Logs, White House Downplays Leak, Claiming "No Broad New Revelations"
July 27, 2010, © Democracy Now
The disclosure of a massive trove of classified military records documenting the Afghanistan war has ignited a firestorm and increased pressure on the White House to defend its military strategy. We play highlights of the White House press conference in Washington and Julian Assange’s press conference in London. . . .

Every Indian outbreak that I have ever known has resulted from broken promises and broken treaties by the government.
—Buffalo Bill

'Four Fish' by Paul Greenberg looks at overharvesting of oceans
By John Alden
July 19, 2010, © The Cleveland Plain Dealer
With the exception of those who fish seriously, for sport or a living, our attitude toward fish is 'out of sight, out of mind.' We see them arrayed on ice or a menu and, contemplating at the selection before us, assume all is well in the underseas. Paul Greenberg's thoughtful, informative and superbly readable examination of the history, ecology and economics of four favorite seafoods quickly appraises us that this is not the case. Each of the species featured -- Atlantic salmon, Mediterranean sea bass, North Atlantic cod and Bluefin tuna -- has been overharvested so seriously that they are, or are close to, commercially extinct. . . .

Freedom for the Mind

High walls and huge the body may confine,

And iron grates obstruct the prisoner's gaze,

And massive bolts may baffle his design,

And vigilant keepers watch his devious ways:

Yet scorns the immortal mind this base control!

No chains can bind it, and no cell enclose:

Swifter than light, it flies from pole to pole,

And, in a flash, from earth to heaven it goes!

It leaps from mount to mount—from vale to vale

It wanders, plucking honeyed fruits and flowers;

It visits home, to hear the fireside tale,

Or in sweet converse pass the joyous hours.

'T is up before the sun, roaming afar,

And, in its watches, wearies every star!

—Emerson

Restoring a Hallowed Vision
By BOB HERBERT
July 9, 2010, © The New York Times
In April 1968, the same month that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed in Memphis, where he had gone to support striking sanitation workers, the president of the powerful auto workers’ union, Walter Reuther, traveled to Memphis to give the strikers critically needed financial support. . . .

Practise what you know, and it will help to make clear what now you do not know.
—Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn

Johan Cruyff hits out at 'anti-football' Holland
Monday 12 July 2010, © Guardian
Johan Cruyff has launched a scathing attack on Holland's performance in their 1-0 defeat to Spain in the World Cup final last night, slamming their "dirty" tactics and their style of "anti-football". . . .

Menotti: "España campeón, una muy buena noticia"
"En su camino al título, mostró una capacidad estratégica como hace tiempo no se veía", destacó el técnico campeón con Argentina en la Copa del Mundo de 1978.
12/07/10, © Clarín.com

El primer Mundial desarrollado en continente africano dejó por encima de todo la incuestionable e inédita consagración de España como campeón. Una muy buena noticia para el juego. No hubo muchas más y sí demasiado por discutir. Mientras se iban sucediendo los partidos tuve la sensación de que son demasiados los equipos que están demás, que el buen juego es por estos tiempos virtud de muy pocos y que el espectáculo y la sobrecargada lucha mediática siguen gozando de muy buena salud.

Así se utiliza un Mundial: el que gana vende, el éxito no se analiza. Así sucedió hace cuatro años en Alemania, cuando se dijo que el fútbol era de Italia, aunque haya sido uno de los que peor había jugado. Llovieron los elogios al campeón, que la disciplina táctica, que eran especialistas en este tipo de competencia...

Las voces del utilitarismo volvieron a escucharse fuerte en Sudáfrica. Cayeron con todo el peso de su miserable condición encima de España y Alemania, coincidiendo con sus derrotas en la fase de grupos. Pero aquellas fueron derrotas en el resultado, no en el juego. El tiempo puso las cosas en su lugar, Serbia y Suiza se fueron temprano a casa, sin siquiera superar la primera instancia, y españoles y alemanes, auténticos defensores de la idea de jugar para ganar jugando, se encontraron y protagonizaron el mejor partido del Mundial. Inolvidable. Ganó España. No perdió nadie. En el juego ganamos todos.

Me pregunto qué dirán ahora aquellos que amparados en su cobardía e ignorancia se atreven a decir que "cuando hay mucho en juego es muy difícil jugar bien y brindar buenos espectáculos". Muchachos... les recomiendo humildemente, ustedes siempre tan afectos al uso de videocaseteras o compacteras, dejen a un costado por dos horas los pizarrones magnéticos, la pelota parada y disparada, y tómense la molestia de ver (y disfruten) un señor partido de fútbol, entre dos señores equipos como España y Alemania que, si no recuerdo mal, se jugaban poquito, apenas un boleto a la final de un Mundial...

En su camino al título, España mostró una capacidad estratégica como hace tiempo no se veía y asumió la búsqueda del resultado desde dos facetas fundamentales: pressing corto para recuperar, poniendo al equipo en campo contrario, asumiendo responsablemente esta estrategia de recuperación de la pelota. Con ella en los pies, entonces el comienzo de la elaboración, que no es otra cosa que buscar el tiempo y espacio que le sea más favorable.

La pelota feliz y bien tratada va de un pie a otro, corto, repetido, ancho para poder ser profundo, si se puede en uno, o en dos, o en 10, o 20. Lo que haga falta. Todos los toques necesarios y el permanente compromiso de participación no sólo de Xavi, Iniesta, Pedro, Busquets, también de los cuatro defensores. Todos a jugar para decirle a Villa la mesa está servida.

El fútbol es espacio, tiempo y engaño pero además qué lindo es jugar con la pelota, si hasta parece que uno no se cansa nunca. Y qué feo es correr detrás de la pelota. Cuando se trata de forzar la acción, España tiene todas las variantes. Nunca intenta dividir, prefiere adueñarse del juego para encontrar la zona de definición. También tiene la posibilidad de generar acciones forzadas desde la habilidad individual.

Hay otras virtudes notorias en esta Selección española: tiene precisión y pase-gol, muy buena media distancia y enormes pequeñas sociedades como Piqué-Puyol o Iniesta-Xavi. Es imposible para los especialistas en números de teléfono saber cómo juega España. Se me ocurre que casi como el Barcelona. ¿y cómo juega el Barca? 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11, 8-9-10-4-5-8, 5-4-1-0... Ah! todos estos números tienen una misma característica: España juega muy bien al fútbol, después marque los números que quiera. Este equipo español deja al mundo del fútbol un mensaje claro y preciso: también se puede ser campeón del mundo jugando bien.

La final fue durísima para España. Holanda le propuso un no-juego, interrumpió con una agresividad siempre al filo del reglamento y muchas veces contó con la complicidad del árbitro, de pésima actuación. Así sostuvo el no-juego, lo llevó a España, lo arrastró a jugar el partido que Holanda quería. Pero medio equipo amonestado y un expulsado fue un costo demasiado alto para los holandeses. Sumado a que ya España había encontrado sintonía fina en Fábregas e Iniesta, las acciones se volcaron en favor del equipo más generoso, más valiente, ese que siempre buscó la victoria.

España fue lo mejor del Mundial. Un justo campeón. Alemania hubiese realzado esta final, sin dudas. Holanda perdió otra final, la tercera en su historia. En las anteriores (1974 y 1978) lo hizo tratando de imponer el protagonismo, condición que ayer en Sudáfrica regaló.
(*) Distribuida por dpa

Boredom is the root of all evil - the despairing refusal to be oneself.
—Soren Kierkegaard

America’s Never-Ending Way of War
America is a nation at war. Forever.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010, © The ITT List
Well maybe not quite forever, but any American under, say, age 75 can be forgiven for thinking the country has been in “perpetual war for perpetual peace” (as Gore Vidal once termed it) since the attack on Pearl Harbor. One war seems to slide directly into another: World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Gulf War, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and of course, bracketing all of these save the first, the Cold War, which encapsulated so many smaller, often covert, military actions around the globe, many of which we didn’t even know about as they were happening. . . .

“It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how Nature is. Physics concerns what we say about Nature.”
—Niels Bohr

ESTA VEZ GANÓ LA MEJOR SELECCIÓN Y PERDIÓ EL FÚTBOL SUCIO, CÍNICO Y VERGONZOSO

¡FELICIDADES A LOS NUEVOS CAMPEONES!

Todos tus muertos
Por Fabián Casas
Domingo 11 de julio de 2010, © Perfîl.com
Caracteres. En casi todas sus novelas los personajes hacen cosas insensatas. Se juntan, se mezclan, se olvidan, se reproducen en medio de una absoluta pereza. Así, hasta sus últimos días. . . .

 ¡VAMOS!

__________

¡VALIENTES!

Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.
—William S. Burroughs

CounterPunch DiaryThe Worst of Times, the Best of Times
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
July 9 - 11, 2010, © Counterpunch
It’s the worst of times. America is plunging back into Depression. Only one out of every two Americans of working age has a job. Forty years ago that would have been okay. Dad went to the factory. Mom stayed at home to mind the kids. These days, just to keep the show on the road, mom and pop both work and the kids get daycare. . . .

Anybody who comes to the cinema is bringing they're whole sexual history, their literary history, their movie literacy, their culture, their language, their religion, whatever they've got. I can't possibly manipulate all of that, nor do I want to.
—David Cronenberg

¿Por qué la tolerancia es una palabra fea?
JUAN ARIAS
06/07/2010, © El Paîs.com
Zapeaba hace unos días en la televisión cuando me encontré con una entrevista a Hussein, el fallecido rey de Jordania. De repente le escuché una frase que me dejó perplejo por unos segundos: "Tolerancia es una palabra fea", dijo. En su opinión, con el diferente, con el emigrante, con el que consideramos de otra cultura no deberíamos usar la palabra "tolerancia", sino "aceptación". . . .

A belligerent state permits itself every such misdeed, every such act of violence, as would disgrace the individual.
—Sigmund Freud

Alemania no le tuvo piedad a la Armada
Por Hugo Asch
Domingo 4 de Julio de 2010, © Perfil.com
Hugo Asch “En el fundamento de esas nobles razas, resulta imposible no reconocer al animal de rapiña, la magnífica bestia rubia que, magnífica y lasciva, vagabundea codiciosa de botín y de victoria”
De “Genealogía de la moral” (1887), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Me resisto, ahora que deben estar fluyendo como lava volcánica las críticas más despiadadas después de la goleada, a ensañarme con la pobre Armada Brancaleone maradoniana, frustrada en su misión divina de recuperar para la causa el Santo Grial. Bastantes cosas dije sobre ellos durante el último año y medio. Maradona hizo lo que pudo, y al menos cayó en su ley, insistiendo en su ilusión casi infantil. . . .

The Nation: Why You Should Root For Argentina
by Dave Zirin
June 30, 2010, © NPR
Dave Zirin is the sports editor for The Nation magazine. He was named one of the UTNE Reader's "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Our World," and is a frequent guest on MSNBC, ESPN, and Democracy Now. His books include A People's History of Sports in the United States and the forthcoming Bad Sports: How Owners Are Ruining the Games We Love. . . .

Dennis Kucinich: Afghanistan, the Environment and Corporate Control of the Political Process
Tuesday, 29 June 2010
Dennis Kucinich sends an important message concerning Afghanistan, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, and the influence of corporate money on federal elections. . . .

Gen. Petraeus and the 'Surge' Myth
By Robert Parry
June 29, 2010, © Consortiumnews.com
If there is one overriding consensus among Washington opinion leaders today, it is that Gen. David Petraeus is the perfect choice to turn around the failing war in Afghanistan because he supposedly already achieved such a feat in Iraq. But what if that conventional wisdom is wrong? . . .

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
—George Bernard Shaw

Maestro, caballero.

Soccer Star Left Behind After Shooting
By ROB HUGHES
June 28, 2010, © The New York Times
JOHANNESBURG — When Paraguay lines up against Japan in the World Cup on Tuesday in Pretoria, Salvador Cabañas will not be there. . . .

ENOUGH ALREADY!!!! The game, the fans, and the players need instant replay and review on all penalty calls, red cards, and goals. It does not take long. If it can be done in ice hockey, a much faster game, it can be done in football.

No, Sexual Violence Is Not 'Cultural'
By LISA SHANNON
June 25, 2010, © International Herald Tribune
A month into my first trip to eastern Congo, site of the deadliest conflict since World War II, I had heard plenty of horror stories — from forced cannibalism to the burning alive of the inhabitants of entire villages. I was no longer easily shocked. But one exchange with an aid worker stopped me cold. . . .

El otro yo

Se trataba de un muchacho corriente: en los pantalones se le formaban rodilleras, leía historietas, hacía ruido cuando comía, se metía los dedos a la naríz, roncaba en la siesta, se llamaba Armando Corriente en todo menos en una cosa: tenía Otro Yo.

El Otro Yo usaba cierta poesía en la mirada, se enamoraba de las actrices, mentía cautelosamente , se emocionaba en los atardeceres. Al muchacho le preocupaba mucho su Otro Yo y le hacía sentirse imcómodo frente a sus amigos. Por otra parte el Otro Yo era melancólico, y debido a ello, Armando no podía ser tan vulgar como era su deseo.

Una tarde Armando llegó cansado del trabajo, se quitó los zapatos, movió lentamente los dedos de los pies y encendió la radio. En la radio estaba Mozart, pero el muchacho se durmió. Cuando despertó el Otro Yo lloraba con desconsuelo. En el primer momento, el muchacho no supo que hacer, pero después se rehizo e insultó concienzudamente al Otro Yo. Este no dijo nada, pero a la mañama siguiente se habia suicidado.

Al principio la muerte del Otro Yo fue un rudo golpe para el pobre Armando, pero enseguida pensó que ahora sí podría ser enteramente vulgar. Ese pensamiento lo reconfortó.

Sólo llevaba cinco días de luto, cuando salió la calle con el proposito de lucir su nueva y completa vulgaridad. Desde lejos vio que se acercaban sus amigos. Eso le lleno de felicidad e inmediatamente estalló en risotadas . Sin embargo, cuando pasaron junto a él, ellos no notaron su presencia. Para peor de males, el muchacho alcanzó a escuchar que comentaban: «Pobre Armando.Y pensar que parecía tan fuerte y saludable».

El muchacho no tuvo más remedio que dejar de reír y, al mismo tiempo, sintió a la altura del esternón un ahogo que se parecía bastante a la nostalgia. Pero no pudo sentir auténtica melancolía, porque toda la melancolía se la había llevado el Otro Yo.

—Mario Benedetti

Noam Chomsky: "The Center Cannot Hold: Rekindling the Radical Imagination"
May 31, 2010, © Democracy Now!
On this Memorial Day special, we spend the hour with the world-renowned political dissident and linguist Noam Chomsky, professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, author of over a hundred books. He spoke recently here in New York addressing more than a thousand people at the Left Forum. He began by discussing the case of Joseph Andrew Stack, who crashed his small plane into an office building in Austin, Texas, hitting an IRS office, committing suicide. . . .

