La felicidad del Mundo

Tea Party: ¿de neoliberalismo a neo teocracia? ¡El templo del dios Mammon!

2011-02-25T21:24:00.039-04:00

The Tea Party's Religious Inspiration

Feb 25 2011, 6:00 AM ET By Wendy Kaminer 11

If American politics were a TV show, it would by now have jumped the shark. Then again, American politics is a sort of TV show, considering its surreal plot lines, its cast of kooky narcissists, and an epistemology that blithely combines absolutist religious convictions with post-modern relativism: belief that the Bible is literally true comfortably co-exists with disbelief in simple, verifiable matters of fact, like the President's place of birth or the absence of an HCR death panel mandate. It's not surprising that, under the influence of the Tea Party, freedom is just another word for no abortion rights (and no contraception or cancer screenings for poor women).

Not long ago, the Tea (taxed enough already) Party was often presumed to stand for what its name implies -- low taxes and limited government services (or at least limits on programs and services not enjoyed by its members.) But a new Pew Forum survey offers some quantitative evidence that Tea Party members tend to be religiously inspired, social conservatives; the movement "draws disproportionate support from the ranks of white evangelical Protestants ... most people who agree with the religious right also support the Tea Party."

What seems new is the increased dominance of the Republican Party by sectarian religious extremists and their acquisition of power during a prolonged economic crisis and even
longer war.

Pew's findings are unsurprising. You might have inferred the Tea Party's religious motivations from the statements and policies of its established or aspiring political leaders, at state and federal levels. I'll refrain from offering an extended litany of their wacky assertions and legislative ideas. Just keep in mind a few examples.

One of the subtler but also most hysterical expressions of legislative sectarianism is the wave of state proposals aimed at banning the non-existent threat of Sharia law. At first glance, you might mistake this trend for an effort to keep religion out of government, but a law intended to impose special disadvantages on one religion is no less sectarian (and violative of the First Amendment) than a law intended to extend special advantages to another.

So it's not surprising to find proposed bans on Sharia law in conservative states, like South Dakota and Texas, alongside extreme anti-abortion proposals. (You can find atheists and agnostics who oppose abortion rights, but generally the anti-abortion movement is overwhelmingly religious and tends to divide along sectarian lines: according to Pew, "most religious traditions in the U.S. come down firmly on one side or the other.") The notorious South Dakota bill that would arguably legalize the killing of abortion providers has been tabled; but a bill pending in Texas requires doctors to conduct pre-abortion sonograms for women and to impose on them a description of the fetus's arms, legs and internal organs. Supporters of this bill insist that it is "pro-woman;" its purpose is empower them and "ensure there are no barriers preventing women from receiving the information to which they are entitled for such a life-changing decision" -- barriers like a woman's right to decline a sonogram or description of the fetus.

But the right wing's aggressive sectarianism extends far beyond the usual battles over abortion and other culture-war casualties. Just listen to Mike Huckabee gush over Israel (biblical Zionists have been carrying on about Israel for years, but these days they have Tea Party stars on their side.) Michelle Bachmann claims that "if we reject Israel, then there is a curse that comes into play." Note former Senator Rick Santorum's defense of the Crusades, which, he laments, have been maligned by "the American left who hates Christendom." Remember the Bible-based environmental policy of Illinois Congressman John Shimkus, now chair of the House Environment and Economy Sub-Committee. "The Earth will end when God declares it's time to be over," Shimkus famously declared in a 2009 hearing. Reading from the Bible and citing God's promise to Noah not to destroy the earth (again), Shimkus said, "I believe that's the infallible word of God and that's the way it's gonna be for his creation."

Pay particular attention to Indiana congressman Mike Pence's revealing declaration that the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, a federal bill prohibiting workplace discrimination against gay people "wages war on freedom of religion in the workplace." If religious beliefs legitimized workplace discrimination, as Pence advises, then Title Vll of the 1964 Civil Rights Act would be unconstitutional at least as applied to people with religious compunctions against hiring women or members of particular racial or religious groups: If you believe that God did not intend women to hold traditionally male jobs, for example, or if you simply don't like Mormons, then, in Pence's view of religious freedom, you have a constitutional defense to employment discrimination claims by female or Mormon job applicants. But I bet that Pence would hesitate to defend a constitutional right to discriminate categorically against women or Mormons in the workplace; and if I'm right, it means he recognizes religious biases as defenses to discrimination claims as long as they're biases he shares. Pence's position on ENDA demonstrates the confident, theocratic approach to governing enabled by the Tea Party's electoral successes.

Of course, Pence and Shimkus, among others, are hardly the first theocrats to land in office. There's nothing new about the religious right's drive for political power, which helped sweep Ronald Reagan into the White House in 1980, when liberal stalwarts were swept out of the Senate. What does seem new is the increased dominance of the Republican Party by sectarian religious extremists and their acquisition of power during a prolonged economic crisis and even longer war -- a period marked by national pessimism, fear of terror, and a bipartisan assault on civil liberty unprecedented in its scope (thanks to technology) if not its intentions. In other words, what's worrisome is our vulnerability, susceptibility to demagoguery, and diminishing margin of error. We don't have time for the unexamined certitudes of religious zealotry.

If only Tea Partiers and their legislative surrogates would take seriously the Constitution and the founding fathers they so frequently invoke. Then they'd respect the First Amendment's prohibition on government-established religion, which codified the Founder's belief in a secular, civil government that accommodates diverse religious practices and beliefs. They'd understand that the Establishment clause doesn't merely bar the federal government from requiring us to attend a federal church; it bars Congress from turning sectarian religious beliefs into law (unless they coincide with practically universal moral codes, like prohibitions on murder.) "People place their hand on the Bible and swear to uphold the Constitution, they don't put their hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible," Maryland State Senator Jamie Raskin once said (to appropriate acclaim.) It's an accurate statement of law and constitutional ideals, but, sad to say, an increasingly aspirational description of political practice.

The Tea Party and Religion

ANALYSIS February 23, 2011 The Tea Party movement clearly played a role in rejuvenating the Republican Party in 2010, helping the GOP take control of the House and make gains in the Senate. Tea Party supporters made up 41% of the electorate on Nov. 2, and 86% of them voted for Republican House candidates, according to exit polls. But the precise nature of the Tea Party has been less clear. (...) A new analysis by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life finds that Tea Party supporters tend to have conservative opinions not just about economic matters, but also about social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. In addition, they are much more likely than registered voters as a whole to say that their religion is the most important factor in determining their opinions on these social issues.2 And they draw disproportionate support from the ranks of white evangelical Protestants.

Para los que aún crean que el Tea Party es un movimiento ciudadano contra los abusos del gobierno, un poco de realidad: la banda de millonarios que financian / controlan el movimiento. Solo tienen un punto en su agenda: menos gobierno, más mercado. Por supuesto, una cita a puerta cerrada como dicta la liturgia.

Koch conference under scrutiny

By KENNETH P. VOGEL & SIMMI AUJLA

1/27/11 4:18 AM EST

This weekend, for the eighth straight year, the billionaire Koch brothers will convene a meeting of roughly 200 wealthy businessmen, Republican politicians and conservative activists for a semi-annual conference to raise millions of dollars for the institutions that form the intellectual foundation – and, increasingly, the leading political edge – of the conservative movement.

In the past, the meetings have drawn an A-list of participants – politicians like Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, leading free-market thinkers including American Enterprise Institute president Arthur Brooks, talkers Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and even Supreme Court justices - to mingle with the wealthy donors who comprise the bulk of the invitees. The meetings adjourned after soliciting pledges of support from the donors – sometimes totaling as much as $50 million – to non-profit groups favored by the Kochs.

For the most part, the meetings, which are closed to the public and reporters, have attracted little attention outside conservative circles. But very different circumstances surround the Koch conference set to begin Saturday at an exclusive resort outside Palm Springs, Calif.

The Koch brothers – Charles and David – have come under intense scrutiny recently for their role in helping start and fund some of the deepest-pocketed groups involved in organizing the tea party movement such as Americans for Prosperity, and for steering cash towards efforts to target President Barack Obama, his healthcare overhaul, and congressional Democrats in the run-up to the 2010 election.

Liberal critics have launched a campaign to highlight what they say is the systematic way in which the Kochs use their political giving to advance a conservative economic and regulatory agenda designed to further the interests of their oil, chemical and manufacturing empire.