GHANA 2 - USA1
WELL DONE - CONGRATULATIONS!

My once-in-a-generation cut? The armed forces. All of them
Simon Jenkins
8 June 2010, © The Guardian
I say cut defence. I don't mean nibble at it or slice it. I mean cut it, all £45bn of it. George Osborne yesterday asked the nation "for once in a generation" to think the unthinkable, to offer not just percentage cuts but "whether government needs to provide certain public services at all". . . .

Congressional Investigation Confirms: US Military Funds Afghan Warlords
Aram Roston
June 21, 2010, © The Nation
Security for key US military supply routes in Afghanistan is in the hands of a small group of powerful Afghan warlords who run a massive protection racket and may be paying off the Taliban, according to a Congressional report being released Tuesday. The report, an advance copy of which was obtained by The Nation, discloses that the Army has opened a criminal investigation into the payoffs, as an Army Criminal Investigation Command spokesman confirmed this evening to the Associated Press. . . .

GRANDES

“Some people spend their entire lives reading but never get beyond reading the words on the page, they don't understand that the words are merely stepping stones placed across a fast-flowing river, and the reason they're there is so that we can reach the farther shore, it's the other side that matters.”
—Jose Saramago

El Vaticano condena otra vez a Saramago tras su muerte
Le acusa de "populismo extremista" y le define como "ideólogo antirreligioso"
MIGUEL MORA
Roma 19/06/2010, © ELPAIS.com
Ni elogio fúnebre ni nota necrológica neutra. Fiel a su historia, el Vaticano ha dedicado hoy a José Saramago, fallecido el viernes a los 87 años en Lanzarote, un ataque denigratorio, una condena de un tono casi sarcástico, que suena casi a celebración por la muerte de uno de los intelectuales que más lúcidamente ha condenado los abusos cometidos en nombre de la religión y la hipocresía y contradicciones de la Iglesia de Roma. . . .

Whatever tears one may shed, in the end one always blows one's nose.
—Heinrich Heine
__________

There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they laugh at.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
___________

I never think of the future - it comes soon enough.
—Albert Einstein

The Loose Vuvuzela
By ROGER COHEN
June 21, 2010, © The New York Times
JOHANNESBURG — They’re calling him the World Cup’s “loose vuvuzela.” They’re swooning as he spreads the love, jumping into his players’ arms like some cuddly bear with diamond earrings and no neck. . . .

Paternal Bonds, Special and Strange
By NATALIE ANGIER
June 14, 2010, © The International Herald Tribune
Not long ago, Julia Fischer of the German Primate Center in Göttingen was amused to witness two of her distinguished male colleagues preening about a topic very different from the standard academic peacock points — papers published, grants secured, competitors made to look foolish. . . .

Não me Peçam Razões...

Não me peçam razões, que não as tenho, 
Ou darei quantas queiram: bem sabemos 
Que razões são palavras, todas nascem 
Da mansa hipocrisia que aprendemos. 

Não me peçam razões por que se entenda 
A força de maré que me enche o peito, 
Este estar mal no mundo e nesta lei: 
Não fiz a lei e o mundo não aceito. 

Não me peçam razões, ou que as desculpe, 
Deste modo de amar e destruir: 
Quando a noite é de mais é que amanhece 
A cor de primavera que há-de vir. 

—José Saramago ("Os Poemas Possíveis")

A Solution to America’s Wild-Horse Crisis?
by Kurt Brungardt
June 10, 2010, © Vanity Fair
The future of America’s wild horses, or mustangs, is at a critical crossroads. Under the administration of President Obama, the Bureau of Land Management (B.L.M.) has continued the aggressive roundup, removal, and relocation of wild horses from public lands, prompting advocates to call the new administration the third Bush term as far as the mustangs are concerned. . . .

Tarkovsky's Polaroids / Las Polaroid de Tarkovsky
No es muy conocido que Tarkovsky, cuyas películas parecen estar compuestas a veces por un montaje de fotografías estáticas, se dedicó durante algún tiempo, efectivamente, a tomar fotos con una Polaroid. Estas fotos, a pesar de sus imperfecciones técnicas, atestiguan la misma forma de mirar y el mismo mundo visual de sus grandes films. . . .

The Sea And The Man

You will not tame this sea
either by humility or rapture.
But you can laugh
in its face.

Laughter
was invented by those
who live briefly
as a burst of laughter.

The eternal sea
will never learn to laugh.

—Anna Swirszczynska
(Translated from the Polish by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Natha)
___________

‘This is what I most want’

This is what I most want
unpursued, alone
to reach beyond the light
that I am furthest from.

And for you to shine there-
no other happiness-
and learn, from starlight,
what its fire might suggest.

A star burns as a star,
light becomes light,
because our murmuring
strengthens us, and warms the night.

And I want to say to you
my little one, whispering,
I can only lift you towards the light
by means of this babbling.

—Osip Mandelstam
Note: Written for his wife, Nadezhda.
(translated by A. S. Kline)

Congratulations to Germany, the most complete-looking team so far, for a very good start in the World Cup...

Abraham Lincoln, Meet Client #9
Katha Pollitt
June 9, 2010, © The Nation
Saving scrap metal. Buying war bonds. Gathering around the radio for a fireside chat after a simple but nutritious Mom-cooked meal made from rationed ingredients. It can't really have been much fun to work in a munitions plant while worried to a frazzle about your son or sweetheart overseas, but the domestic front of World War II has entered our collective memory as a safe and happy place full of solidarity, adventure, a sense of purpose and an egalitarian spirit. If you think about it, many of our favorite American stories have that poor-but-happy feel: Walden, Little Women, the Little House books, the Waltons, even Huckleberry Finn. . . .

On The 100th Anniversary Of Anna Akhmatova
The fire and the page, the hewed hairs and the swords,
The grains and the millstone, the whispers and the clatter --
God saves all that -- especially the words
Of love and pity, as His only way to utter.
The harsh pulse pounds and the blood torrent whips,
The spade knocks evenly in them, by gentle muse begotten,
For life is so unique, they from the mortal lips
Sound more clear than from the divine wad-cotton.
Oh, the great soul, I'm bowing overseas
To you, who found them, and that, your smoldering portion,
Sleeping in the homeland, which, thanks to you, at least,
Obtained the gift of speech in the deaf-mute space ocean.
—Joseph Brodsky
___________

The Sphinx

The Sphinx is drowsy,
  Her wings are furled:
Her ear is heavy,
  She broods on the world.
"Who'll tell me my secret,
  The ages have kept?--
I awaited the seer
  While they slumbered and slept:--

"The fate of the man-child,
  The meaning of man;
Known fruit of the unknown;
  Daedalian plan;
Out of sleeping a waking,
  Out of waking a sleep;
Life death overtaking;
  Deep underneath deep?

:Erect as a sunbeam,
  Upspringeth the palm;
The elephant browses,
  Undaunted and calm;
In beautiful motion
  The thrush plies his wings;
Kind leaves of his covert,
  Your silence he sings.

"The waves, unashaméd,
  In difference sweet,
Play glad with the breezes,
  Old playfellows meet;
The journeying atoms,
  Primordial wholes,
Firmly draw, firmly drive,
  By their animate poles.

"Sea, earth, air, sound, silence,
  Plant, quadruped, bird,
By one music enchanted,
  One deity stirred,--
Each the other adorning,
  Accompany still;
Night veileth the morning,
  The vapor the hill.

"The babe by its mother
  Lies bathéd in joy;
Glide its hours uncounted,--
  The sun is its toy;
Shines the peace of all being,
  Without cloud, in its eyes;
And the sum of the world
  In soft miniature lies.

"But man crouches and blushes,
  Absconds and conceals;
He creepeth and peepeth,
  He palters and steals;
Infirm, melancholy,
  Jealous glancing around,
An oaf, an accomplice,
  He poisons the ground.

"Out spoke the great mother,
  Beholding his fear;--
At the sound of her accents
  Cold shuddered the sphere:--
'Who has drugged my boy's cup?
  Who has mixed my boy's bread?
Who, with sadness and madness,
  Has turned my child's head?

I heard a poet answer
  Aloud and cheerfully,
"Say on, sweet Sphinx! thy dirges
  Are pleasant songs to me.
Deep love lieth under
  These pictures of time;
They fade in the light of
  Their meaning sublime.

"The fiend that man harries
  Is love of the Best;
Yawns the pit of the Dragon,
  Lit by rays from the Blest.
The lethe of Nature
  Can't trance him again,
Whose soul sees the perfect,
  Which his eyes seek in vain.

"To vision profounder,
  Man's spirit must dive;
His aye-rolling orb
  At no goal will arrive;
The heavens that now draw him
  With sweetness untold,
Once found,--for new heavens
  He spurneth the old.

"Pride ruined the angels,
  Their shame them restores;
Lurks the joy that is sweetest
  In stings of remorse.
Have I a lover
  Who is noble and free?--
I would he were nobler
  Than to love me.

"Eterne alternation
  Now follows, now flies;
And under pain, pleasure,--
  Under pleasure, pain lies.
Love works at the center,
  Heart-heaving alway;
Forth speed the strong pulses
  To the borders of day.

"Dull Sphinx, Jove keep thy five wits'
  Thy sight is growing blear;
Rue, myrrh and cummin for the Sphinx,
  Her muddy eyes to clear!"
The old Sphinx bit her thick lip,--
  Said, "Who taught thee me to name?
I am thy spirit, yoke-fellow;
  Of thine eye I am eyebeam.

"Thou art the unanswered question;
  Couldst see thy proper eye,
Alway it asketh, asketh;
  And each answer is a lie.
So take thy question through nature,
  It through thousand natures ply;
Ask on, thou clothed eternity;
  Time is the false reply.

Uprose the merry Sphinx,
  And crouched no more in stone;
She melted into purple cloud,
  She silvered in the moon;
She spired into a yellow flame;
  She flowered in blossoms red;
She flowed into a foaming wave:
  She stood Monadnoc's head.

Through a thousand voices
  Spoke the universal dame
"Who telleth one of my meanings
  Is master of all I am."

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Gaza: It's Not About Anti-Semitism
Robert Dreyfuss
June 4, 2010, © The Nation
Whatever your thoughts about the Gaza flotilla incident, one thing is certain: neither the event itself, nor the subsequent world reaction, has anything to do with anti-Semitism.
Try telling that to Charles Krauthammer or Bibi Netanyahu. . . .

A Problem
Let none resemble another; let each resemble the highest!
How can that happen? let each be all complete in itself.
—Friedrich von Schiller

Bernardo Romeo
Romeo ist und bleibt ein Phänomen. Was ihm an Ballgewandtheit und Technik fehlt, macht er durch seinen unglaublichen Torriecher wieder wett.
Seit seinem Wechsel vom argentinischen Klub San Lorenzo zum HSV hat Romeo sich eine durchaus respektable Torausbeute erarbeitet. Der klassische Strafraumspieler ist bekannt für seine Doppelpacks und will versuchen, zumindest die HSV-interne Torjägerkrone zu erringen. . . .

Rubén Juárez, cantor de tango y bandoneonista inolvidable
JOSÉ MARÍA OTERO
01/06/2010, © El País
La aparición de Rubén Juárez fue como un oasis en el desierto. Cuando el tango atravesaba una de sus clásicas mareas bajas, cercado por continuas dictaduras que recelaban de la cultura y por la invasión de distintos ritmos foráneos que apoyaban las grabadoras, llegó el tango en su bandoneón, su pinta ganadora y su hermosa voz de barítono. . . .

Israel should lead investigation into attack on Gaza flotilla, says US
Turkey's demands for international inquiry blocked at meeting of United Nations security council
Chris McGreal
Tuesday 1 June 2010, © The Guardian
The United States has blocked demands at the UN security council for an international inquiry into Israel's assault on the Turkish ship carrying aid to Gaza that left nine pro-Palestinian activists dead. . . .

P.S. i hope you took a box of cigars on your trip, dennis. if not, let us know and we will send you some immediately.
love, viggo.

photo by: mike welch

3 Facts You Need to Know About the Israeli Attack on Peace Activists on the Gaza Flotilla
May 31, 2010, © Alternet
It is quite astounding that Israel has been able to create over the past 12 hours a news blackout, just as it did with its attack on Gaza 18 months ago, into which our main media organisations have willingly allowed Israeli spokespeople to step in unchallenged. . . .

Dear Dennis,

I am sorry not to have physically been with you the moment you left, but you know I was there otherwise. You went quietly and with a smile, I was told. That is not surprising. You always seemed to know the value of the saying  "Si vis vitam, para mortem" ("If you want to endure life, prepare for death"). You travelled eagerly, hopefully, acknowledging all that you found good, bad, and indifferent in yourself and in others you encountered along the way.  I enclose a few pictures from our walk around Amsterdam a few years ago, where you showed us so many things and made us laugh as usual, as well as some words that always remind me of you - that 1971 quote from your fellow Kansan, the poet William Stafford. Here it is again, in case it comes in handy wherever you are today:

"I keep following this sort of hidden river of my life, you know, whatever the topic or impulse which comes, I follow it along trustingly. And I don't have any sense of its coming to a kind of crescendo, or of its petering out either. It is just going steadily along."

See you later, brother.

Love,
Viggo.

“No puedo escindirme de quienes escribieron conmigo”
Por Silvina Friera
Jueves, 27 de mayo de 2010, © Página 12
Fabián Casas cumplió en abril 45 años, “la velocidad de los discos lentos”. Su voz reposada, como si se adaptara a las “revoluciones” del comentario, festeja el anacronismo de tener la edad de una reliquia que sólo perdura en su memoria. Y en la de otros, pero que empiezan a peinar canas o andan en eso. . . .

Priest Fights Gangs With 'Boundless Compassion'
May 20, 2010, © NPR
Homeboy Industries is the largest gang-intervention program in the country, serving the needs of thousands of East Los Angeles gang members who are looking for a way to leave the streets behind. Its motto is: "Nothing stops a bullet like a job." For the past 20 years, the Rev. Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit priest who started Homeboy, has mentored and counseled the more than 12,000 gang members who pass through Homeboy each year to learn job skills, get their gang tattoos removed and attend therapy sessions on everything from alcohol abuse to anger management. . . .

7,000 Miles Nonstop, and No Pretzels
By CARL ZIMMER
May 24, 2010, © The New York Times
In 1976, the biologist Robert E. Gill Jr. came to the southern coast of Alaska to survey the birds preparing for their migrations for the winter. One species in particular, wading birds called bar-tailed godwits, puzzled him deeply. They were too fat. . . .

Revealed: how Israel offered to sell South Africa nuclear weapons
Chris McGreal
Monday 24 May 2010, © The Guardian
Secret South African documents reveal that Israel offered to sell nuclear warheads to the apartheid regime, providing the first official documentary evidence of the state's possession of nuclear weapons. . . .

25 DE MAYO DE 1810    --   25 DE MAYO DE 2010

___________

MERCI AU CANADIEN!

et bonne chance aux Flyers

___________

Tu peux.

___________

My Country, Tis of Me
There’s nothing patriotic about the Tea Party Patriots.
By Michael Kinsley
June 2010, © ATLANTIC MAGAZINE
The right-wing populist Tea Party movement has politicians of both parties spooked. Democrats fear it will bring so many Republicans to the boil, and then to the voting booth, that they will lose control of Congress. Republicans fear the movement will frighten away moderates and leave their party an unelectable, ideologically extreme rump. The press, both alarmed and delighted by this political force that sprang from nowhere, is eager to prove its lack of elitism and left-wing bias by treating the Tea Party activists with respect. Journalists also sincerely appreciate having something new to write or talk about. It is in their interest to keep this story going. . . .

It is a strange fact that freedom and equality, the two basic ideas of democracy, are to some extent contradictory. Logically considered, freedom and equality are mutually exclusive, just as society and the individual are mutually exclusive.
—Thomas Mann

Javier Zanetti
Javier Adelmar Zanetti (born 10 August 1973) is an Argentine footballer who plays for Serie A club Internazionale. Javier Zanetti has played for Inter since 1995, taking the captain's armband in 1999. Known for his versatility, he is adept on both the left and right wing, having played on both flanks as a fullback as well as a winger. He slots into several midfield positions with ease, particularly as a defensive or central midfielder. Internationally, he holds the record of the most capped player in the history of the Argentine national team and has played in the 1996 Olympic tournament and in two World Cups, in 1998 and 2002. . . .

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.”
—Charles Darwin
___________

TOMES

There is a section in my library for death
and another for Irish history,
a few shelves for the poetry of China and Japan,
and in the center a row of imperturbable reference books,
the ones you can turn to anytime,
when the night is going wrong
or when the day is full of empty promise.

I have nothing against
the thin monograph, the odd query,
a note on the identity of Chekhov's dentist,
but what I prefer on days like these
is to get up from the couch,
pull down The History of the World,
and hold in my hands a book
containing nearly everything
and weighing no more than a sack of potatoes,
eleven pounds, I discovered one day when I placed it
on the black, iron scale
my mother used to keep in her kitchen,
the device on which she would place
a certain amount of flour,
a certain amount of fish.

Open flat on my lap
under a halo of lamplight,
a book like this always has a way
of soothing the nerves,
quieting the riotous surf of information
that foams around my waist
even though it never mentions
the silent labors of the poor,
the daydreams of grocers and tailors,
or the faces of men and women alone in single rooms-

even though it never mentions my mother,
now that I think of her again,
who only last year rolled off the edge of the earth
in her electric bed,
in her smooth pink nightgown
the bones of her fingers interlocked,
her sunken eyes staring upward
beyond all knowledge,
beyond the tiny figures of history,
some in uniform, some not,
marching onto the pages of this incredibly heavy book.
-Billy Collins
___________

Thor tror på endnu et dansk mirakel
Michael Søvsø  
Hvorfor ikke gå ud på isen for at tro på endnu et dansk ishockeymirakel? Sådan synes stemningen at være på det danske ishockeylandshold før kampen mod Sverige, der her til aften baskede Schweiz med 4-0 og på den måde sikrede sig førstepladsen i den modsatte mellempulje af Danmarks.
For har man slået både Finland og USA, så har man bestemt også en mulighed mod gruppevinderen fra den anden mellempulje, det legendariske Tre Kronor-mandskab. . . .

Denmark in quarterfinals of world championship
May 18, 2010, © Sports Illustrated
COLOGNE, Germany (AP) -- Denmark reached the quarterfinals of the hockey world championship for the first time Monday, joining Canada and Finland in the final eight. . . .

¡GRACIAS, GALLEGO! TE DESEAMOS MUCHA SUERTE
DONDEQUIERA QUE VAYAS. GRACIAS POR LO QUE PUDISTE HACER
EN UN MOMENTO TAN DIFÍCIL PARA SAN LORENZO,
POR TU GENTILEZA Y PROFESIONALISMO.
¡TE VAMOS A EXTRAÑAR!

La 'Nakba' palestina
NABIL SHAATH
15/05/2010, © El País
Hoy Israel celebra los 62 años de su creación, el 15 de mayo de 1948. Para los palestinos, hoy se conmemoran 62 años de la Nakba -nuestra catástrofe nacional y personal, la pérdida de nuestra patria ancestral y la dispersión en el exilio de las tres cuartas partes de nuestro pueblo-. El pueblo palestino todavía espera el reconocimiento por parte de Israel de su responsabilidad en tal catástrofe y un acuerdo para resolver el conflicto que esté basado en el Derecho Internacional, incluyendo las resoluciones de la ONU. . . .

Scientists call for GM review after surge in pests around cotton farms in China
Ian Sample
13 May 2010, © The Guardian
Scientists are calling for the long-term risks of GM crops to be reassessed after field studies revealed an explosion in pest numbers around farms growing modified strains of cotton. . . .

DOLOR
I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper weight,
All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplicaton of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces.
—Theodore Roethke

Frank Frazetta obituary
A prolific painter of fantasies that adorned book covers, film posters and rock LPs
Steve Holland
13 May 2010, © The Guardian
Frank Frazetta, who has died of complications following a stroke, aged 82, was a creator of fantasy illustrations, his muscular, bloodied heroes and shapely heroines inspiring and influencing later generations of artists. His covers lured readers into the worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Venus and Mars and below the Earth's surface to Pellucidar with Burroughs's most famous creation, Tarzan. His book covers were key to the revival of interest in the works of Robert E Howard, whose mythic warrior Conan was depicted by Frazetta in the 1960s. Arnold Schwarzenegger played the character twice in the 1980s. . . .

This is not what the people voted for
Johann Hari
14 May 2010, © The Independent
We are all supposed to now laze back and watch the latest Richard Curtis film: Politics, Actually, a charming tale of two 43-year-old rich men who have to run Britain together despite having different colour ties and eccentric armies of supporters tossing buns at each other in the background. Larks and hijinks no doubt ensue. But before you reach for the popcorn, can I briefly refer back to the will of the British people, before our ballots are so casually binned? . . .

THE FAR FIELD

I

I dream of journeys repeatedly:
Of flying like a bat deep into a narrowing tunnel
Of driving alone, without luggage, out a long peninsula,
The road lined with snow-laden second growth,
A fine dry snow ticking the windshield,
Alternate snow and sleet, no on-coming traffic,
And no lights behind, in the blurred side-mirror,
The road changing from glazed tarface to a rubble of stone,
Ending at last in a hopeless sand-rut,
Where the car stalls,
Churning in a snowdrift
Until the headlights darken.

II

At the field's end, in the corner missed by the mower,
Where the turf drops off into a grass-hidden culvert,
Haunt of the cat-bird, nesting-place of the field-mouse,
Not too far away from the ever-changing flower-dump,
Among the tin cans, tires, rusted pipes, broken machinery, --
One learned of the eternal;
And in the shrunken face of a dead rat, eaten by rain and ground-beetles
(I found in lying among the rubble of an old coal bin)
And the tom-cat, caught near the pheasant-run,
Its entrails strewn over the half-grown flowers,
Blasted to death by the night watchman.

I suffered for young birds, for young rabbits caught in the mower,
My grief was not excessive.
For to come upon warblers in early May
Was to forget time and death:
How they filled the oriole's elm, a twittering restless cloud, all one
morning,
And I watched and watched till my eyes blurred from the bird shapes, --
Cape May, Blackburnian, Cerulean, --
Moving, elusive as fish, fearless,
Hanging, bunched like young fruit, bending the end branches,
Still for a moment,
Then pitching away in half-flight,
Lighter than finches,
While the wrens bickered and sang in the half-green hedgerows,
And the flicker drummed from his dead tree in the chicken-yard.

-- Or to lie naked in sand,
In the silted shallows of a slow river,
Fingering a shell,
Thinking:
Once I was something like this, mindless,
Or perhaps with another mind, less peculiar;
Or to sink down to the hips in a mossy quagmire;
Or, with skinny knees, to sit astride a wet log,
Believing:
I'll return again,
As a snake or a raucous bird,
Or, with luck, as a lion.

I learned not to fear infinity,
The far field, the windy cliffs of forever,
The dying of time in the white light of tomorrow,
The wheel turning away from itself,
The sprawl of the wave,
The on-coming water.

III

The river turns on itself,
The tree retreats into its own shadow.
I feel a weightless change, a moving forward
As of water quickening before a narrowing channel
When banks converge, and the wide river whitens;
Or when two rivers combine, the blue glacial torrent
And the yellowish-green from the mountainy upland, --
At first a swift rippling between rocks,
Then a long running over flat stones
Before descending to the alluvial plane,
To the clay banks, and the wild grapes hanging from the elmtrees.
The slightly trembling water
Dropping a fine yellow silt where the sun stays;
And the crabs bask near the edge,
The weedy edge, alive with small snakes and bloodsuckers, --
I have come to a still, but not a deep center,
A point outside the glittering current;
My eyes stare at the bottom of a river,
At the irregular stones, iridescent sandgrains,
My mind moves in more than one place,
In a country half-land, half-water.

I am renewed by death, thought of my death,
The dry scent of a dying garden in September,
The wind fanning the ash of a low fire.
What I love is near at hand,
Always, in earth and air.

IV

The lost self changes,
Turning toward the sea,
A sea-shape turning around, --
An old man with his feet before the fire,
In robes of green, in garments of adieu.
A man faced with his own immensity
Wakes all the waves, all their loose wandering fire.
The murmur of the absolute, the why
Of being born falls on his naked ears.
His spirit moves like monumental wind
That gentles on a sunny blue plateau.
He is the end of things, the final man.

All finite things reveal infinitude:
The mountain with its singular bright shade
Like the blue shine on freshly frozen snow,
The after-light upon ice-burdened pines;
Odor of basswood on a mountain-slope,
A scent beloved of bees;
Silence of water above a sunken tree :
The pure serene of memory in one man, --
A ripple widening from a single stone
Winding around the waters of the world.

—Theodore Roethke

Écrire l’Histoire
jeudi, 13.05.2010, © canadiens.com
MONTRÉAL – Maurice Richard, Jean Béliveau, Bernard Geoffrion, Marcel Bonin, Frank Mahovlich, Guy Lafleur. Une pléiade de noms à laquelle s’accole aujourd’hui Michael Cammalleri, dans le livre des records des Canadiens. . . .

FOR SIGMUND FREUD BY BERNARD-HENRI LÉVY
LE 28 AVRIL 2010, POUR THE HUFFINGTON POST
Michel Onfray complains of being criticized without being read?
Well then, I read him.
I did so while forcing myself to put aside, as much as possible, old companionships, common friendships and, it goes without saying, the fact that we share the same publishing house.
And the truth compels me to admit that I was even more dismayed when I put the book down than the few accounts I was, like everyone else, familiar with would have led me to expect. . . .

The Arabs have their gulags too
Robert Fisk
Saturday, 8 May 2010, © The Independent
We know all about Guantanamo. We know about "black" prisons. You only have to read the evidence from the latest drum-head "trial" at Guantanamo – a man called Khadr, arrested by the Americans for killing a US soldier at the age of 15, found chained in a tiny cell at Bagram by an American medic, hooded and crying – to know what Western "justice" still means. . . .

Mahler, su tiempo ha llegado
LUIS SUÑÉN
08/05/2010, © El País
Hace ya 40 años -Dios mío-, Federico Sopeña, comisario general de la Música -título que la Administración todavía franquista daba al responsable de las cosas de la solfa en el ministerio correspondiente- organizaba en Madrid un ciclo completo de las sinfonías de Gustav Mahler que resultaría una revelación. Y un escándalo, pues, aunque hoy cueste creerlo, buena parte de los abonados a los viernes de la Orquesta Nacional veían al compositor nacido en Kaliste, Bohemia, el 7 de julio de 1860, hijo de un destilador de licores y una madre cuya presencia le marcó para siempre, como una suerte de extraño meteorito que la cultura centroeuropea lanzaba sobre más soleadas latitudes. Un auténtico espanto sinfónico que bien podía esperar sentado que se cumpliera esa frase que acuñó para sí mismo: "Mi tiempo llegará". . . .

GO

____________

¡QUE SE QUEDE EL GALLEGO!

Explaining the Plunder and the Crime
By Danny Schecter
May 3, 2010, © Consortiumnews.com
We ask ourselves how we can be experiencing the largest economic meltdown in decades with millions out of work and millions more losing their homes, and yet, have such a tepid mass mobilization or ongoing response from the progressive world even as every pollster finds public anger registering on the Richter scale. . . .

Meryl Streep
Mary Louise "Meryl" Streep (born June 22, 1949) is an American actress who has worked in theatre, television, and film. She is widely regarded as one of the most talented and respected movie actors of the modern era. . . .

Memories, the good, the bad and the phony
By GARRISON KEILLOR
May 1, 2010, © StarTribune
It's the best spring ever, green and lush, and baby robins are chittering in their nest in the maple tree and the smell of blossoms is in the air -- and yet we dour Scots cannot forget that April 27 was the anniversary of our ignominious defeat at the Battle of Dunbar, our good King John stripped of his regalia, and the Stone of Scone hauled off to London. Yes, I know that 1296 seems like a long time ago, and maybe 714 years is a wee bit long to be grinding our teeth over a bad day on the battlefield, but we Scots nurse our resentments carefully. I know I do. . . .

To restrict the artist is a crime. It is to murder germinating life.
—Egon Schiele

Michael Cammalleri
Michael Cammalleri (born June 8, 1982) is a Canadian professional ice hockey player currently playing for the Montreal Canadiens of the National Hockey League (NHL).

Born: June 8, 1982 (age 27), Richmond Hill, ON, CAN
Height: 5 ft 9 in (1.75 m)
Weight: 185 lb (84 kg; 13 st 3 lb)
Position: Left wing
Shoots: Left
NHL team: Montreal Canadiens
F. teams: Calgary Flames, Los Angeles Kings
Ntl. team: Canada
NHL Draft: 49th overall, 2001, Los Angeles Kings
Playing career: 2002 – present

I SAW IN LOUISIANA A LIVE-OAK GROWING
I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing, All alone stood it, and the moss hung down from the branches; Without any companion it grew there, uttering joyous leaves of dark green, And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself; But I wonder'd how it could utter joyous leaves, standing alone there, without its friend, its lover near--for I knew I could not; And broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it, and twined around it a little moss, And brought it away--and I have placed it in sight in my room; It is not needed to remind me as of my own dear friends, (For I believe lately I think of little else than them:) Yet it remains to me a curious token--it makes me think of manly love; For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana, solitary, in a wide flat space, Uttering joyous leaves all its life, without a friend, a lover, near, I know very well I could not.
—Walt Whitman

Man At Very Top Of Food Chain Chooses Bugles
April 26, 2010, © The Onion
SOUTH BEND, IN—Despite having no natural enemies and belonging to a species that completely dominates its ecosystem, local IT manager Reggie Atkinson opted to consume the processed corn snack Bugles Monday. "I was in the mood for something salty and crunchy, and it's a little early for dinner," said the ultimate predator, whose ancestors' bipedal locomotion, toolmaking abilities, and advanced spatial recognition developments allowed them to hunt animals 10 times their size. "These are original, but the other flavors are pretty good, too." Acting on an impulse from an incredibly complex forebrain that has evolved over millions of years, Atkinson then took note of the Bugles' amusing conical shape and placed one on each of his opposable thumbs like little wizard hats. . . .