Common Cause, the liberal watchdog group, is planning a protest called “Uncloaking the Kochs” and what it calls “the billionaires caucus” on Sunday a few miles down the road from the resort in Rancho Mirage, Calif., where this weekend’s conference will be held, and a handful of reporters have made plans to try to cover the Koch’s closed-door gathering.

While the Koch conferences have taken on an undeniably political edge – a June summit featured sessions on voter mobilization efforts for the 2010 midterms as well as solicitations for an ad campaign attacking Democratic lawmakers – those who have attended the meetings say the critics have it all wrong.

“The main goal of the seminars appeared to me to be education on the challenges that face the American system of free enterprise and democracy, and what people can do about them,” said Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, a conservative Republican who has attended at least seven of the meetings.

McDonnell, who is not attending this weekend’s conference, said he was introduced to the gatherings by “free market friends up in Northern Virginia, some in the Koch enterprises institution,” and he cast the conferences as playing an important role in the political process.

“Groups on the right, left and in the middle get together all over this great country to exercise their first amendment rights to talk about these issues - some of them are public. Some of them are closed meetings,” he said. “So, to the degree that some on the left may be trying to attack these Koch seminars is really ridiculous.”

Until recently, the secrecy surrounding the meetings had always been tight.

Mike Huckabee at home abroad on frequent trips to Israel

By BEN SMITH
2/18/11 10:52 AM EST

A parade of Republican presidential hopefuls is making its way to Israel, signaling the candidates’ seriousness about foreign policy and national security and their hawkish approach to terrorism. As POLITICO recently reported, “A stop in the Jewish state is becoming as critical as an early trip to Iowa or New Hampshire.”

But while Mitt Romney and Haley Barbour check the Israel box and move on, Mike Huckabee lingers. This month, the former Arkansas governor spent two weeks in Israel on his 15th trip to the Jewish state, during which his suggestion that the Palestinians go find their own state in some Arab country prompted a settler leader, Dani Dayan, to announce that he is praying Huckabee will be elected president.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0211/49750.html#ixzz1F0FA3iOn

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0211/49750.html

The rentier elite

Feb 24th 2011, 9:52 by Schumpeter

.MOTHER JONES has compiled some interesting graphics on the distribution of wealth in the United States. The magazine's list of the ten richest people in Congress is particularly interesting (John McCain, who forgot how many houses he owns during the 2008 presidential election, does not make it).

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) $451.1 million

Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) $435.4 million

Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.) $366.2 million

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) $294.9 million

Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) $285.1 million

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) $283.1 million

Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wisc.) $231.2 million

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) $201.5 million

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) $136.2 million

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) $108.1 million

It is notable that seven of the top ten are Democrats. Of these, four made their money by marrying or inheriting it. Perhaps the Republicans should start rethinking their opposition to inheritance taxes.

Santorum: Left hates 'Christendom'

Rick Santorum says the history of the Crusades has been corrupted by 'the American left.' AP Photo

By ANDY BARR

2/23/11 2:35 PM EST Updated: 2/24/11 7:57 AM EST

Rick Santorum launched into a scathing attack on the left, charging during an appearance in South Carolina that the history of the Crusades has been corrupted by “the American left who hates Christendom.”

“The idea that the Crusades and the fight of Christendom against Islam is somehow an aggression on our part is absolutely anti-historical,” Santorum said in Spartanburg on Tuesday. “And that is what the perception is by the American left who hates Christendom.”

He added, “They hate Western civilization at the core. That's the problem.”

After asserting that Christianity had not shown any “aggression” to the Muslim world, the former Pennsylvania senator — who is considering a 2012 run for the White House — argued that American intervention in the Middle East helps promote “core American values.”

“What I'm talking about is onward American soldiers,” he said. “What we're talking about are core American values. ‘All men are created equal' — that's a Christian value, but it's an American value.”

“It's become part of our national religion, if you will,” he continued. “The point I was trying to make was that the national faith, the national ideal, is rooted in the Christian ideal — in the Judeo-Christian concept of the person.”

Pelosi edits honorary resolution...on Pelosi http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/0211/Pelosi_edits_honorary_resolutionon_Pelosi_.html

White House meets lobbyists off campus http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0211/50081.html

Right now sees Michelle Obama as fair game

(Clockwise from upper left) Limbaugh, Bachmann, Breitbart and Palin have all taken jabs. AP Photos

By AMIE PARNES

2/24/11 7:43 PM EST Updated: 2/25/11 11:50 AM EST

Except for an ill-advised trip to an expensive Spanish resort last summer, Michelle Obama has escaped much of the criticism that has been directed at her husband, keeping a relatively low-profile while primarily focusing on childhood obesity, military families and the arts.

During her first two years in the White House, she was more Laura Bush rather than Hillary Clinton, but that has begun to change. Now, for conservative critics, it is open season on the first lady.

Obama’s admonishments on nutrition and advice on breastfeeding are examples of big government “nanny state” intrusion according to Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.); her eating habits are evidence of her hypocrisy, according to Rush Limbaugh; her athletic physique is something to be lampooned on Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government website, which posted a cartoon showing her as overweight and eating a plate full of hamburgers.

To date, the East Wing has managed to stay above the fray, not wanting to take part in a point-counterpoint kind of debate. But to one academic expert on first ladies, the attacks seem unusually pointed.

“There’s so much anger in the criticism surrounding Michelle Obama,” said Myra Gutin, a Rider University professor and author of a biography of Barbara Bush and a book on 20th century first ladies. “It seems almost personal to me.”

Republicans have a simple response: Obama is now fair game because she is playing an increasingly political role in her husband’s administration.

When Obama made a string of campaign stops for Democratic candidates during the 2010 campaign, Republicans generally refrained from any attacks. But many of them point to the first lady’s e-mail to supporters earlier this month announcing the news that Charlotte had been picked as the host city of the 2012 Democratic National Convention as an example of her slow movement onto political turf.

And they say her support for the government playing a bigger role in advancing better nutrition is inherently political. “If the first lady doesn’t want criticism, then she shouldn’t propose policy,” said Republican strategist Mark McKinnon.

“While no one disagrees with encouraging good health, against the backdrop of her husband’s demonstrably invasive and expanding government, the fear is that her encouragement will cross over to government fiat,” said Mary Matalin, a former aide to President George H.W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

In contrast to Hillary Clinton, who was put in charge of her husband Bill Clinton’s health care initiative shortly after he became president, Obama’s role in health care policy has been minimal. Clinton, a former senator who is now secretary of state, was an entirely new model of a first lady and quickly became a target of what she called “the vast right wing conspiracy” before dialing back her public involvement in policy after health care crashed and burned.

Republican strategist John Feehery said conservatives may be seizing on the fact that Michelle Obama, like Hillary Clinton, is perceived to be more liberal than her husband. But he sees a difference between the current first lady and Clinton, who was perceived as a “real ideological threat.”

“Michelle Obama isn’t heading up a health care task force,” Feehery said, referring to Clinton. “Michelle Obama is talking about issues that are relatively important. I think she’s a fairly traditional first lady.”

In that sense she has resembled her predecessor, Laura Bush, who promoted literacy and woman’s issues in Afghanistan as first lady, and never attracted much controversy.

Conmovedor

2011-02-10T00:31:00.002-04:00

LOS DEMOCRATAS ARABES ROMPEN EL ESTEREOTIPO DE OCCIDENTE

La campaña ya no funciona

Una familia de manifestantes sostiene un cartel acusando a Mubarak de corrupción.

Desde hace cerca de treinta años, una obstinada campaña de denigración se consagró a presentar al Islam como un enemigo de los valores occidentales. Confundieron a un puñado de alterados terroristas con millones de individuos.

Por Eduardo Febbro

Desde París

Los demócratas árabes que hicieron saltar la banca de la autocracia y la corrupción en Túnez y Egipto aportaron una contribución inestimable al conocimiento humano: desmontaron con su vigor democrático el perfil de demonio con el cual la prensa de Occidente y ensayistas aprovechadores habían retratado al Islam y al mundo árabe musulmán en general, al tiempo que pusieron en tela de juicio los intereses estratégicos de la primera potencia mundial. Desde hace cerca de treinta años, una obstinada campaña de denigración se consagró a presentar al Islam como un enemigo de los valores occidentales, a los árabes como una sociedad de individuos histéricos y fuera de la historia. Artículos, reportajes televisivos y ensayos se ensañaron con una temática común: el miedo al Islam, al islamismo, la identificación de una religión con el terrorismo de masa. Confundieron a un puñado de alterados terroristas con sociedades civiles de millones de individuos e hicieron caso omiso de la historia del mundo, del colonialismo, dejaron afuera la influencia de los recursos petrolíferos en la expansión provocada del fundamentalismo islámico así como el papel que tuvo la confrontación entre el Este y el Oeste en el fomento de los extremismos religiosos como armas estratégicas.

En esa masa de mentiras y miedo contribuyeron en mucho los intelectuales modernos, adeptos al sillón giratorio desde el cual miran el mundo y proyectan sus opciones ideológicas y su sagacidad sin desplazarse, sin conocer, la mayor parte de las veces, a ese ser humano, a esa gente, la intimidad de las naciones, su historia, los idiomas que se hablan, la práctica confesional en curso, la razón y los matices de los ritos, la dimensión histórica de la identidad, el juego perverso de las pugnas geopolíticas que trazaron el mapa de Medio Oriente. La propaganda se mezcló con la reflexión. Sin embargo, el islamismo fundamentalista, tal como lo conocemos hoy, precede la creación de grupos como Hamas, Al Qaida, el Hezbolá e incluso es anterior a la confrontación entre Israel y los fundamentalistas islámicos que pugnan por la desaparición de un Estado judío. Hamas primero fue creado en 1987 como movimiento de resistencia islámico contra la ocupación israelí del territorio de Gaza. El Hezbolá nació en 1982 contra la ocupación del Líbano por las tropas israelíes (1982). El tercero, Al Qaida, es una emanación de la política norteamericana en Asia Central.

El extremismo islámico contemporáneo se plasmó en 1953 con el golpe de Estado contra el primer ministro iraní Mohammad Mossadegh. Electo dos años antes con el apoyo del Frente Nacional, un grupo de partidos progresistas, Mossadegh suprimió los exorbitantes privilegios de que gozaba la primera empresa mundial de explotación de hidrocarburos, la compañía angloiranian Oil, AIOC. Esta empresa detentaba el monopolio de la explotación y la venta del petróleo iraní y a cambio pagaba magros beneficios al Estado iraní, mientras que la población vivía en la pobreza. Los británicos, en su afán de derrocar a Mohammad Mossadegh, pidieron la cooperación de Washington. Un emisario del Secret Intelligence Service, Christopher Montague Woodhouse, convenció a la CIA de la necesidad de erradicar la triple amenaza que representan el nacionalismo de Mossadegh, el poderoso partido de la izquierda iraní, Tudeh, y la ex Unión Soviética, país fronterizo de Irán. Estados Unidos y Gran Bretaña montaron el operativo AJAX y derribaron el régimen de Mohammad Mossadegh con la ayuda de un aliado interior, el soberano iraní Mohammed Réza shah Pahlévi. La frustración nacional por la explotación petrolífera, la cooperación del shah de Irán con quienes expoliaban los hidrocarburos y la instauración de una tiranía absoluta que aplastó al movimiento democrático y laico le dio vida y cuerpo al fundamentalismo chiíta, es decir, el ala derecha extremista y nacionalista de Irán. En 1979, el ayatolá Jomeini se apoyó en ese movimiento fundamentalista para lanzar la revolución iraní, cuya permanencia forjó un fascismo religioso e hizo de Teherán un eje del terror. El ex presidente norteamericano Bill Clinton reconoció en el año 2000 las nefastas consecuencias del operativo AJAX y pidió disculpas. Demasiado tarde. Otro monstruo de siniestras consecuencias, también diseñado y perpetrado por Washington, estaba alimentándose en Asia Central: la financiación de los sectores más radicales del Islam para combatir la invasión de Afganistán por parte de la Unión Soviética. Las escuelas coránicas de Pakistán (madrazas) fueron financiadas por Washington para preparar a los “combatientes de la libertad” inspirados en la versión más extrema de la religión. La casi totalidad de los terroristas buscados por Estados Unidos desde los atentados del 11 de septiembre fueron llevados por Washington a Pakistán en charters especiales a lo largo de los años ’80. Bin Laden y los talibanes afganos fueron aliados íntimos en esa estrategia, soldados al servicio de la causa norteamericana que luego se dieron vuelta.

La pugna por los hidrocarburos y la táctica confesional contra el comunismo diseñaron el mundo que tenemos hoy. Occidente se lavó las manos y ensució al mundo árabemusulmán con una propaganda impúdica. Los musulmanes pasaron a ser retrógrados, rígidos, fanáticos peligrosos que ponían en peligro la identidad y los valores de Occidente. La influencia de ese discurso ha sido tal que la casi totalidad de los partidos de extrema derecha que arrasan en las urnas del Viejo Continente han hecho del miedo o el odio a los musulmanes su principal negocio electoral. Y, sin embargo, no fueron los papelitos sucios de Wikileaks los que hicieron avanzar la historia sino el pueblo. En las revueltas de Túnez o en la plaza Tahrir de El Cairo no se vieron barbudos agresivos, ni el Corán ni armas: vimos demócratas que pugnaban por la libertad, la igualdad, la redistribución justa de las riquezas y un futuro mejor. Vimos banderas egipcias, retratos de Hosni Mubarak con el bigote de Hitler y carteles pidiendo que se vaya. En dos semanas, un sector del mundo árabe trastornó el orden preestablecido del mundo sin bombas ni atentados. ¿Qué dirán los heraldos del pavor a lo diverso, ahora que ese otro tan temido y denigrado se juega la vida colectivamente por los valores en los que se basa la cultura política de Occidente? ¿Qué demonio inventarán para seguir teniendo razón? Esos progresistas de sociedades menospreciadas por la tecno cultura occidental han creado en un puñado de días una de las mayores transformaciones de la historia. Detrás de sus reclamos no hay demonios fundamentalistas, sino siglos de opresión, de expoliación y corrupción. Sea cual fuere el rumbo de esa revolución les debemos a esos empeñados demócratas una demostración única, una emoción gigantesca, la oportunidad de ver al otro como es, de reconocerlo, de palpar sus sueños, que también son nuestros. Vimos la historia avanzar ante nuestras miradas, tenemos la prueba de que, por encima de la cultura, del idioma y del Dios al que dirigimos nuestras plegarias, persiste en el ser humano la ambición irrenunciable de la libertad.

OPINION

Sangre marrón

Por Robert Fisk *

Desde El Cairo

La sangre se pone marrón con el tiempo. Las revoluciones no. Trapos sucios cuelgan en una esquina de la plaza, las últimas prendas usadas por los mártires de Tahrir: un médico, un abogado, una joven mujer, sus fotos esparcidas sobre la multitud, la tela de las remeras y los pantalones manchados del color del barro. Pero ayer la gente honró a sus muertos de a decenas de miles en la mayor marcha de protesta jamás reunida contra la dictadura del presidente Hosni Mubarak, gente alegre, transpirando, empujando, gritando, llorando, impaciente, temerosa de que el mundo olvide su coraje y su sacrificio. Nos tomó tres horas abrirnos camino hacia la plaza, dos horas para hundirnos en un mar de cuerpos humanos para irnos. Por encima nuestro, un fantasmagórico fotomontaje se sacudía con el viento: la cabeza de Hosni Mubarak superpuesta sobre la terrible imagen de Saddam Hussein con una soga al cuello.

Los levantamientos no siguen un horario. Y Mubarak buscará una forma de venganza por la renovada explosión de furia y frustración de ayer en su gobierno de treinta años. Durante dos días, su nuevo gobierno de vuelta al trabajo había tratado de pintar a Egipto como una nación volviendo a su antiguo autocrático letargo. Las estaciones de servicio abiertas, una serie de embotellamientos, los bancos entregando dinero –aunque en sumas pequeñas–, los comercios trabajando, los ministros sentados firmes en la televisión estatal mientras el hombre que seguiría siendo rey por otros cinco meses les hablaba sobre la necesidad de volver del caos al orden, una única razón declarada para mantenerse a toda costa en el poder.