Halak vole les Capitals et pousse la série à la limite
François Gagnon
Publié le 26 avril 2010 à 20h58, © cyberpresse.ca
Débarqués au Centre Bell en criant le nom de P.K. Subban, les partisans du Canadien en sont ressortis en hurlant le nom de Jaroslav Halak. . . .

THE EMPIRE
a new play by D C Moore
14 April, 2010, © TIME OUT
By Sam Marlowe
Gary, a British soldier in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, comes from a military family. He's working in training and liaison with the Afghan National Army, he's learning to speak the local language, Dari, and doing his best to be even-handed. But with daily life back in the UK and in this blistering, bewildering foreign land riven by race, class and religion, he sums up Britain's history of foreign occupation in the baldest and bitterest of terms: 'Thick cunts, led by posh cunts, hitting brown cunts. Way it is. Even now.'
DC Moore's new play is a gripping examination of division that connects the imperial past with the present, and traces the parallels between British social atomisation and borders and battle lines overseas. When the Taliban prisoner whom Gary and dope-smoking, traumatised Afghan Hafizullah are guarding regains consciousness, he unexpectedly addresses them in London street slang. How did he get there, and who will determine what will become of him - Gary's upper-crust captain, or the Afghan soldiers who will exact bloody revenge without concern for protocol? . . .

El periodismo deportivo es puro cliché
IGNACIO FUSCO
24-04-2010, © Olé
Poeta, periodista y escritor, Fabián Casas analiza el lenguaje “vacío, repetido” de los medios, y se alarma por la falta de pensamientos “que duren más de un minuto”. El miedo a equivocarse, la obligación a decir, su querido San Lorenzo y la amistad con Viggo Mortensen, en este mano a mano con un ex Olé.
Muchas veces me preguntaron cuál creía yo (cuál sentía yo) que era el mejor comienzo de la literatura universal, y siempre elijo el mismo: Alemania-Holanda del 74 -se lanza Fabián Casas, adjetivado por orden de aparición: boedista, hincha de San Lorenzo, poeta, periodista, ensayista, charlando ahora a 20 pisos del río, sobre una Buenos Aires espectral-. . . .

CHAU PESIMISMO
Ya sos mayor de edad
tengo que despedirte
pesimismo

años que te preparo el desayuno
que vigilo tu tos de mal agüero
y te tomo la fiebre
que trato de narrarte pormenores
del pasado mediato
convencerte de que en el fondo somos
gallardos y leales
y también que al mal tiempo buena cara

pero como si nada
seguís malhumorado arisco e insociable
y te repantigás en la avería
como si fuese una butaca pullman

se te ve la fruición por el malogro
tu viejo idilio con la mala sombra
tu manía de orar junto a las ruinas
tu goce ante el desastre inesperado

claro que voy a despedirte
no sé por qué no lo hice antes
será porque tenés tu propio método
de hacerte necesario
y a uno lo deja triste tu tristeza
amargo tu amargura
alarmista tu alarma

ya sé vas a decirme no hay motivos
para la euforia y las celebraciones
y claro cuandonó tenés razón

pero es tan boba tu razón tan obvia
tan remendada y remedada
tan igualita al pálpito
que enseguida se vuelve sinrazón

ya sos mayor de edad
chau pesimismo

y por favor andate despacito
sin despertar al monstruo

—Mario Benedetti

FELICIDADES A LOS BOSTEROS

2        -        0

San Lorenzo, con los pelos de punta
BOCA 2 - SAN LORENZO 0
Lunes 26, Abril 2010, © Clarín.com
El clásico se calentó en el final. Porque ya estaban susceptibles los futbolistas de San Lorenzo. No sólo por el "ole" que bajaba de la tribuna azul y oro. También, por dos claros penales que el árbitro Gabriel Favale no cobró. Entonces, Juan Román Riquelme se llevó puesto a Cristian González en un cruce inusual. Y el Kily explotó. Empujó al crack de Boca con el pecho, como en las viejas riñas. La historia no terminó ahí. Al rato, Pablo Migliore lo apuró a Gary Medel. Hubo empujones. Y mucha bronca. Con una justificación por parte de Sebastián Méndez en el vestuario: "Yo los entiendo. A los jugadores les tiene que doler muchísimo perder". . . .

DAWN
FLY hence, shadows, that do keep
Watchful sorrows charm'd in sleep!
Tho' the eyes be overtaken,
Yet the heart doth ever waken
Thoughts chain'd up in busy snares
Of continual woes and cares:
Love and griefs are so exprest
As they rather sigh than rest.
         Fly hence, shadows, that do keep
         Watchful sorrows charm'd in sleep!
—John Ford
____________

Glazunoviana

The man with the red hat
And the polar bear, is he here too?
The window giving on shade,
Is that here too?
And all the little helps,
My initials in the sky,
The hay of an arctic summer night?

The bear
Drops dead in sight of the window.
Lovely tribes have just moved to the north.
In the flickering evening the martins grow denser.
Rivers of wings surround us and vast tribulation.

—John Ashbery

Looking Out, Looking In by EA Markham
Sean O'Brien
Saturday 24 April 2010, © The Guardian
EA Markham (1939-2008), always known as Archie, was, in print as in person, designed to provoke the irritation of the orthodox almost as much as they irritated him. University administrators were a rich source of amused contempt and fury, though probably less so than arts bureaucrats who blithely assumed that since Markham was black (born in Montserrat, resident in Britain and Europe and New Guinea and elsewhere from 1956) he must be a performance poet. Anyone who actually read his work would immediately see that its meditative and ironic qualities found their permanent home on the page. He was, to put it mildly, "literary", in a time when some who should have known better were starting to apologise for that quality. . . .

ODA AL VINO
Vino color de día,
vino color de noche,
vino con pies de púrpura
o sangre de topacio,
vino,
estrellado hijo
de la tierra,
vino, liso
como una espada de oro,
suave
como un desordenado terciopelo,
vino encaracolado
y suspendido,
amoroso,
marino,
nunca has cabido en una copa,
en un canto, en un hombre,
coral, gregario eres,
y cuando menos, mutuo.
A veces
te nutres de recuerdos
mortales,
en tu ola
vamos de tumba en tumba,
picapedrero de sepulcro helado,
y lloramos
lágrimas transitorias,
pero
tu hermoso
traje de primavera
es diferente,
el corazón sube a las ramas,
el viento mueve el día,
nada queda
dentro de tu alma inmóvil.
El vino
mueve la primavera,
crece como una planta la alegría,
caen muros,
peñascos,
se cierran los abismos,
nace el canto.
Oh tú, jarra de vino, en el desierto
con la sabrosa que amo,
dijo el viejo poeta.
Que el cántaro de vino
al beso del amor sume su beso.

Amor mio, de pronto
tu cadera
es la curva colmada
de la copa,
tu pecho es el racimo,
la luz del alcohol tu cabellera,
las uvas tus pezones,
tu ombligo sello puro
estampado en tu vientre de vasija,
y tu amor la cascada
de vino inextinguible,
la claridad que cae en mis sentidos,
el esplendor terrestre de la vida.

Pero no sólo amor,
beso quemante
o corazón quemado
eres, vino de vida,
sino
amistad de los seres, transparencia,
coro de disciplina,
abundancia de flores.
Amo sobre una mesa,
cuando se habla,
la luz de una botella
de inteligente vino.
Que lo beban,
que recuerden en cada
gota de oro
o copa de topacio
o cuchara de púrpura
que trabajó el otoño
hasta llenar de vino las vasijas
y aprenda el hombre oscuro,
en el ceremonial de su negocio,
a recordar la tierra y sus deberes,
a propagar el cántico del fruto.

—Pablo Neruda
____________

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
—Jonathan Swift

Arizona Law Is Not "Merely Cruel," It Is "Immoral"
by John Nichols
4/23/2010, © The Nation
Cheered on by the Republican Party's most recent presidential nominee, the no-longer-maverick Senator John McCain, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer on Friday signed anti-immigrant legislation so crude in its construction that even conservative commentators say it will do damage to Arizona's economic recovery and undermine public safety. . . .

____________

WE ARE NOT DONE JUST YET!...

ON SE REVOIT LUNDI!

____________

AL CLUB:
HIGUAÍN VALE MÁS QUE EL NENE RONALDO Y KAKA JUNTOS. NO SEAN BOLUDOS Y PÁGUENLE UN SUELDO DIGNO DE LO QUE APORTA DESDE HACE TIEMPO ESTE JUGADOR TAN VALIOSO - O SE IRÁ.

Hopes And Prospects (Amnesty International Lecture)
Noam Chomsky
Text of lecture given in Belfast, Ireland, October 30, 2009

Hopes and Prospects, regrettably, are not well aligned, even closely. The task is to bring them to closer alignment. Presumably that was the intent of the Nobel Peace Prize committee a few weeks ago. Their choice elicited much surprise and sometimes scorn. In defense of the committee, we might say that the achievement of doing nothing to advance peace places Obama on a considerably higher moral plane than some of the earlier recipients, whose names I will omit out of politeness.

The New York Times reported, plausibly, that "The Nobel committee's embrace of Mr. Obama was viewed as a rejection of the unpopular tenure, in Europe especially, of his predecessor, George W. Bush." The prize "seemed a kind of prayer and encouragement by the Nobel committee for future endeavor and more consensual American leadership."

The nature of the Bush-Obama transition is clearly an important question, which bears directly on the realism of the prayers and encouragement. Some light is cast on the matter by the record of the "special relationship" between the US and Britain, just reaffirmed by Hillary Clinton in London, where she came to deliver the message that, in her words, "it can't be said often enough, we have a special relationship between our countries." Repeatedly over the years, the special relationship has been put to the test, most dramatically during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. US leaders were making decisions that risked nuclear war, placing the very survival of Britain in peril. They refused to provide the British with any information, on the grounds that Europeans are not capable of the "rational and logical" approach of the bright lights of Camelot, so internal records reveal. President Kennedy warned privately that allies "must come along or stay behind we cannot accept a veto from any other power." As the crisis peaked, a senior Kennedy advisor defined the "special relationship" succinctly: Britain will "act as our lieutenant (the fashionable word is partner)." Europeans of course prefer the fashionable word. . . .

Yearning for an America that's gone
By LEONARD PITTS JR.
April 22, 2010, © Miami Herald
The numbers are in.
Thanks to a new CBS News/New York Times poll, we now have a statistical picture of the tea party movement. There are few surprises. . . .

Extravagant Disorder: On Miroslav Tichy
By Jana Prikryl
April 14, 2010, © The Nation
How often, in these foxed old photographs, the women are taken from behind. Speckled with bromine, curling with age, gnawed by rats in the photographer's crumbling house, the women in these images have been palpably misused. Made by Miroslav Tichy and on view at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York City (through May 9), the snapshots chronicle the comings and goings of women in the Moravian village of Kyjov between the 1960s and 1980s. . . .

Tea Partiers Protect Wall Street
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
April 17, 2010, © Consortiumnews.com
With all due respect, we can only wish those Tea Party activists who gathered in Washington and other cities this week weren't so single-minded about just who's responsible for all their troubles, real and imagined. . . .

Color
¡Color que, un momento, el humo
toma del sol que lo pasa;
vida mía, vida mía,
fugaz y coloreada!
—Juan Ramón Jiménez

Just How Russian Was Stravinsky?
By RICHARD TARUSKIN
Published: April 16, 2010
ARE we postracial yet? Not as long as the whole country looks over President Obama’s shoulder to see what race he checks off on his census form. . . .

My sister, my little cricket
Listen sister,
sometimes it seems life’s
not worth a bowl
of old onions
but, like travel,
you should stick with it
for the points of interest
along the way.

Take love for instance,
that’s interesting
in any language.

—Jenny Bornholdt

A Reign Not of This World: On Juan Carlos Onetti
By Jonathan Blitzer
April 14, 2010, © The Nation
"I am animated by the idea that you can stop reading me when you wish," explains Juan María Brausen in A Brief Life, a 1950 novel by Juan Carlos Onetti. Brausen's remark appears in a letter to a friend: Brausen has recently left town, and he doesn't want his friend to follow him. . . .

____________

Cancha Rayada
Caminamos, con mi viejo, por la playa de estacionamiento.
Es un día de calor sofocante
y en el asfalto recalentado
vemos la sombra de un pájaro negro
que vuela en círculos,
como satélite de nuestra desgracia.
Una multitud victoriosa, a nuestras espaldas,
ruge todavía en la cancha.
Acabamos de perder el campeonato.
La cabina del auto es un horno a leña;
los asientos queman y el sol que pega
en el vidrio, enceguece.
Pero no importa, como dos bonzos
dispuestos a inmolarse,
nos sentamos y enciendo el motor:
Fabián Casas y su padre
van en coche al muere.
—Fabián Casas

____________

25/4...

____________

¡QUE SE QUEDE CON NOSOTROS EL GALLEGO!

____________

YES WE CAN

GRANDE

C.I.A. Document Details Destruction of Tapes
By MARK MAZZETTI
April 15, 2010, © The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Porter J. Goss , the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, in 2005 approved of the decision by one of his top aides to destroy dozens of videotapes documenting the brutal interrogation of two detainees, according to an internal C.I.A. document released Thursday. . . .

Tillykke Med Fødselsdagen!!!

____________

SANS PEUR

____________

Datos Biográficos

Me sacaron la tierra
de debajo
-a eso llaman destierro-
o sea que, de pronto,
me faltó el suelo
y me sobró distancia.

Pero un día,
antes de aquello,
me habían arrancado
la libertad de cuajo,
y entonces,
cuando me faltaba el aire
y me sobraban rejas,
me sentía
un poco mejor que antes,
que cuando me quitaron
a mi hija de los brazos:
en ese entonces
me faltaba todo -el futuro-
(podría decir que me sobró la vida).

Y sin embargo
todavía me acordaba
del día que los milicos
metieron a mi patria entre barrotes,
ese día me sobró la fuerza
y me faltó el miedo.
Allí empezó la cosa.