Pero Issam Etman le demostró que estaba equivocado. Empujado por los miles a su alrededor, llevaba a Hadiga, su hija de cinco años, sobre sus hombros. “Estoy aquí por mi hija”, gritó sobre la protesta. “Es por su libertad que quiero que Mubarak se vaya. No soy pobre. Dirijo una empresa de transportes y una estación de servicio. Todo está cerrado ahora y estoy sufriendo, pero no me importa. Le pago a mi personal de mi propio bolsillo. Esto es sobre la libertad. Cualquier cosa la vale.” Y todo el tiempo la pequeña sentada sobre los hombros de Etman mirando a la multitud épica con asombro; ninguna extravagancia estilo Harry Potter podría igualar esto.

Muchos de los manifestantes –tantos se reunían en la plaza ayer que el sitio de protesta se había desbordado a los puentes del río Nilo y a otras plazas del centro de El Cairo– venían por primera vez. Los soldados del Tercer Ejército de Egipto deben haber sido superados 40.000 a uno, estaban sentados en sus tanques y los carros blindados, sonriendo nerviosamente mientras los ancianos y los jóvenes y mujeres jóvenes estaban alrededor de sus tanques, durmiendo contra los blindados; una fuerza militar impotente por un ejército de disconformidad. Muchos decían que habían venido porque tenían miedo: porque temían que el mundo estuviera perdiendo interés en su lucha, porque Mubarak todavía no había abandonado su palacio, porque las multitudes eran más pequeñas en los últimos días, porque algunos de los equipos de camarógrafos habían partido hacia otras tragedias y otras dictaduras, porque el olor a traición estaba en el aire. Si la República de Tahrir se seca, entonces el despertar nacional se terminó. Pero ayer se confirmó que la revolución está viva.

Su error fue subestimar la habilidad del régimen para sobrevivir, para encender sus atormentadores, para apagar las cámaras y hostigar a la única voz de esa gente –los periodistas– y persuadir a aquellos viejos enemigos de revoluciones, los “moderados” a quienes ama Occidente, que envilecen su única exigencia. ¿Qué son cinco meses más si el viejo se va en septiembre? Hasta Amr Mou-ssa, el muy respetado favorito de los egipcios, resulta que quiere que el viejo siga hasta el final. Y en verdad, es la comprensión política de esta inocente pero a menudo no instruida masa.

Es fácil acusar a los cientos de miles de manifestantes pro democracia de ingenuidad, de simpleza mental, de confiar demasiado en Internet y Facebook. Hay una creciente evidencia de que la “realidad virtual” se convirtió en realidad para los jóvenes de Egipto, que habían comenzado a creer en la pantalla más que en la calle –y que cuando tomaron las calles, estaban profundamente shockeados por el estado de violencia y la fuerza física brutal del régimen continuaba–. Pero sin embargo, que la gente guste de esta nueva libertad es abrumador. ¿Cómo puede planear su revolución gente que ha vivido bajo la dictadura durante tanto tiempo? Nosotros en Occidente podemos olvidar esto. Estamos tan institucionalizados que todo en nuestro futuro está programado. Egipto es una tormenta de truenos sin dirección, una inundación de expresión popular que no se adapta prolijamente a nuestros libros de historia revolucionaria o nuestra meteorología política.

Tendremos que recordar que los dedos de hierro de este régimen hace tiempo que han crecido en la arena, más profundamente que las pirámides, más poderosos que una ideología. No hemos visto el fin de esta criatura. Ni su venganza.

* De The Independent, de Gran Bretaña. Especial para Páginal12.

Traducción: Celita Doyhambéhère.

Egipto, 14 días

2011-02-07T21:34:00.002-04:00

La oposición y los manifestantes desconfían de las promesas del régimen egipcio

El vicepresidente Suleimán, que ayer se reunió con los grupos anti-Mubarak, incluido un representante de los Hermanos Musulmanes, ofrece revisar la Constitución, pero no da garantías.- La multitud concentrada en El Cairo sigue exigiendo la dimisión de Mubarak

ENRIC GONZÁLEZ - El Cairo - 07/02/2011

El régimen egipcio resiste. Y demuestra que, con Hosni Mubarak o sin él, será difícil arrancarle concesiones significativas. El vicepresidente Omar Suleimán se reunió ayer con una delegación de opositores en la que figuraba un representante de los Hermanos Musulmanes. Eso supuso una novedad, ya que el ilegal movimiento islamista fue siempre el espantajo del régimen, la excusa de la dictadura...

Los rostros de la resistencia

Un médico, un investigador, una profesora, una estudiante y un parado cuentan por qué seguirán en la plaza de la Liberación hasta que Mubarak se vaya

GEORGINA HIGUERAS | El Cairo 07/02/201

Los Hermanos Musulmanes, pioneros del islamismo político, buscan la moderación

G. HIGUERAS | El Cairo (Enviada Especial) 07/02/2011

Los Hermanos Musulmanes, cuyos delegados se reunieron este domingo -pese a ser una organización ilegal? con el vicepresidente Omar Suleimán para buscar una salida a la crisis que azota Egipto, son los pioneros del islamismo político y los inspiradores de buena parte de los grupos islámicos radicales. Sin embargo, en la actual revuelta los Hermanos Musulmanes han tenido un especial interés en mostrar su cara más moderada, su voluntad de diálogo y su disposición a formar parte del nuevo Egipto democrático como una fuerza política más.

Hasan al Bana fundó en 1928 los Hermanos Musulmanes para expandir los valores islámicos entre una población que se occidentalizaba bajo el dominio británico. Combinó la labor caritativa, con la educativa. Además de enseñar los principios islámicos se defendía un Estado libre del yugo colonial y gobernado por la sharía o ley islámica. Ahora, aunque no han renunciado a su imposición, aseguran que no es ese su objetivo.

Enfrentados de forma cada día más violenta al poder colonial, los Hermanos Musulmanes fueron ilegalizados en 1948, después de que se les acusara de estar detrás del asesinato del entonces primer ministro Mahmud al Nugrashi. Aunque Al Bana lo rechazó, fue asesinado poco después por, según sus seguidores, policías vestidos de civiles.

La organización no fue legalizada hasta la caída de la monarquía y la salida de los británicos, tras el golpe de Estado de Gamal Abdel Nasser. Los Hermanos Musulmanes llegaron a la nueva República como una fuerza muy compacta cuya filosofía se radicalizaba con los sermones de Sayid Qutb, su principal ideólogo tras la desaparición del fundador.

El periodo de gracia duró apenas dos años. La animadversión entre Nasser y los Hermanos Musulmanes fue evidente. El atentado fallido contra el presidente más popular de Egipto, en 1954, sirvió para desatar la caza de miembros de esta organización.

La llegada de Anuar el Sadat, en 1970, tras el fallecimiento de su predecesor, mejoró la situación de los Hermanos Musulmanes, bajo cuyo paraguas comenzaban a surgir grupos armados mucho más violentos, como la Yihad Islámica, y posteriormente la misma Al Qaeda. Sadat fue víctima, en 1981, de la Yihad Islámica por haber firmado la paz con Israel.

Al subir al poder, Hosni Mubarak optó por una cierta tolerancia de la organización, en cuyas filas ganaban espacio los moderados. En 2000 se les autorizó a acudir a las urnas como independientes y obtuvieron 17 escaños. Cuando en las elecciones de 2005 se hicieron con el 20% de los diputados, el régimen se sintió amenazado. De nuevo, muchos miembros de la organización fueron detenidos.

La actual revuelta les pilló desprevenidos y hasta pasados un par de días no se sumaron a ella. La organización, dirigida por Mohamed Badie, sabe que se juega la posibilidad de hacer historia y formar parte de un Gobierno de unidad nacional que siente las bases de un Egipto democrático.