—Alicia Partnoy

You Will Not Be Alone
By Judith Butler
April 13, 2010, © The Nation
Let us begin with the assumption that it is very hard to hear the debate under consideration here. One hears someone saying something, and one fears that they are saying another thing. It is hard to trust words, or indeed to know what words actually mean. So that is a sign that there is a certain fear in the room, and also, a certain suspicion about the intentions that speakers have and a fear about the implications of both words and deeds. Of course, tonight you do not need a lecture on rhetoric from me, but perhaps, if you have a moment, it might be possible to pause and to consider reflectively what is actually at stake in this vote, and what is not. . . .

Jonathan Bottinelli

Nombre: Jonathan Pablo Bottinelli
Apodo: "El Botti" - "El rubio" - "Johnny"
Nacimiento: 14 de septiembre de 1984(24 años) Buenos Aires, Argentina
Nacionalidad: Argentina
Club actual: San Lorenzo de Almagro
Posición: Defensor central y Lateral izquierdo
Estatura: 1.80 metros
Año del debut: 2000
Club del debut: San Lorenzo

Jonathan Pablo Bottinelli Jugador de fútbol, nacido el 14 de septiembre de 1984. Se desempeña en el Club Atlético San Lorenzo de Almagro como defensor central. Un central de renombre en argentina. Por su edad y su gran capacidad de quitar el balón a los rivales y su gran poder defensivo y ofensivo en pelotas aéreas es considerado uno de los mejores defensores argentinos. . . .

Time spent with cats is never wasted. 
—Sigmund Freud 

What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult. 
—Sigmund Freud
____________

INDEPENDIENTE 0 - SAN LORENZO 1
------------------------------------------
¡¡BRAVO MIGLIORE!!
¡GUAPA LA DEFENSA AZULGRANA!

Why the ban of Moonfleece matters
What is claimed as anti-discrimination is part of a censorious attitude stalking Britain
David Edgar
Friday 9 April 2010, ©
Why did the Dormston Arts and Sports Centre, Dudley, cancel a booking it had made for a performance of Philip Ridley's play Moonfleece in its 350-seat theatre, and why does it matter? . . .

____________

¡VAMOS!

LATER
In poems it always looks different. 
When I read sentences written by others, 
everything seems clear and easy. 
Like a sheet of paper which still resists fire, 
which hardly feels the signs of ash
on it. In my yard
ash is so comprehensive. 
Like an illusion, like a picture that inspires. 
Many write about lost beauty, 
about misfortune that comes suddenly and creeps
into a silent, abandoned heart. 
However, I would like to say something
about my yard and about the big river
which you should see from the window. 
About an ash-tree and two lime-trees which
disappeared the other day. 
The mechanism of the fairy-tale has suddenly become
completely inconceivable to me. 
The ash that falls from the window, 
that black soot that only yesterday
used to be a table, a bed or books, 
somebody’s life about which nobody thought very much, 
that is stuck in my throat and blurring my sight. 
When I wave with my hand,
will I still be able to feel anything?
—ZVONKO MAKOVIC

Mirko Saric

Nacimiento: 6 de junio de 1978
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Fallecimiento: 4 de abril de 2000
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Nacionalidad: Argentina
Posición: Volante
Estatura: 1,90 metros
Año del debut: 1998
Club del debut: San Lorenzo de Almagro

Mirko Saric (Buenos Aires, Argentina; 6 de junio de 1978 – †4 de abril de 2000) fue un futbolista argentino. Al momento de su fallecimiento jugaba devolante en San Lorenzo de Almagro, de la Primera División de Argentina. Se suicidó el 4 de abril de 2000, a los 21 años de edad. . . .

Lionel Messi

Personal information
Full name Lionel Andrés Messi
Date of birth 14 June 1987 (1987-06-14) (age 22)
Place of birth Rosario, Argentina
Height 1.69 m (5 ft 7 in)
Playing position Striker / Winger

Club information
Current club: Barcelona
Number: 10

Lionel Andrés Messi (born 24 June 1987) is an Argentine footballer who currently plays for La Liga team Barcelona and the Argentine national team. Considered one of the best football players of his generation and frequently cited as the world's best contemporary player. Messi received several Ballon d'Or and FIFA World Player of the Year nominations by the age of 21 and won both by the age of 22. His playing style and ability have drawn comparisons to football legend Diego Maradona, who himself declared Messi his "successor". . . .

Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Diego Forlán

Personal information
Full name: Diego Martín Forlán Corazo
Date of birth: 19 May 1979 (1979-05-19) (age 30)
Place of birth: Montevideo, Uruguay
Height: 1.79 m (5 ft 10+1⁄2 in)
Playing position: Striker

Club information
Current club: Atlético Madrid
Number: 7

Diego Martín Forlán Corazo (born 19 May 1979 in Montevideo) is an Uruguayan footballer who currently plays for Atlético Madrid of La Liga. He is a two-time winner of both the Pichichi Trophy and the European Golden Shoe.

He was born into a family of footballers. His father Pablo had played for the Uruguay national football team during the 1966 FIFA World Cup held in England and the 1974 FIFA World Cup held in West Germany and his grandfather (through his mother), Juan Carlos Corazo, played for Independiente in Argentina. Forlán also holds Spanish nationality. . . .

Andrés Iniesta

Personal information
Full name: Andrés Iniesta Luján
Date of birth: 11 May 1984 (1984-05-11) (age 25)
Height: 1.70 m (5 ft 7 in)
Playing position: Midfielder

Club information
Current club: Barcelona
Number: 8

Andrés Iniesta Luján, born 11 May 1984 in Fuentealbilla, Albacete, Castile-La Mancha is a Spanish football midfielder who currently plays for Spanish La Liga club Barcelona. His willingness to play anywhere on the pitch, coupled with a natural humility, has earned him the sobriquet El Ilusionista, El Anti-Galáctico and most recently Don Andrés from the Spanish press. After the 2009 UEFA Champions League Final, Manchester United striker Wayne Rooney asserted that he believed the midfielder to be the best player in the world. . . .

____________

De las tantas cosas que no puede

De las tantas cosas que no puede
mostrar ciertamente la palabra,
la primera imposible es el olor
tan propio y exacto de las cosas.
La poesía también es como el aroma.
Así quedan sin nombre
el olor definitivo de la lluvia
y el efímero matiz que se respira
al asomarse a las sombras de un aljibe;
el olor del primer mar, a los seis años,
la fragancia, que nos asustaba, de los cielos nublados,
y el olor a comida de una casa
que nos fue querida.
La memoria tal vez sea
sólo visión de olores olvidados,
como este papel a donde llamo
a la presencia ardiente de unas hojas quemadas
y a la clave del enigma de la rosa;
al olor de las sangres
que no vi derramarse,
al olor del incienso y al del alcanfor,
un olor que resplandece;
al de las jóvenes mujeres en los baños públicos,
al de las monedas, que abandonan la mano
y que retornan, al de la tierra de Pinzón
una mañana de octubre, al de los gatos,
al olor milagroso de las cosas vulgares,
de las que apenas se comprende
que emanan la noche poderosa,
al de un río que corre lejos
y al que sin razón evoco,
al de la palabra marisma, al de retablo,
a los de esta mañana
que partieron a un país sin dónde,
al de una muchacha que se fue,
el 2 de noviembre de 1982,
para que mis palabras
pidieran el perfume de unos versos
y me quedaran la fecha y la balada,
el de las ballenas que tiñen
la espuma de aceite y de tamaño,
el de un hombre que hablaba del origen del día,
al de las tantas cosas
a las que no pude acercarme y que me esperan.
Son otro mundo más sobre este mundo,
veo el bosque y entre el bosque
la selva del aroma.
Yo me voy de los hombres y las cosas
como un salvaje que marcha a las ciudades
y dice adiós a su mundo de olores;
también a mí ellos vuelven
bellos y pesados como un remordimiento.
Serán desde estos versos mi memoria,
seguirán sobre el mundo
cuando me haya muerto.
—Luis Benítez
____________

The human shape is a ghost made of distraction and pain.
Sometimes pure light, sometimes cruel, trying wildly to open, this image tightly held within itself.
—Rumi

Nicklas Bendtner

Personal information
Full name: Nicklas Bendtner
Date of birth: 16 January 1988 (1988-01-16) (age 22)
Place of birth: Copenhagen, Denmark
Height: 1.94 m (6 ft 4 in)
Playing position: Striker

Club information
Current: club Arsenal
Number: 52

Nicklas Bendtner (born 16 January 1988) is a Danish footballer who plays for Arsenal and the Denmark national team as a striker. His preferred position is centre forward but has been played on the right side of coach Arsène Wenger's 4-3-3 formation. . . .

Gonzalo Higuaín

Personal information
Full name: Gonzalo Gerardo Higuaín
Date of birth: 10 December 1987 (age 22)
Place of birth: Brest, France
Height: 1.85 m (6 ft 1 in)
Playing position: Striker

Club information
Current club: Real Madrid
Number: 20

Gonzalo Gerardo "El Pipita" Higuaín (born 10 December 1987) is a French-born Argentine footballer who currently plays as a striker for Real Madrid and the Argentine national team. He is renowned for his pace, dribbling skills, and low, powerful drives. . . .

____________

Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
____________

Al Castellano

I.
En esta lengua que hablo, en estas frases de un eco
cuántas voces viven, cuánto eres la inmortalidad,
lengua de plurales que siendo una eres
metáfora de aquello que siendo uno es lo diverso.
El todo te contiene y tú contienes esa palabra: Universo.
Porque de qué otro modo podrían vivir en estos verbos,
en estas sonoridades, en estos silencios y alturas,
tantas sombras que fueron y tantas que serán mañana:
de las que serán ya están las palabras en las bocas
y estuvieron en la luna sangrienta de Quevedo,
en la mañana en que Díaz de Vivar tomó una ciudad
ya muerto, en la impávida marinería que otra mañana,
de octubre, vio una costa (sueño dentro de un sueño),
y estaba hecha de dolor, de hambre y de coraje.
Oh lengua donde cabalgan hombres y donde
tantas lenguas han desembocado,
ancho río de España que ha salido al mar,
es cierto que no conservaste para nosotros
la gracia leve de las declinaciones,
pero del sólido latín vienen tus huesos,
la carne somos hoy los que te hablamos
(el centurión que rige en la provincia
lejana de su imperio, no comprende
que al pedir el vino pide a la historia que conserve
unos distintos matices, unos cambios que no serán
fugaces como su humana sombra,
sino el futuro del habla de Virgilio).
El fenicio que apoyaba su balanza en su lanza
y desde lo conjeturable a cambio
nos dejó su sangre y sus palabras.
El doctor que en la Torá canta al Dios de Abraham,
el duro visigodo que bautiza a su hijo
con trabajosas frases que ya no son exactamente las sajonas
con que fue nombrado. El victorioso muslín,
que bajo el verde triángulo de sus banderas
no sabe que fue él el conquistado.
El probable griego que lejos de Bizancio
sumó a sus ciencias el arte de vivir en el exilio.
El capitán de hombres, asturiano,
que juró sobre la espada de hierro tomar esa colina
y en la colina duerme desde entonces.
El fraile que en la celda deleita las horas y las horas,
al resguardo del muro y de su tiempo,
inclinado sobre el tomo y que transcribe
siglos después el porvenir de esos ecos,
las frases de Aristóteles y los dobles sueños de Plutarco,
no conoce que en lo que ara su pluma
otro rumbo se ha abierto.
Lo supo el triste, el alto, el solo
que soñó en la cárcel que era Miguel de Cervantes
y que escribía el Quijote.
Ni el judío ni el moro ni el cristiano
que disputan y entremezclan sus sangres
en tu sonoro ancestro lo comprenden:
de qué miles de hombres y de historias
has salido, lengua de Gracián y las Américas.

II.
Veo en ti. No estás hecha de sonidos solamente,
ni de ideas solamente ni de conceptos. Fuiste hecha
también para nombrar esas penumbras de las imprecisiones,
la ambigua senda que entre la palabra y los hechos
declara su dominio. Otra proeza tuya, castellano.
Que la eternidad tenga un cuerpo y que podamos
palpar el peso de una hora en la palabra.
En Persia ciertas oraciones podían mover los astros;
sólo tú, ahora, puedes convocarlos. Que yo diga pradera
y la pradera se extienda, como una alfombra sin árboles,
amarillento cielo derramado de aquí hasta el horizonte.
Que yo diga volcán y que éste brote en la habitación sonora,
arrancando los pisos e hirviendo los aires y el aliento.
Que diga mar y pise el légamo del fondo
con los cabellos sacudidos por las olas, todo venido en torno
sueño líquido, blando peso en movimiento, inconmensurable.
Que diga aire y me eleve o todo hacia algún allá descienda,
como si cayera la tierra y en el mismo lugar me quedara, solo.
De alguna forma, en millones de bocas,
lo has abarcado todo, lo has devorado todo:
¿qué otras palabras, como gentes del futuro,
en ti, lengua infinita, allá adelante esperan por nosotros?
Cuáles habrá para nombrar lo que no ha nacido nunca,
como no habían nacido antes éstas que hablamos.
Si presente es eso que al nombrarlo en ti
es lo que ha sido, más el mañana de lo mismo, incluso,
lengua que has sido la de Góngora y es mía,
usando tus palabras yo te sueño tan eterna
como la tierra y el aire. A ti, que abarcas por igual
el fuego y el agua y la tierra y el aire.
—Luis Benítez
____________

¡¡¡AGUANTE CICLÓN!!!

(photo: Geordie Sheffer)

The People Speak - Democracy is not a spectator sport
General Butler on War (2:54)
Viggo Mortensen performs the words of Major General Smedley Butler, a highly decorated United States Marine, as he shared his feelings about war in 1935. Introduction by Danny Glover. . . .

Gracias por tu esfuerzo, Cholo. Hiciste lo que pudiste, y te deseamos suerte en el camino. "Si estás triste sonríe, porque más vale una sonrisa triste, que la tristeza de no verte sonreir!"

La noche que empezó la Guerra Fría
Por Juan Forn
Viernes, 2 de abril de 2010, © Página 12
Anna Ajmátova creyó hasta el día de su muerte que la Guerra Fría había empezado por su culpa, la noche del 25 de noviembre de 1945. Para Stalin, Ajmátova era una excrecencia del pasado prerrevolucionario, mitad monja, mitad puta en celo, y desde 1921 le tenían prohibido publicar sus poemas. Pero los soldados rusos se los sabían igual de memoria. Por esa razón, en los momentos más difíciles de la guerra, bajó desde el Soviet Supremo la orden de que Ajmátova recitara sus poemas por radio para levantar la moral de la nación. La guerra se ganó, los intelectuales evacuados de Leningrado volvieron a la ciudad en ruinas y, en noviembre de 1945, llegó a la URSS una comisión cultural británica cuyo velado propósito era sondear la actitud soviética respecto de sus aliados, con la guerra terminada. . . .