Egipto aprende a convivir en la plaza de la Liberación

Fieles de diferentes credos se congregan en una oración

NURIA TESÓN - El Cairo - 07/02/2011

Los manifestantes llevan a hombros a un musulmán con un Corán (izquierda) y a un copto con una cruz.- REUTERS

Egipto, centro de atención mundial tras 14 días de protesta

2011-02-07T21:22:00.001-04:00

Ola de cambio en el mundo árabe

La plaza de la Liberación se pertrecha para una larga resistencia hasta la marcha de Mubarak

La reunión del Gobierno con la oposición para ofrecer reformas no aplaca la protesta y en la plaza de la Liberación, epicentro de las protestas, aumentan los acampados.- El Ejecutivo anuncia que subirá los salarios de los funcionarios un 15%

G. HIGUERAS/ E. GONZÁLEZ/ N. TESÓN | Enviados especiales en El Cairo 07/02/2011

Los manifestantes, en la plaza de la Liberación de El Cairo, tras 14 días de protesta.- EFE

Reacios ante las moderadas propuestas de reforma del Gobierno, los manifestantes de la plaza de la Liberación se preparan para una larga resistencia. No cederán hasta que el presidente Hosni Mubarak se vaya. El recinto, centro neurálgico de las masivas protestas contra el régimen, se ha llenado de nuevo hoy, tras dos semanas de manifestaciones, con integrantes de todas las capas sociales. Entre los que permanecen concentrados aumentan quienes deciden acampar, dispuestos a aguantar lo que haga falta hasta la marcha del rais. El presidente se ha reunido esta mañana por primera vez con el nuevo Gobierno en pleno y ha anunciado un aumento salarial para los empleados públicos.

Son varios miles de ciudadanos, la mayoría hombres, que organizan marchas y cánticos, desde primeras horas de la mañana. Sobre todo intentan impedir que los tanques del Ejército abandonen la plaza (algunos incluso duermen entre las ruedas de los vehículos). Entienden que su presencia garantiza que la revuelta pueda continuar y ofrecen cierta protección ante el hostigamiento de los partidarios del Gobierno. El clamor resuena en el centro de El Cairo. "¡Vete! ¡Mubarak, vete!", gritan los manifestantes. Desde EE UU, el presidente Barack Obama ha avisado esta mañana de que Egipto "ya no volverá a ser lo que era", y en una nueva comparecencia, horas más tarde, ha asegurado que se han hecho "progresos" en el proceso político. Pero ese proceso es todavía muy débil. Un dirigente de los Hermanos Musulmanes ha asegurado que podrían retirarse de las conversaciones si el Gobierno no se hace eco de sus peticiones. "Nuestra principal demanda", ha recordado Essam el Erian a Reuters, "es que Mubarak se vaya". Mientras, el país trata poco a poco de volver a la normalidad y sólo lo consigue a duras penas. Los bancos han reabierto pero las escuelas y la bolsa siguen cerrados, según informa la BBC.

El Gobierno, sin embargo, resiste y demuestra que, con Mubarak o sin él, será difícil arrancarle concesiones significativas. Tras la reunión del Consejo de Ministros, se ha anunciado una subida salarial del 15% a los funcionarios y la creación la un fondo para indemnizar a los comercios afectados por las revueltas. Han sido las primeras medidas, anunciadas por la agencia oficial MENA y recogidas por France Presse, tras el encuentro que mantuvo ayer el vicepresidente, Omar Suleimán, con la oposición.

Suleimán se reunió con una delegación de opositores en la que figuraba un representante de los Hermanos Musulmanes. Eso supuso una novedad, ya que el ilegal movimiento islamista fue siempre el espantajo del régimen, la excusa de la dictadura.

El vicepresidente ofreció ampliar la libertad de prensa, liberar a los presos "de conciencia", establecer una comisión consultiva sobre la reforma de la Constitución y cancelar, en un futuro indeterminado, un estado de excepción que dura desde 1981. Los delegados de la oposición abandonaron la reunión entre dubitativos y decepcionados. Llevaban dos semanas exigiendo la dimisión del presidente y asegurando que no negociarían mientras no se cumpliera esa reivindicación. Su encuentro con Suleimán se desarrolló, sin embargo, bajo un gran retrato del dictador, un punto simbólico a favor del inmovilismo. Ahmed Shafiq, el primer ministro, insistió de nuevo en que Mubarak agotaría su mandato y solo dejaría el cargo en septiembre, cuando se eligiera un nuevo presidente.

Sin grandes compromisos

Un análisis de las propuestas de Suleimán indicaba la determinación del régimen, ahora ya sinónimo de Ejército, de regular cuidadosamente los gestos de apertura y de no comprometerse demasiado. Ofreció, por ejemplo, liberar a los centenares de detenidos desde el martes 25, pero a la vez siguió arrestando a activistas y periodistas extranjeros y, sobre todo, a ciudadanos egipcios. Sin embargo, hoy se ha producido la liberación de algunos arrestados en las protestas. Entre otros, un alto cargo de la compañía estadounidense Google. Otro gesto de cambio ha sido el interrogatorio por parte de fiscales militares al anterior ministro del Interior, Habib el Adli, a quien han pedido explicaciones sobre su actuación en los primeros días de protestas. Según una fuente de seguridad citada por Reuters, El Adli está acusado de ordenar la retirada de las fuerzas de seguridad de las calles el día 28 de ese mes, lo que provocó un enorme caos (y el consiguiente relevo de Gabinete en el que perdió su cargo), a la vez que les autorizó para disparar fuego real contra los manifestantes.

En el proceso político, la idea de crear una comisión sobre la reforma constitucional que debería alcanzar conclusiones a principios de marzo resultaba atractiva; sin embargo, no existía garantía alguna de que esas conclusiones fueran a ser aceptadas. ¿Libertad de prensa? La hegemónica televisión pública seguía ofreciendo una cobertura aberrante de la crisis, mostrando imágenes de apoyo a Mubarak y atribuyendo la revuelta a espías y conspiradores extranjeros. Esos mensajes de fomento a la paranoia colectiva calaban en amplias capas de la sociedad. En un comunicado tras la reunión, Suleimán insistió en referirse a "elementos extranjeros que trabajan para minar nuestra estabilidad".

Continúan las protestas en la calle

La reunión de Suleimán con la oposición no convenció ayer a la multitud de la plaza de la Liberación. Arreciaron los gritos contra Mubarak y la voluntad de mantener la protesta (que ayer congregó de nuevo a muchas decenas de miles) hasta lograr sus objetivos, que incluyen la dimisión inmediata de Mubarak. También creció cierta desconfianza frente al Ejército, hasta ahora mimado por la multitud. Los esfuerzos militares por levantar las barricadas que protegían a los manifestantes, por reducir su espacio y por aislarlos del resto de El Cairo, junto a las peticiones de disolución de la protesta lanzadas por el ministro de Defensa y del jefe del Estado Mayor, dejaban pocas dudas sobre hacia dónde se inclinaban los mandos del Ejército.

Liberado un alto cargo de Google desaparecido tras participar en una manifestación

Acaba de ser puesto en libertad, Wael Ghonim, uno de los líderes de las protestas que se desarrollan desde el pasado 25 de enero en El Cairo. El joven responsable de Marketing de Google para Oriente Medio y el Norte de África, llevaba en paradero desconocido desde el pasado 27 de enero. Ha sido puesto en libertad esta tarde. Vivía en El Cairo, Egipto, y lo último que sus amigos sabían de él fueron unos mensajes que dejó en la red social twitter .

En la plaza de Tahrir le aclaman como un líder y llevaban pancartas con su nombre. Al mismo tiempo, los medios afines al Gobierno de Mubarak le presentaban como un traidor al régimen. El domingo, las autoridades egipcias, que hasta el momento habían permanecido en silencio, hablaron por fin y anunciaron su intención de liberarle. Según el multimillonario Naguib Sawiris, quien confirmó que el vicepresidente Omar Suleiman le había garantizado la liberación de Wael Ghonim, "es un heróe" para el pueblo egipcio.

NURIA TESÓN

Opinión

2011-01-30T13:04:00.000-04:00

El apoyo de los demócratas de Occidente

Por Eduardo Febbro

Desde París

p>Hosni Mubarak no tardará en reunirse con sus hermanos de sangre en el amplio panteón universal de los dictadores. Justicia, policía, derechos civiles, libertad de expresión, procesos electorales, no hay territorio democrático donde el régimen del presidente egipcio no haya pisoteado sus fundamentos. Y todo ocurría ante el asfixiante silencio de las democracias occidentales que le perdonaron a ese aliado central las violaciones a todos los valores que esas mismas democracias defienden, promueven y reiteran como esencia de la identidad occidental. Y sin embargo, lo mismo que ocurrió con la caída del corrupto presidente de Túnez y su clan –Ben Alí–, Occidente salió corriendo detrás de los hechos, se pegó a la cola de la historia que los pueblos estaban cambiando sin haber sido capaz de anticipar la proximidad de la fractura.

En el juego de las relaciones internacionales, Ben Alí y Mubarak eran aliados y amigos necesarios. En ese festival de alianzas y contradicciones, nadie se salva del oprobio, ni siquiera la izquierda del Viejo Continente. Los socialistas y los conservadores europeos que, con una tardanza cómica, se sumaron a media voz al apoyo a la Revolución de los Jazmines que estalló en Túnez son los mismos que pasaban sus vacaciones y sus mejores fines de semana en los palacios del dictador tunecino. Los demócratas ejemplares mantenían con el antídoto de cualquier democracia relaciones carnales.

Con Hosni Mubarak el vicio es todavía más imperdonable y la hipocresía no puede ocultar sus rasgos detrás de los tardíos llamados al cambio, a las reformas democráticas, al respeto del derecho de los pueblos a decidir por sí mismos. Del otro lado del Mediterráneo, durante décadas y décadas los pueblos no decidieron sino que fueron los intereses de las grandes potencias los que, en su afán de estabilidad y su obsesión por contar con interlocutores seguros, pasaron por la soga del silencio las abrumadoras violaciones a todos los derechos. Estados Unidos en primer lugar. El abanderado de la democracia mundial hizo de Egipto el aliado árabe de más trascendencia en la región. Mientras la estabilidad interna estuviese garantizada, poco importaba lo que ocurriera adentro. El Cairo cuenta, además, con atributos excepcionales que le valieron un perdón proporcionalmente excepcional. Entre las palabras y los hechos había un abismo en el que, de Túnez hasta Siria, pasando por Marruecos, Argelia, Jordania y Egipto, caían en el olvido miles y miles de inocentes.

Socio decisivo de la paz en Medio Oriente, guardián del estratégico Canal de Suez, modelo de posible exportación para otros países de la región, antídoto contra el islamismo radical, Egipto contó con el beneplácito y el respaldo de todos los sistemas democráticos del planeta, incluido el de las recobradas democracias latinoamericanas cuya historia pagó el peor de los tributos a la insaciable voracidad dictatorial de los militares. En 2010, la ayuda que Estados Unidos proporcionó a Egipto a cambio de su participación activa y positiva en el proceso de paz de Medio Oriente alcanzó los 1,3 mil millones de dólares mientras que la ayuda económica directa sumó 250 millones de dólares.

Egipto es el segundo receptor de la ayuda de Washington, justo detrás de Israel. La Unión Europea suministra una ayuda estrecha a El Cairo, unos 600 millones de euros, pero, en cambio, es su primer socio comercial en suministros con un intercambio de 15 mil millones de dólares y el primer inversor. La suma de la ayuda estadounidense es gigantesca y sirvió para mantener en pie una dictadura con el pretexto de un proceso de paz en punto muerto y el sacrosanto principio de luchar contra el fundamentalismo religioso. El miedo al Islam radical y antioccidental desempeñó un papel inverso: fue un espantapájaros para las verdaderas reformas democráticas, atrasó la emergencia de verdaderas corrientes progresistas y, a su manera brutal y descarnada, congeló la historia de millones de individuos y mantuvo en el poder la versión más ilegítima de gobierno. Compra de votos, represión, estructura policial del poder. La misma línea ha adoptado Israel. El país que se congratula por ser el único régimen auténticamente democrático de la región ha guardado un prolongado y temeroso silencio ante el nacimiento de un movimiento popular, joven y democrático en un país a la vez vecino y aliado.

Todo parece demostrar que, en ese segmento del mundo, la democracia es lo que más infunde miedo a los demócratas de Occidente. En la primera década del siglo XXI los pueblos árabes empiezan a deshacer las vendas del miedo con que sus gobiernos amordazaron sus voces y su libertad. Sería necesario que Occidente también deshiciera las suyas, esas vendan que le hacen tener miedo a la democracia según la zona geográfica en la cual ésta se expande.

Mujeres de Egipto (por Leil-Zahra Mortada)

2011-01-30T12:40:00.000-04:00

Women of Egypt

For everyone who has been asking where the women of Egypt are! I´m trying to compile all the photos with Egyptian women in them. A homage to all those women out there fighting, and whose voices and faces are hidden from the public eye! p.s. few of these ... photos were compiled by me, the rest were sent by people from all over after I published the album! I´m so grateful for everyone who is sending me photos and links, tagging me..etc. p.s. 2 I´m trying to confirm that all of these photos are from Egypt, if I publish any by mistake, forgive me! All revolutions are one in the end! If you have photos of women during the Egyptian revolution, please send me a link, or a message! The album seems to be picking up quite fast! Let´s pay these women and the people of Egypt the tribute they deserve for inspiring all of us! And here is a collection of photos dedicated to the women of Tunisia (from Le Monde - thanks to Raida) http://ow.ly/3MDyZ Tahya Tunes, Tahya MasrVer más

De: Leil-Zahra Mortada

Facebook http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1618687786179&set=a.1543235379916.2074877.1205911830#!/album.php?aid=268523&id=586357675&fbid=493689677675

China - Estados Unidos

2011-01-29T16:29:00.000-04:00

China's Confucius Institutes

(The Economist) Jan 20th 2011 | BEIJING | from PRINT EDITION

A WEEK before President Hu Jintao’s visit to America on January 18th the appearance of a giant bronze statue of Confucius on the east side of Tiananmen Square caused a stir in the Chinese capital. He is the first non-revolutionary to be commemorated on the hallowed ground of Chinese communism. The party, having once vilified the ancient sage, now depends on him in its attempts at global rebranding.

Mao Zedong, the only other figure permanently honoured at Tiananmen (a portrait of Sun Yat-sen is displayed twice a year), is considered a bit too controversial among foreigners to be part of this image-moulding effort. In 2004 China began setting up language schools abroad to extend its cultural reach. They were called Confucius Institutes, apparently to boost their appeal by disguising any links with communism.

During his trip to America, Mr Hu hopes Confucius will help him connect with ordinary Americans. His itinerary includes a visit to a high school in Chicago that is home to a Confucius Institute. Of about 320 such institutes worldwide, over one-fifth are in America. The United States is also home to more than 200 offshoot “Confucius Classrooms”.

China has been careful not to encourage these language centres to act as overt purveyors of the party’s political viewpoints, and little suggests they are doing so. But officials do say that an important goal is to give the world a “correct” understanding of China. An online Confucius Institute, also supported by the Chinese government, includes an article noting the “active” efforts of some unspecified Confucius Institutes in opposing independence for Tibet and Xinjiang, pro-democracy activism and the Falun Gong sect.

Promoting Confucianism is not part of their remit. Party officials use Confucius as a Father-Christmas-like symbol of avuncular Chineseness rather than as the proponent of a philosophical outlook. (Mao was more concerned with the philosophy, which he rallied the nation to attack as a legacy of the bad old days.) The new Confucius statue, on the other hand, appears to have struck a wrong note. Of more than 820,000 responses to an online poll conducted by the party newspaper, the People’s Daily, 62% opposed it. Mr Hu’s efforts at rebranding need some more explaining at home.

Sociología

2011-01-29T16:24:00.000-04:00

Daniel Bell

(Prospect Magazine) Anthony Dworkin

20th October 2000

Between the 1950s and 1970s this American sociologist mapped out the intellectual terrain of the centre-left

The New York stock exchange pictured in 1963 (above). Daniel Bell’s work ‘The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism’ grew out of his concern at the decline of American morals

The British political season is about to begin again. Within the next year we face the prospect of a general election-the first contest of Tony Blair’s “progressive century.” With this in mind, Labour’s party conference will be an occasion for stocktaking and thinking ahead. By all accounts, the party’s strategists are not finding it easy to put together a package of firm policies that they can hold out to the voters as their programme for a second term. But the underlying vision which sustains New Labour remains intact and overwhelmingly popular.