Pintadas antisemitas y esvásticas en la Pascua judía
Viernes 02, Abril 2010, © Clarín.com
La localidad de Santa Teresita, en el Partido de la Costa, amaneció ayer con pintadas antisemitas. Cruces esvásticas y frases como "muerte a los judíos" pudieron visualizarse en paredones cercanos a un hotel donde se celebra la festividad de Pesaj. Previo a las pintadas, el miércoles por la noche, vecinos del lugar habían visto a grupos de desconocidos, que circulaban en motos, gritar consignas similares. . . .

¡FELIZ CUMPLEAÑOS CUERVO!

102

Jerusalén Este: la nueva ofensiva israelí, una bomba de tiempo
Por: Shlomo Slutzky
28 de marzo, 2010, © Clarín
El viernes las paredes de la entrada occidental a Jerusalén -del lado de Israel- estaban cubiertas por enormes carteles que clamaban: "No nos rendimos a los dictados de Obama". Los carteles estaban destinados a reforzar a Benjamin Netanyahu, el jefe de gobierno que volvía de EE.UU., orgulloso de no haber cedido en su decisión de extender las colonias en esa ciudad disputada. . . .

De nación a bantustán
Marcelo Cantelmi
28 de marzo, 2010, © Clarín
Un Estado palestino, existe sólo si una Jerusalén dividida entre occidente y oriente es la capital de ambos países. Si se traba esa posibilidad se estrangula la salida a este crónico conflicto que tiene a la humanidad de rehén.
Pero Israel, con el actual gobierno, está aislando de los palestinos a toda Jerusalén, unificada bajo su mando. La estrategia incluye descongelar la construcción de 3.500 viviendas en la denominada E-1 (ver el círculo en el mapa) lo que conectaría a la ciudad con el asentamiento de Maale Adumin.
La ONG anticolonización israelí Ir Amim le explicó a este cronista que ese avance implicaría un tajo entre el norte y sur de Cisjordania sin un paso libre para la población árabe. Ni George Bush llegó a aceptar tal cosa por el nivel de conflicto que implica la división en tres pedazos, junto con la Franja de Gaza, del territorio palestino. Sería la consagración en Oriente Medio de la política del bantustán, aquellas regiones que los sudafricanos blancos, en las épocas de la segregación, reservaban a los negros como espacios pseudo nacionales.

Nada está perdido si se tiene el valor de proclamar que todo está perdido y hay que empezar de nuevo.
—Julio Cortázar
____________

DENNIS HOPPER
(on the occasion of receiving a star on Hollywood Boulevard, 26th march, 2010.)

Dennis Hopper has come to be considered by many a legendary and legendarily-eccentric director and actor in the movie business. In the short attention spans of most moviegoers and critics, he is someone who has seemed to regularly rise out of the ashes of self-inflicted chaos, surprising us with his originality and wit as an artist, and defying the odds by somehow staying alive physically and professionally. I think he would be the first to admit that this is not an entirely inaccurate perception of his career. In the public's cultural consciousness, increasingly dependent on celebrity-driven and disposable story-telling and performance, Dennis has seemed to vanish for long periods of time, as far as many people were concerned. Although he might also jokingly agree with that notion, to those who have known and valued him as an artist and as a man over the years, he has never vanished, never stopped asking questions, never stopped searching for and finding inspiration in work and life.

Dennis is my friend. We met while working on a movie called "The Indian Runner" some twenty years ago. Short-lived friendships are mostly the norm in the movie business - it seems to go with the transient, stop-start nature of our jobs, the travelling, and the physical separations involved. There are people you get to know very well during a brief, intense period of work, and often do not see again for years as your individual careers and lives meander in their various directions. If and when you do see each other again you often find that what originally connected you so strongly has mostly withered away somehow. That did not happen with Dennis and me, and it has not been the case with his many other friends. We have continued to share a mutual curiosity about not only movie story-telling, but also in regard to photography, painting, and a generally artistic way of living life -- that is, an interest in remaining consistently present and open to all kinds of inspiration. Aside from being a complete and fertile artist, Dennis has, most importantly, remained a constant source of ideas, inspiration, and humour for his friends and colleagues. This positive influence has manifested itself in his unceasing interest in people and their behaviour, in the unpredictability of life  -- an openness that has often involved changing his mind and letting go of pre-conceived notions regarding art and morality in his life, and in the lives of others. Like any true artist, he has continually learned from, suffered over, and, as frequently as possible, laughed at his own mistakes and apparent dead-ends. He keeps himself honest, and he keeps those around him honest.

"Why do you say that?", "Where did that come from?", "Who did it first?", "Why does it matter?", "Maybe I'm wrong.", "I love you." -- these are some of the phrases likely to come out of his mouth at any time. His candour and essential modesty inspire fearlessness in others. As much as he deserves this star on Hollywood Boulevard and the many other professional honours he has received, it is this ability to instill a degree of fearlessness and wonder that sets him apart as an artist and as a friend.

Dennis Hopper was born in Dodge City, Kansas. Perhaps the finest and most honest poet that state has produced was William Stafford. In a 1971 interview he once said something that could have come straight from Dennis:   

"I keep following this sort of hidden river of my life, you know, whatever the topic or impulse which comes, I follow it along trustingly. And I don't have any sense of its coming to a kind of crescendo, or of its petering out either. It is just going steadily along."

As regards being honest and inspiring fearlessness goes, among Stafford's 50 or 60 volumes of poetry can be found this short poem I would like to dedicate to Dennis in closing:

For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid
There is a country to cross you will
find in the corner of your eye, in
the quick slip of your foot--air far
down, a snap that might have caught.
And maybe for you, for me, a high, passing
voice that finds its way by being
afraid. That country is there, for us,
carried as it is crossed. What you fear
will not go away: it will take you into
yourself and bless you and keep you.
That's the world, and we all live there.
—William Stafford

Joe Lieberman: How About Another War?
posted by John Nichols
12/28/2009, © The Nation
Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, who began openly and aggressively angling for a war with Iraq just weeks after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, and who has been the most ardent advocate for expanding the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan, appears to be determined to use the thwarted Christmas Day attack on a Northwest Airlines flight as an excuse to launch another crusade for another war. . . .

THE WIDOW'S LAMENT IN SPRINGTIME
SORROW is my own yardwhere the new grassflames as it has flamedoften before but notwith the cold firethat closes round me this year.Thirtyfive years I lived with my husband.The plumtree is white todaywith masses of flowers.Masses of flowersload the cherry branchesand color some bushesyellow and some redbut the grief in my heartis stronger than theyfor though they were my joyformerly, today I notice themand turned away forgetting.Today my son told methat in the meadows,at the edge of the heavy woodsin the distance, he sawtrees of white flowers.I feel that I would liketo go thereand fall into those flowersand sink into the marsh near them.
—William Carlos Williams

Netanyahu 'versus' Obama
IGNACIO ÁLVAREZ-OSSORIO
23/03/2010, © El País
El reciente desplante de Benjamín Netanyahu al vicepresidente norteamericano le puede salir caro a Israel. Por el momento, ya ha abierto la mayor crisis entre ambos países en las últimas décadas. El anuncio de la construcción de 1.600 nuevas viviendas en el barrio ultraortodoxo de Ramat Shlomo, coincidiendo con la visita de Joseph Biden a Jerusalén, ha sido interpretado por la Administración de Obama como un movimiento deliberado para sabotear la reanudación del proceso de paz. . . .

Los jueces en la política española
IGNACIO SÁNCHEZ-CUENCA
23/03/2010, © El País
El Estado de derecho requiere que los jueces sean independientes y puedan tomar sus decisiones con autonomía y sin coacción. ¿Pero qué sucede si, siendo independientes, son parciales y actúan de acuerdo con principios ideológicos? Y, sobre todo, ¿qué hacer si los jueces tienen un sesgo ideológico claro, a favor de ciertas posiciones, que les lleva a enfrentarse a los poderes políticos representativos? . . .

'La primera victoria de Obama'
ANTONI Segura
23/3/2010, © elPeriódico.com
Estados Unidos es uno de los países que más invierten en investigación médica –con capacidad para captar investigadores de excelencia en el resto del mundo– y de los que disponen de mejores hospitales. Sin embargo, su gasto sanitario (en porcentaje del PIB) es del 16%, apenas superior al de España (15,35%) e inferior al del Reino Unido, Francia y otros países europeos, y su esperanza de vida (79,1 años) es la misma que la de Grecia y queda por debajo de otros países desarrollados como Japón (82,7), Islandia y Suiza (81,7), Australia (81,2), Italia (81,1), Francia (81,0), Suecia (80,8), España e Israel (80,7), Canadá (80,6) y Noruega (80,5), entre otros. Esta disparidad entre, por un lado, investigación y excelencia de algunos centros hospitalarios y, por otro, una, comparativamente, baja esperanza de vida encuentra su explicación en el sistema sanitario y en la capacidad de presión de los lobis relacionados con las industrias farmacéuticas, con las compañías de seguros y con algunos destacados profesionales de la medicina. . . .

As things get worse in Pakistan, the optimism continues to soar
Civilians have paid the price in revenge attacks that usually target the army
By Robert Fisk
Saturday, 20 March 2010, © The Independent
A few days ago, I was driving around Lahore, its population still shattered by the suicide bombers who blew themselves up next to two army trucks, killing 18 Pakistani soldiers and 48 civilians. The civilians, of course, were the usual "collateral damage" – the bad guys have even adopted our own obscene expression for unintended casualties – and they paid the price for Pakistan's continuing war against the Taliban in Swat and South Waziristan on behalf of America's "war on terror". Indeed, the conflict here is primarily between the army and the Taliban. I couldn't help noticing that the street where the bombs exploded is in the RA Barracks area of Lahore – and it took a time before I discovered that RA stands for Royal Artillery. Yes, our imperial ghosts continue to stalk this place while America's more recent empire ensures that its people suffer as they did under the Raj. Will freedom at midnight never come? . . .

Archaic Torso of Apollo

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

—Rainer Maria Rilke

I was a victim of abuse. This is what the Pope must do to stop it
By Colm O'Gorman
Saturday, 20 March 2010, © The Independent
It was not being raped by a priest at the age of 14 that shattered my faith; it was the horrifying realisation that the Catholic Church had wilfully, knowingly abandoned me to it, the knowledge that they had ordained the priest who abused me despite knowing he was a paedophile and set him free to abuse with near impunity, ignoring all complaints. . . .

"El Oscar es de todas las hinchadas por igual"
NATALIA SCALI
Jueves 18, Marzo 2010, © Olé
-¿Cómo define un experto en las palabras lo que significó ganar un Oscar?  
-Tuve la suerte de estar en Los Angeles. Eramos un contingente 20 personas. De ésas, seis entraron al Kodak Center: Campanella, Francella y los productores. Y a los demás, el consulado argentino nos puso un hotel paquete con una pantalla gigante para que esperáramos. Y el gran momento te lo puedo contar desde el pasillo, porque seguí una vieja cábala futbolera que indica que los penales no se miran. Así que cuando Tarantino estaba anunciando las películas en competencia, yo encaré hacia el pasillo y me guié según el viejo precepto: si escucho un grito es gol y si no escucho nada, vuelvo silbando bajito . . .

Health Care is a Civil Right
Wednesday, 17 March 2010, © Dennis Kucinich
Each generation has had to take up the question of how to provide for the health of the people of our nation. And each generation has grappled with difficult questions of how to meet the needs of our people. I believe health care is a civil right. Each time as a nation we have reached to expand our basic rights, we have witnessed a slow and painful unfolding of a democratic pageant of striving, of resistance, of breakthroughs, of opposition, of unrelenting efforts and of eventual triumph. . . .

COLUMBUS’ REVENGE

A trip into the unknown is always something
that can make us happy.
Therefore it’s important to see happiness
as a phase, and the unknown as the first thing
you see around.

See something as the unknown
because what makes it
distant makes it close at the same time.

The shores from which you set sail are
a completely individual matter.
The point of departure stays unprotected by nature.
Everything we were turns into oil.
Unbutton your shirt and
take a look over the fence, jellyfish are taking
over the sea.

The unknown demands that you embrace it
as the desire to fall
or help when you need it
Your trip must become
Columbus’ revenge,
an expedition that will institute you as
a retired officer or a
chameleon between love and silence.

—MARKO POGACAR

Delirios xenófobos
CARLES CASAJUANA
16/03/2010, © El País
Alguien aconsejó una vez a Winston Churchill que gobernara con el oído pegado al suelo, para estar al tanto de los deseos de los ciudadanos. Churchill respondió que no quería que ningún ciudadano pudiera sorprenderle en una postura tan poco airosa. La anécdota refleja bien uno de los numerosos dilemas a los que se enfrenta el gobernante. Se supone que un verdadero líder mira hacia adelante, hacia el futuro, y no anda volviéndose para ver si los ciudadanos le siguen. Pero los sondeos ofrecen hoy datos muy precisos al dirigente que, antes de decidir el rumbo, prefiere saber cómo piensan los ciudadanos, para asegurarse de que le van a seguir. El riesgo, como advirtió Churchill, es que los ciudadanos se den cuenta y le pierdan el respeto. . . .

De Profundis

There is a stubble field on which a black rain falls.
There is a tree which, brown, stands lonely here.
There is a hissing wind which haunts deserted huts---
How sad this evening.

Past the village pond
The gentle orphan still gathers scanty ears of corn.
Golden and round her eyes are gazing in the dusk
And her lap awaits the heavenly bridegroom.

Returning home
Shepherds found the sweet body
Decayed in the bramble bush.

A shade I am remote from sombre hamlets.
The silence of God
I drank from the woodland well.

On my forehead cold metal forms.
Spiders look for my heart.
There is a light that fails in my mouth.

At night I found myself upon a heath,
Thick with garbage and the dust of stars.
In the hazel copse
Crystal angels have sounded once more.

—GEORG TRAKL

US-Israel Showdown?
posted by Robert Dreyfuss
03/15/2010, © The Nation
The Israel lobby is mobilizing for what might turn into the most significant confrontation between the United States and Israel since, well, the Suez War of 1956, when President Eisenhower told Israel -- and its covert allies, the UK and France -- to halt the unprovoked assault on Egypt. Since then, US-Israel conflicts have been relatively small and tied to side issues, such as the fight over President Reagan's sale of AWACS surveillance aircraft to Saudi Arabia in the early 1980s or President Bush's showdown with Israel in the early 1990s, when the United States threatened to withhold loan guarantees to Israel after a right-wing Israeli government stone-walled the peace process. . . .

I come from there and I have memories
Born as mortals are, I have a mother
And a house with many windows,
I have brothers, friends,
And a prison cell with a cold window.
Mine is the wave, snatched by sea-gulls,
I have my own view,
And an extra blade of grass.
Mine is the moon at the far edge of the words,
And the bounty of birds,
And the immortal olive tree.
I walked this land before the swords
Turned its living body into a laden table.

I come from there. I render the sky unto her mother
When the sky weeps for her mother.
And I weep to make myself known
To a returning cloud.
I learnt all the words worthy of the court of blood
So that I could break the rule.
I learnt all the words and broke them up
To make a single word: Homeland...

—Mahmoud Darwish
____________

FROM 'PRAYERS OF ATONEMENT'

You came to me to open my eyes,
your body a glance a window a mirror,
you arrived as night comes to the owl
to show him in darkness all necessary things.

And I learned: a name for every eyelash and nail
for every hair on flesh uncovered, made light,
and the fragrance of childhood, of resin and pine,
was the sweet fragrance of our bodies' night.

If there were torments – then they voyaged toward you
my white sail on course toward your dark night.
Now, allow me to leave, let me go, let me go
to bow on the shores of forgiveness.

—Lea Goldberg

SHAKEN TO THE CORE
The earthquake's nightmare alerted Chileans to a different face in the mirror, forcing us to recognize that we live in a country forged out of illusions.
By Ariel Dorfman
March 11, 2010, © Los Angeles Times
Almost two weeks after the earthquake that devastated Chile, the country is still reeling from aftershocks. I speak to my sister-in-law in Santiago and she suddenly interrupts our conversation, telling me she has to hang up, está temblando, está temblando -- it's trembling, again and again. . . .

Congress Votes for Afghan War
By Tom Hayden
March 11, 2010, © The Nation
A plain reading of yesterday's vote on the Kucinich war powers resolution is that an overwhelming majority of the House has authorized the Afghanistan war, including a majority of Democrats. The war now has greater legitimacy. The vote was 356-65-9. . . .

Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.
—Arthur Schopenhauer

Palestinians snub peace talks because of Israeli homes expansion
Mahmoud Abbas 'not ready to negotiate' after Israel announces 1,600 new homes for East Jerusalem
Rory McCarthy
Thursday 11 March 2010, © The Guardian
The Palestinians pulled out of a new round of indirect peace talks last night, even before they had begun, as a protest at Israel's decision to announce approval for hundreds of new homes in a Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem. . . .

Helmand

Night on the cold plain,
invisible sands lift,
peripheral shadows stir,

space between light and dark
shrouding secrets;
old trades draped grey.

Here too poppies fall,
petals blown on broken ground,
seeds scattered on stone

and this bright bloom,
newly cropped,
leaves pale remains,

fresh lines cut;
the old sickle wind
sharp as yesterday.

—John Hawkhead, 2009

Rep. Kucinich on Afghanistan War: “We’re Acting Like a Latter Day Version of the Roman Empire”
December 02, 2009, © Democracy Now
As President Obama unveils his plan to escalate the war in Afghanistan, we speak with Ohio Congressmember Dennis Kucinich. “The United States is going deeper and deeper into debt,” says Kucinich. “We have money for Wall Street and money for war but we don’t have money for work…for healthcare. We have to start asking ourselves, ‘Why is it that war is a priority but the basic needs of people in this country are not?’” . . .

Top home-school texts dismiss Darwin, evolution
By DYLAN LOVAN
March 6, 2010, © Associated Press
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Home-school mom Susan Mule wishes she hadn't taken a friend's advice and tried a textbook from a popular Christian publisher for her 10-year-old's biology lessons. . . .

Girl starved to death while parents raised virtual child in online game
Mark Tran
Friday 5 March 2010, © The Guardian
South Korean police have arrested a couple for starving their three-month-old daughter to death while they devoted hours to playing a computer game that involved raising a virtual character of a young girl. . . .

selection from Artists in a Time of War

Society classifies me. I am a historian. That scares me. I don’t want to be just a historian, but
society puts us into a discipline. Yes, disciplines us. You’re a historian, you’re a businessman,
you’re an engineer. You’re this or you’re that. The first thing someone asks you at a party is,
“What do you do?” That means, “How are you categorized?”  

The problem is that people begin to think that’s all they are. They’re professionals in something.
You hear the word “professionalism” being used often. People say, “You have to be
professional.” Whenever I hear the word, I get a little scared, because that limits human beings to
working within the confines set by their profession.  

I faced this as a historian. During the Vietnam War, there were meetings of historians. The war
was raging in Southeast Asia. The question was, “Should historians take a stand on the war?”
There was a big debate about this. Some of us introduced a resolution saying, “we historians
think the United States should get out of Vietnam.” There were others who objected. They said,
“It’s not that we don’t think the United States should get out, but we are just historians. It’s not
our business.”

But whose business is it? The historian says it’s not my business. The lawyer says it’s not my
business. The businessman says it’s not my business. And the artist says it’s not my business.
Then whose business is it? Does that mean you are going to leave the business of the most
important issues in the world to the people who run the country? How stupid can we be? Haven’t
we had enough experience historically with leaving the important decisions to the people in the
White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court, and those who dominate the economy?  

One of the things we learned about during the Vietnam War was experts. When the war started,
people would ask, “Why are we there?” These experts would come on television and tell us why.
The British actor Peter Ustinov spoke out against the war in Vietnam. Then somebody said,
Ustinov? He’s an actor. He’s not an expert. Ustinov made an important point. He said that there
are experts in little things but there are no experts in big things. There are experts in this fact and
that fact but there are no moral experts. It’s important to remember that. All of us, no matter
what we do, have the right to make moral decisions about the world. We must be undeterred by
the cries of people who say, “You don’t know. You’re not an expert. These people up there, they
know.” It takes only a bit of knowledge of history to realize how dangerous it is to think that the
people who run the country know what they are doing.
I am asking all of us to think carefully and clearly. For if we are all being herded into actions that
will make the world even more dangerous than it is now, we will later regret that we went along
silently and did not raise our voices as citizens to ask, “How can we get at the roots of this
problem? Is it right to meet violence with violence?” All of us can do something, can ask
questions, can speak up.

—Howard Zinn
____________

The Timber
Sure thou didst flourish once! and many springs,
Many bright mornings, much dew, many showers,
Pass'd o'er thy head; many light hearts and wings,
Which now are dead, lodg'd in thy living bowers.

And still a new succession sings and flies;
Fresh groves grow up, and their green branches shoot
Towards the old and still enduring skies,
While the low violet thrives at their root.

But thou beneath the sad and heavy line
Of death, doth waste all senseless, cold, and dark;
Where not so much as dreams of light may shine,
Nor any thought of greenness, leaf, or bark.

And yet—as if some deep hate and dissent,
Bred in thy growth betwixt high winds and thee,
Were still alive—thou dost great storms resent
Before they come, and know'st how near they be.

Else all at rest thou liest, and the fierce breath
Of tempests can no more disturb thy ease;
But this thy strange resentment after death
Means only those who broke—in life—thy peace.
—Henry Vaughan

Divorced Before Puberty
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
March 3, 2010, © The New York Times
It’s hard to imagine that there have been many younger divorcées — or braver ones — than a pint-size third grader named Nujood Ali.
Nujood is a Yemeni girl, and it’s no coincidence that Yemen abounds both in child brides and in terrorists (and now, thanks to Nujood, children who have been divorced). Societies that repress women tend to be prone to violence. . . .

Darwin Foes Add Warming to Targets
By LESLIE KAUFMAN
March 3, 2010, © The New York Times
Critics of the teaching of evolution in the nation’s classrooms are gaining ground in some states by linking the issue to global warming, arguing that dissenting views on both scientific subjects should be taught in public schools. . . .

Semites and 'Anti-Semites'
By Eric Alterman
February 25, 2010, © The Nation
As I've noted in this space before, the racist anti-Arab rants by New Republic editor in chief/owner Martin Peretz have undermined not only his magazine's reputation for liberalism but also the term "pro-Israel" itself. What I have not addressed, however, is the manner in which the magazine, no less cynically and purposefully, confuses the issue of anti-Semitism by deploying it for political purposes to try to silence those with opposing views about Israel and the Palestinians. Recent targets have included Jimmy Carter, Wes Clark, Juan Cole and the political scientists Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer. This tendency has finally spilled into polite discussion now that the magazine has turned on one of its own: former editor, and now Atlantic Monthly blogger, Andrew Sullivan. . . .

Demokratierne er ofte langsomme til at træffe de rigtige beslutninger, diktaturerne er anderledes hurtige til at træffe de forkerte.
(Democracies are often slow to arrive at the right decisions; dictatorships, on the other hand, are quick to arrive at the wrong ones.)
—Peder Tabor

____________

Dale la pelota a Higuaín, ¡no seas tan celoso y amarrete Cristiano!
____________

A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes but to get into accord with them: they are legitimately what directs his conduct in the world.
—Sigmund Freud

The Attack on Climate-Change Science: Why It's the O.J. Moment of the Twenty-First Century
By Bill McKibben
February 25, 2010, © The Nation
Twenty-one years ago, in 1989, I wrote what many have called the first book for a general audience on global warming. One of the more interesting reviews came from the Wall Street Journal. It was a mixed and judicious appraisal. "The subject," the reviewer said, "is important, the notion is arresting, and Mr. McKibben argues convincingly." And that was not an outlier: around the same time, the first President Bush announced that he planned to "fight the greenhouse effect with the White House effect.". . .

I curse all negative purism that tells me not to use a word from another language that either expresses something that my own language cannot or does that in a more delicate manner.
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
____________

The Hand That Signed The Paper

The hand that signed the paper felled a city;
Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath,
Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country;
These five kings did a king to death.

The mighty hand leads to a sloping shoulder,
The finger joints are cramped with chalk;
A goose's quill has put an end to murder
That put an end to talk.

The hand that signed the treaty bred a fever,
And famine grew, and locusts came;
Great is the hand that holds dominion over
Man by a scribbled name.

The five kings count the dead but do not soften
The crusted wound nor pat the brow;
A hand rules pity as a hand rules heaven;
Hands have no tears to flow.

—Dylan Thomas

Karzai has taken personal control of the electoral process
The Afghan president has subverted the intended legacy of the 2001 invasion by seizing control of the electoral watchdog
Gerard Russell
Monday 22 February 2010, © The Guardian
Hamid Karzai's decision to take control of Afghanistan's electoral watchdog by presidential decree is a terrible blow to the intended legacy of the 2001 invasion – fair elections, democratic institutions and a constitutional government. . . .

Zinn-ophobia at NPR
By Eric Alterman
February 11, 2010, © The Nation
When the historian and political activist Howard Zinn died recently of a heart attack at 87, NPR's All Things Considered ran a short obituary consisting of snippets of interviews from three people: the linguist Noam Chomsky, the civil rights leader Julian Bond and the radical right-wing provocateur David Horowitz. . . .

Everyone is naked under his clothes and everyone is a foreigner outside his native lands.
—Gisli Palsson

Political Awakenings: An Unpublished Howard Zinn Interview
By Harry Kreisler
February 8, 2010, © The Nation
In the forthcoming book, Political Awakenings: Conversations with Twenty of the World's Most Influential Writers, Politicians, and Activists, author Harry Kreisler sits down with the late historian Howard Zinn. In this excerpted interview from 2001, which will be published later this month, Zinn reveals much about his coming-of-age as a radical thinker--specifically his experience as a soldier and its influence on his politics--and his quest to not only study democracy, but to experience it. . . .

Utopia

Island where all becomes clear.

Solid ground beneath your feet.

The only roads are those that offer access.

Bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs.

The Tree of Valid Supposition grows here
with branches disentangled since time immemorial.

The Tree of Understanding, dazzlingly straight and simple,
sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It.

The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista:
the Valley of Obviously.

If any doubts arise, the wind dispels them instantly.

Echoes stir unsummoned
and eagerly explain all the secrets of the worlds.

On the right a cave where Meaning lies.

On the left the Lake of Deep Conviction.
Truth breaks from the bottom and bobs to the surface.

Unshakable Confidence towers over the valley.
Its peak offers an excellent view of the Essence of Things.

For all its charms, the island is uninhabited,
and the faint footprints scattered on its beaches
turn without exception to the sea.

As if all you can do here is leave
and plunge, never to return, into the depths.

Into unfathomable life.

—Wislawa Szymborska

A Horrendous Decision on Habeas Corpus
By Matthew Rothschild
January 9, 2010, © The Progressive
The rule of law just took a beating the D.C. Circuit Court on Jan. 5, when three conservative judges limited the ability of Guantanamo detainees to challenge their detention. . . .

WINTER TREES
All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.
—William Carlos Williams

The Dangers of Sarah Palin
By Matthew Rothschild
February 8, 2010, © The Progressive
I’m not writing her off. No matter how many gaffes she makes, no matter what she writes on her palm, she is not going away.
In fact, she may very well be the Republican nominee in 2012, and if the economy hasn’t recovered by then, there’s an outside chance she could win the White House. . . .

¡Quedate Cholo!
____________

Seek not the favour of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of the few; number not the voices, but weigh them.
—Immanuel Kant
____________

I like people who refuse to speak until they are ready to speak.
—Lillian Hellman
____________

No somos disparados a la existencia como una bala de fusil cuya
trayectoria está absolutamente determinada. Es falso decir que lo que
nos determina son las circunstancias. Al contrario, las circunstancias
son el dilema ante el cual tenemos que decidirnos. Pero el que decide
es nuestro carácter.
—José Ortega y Gasset

En Las Buenas Y En Las Malas,
Siempre Estamos con vos -
¡Adelante San Lorenzo!

El Kily da la cara
© SanLorenzo.com.ar
El Kily no ocultó su bronca.
Temperamental como siempre, no dudó en decir que el equipo entró "medio boludo" a la cancha, que el esquema de juego que tenían planeado "hablando mal, se nos fue al carajo a los dos minutos de juego. Pero bueno, hay que empezar a corregir eso. A darnos cuenta de que ya nos pasó en varios partidos", afirmó.
Y agregó: "la pagamos muy caro contra un equipo que juega bien y se conoce". . . .

from "The Talk Of Flowers"

I do not know, whether the sun
accomplished it,
the rain or wind –
but I was missing so
the whiteness and the snow.

I listened to the rustling
of spring rain,
washing the reddish buds
of chestnut-trees, –
and a tiny spring ran down
into the valley from the hill –
and I was missing
the whiteness
and the snow.

And in the yards, and on the slopes
red-cheeked
village maidens
hung up the washings
blown over by the wind
and, leaning,
stared a long while
at the yellow tufts of sallow:

For love is like the wind,
And love is like the water –
it warms up with the spring,
and freezes over – in the autumn.
But to me, I don't know why,
whether the sun
accomplished it,
the rain or wind –
but I was missing so
the whiteness and the snow.

I know – the wind
will blow and blow the washings,
and the rain
will wash and wash the chestnut-trees, –
but love, which melted with
the snow –
will not return.

Deep below the snow sleep
words and feelings:
for today, watching
the dance of rain between the door –
the rain of spring! –
I saw another:

she walked by in the rain,
and beautiful she was,
and smiled:

For love is like the wind,
and love is like the water –
it warms up with the spring
and freezes over – in the autumn,
though to me, I don't know why,
whether the sun
accomplished it,
the rain or wind –
but I was missing so
the whiteness and the snow.