It is no longer fashionable to call it the third way, but the worldview which animates the Blair government is now familiar to the point of cliché. We live in a post-industrial society, where class distinctions and the old verities of left and right have lost much of their meaning. The government’s role in this new world should be to promote opportunity by enhancing people’s skills and education, and to prevent the exclusion of the disadvantaged. Above all, in Blair’s case, there is a semi-religious vision of community. While market capitalism is an unrivalled engine of prosperity, it also tends to break down the ties which bind us together. The political challenge is to reinforce solidarity without undermining growth.

The third way has had its critics, but the charges levelled against it have mostly been either of vacuity or of conservatism. On the novelty of their ideas, Blair and his favourite academic Anthony Giddens have been taken at their word. Yet the modern centre-left outlook has its genealogy; it is striking how much of it was anticipated by an American thinker, who put the basic elements in place 30 years ago.

The sociologist Daniel Bell is the unacknowledged prophet of the third way. In a path-breaking series of articles and books written between the 1950s and the 1970s, he mapped out the intellectual terrain on which the modernising centre-left has now pitched its tent. At the time, he was often an isolated figure, pilloried by both left and right. From today’s perspective, whether you agree with him or not, his work stands out as astonishingly prescient in its anticipation of the concerns and concepts which dominate political debate in both Britain and the US.

Daniel Bell is hardly an unrecognised thinker. In 1995, the Times Literary Supplement included two of his works, The End of Ideology and The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, in a list of the 100 most influential books written since 1945. Yet in Britain, Bell’s writing is not widely known among the younger generation of politicians, intellectuals and activists.

To some extent, Bell has suffered from the fact that his intellectual style is rooted in a world which has disappeared. He came to prominence as one of the so-called “New York intellectuals”-a group of mostly Jewish, ex-student radicals who colonised the highbrow end of American journalism in the middle decades of the last century. From the Jewish tradition of textual exposition, Bell and his peers developed a love of argument and high theory. They also had vast intellectual ambition. Bell himself once defined a New York intellectual as someone “who can speak for 15 minutes on any subject in the world.”

In his work and in conversation, Bell comes across as a compulsive spinner of ideas, restlessly processing a huge database of reading and information into a sequence of elaborate constructions. He has an undoubted knack for what would now be called a soundbite-”the end of ideology” or “post-industrial society”-but anyone who sits down to read his books must be prepared for some heavy work. The writer Michael Lind, who is an admirer of Bell, once compared The Coming of Post-Industrial Society to one of those legendary Chinese examinations in which candidates were supposed to write down everything they knew. The effect is amplified by Bell’s habit of garlanding new editions of his works with successive prefaces, forewords, afterwords and codas.

If the density and erudition of his writing sets Bell apart from contemporary journalistic social commentators, neither does he fit easily into the specialised world of university sociology. Although he taught at Chicago, Columbia and Harvard, he has always seemed happier as a wide-ranging critic than as an academic technician. Most of his important writing has appeared in intellectual magazines such as Partisan Review, Commentary, Encounter and The Public Interest rather than in academic journals. According to Alan Wolfe, a leading American sociologist, Bell has always been marginal to academic sociology. “But,” he adds, “I think that says more about academia than about Bell, because for me he is easily the greatest sociological mind now living.”

Looking back on his first important work, The End of Ideology, Bell once wrote that it fused “the experiences of my generation with a judgement about human nature and history.” He was born in 1919 and grew up in a Yiddish-speaking household in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Like many poor young Jews, he embraced socialism-joining the Young People’s Socialist League at the age of 13. He likes to tell the story of how, when he went for his bar mitzvah, he told the rabbi that he had found socialism and didn’t believe in God. “So, kid, you don’t believe in God,” the rabbi replied. “Tell me, you think God cares?”

Bell later said that socialism gave him a way out of his immigrant neighbourhood into a wider world: “It revealed a world of ideas, a world of experience, a world of imagination… one became almost greedy in reaching for this.” At City College of New York, he found himself in the company of a group of bright and ambitious fellow students from similar backgrounds. Many of them would go on with Bell to form the core of the New York intelligentsia of their generation; among them Irving Kristol, Nathan Glazer, and Irving Howe. All four, at that time, were socialists or Trotskyists, and they conducted a running battle with the communist students who gathered in an adjoining alcove in the college cafeteria.

Bell and his friends were already fervent anti-Stalinists, but their views evolved after the US entered the war against Hitler and the true nature of Nazi and Soviet rule came to light. “Living through the 1930s and 1940s was a heartbreak house,” Bell later wrote. “There had been the Nazi death camps, barbarism beyond imagining; and the Soviet concentration camps, which cast a pall on all utopian visions. How was one to explain them?” In his twenties, Bell turned away from the idealistic dreams of his early years and, under the influence of theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, embraced a more sceptical view of human nature. “Ours is a generation that finds its wisdom in pessimism, evil, tragedy and despair,” he concluded.

Despite the gloom of Bell’s intellectual outlook, he continues to display-even in his eighties-a certain irrepressibility of spirit. According to him, “Optimism of the will, pessimism of the heart, has been the unresolved tension of my temperament.” Nevertheless, for Bell and many of his intellectual cohort, the evident bankruptcy of socialist utopianism brought a new appreciation of the checks and balances of the American liberal tradition during the 1950s. Distrustful of “emotion in politics, and of the politics of passions and hatreds,” Bell argued that the grand ideological visions of the 19th century had been exhausted. At the same time, he detected “a rough consensus among intellectuals on political issues”-by which he meant an acceptance of the welfare state, a mixed economy and political pluralism. Together, these arguments furnished the central thesis of The End of Ideology, which was published in 1960.

Bell admits that the notion that ideology had ended was by no means his alone. “I was part of a whole milieu in which these ideas were percolating,” he told me. He lists Tony Crosland, Raymond Aron and Ralf Dahrendorf as influences. Nevertheless, it was Bell who gave the concept its sharpest and most effective formulation. He captured an emerging sense that politics in western societies was becoming a debate about means rather than ultimate ends, and that the questions that remained to be solved were mostly technical. It was now accepted, he wrote, that “the dream of organising a society by blueprint was bound to fail,” and that the focus of government should be “within a framework of liberal values, on problem-solving as a means of remedying social ills.”

Rather like Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man-which 30 years later raised the argument to a global level-Bell’s book was controversial. It was seized on by the student radicals in the early 1960s as a symbol of what they were fighting against. “He got hammered,” recalls Todd Gitlin, who was then a leader of Students for a Democratic Society and now teaches sociology in New York. “In the New Left we were proud to be ideological… Bell was seen as complacent.” In fact, as Gitlin now admits, much of the criticism was unfair. Bell was not a defender of the status quo, but an advocate of incremental social change. His outlook matched that of the liberals who gathered in the Kennedy and early Johnson administrations: they sought to expand opportunity without any large-scale redistribution of wealth or challenge to the underlying structure of society.

During the upsurge of the New Left and then the New Right, it was easy to make fun of Bell’s argument. But the radicals of the 1960s never came up with a plausible economic programme, and the market fundamentalists of the 1980s never won popular support for an all-out attack on the state. Now, once again, we are said to live in a “post-ideological” age. Based on consensus and guided by task-forces, Blair’s technocratic reformism (and Clinton’s bite-sized public policy) is the embodiment of Bell’s prediction. When I asked Bell what he thought about Anthony Giddens’s 1994 book Beyond Left and Right, he chuckled. “The argument is a pretty good one,” he told me. “It’s just 30 years behind the times.”

The 1960s were difficult years for Bell’s rationalist welfare liberalism. Alarmed by the anti-authority gestures of the counter-culture and the breakdown of the social fabric in America’s big cities, many of his fellow-thinkers drifted to the right. Bell’s old college friend Irving Kristol, with whom he had founded the journal The Public Interest in 1965, was a leading figure in the movement which became known as neo-conservatism. Neo-conservatives argued that activist social policy was subject to a “law of unintended consequences” and tended to do more harm than good. Kristol once described a neo-conservative as “a liberal who’s been mugged by reality.”

Bell himself has often been labelled a neo-conservative, but he rejects the description. He shared many of his friends’ concerns about ill-thought-out public policy and about the hostility of the 1960s sensibility to tradition. At the same time, he continued to mount an anguished defence of some disputed liberal programmes, including affirmative action for minorities, which was to become a touchstone for neo-conservatives. In the watershed 1972 election, when many former liberals gave their support to Richard Nixon, Bell voted with reluctance for the left-wing Democrat, George McGovern. He argued that the neo-conservatives were letting their distrust of ideology turn into an ideology in itself. Nevertheless, the debates of the period spurred him to refine his thoughts about social and cultural change and led to the two books which constitute his most important legacy.