—Jonas Mekas
(Translated by Clark Mills)

The lessons of Iraq have been ignored. The target is now Iran
The US military buildup in the Gulf and Blair's promotion of war against Tehran are a warning of yet another catastrophe
Seumas Milne
Wednesday 3 February 2010, © The Guardian
We were ­supposed to have learned the lessons of the Iraq war. That's what Britain's ­Chilcot inquiry is meant to be all about. But the signs from the Middle East are that it could be happening all over again. The US is ­escalating the military build-up in the Gulf, officials revealed this week, boosting its naval presence and supplying tens of billions of dollars' worth of new weapons systems to allied Arab states. . . .

Six O'clock In Princes Street

In twos and threes, they have not far to roam,
Crowds that thread eastward, gay of eyes;
Those seek no further than their quiet home,
Wives, walking westward, slow and wise.

Neither should I go fooling over clouds,
Following gleams unsafe, untrue,
And tiring after beauty through star-crowds,
Dared I go side by side with you;

Or be you in the gutter where you stand,
Pale rain-flawed phantom of the place,
With news of all the nations in your hand,
And all their sorrows in your face.

—Wilfred Owen

A Radical Treasure
By BOB HERBERT
January 29, 2010, © The New York Times
I had lunch with Howard Zinn just a few weeks ago, and I’ve seldom had more fun while talking about so many matters that were unreservedly unpleasant: the sorry state of government and politics in the U.S., the tragic futility of our escalation in Afghanistan, the plight of working people in an economy rigged to benefit the rich and powerful. . . .

Las cavidades ausentes
No hay hueco en este espejo
El humo supura sudor
y empaña
Este es el tiempo ácido
Esta la palabra y su género
Aquí está el plomo
robándole peso a la mirada.
*   *   *
Trepo a una punta rodeada de viento y ver:
Aquí los deseos negros llaman la lluvia
todos los días
y escapan derretidos y sedientos
como perseguidos por caracoles
-cargo con un techo blanco como mil conejos-
Llegar al punto donde el mar calla:
Se abrirá una ventana
allí donde la sal es agua
y soñarán los peces su deseo de ser otros.
*   *   *
Mucho antes del comienzo
había algo
El dedo de los que ignoran
señalaba el fuego
Y lo demás era sólo arena
Después vinieron los días quietos
y el reparo
para llenarnos como a recipientes
Luego
cargaremos con todas las palabras
Mantendremos en secreto su peso
Lo sé, mis ojos tardarán en partir.
—Lía Colombino

Washington's Refusal to Talk about Drone Strikes in Pakistan Meets Growing Opposition
by Sebastian Abbot
February 2, 2010, © CommonDreams.org
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Criticism is mounting over Washington's refusal to say anything about missile strikes against Taliban and al-Qaida fighters in Pakistan's northwest, prompting even supporters to argue the U.S. needs to be more open to counter militant allegations that only innocent civilians are dying. . . .

Interior

It sheds a shy solemnity,
This lamp in our poor room.
O grey and gold amenity, --
Silence and gentle gloom!

Wide from the world, a stolen hour
We claim, and none may know
How love blooms like a tardy flower
Here in the day's after-glow.

And even should the world break in
With jealous threat and guile,
The world, at last, must bow and win
Our pity and a smile.

—Hart Crane
____________

MIGLIORE

¡No sean boludos intolerantes! Los cuervos somos más grandes que eso de castigarle a un jugador por ir a ver un partido de fútbol. Y Migliore no tiene que dar ninguna explicación. Es un juego lindísimo que nos gusta a todos, ¿no? Si Migliore ha ido a verlos jugar a los bosteros en cualquier cancha, no tiene importancia. Y si no ha ido, tampoco tiene importancia. ¡A enfocarnos en lo que nos importa como hinchas, carajo!: El fútbol y San Lorenzo de Almagro. Migliore está jugando muy bien y con coraje para nuestro equipo. Ya está.
-Guido

____________

The Wounded Hare

Inhuman man! curse on thy barb'rous art,
And blasted by thy murder-aiming eye;
May never pity soothe thee with a sigh,
Nor never pleasure glad thy cruel heart!

Go live, poor wanderer of the wood and field,
The bitter little of life that remains!
No more the thickening brakes and verdant plains
To thee shall home, or food, or pastime yield.

Seek, mangled wretch, some place of wonted rest,
No more of rest, but now of dying bed!
The sheltering rushes whistling o'er thy head,
The cold earth with thy bloody bosom Crest.

Oft as by winding Nith I, musing, wait
The sober eve, or hail the cheerful dawn,
I'll miss thee sporting o'er the dewy lawn,
And curse the ruffian's aim, and mourn thy hapless fate.

—Robert Burns

America's Secret Afghan Prisons
By Anand Gopal
January 28, 2010, © The Nation
One quiet, wintry night last year in the eastern Afghan town of Khost, a young government employee named Ismatullah simply vanished. He had last been seen in the town's bazaar with a group of friends. Family members scoured Khost's dusty streets for days. Village elders contacted Taliban commanders in the area who were wont to kidnap government workers, but they had never heard of the young man. Even the governor got involved, ordering his police to round up nettlesome criminal gangs that sometimes preyed on young bazaargoers for ransom. . . .

America's Sorry History with Haiti
By Lisa Pease
January 30, 2010, © Consortiumnews.com
With all the talk of America taking charge of Haiti for a while, it would be prudent for us to take a step back and review the history of our various interventions in Haiti, and the outcomes of those efforts. 
For there is another kind of aid that the people of Haiti need that isn’t being talked about. They need us to understand their real history, their culture and their potential. . . .

America's Sad History with Haiti, Part 2
By Lisa Pease
February 1, 2010, © Consortiumnews.com
The Haitians have a saying in their native créole language: Piti, piti, wazo fe nich li. “Little by little, the bird builds its nest.”
Freed of the powerful grip of the Duvaliers in 1986, and despite a dysfunctional system, little by little, the Haitians undertook the difficult work of rebuilding their nation into a more democratic place from within. . . .

Italian Music In Dakota

Through the soft evening air enwrinding all,
Rocks, woods, fort, cannon, pacing sentries, endless wilds,
In dulcet streams, in flutes' and cornets' notes,
Electric, pensive, turbulent artificial,
(Yet strangely fitting even here, meanings unknown before,
Subtler than ever, more harmony, as if born here, related here,
Not to the city's fresco'd rooms, not to the audience of the opera
house,
Sounds, echoes, wandering strains, as really here at home,
Sonnambula's innocent love, trios with Norma's anguish,
And thy ecstatic chorus Poliuto;)
Ray'd in the limpid yellow slanting sundown,
Music, Italian music in Dakota.

While Nature, sovereign of this gnarl'd realm,
Lurking in hidden barbaric grim recesses,
Acknowledging rapport however far remov'd,
(As some old root or soil of earth its last-born flower or fruit,)
Listens well pleas'd.

—Walt Whitman
____________

Bon match contre les Sénateurs. Merci.
____________

Pour Toi
Estoy de ti florecido
como los tiestos de rosas,
estoy de ti floreciendo
de tus cosas...
Menudo limo de amores
abona mis noches tuyas
y me florecen de sueños
como los cielos de luna...
Como tú mido los pasos
y la distancia es más corta,
hablo en tu idioma de amor
y me comprenden las rosas...
Es que ya estoy florecido.
Es que ya estoy floreciendo
de tus cosas.
—Pedro Mir
____________

Hay Un País En El Mundo

Hay un país en el mundo
colocado
en el mismo trayecto del sol.
Oriundo de la noche.
Colocado
en un inverosímil archipiélago
de azúcar y de alcohol.

Sencillamente
liviano,
como un ala de murciélago
apoyado en la brisa.

Sencillamente
claro,
como el rastro del beso en las solteronas antiguas
o el día en los tejados.

Sencillamente
frutal. Fluvial. Y material. Y sin embargo
sencillamente tórrido y pateado
como una adolescente en las caderas.

Sencillamente triste y oprimido.

Sencillamente agreste y despoblado

En verdad.
Con tres millones
suma de la vida
y entre tanto
cuatro cordilleras cardinales
y una inmensa bahía y otra inmensa bahía,
tres penínsulas con islas adyacentes
y un asombro de ríos verticales
y tierra bajo los árboles y tierra
bajo los ríos y en la falda del monte
y al pie de la colina y detrás del horizonte
y tierra desde el canto de los gallos
y tierra bajo el galope de los caballos
y tierra sobre el día, bajo el mapa, alrededor
y debajo de todas las huellas y en medio del amor.

Entonces
es lo que he declarado.

Hay
un país en el mundo
sencillamente agreste y despoblado.

Algún amor creerá
que en este fluvial país en que la tierra brota,
y se derrama y cruje como una vena rota,
donde el día tiene su triunfo verdadero,
irán los campesinos con asombro y apero
a cultivar
cantando
su franja propietaria.

Este amor
quebrará su inocencia solitaria.
Pero no.

Y creerá
que en medio de esta tierra recrecida,
donde quiera, donde ruedan montañas por los valles
como frescas monedas azules, donde duerme
un bosque en cada flor y en cada flor la vida,
irán los campesinos por la loma dormida
a gozar
forcejeando
con su propia cosecha.

Este amor
doblará su luminosa flecha.
Pero no.
Y creerá
de donde el viento asalta el íntimo terrón
y lo convierte en tropas de cumbres y praderas,
donde cada colina parece un corazón,
en cada campesino irán las primaveras cantando
entre los surcos
su propiedad.

Este amor
alcanzará su floreciente edad.
Pero no.

Hay
un país en el mundo
donde un campesino breve,
seco y agrio
muere y muerde
descalzo
su polvo derruido,
y la tierra no alcanza para su bronca muerte.

¡Oídlo bien! No alcanza para quedar dormido.
Es un país pequeño y agredido. Sencillamente triste,
triste y torvo, triste y acre. Ya lo dije:
sencillamente triste y oprimido.

Procedente del fondo de la noche
vengo a hablar de un país.
Precisamente
pobre de población.
Pero
no es eso solamente.
Natural de la noche soy producto de un viaje.
Dadme tiempo
coraje
para hacer la canción.

Plumón de nido nivel de luna
salud del oro guitarra abierta
final de viaje donde una isla
los campesinos no tienen tierra.

Decid al viento los apellidos
de los ladrones y las cavernas
y abrid los ojos donde un desastre
los campesinos no tienen tierra.

El aire brusco de un breve puño
que se detiene junto a una piedra
abre una herida donde unos ojos
los campesinos no tienen tierra.

Los que la roban no tienen ángeles
no tienen órbita entre las piernas
no tienen sexo donde una patria
los campesinos no tienen tierra.

No tienen paz entre las pestañas
no tienen tierra no tienen tierra.

.......

Miro un brusco tropel de raíles
son del ingenio
sus soportes de verde aborigen
son del ingenio
y las mansas montañas de origen
son del ingenio
y la caña y la yerba y el mimbre
son del ingenio
y los muelles y el agua y el liquen
son del ingenio
y el camino y sus dos cicatrices
son del ingenio
y los pueblos pequeños y vírgenes
son del ingenio.

Es verdad que en el tránsito del río,
cordilleras de miel, desfiladeros
de azúcar y cristales marineros
disfrutan de un metálico albedrío,
y que al pie del esfuerzo solidario
aparece el instinto proletario.

Pero ebrio de orégano y de anís,
y mártir de los tórridos paisajes
hay un hombre de pie en los engranajes.
Desterrado en su tierra. y un país,
en el mundo,
fragrante,
colocado
en el mismo trayecto de la guerra.
Traficante de tierras y sin tierra.
Material. Matinal. Y desterrado.

.......

Quiero ver su amargura necesaria
donde el hombre y la res y el surco duermen
y adelgazan los sueños en el germen
de quietud que eterniza la plegaria.

Donde un ángel respira.
donde arde
una súplica pálida y secreta
y siguiendo el carril de la carrera
un boyero se extingue con la tarde.

Después
no quiero más que paz.
Un nido
de constructiva paz en cada palma.
Y quizás a propósito del alma
el enjambre de besos
y el olvido.

—Pedro Mir
____________

¡VAMOS SAN LORENZO!

____________

Have you no shame, Tony Blair?
____________

Thank you, Howard. It is an honour to have read you, heard you, learned from you, known you at least a little. You will always be missed, always be celebrated. Your history is our history, irreplaceable, unforgettable, as contagious as your smile, a blessing, a warning, a measuring stick, an example to us all.

"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.”

“There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”

“If the gods had intended for people to vote, they would have given us candidates”

“Americans have been taught that their nation is civilized and humane. But, too often, U.S. actions have been uncivilized and inhumane.”

“We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children”

“In the United States today, the Declaration of Independence hangs on schoolroom walls, but foreign policy follows Machiavelli.”

“If those in charge of our society - politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television - can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.”

“(Nationalism is) a set of beliefs taught to each generation in which the Motherland or the Fatherland is an object of veneration and becomes a burning cause for which one becomes willing to kill the children of other Motherlands or Fatherlands”

“One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression.”

“I'm worried that students will take their obedient place in society and look to become successful cogs in the wheel - let the wheel spin them around as it wants without taking a look at what they're doing. I'm concerned that students not become passive acceptors of the official doctrine that's handed down to them from the White House, the media, textbooks, teachers and preachers.”

“Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.”

“I don't think there's any question that the United States is going to have to get out of Iraq. The only questions are: How long will it take? How many more people will die? And how will it be done?”

“War itself is the enemy of the human race.”

“People like Eugene Debs, Helen Keller, Emma Goldman, Jack London and Upton Sinclair were wonderful writers who joined the movement against war and injustice, against capitalism and corporate power. That was a very exciting period in American history.”

“The UN should arrange, as US forces leave, for an international group of peacekeepers and negotiators from the Arab countries to bring together Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, and work out a solution for self-governance that would give all three groups a share in political power. Simultaneously, the UN should arrange for shipments of food and medicine, from the United States and other countries, as well as engineers to help rebuild the country.”

“Most wars, after all, present themselves as humanitarian endeavors to help people.”

“When people don't understand that the government doesn't have their interests in mind, they're more susceptible to go to war.”

“I suggest that if you know history, then you might not be so easily fooled by the government when it tells you you must go to war for this or that reason -that history is a protective armor against being misled.”

—Howard Zinn

Dunkin Donuts, Boston, 8 January, 2008

Howard Zinn, historian who challenged status quo, dies at 87
By Mark Feeney and Bryan Marquard
January 27, 2010, © The Boston Globe
Howard Zinn, the Boston University historian and political activist who was an early opponent of US involvement in Vietnam and whose books, such as "A People's History of the United States," inspired young and old to rethink the way textbooks present the American experience, died today in Santa Monica, Calif, where he was traveling. He was 87. . . .
____________

L'une des clés d'une relation amoureuse est de respecter la maladie que l'autre porte en lui.

Wild Horse Preservation:
The American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign is dedicated to preserving the American wild horse in viable free-roaming herds for generations to come.