The first of these was The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, sub-titled “A Venture in Social Forecasting.” In the book, Bell posits a theory which has since become a commonplace: that the processing of knowledge was replacing the manufacture of goods as the characteristic activity of advanced societies, and that this would have far-reaching social consequences. Instead of manipulating tools, the new worker would be engaged in “a game between persons.” Building on his earlier writing, Bell argued that traditional class distinctions had less relevance in this new context. In a post-industrial society, what would count was educational attainment and access to knowledge. He predicted that a new knowledge class would come to occupy the top rung of the social ladder.

Where the old left attributed social disharmony to a shortage of resources, Bell suggested that post-industrial society would see new kinds of scarcity: scarcity of time, and scarcity of information. Technological change would bring rising standards of living, but not necessarily greater equality. Against the egalitarians of the left, he argued that a technical society required mobility based on merit and skill, and “a more differentiated and intellectual educational system.” Politics in the future would not be about redistribution but about community and “the inclusion of disadvantaged groups.” A truly Blairite formulation.

Bell followed The Coming of Post-Industrial Society with a look at the link between economics and culture. The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, published in 1976, grew out of his concern at the decline of American morals. It was a pessimistic book, and accounts for Bell’s reputation as a modern Jeremiah. But his analysis offered no comfort to the declinists of the right. Instead of blaming the moral laxity of modern society on liberalism, he argued that it was inherent in capitalism itself.

Bell followed Max Weber in attributing the take-off of capitalism to the protestant ethic, with its emphasis on asceticism and discipline. But there was always another strand to the capitalist mentality-a restless, striving, individual acquisitiveness. The two halves of the divided bourgeois soul were in tension with each other. Gradually, the traditional values which had given meaning to the capitalist economy came to be overwhelmed by the desires it had unleashed.

There were a number of stages in Bell’s diagnosis of decline. One was the advent of cultural modernism, which drew on the same individualist energies as business enterprise. It broke the bonds of artistic tradition and asserted the centrality of the self. Modernist culture promoted “the idea of boundless experiment… of unconstrained sensibility, of impulse being superior to order, of the imagination being immune to merely rational criticism.” At first these were the values of the avant-garde, confined to an urban elite. However, the coming of mass society in the 20th century allowed them to permeate popular culture and led to the excesses of the 1960s.

At the same time, social changes such as urbanisation, mass communication and easy credit were turning the US into a consumer society. People came to define themselves through spending as much as working, and consumerism encouraged them to gratify their every desire. The deferred gratification of early capitalist production yielded to the instant gratification of later capitalist consumption. Thus, cultural and economic forces conspired to undermine the restraint and morality that had given birth to capitalism and were needed to hold it together. Social values were no longer concerned with “how to work and achieve, but how to spend and enjoy,” Bell wrote. “When the protestant ethic was sundered from bourgeois society, only hedonism remained… the elements that provide men with common identification and effective reciprocity”-family, church and community-lost their hold, and people’s “capacity to maintain sustained relations with each other” was destroyed.

In some respects Cultural Contradictions reads like a product of its times. Bell’s discussion of the 1960s counter-culture overstates the importance of some silly attitude-striking on the part of over-privileged youth. He also seems insensitive to the gains in social tolerance which grew out of the challenge to authority. There is a stodgy quality to his analysis which blinds him to the idealism and vitality of the social movements of the time. In that respect, Todd Gitlin argues, “Bell’s view of the counterculture was always very thin. You could say that he never really ‘got it.’” However, Gitlin concedes that Cultural Contradictions “turns out to have been a very smart book,” and that with hindsight, its central idea about the inherent tensions in capitalism “seems to be basically right.”

Indeed, in most ways, the book seems prophetic. In the 25 years since it was published the impact of an aggressively hedonistic ethos has become far more pervasive in parts of the west. In an Afterword to the latest edition of the book he quotes the example of a gangsta rap record label, condemned for the violence and obscenity of its lyrics, that was dropped by its corporate owner-only to be quietly signed up by another one. Even if one does not share his concern about rap lyrics the implications of his argument reach far beyond the culture wars of the last 20 years. Today it seems indisputable that the difficulty of maintaining the values of social solidarity and decency in an individualistic consumer society is the political problem of our time-echoed in Blairite discussions about “social capital” and “civil society.” Most of the communitarian strand in centre-left politics is an elaboration of the questions Bell raised. According to Alan Wolfe, “the idea that people’s lives are somehow up in the air, that the economic transformations of our time have left a cultural gap that we need to address, that all comes out of his work.”

If there is one thing that Bell failed to anticipate, it is the decline of the big organisation. The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, for all its insight into the coming information age, still envisages a largely bureaucratic economy. Similarly, Cultural Contradictions portrays a conflict between disciplined, hierarchical producers and hedonistic, acquisitive consumers. In fact, the libertarian ethic of the new economy has produced a blurring of categories: computer-age yuppies who turn up to work in T-shirts and work out obsessively at weekends. The American writer David Brooks labels this new class “bourgeois bohemians” or “Bobos.” Brooks claims that the “counter-cultural capitalists” have constructed a new ethos which approaches work as a spiritual vocation and favours environmentalism over ostentation. They have resolved the contradictions of capitalism.

The idea that these new age knowledge workers are the pioneers of a more cohesive capitalism seems a little glib-they seem rather to exude a kind of spiritual narcissism. And while the flexible economy may have given the US a new surge of prosperity, for most workers it remains a source of risk as much as opportunity. This accounts for the striking fact that in this year’s presidential election, Al Gore has improved his standing in the polls by running against Bill Clinton’s legacy from the left. Bell’s diagnosis of capitalism’s vulnerability remains more convincing than Brooks’s celebration of its new vigour.

Asked about his political views, Bell says that he remains “a social democrat in economics, a liberal in politics, and a conservative in culture.” He believes every society has an obligation to give people “that degree of decency to allow them to feel that they are citizens.” At the same time, he believes in the liberal principle of individual rights, and “the individual achievement of social position on the basis of merit.” Finally, he argues that there is a moral basis to social cohesion and that some element of continuity with tradition is “essential to the vitality of a culture.”

In his personal style and tastes, Bell is much more old-fashioned than today’s third way politicians. Bill Clinton and Tony Blair have more than a touch of the Bobo ethos themselves. Nevertheless, his three-part formulation, in its aspirations and ambiguities, captures something essential about the values of the modern centre-left. For his part, Bell looks on New Labour and the New Democrats with a kind of paternalistic approval. “In principle I do sympathise with their approach,” he told me. “The issue of how do you accept the market, but absorb it within a social framework, is clearly the right one to be thinking about.” He also endorses their rejection of egalitarian redistribution in favour of an opportunity-based approach.

The questions begged by Bell’s politics and the third way are similar. With his lifelong distrust of “emotion in politics,” he tends to ignore the value of political passion in creating a broad constituency for reform; popular participation remains essential to democratic politics. The intrinsic conflict between meritocracy and an inclusive society may also be greater than Bell, or the third-wayers, admit. And what happens when the social values of the majority impinge on the rights of the few? Bell the liberal has always rejected political interference in people’s private lives; but such a stance may not be consistent with his ambition to reverse the supposed decline of decency. Bell’s own life has been lucky enough for him to believe that these tensions are bearable, even if they can’t be resolved. His pessimism of the heart remains balanced by his optimism of the will. n

La impunidad ante delitos como el esclavismo sería un retroceso de siglos para la democracia en la región

2011-01-20T21:07:00.000-04:00

Defensora de los derechos de los haitianos pide apresar y juzgar a Duvalier

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Santo Domingo, 20 ene (EFE).- La activista dominicana de ascendencia haitiana Sonia Pierre pidió hoy a la comunidad internacional apoyar a los defensores de los derechos humanos en Haití para que se pueda apresar y juzgar al exdictador Jean Claude Duvalier, quien regresó el domingo por sorpresa a ese país. Seguir leyendo el arículo

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Foro: República Dominicana

Ante la falta de institucionalidad en Haití "esperamos que la comunidad internacional y los derechos humanos puedan alzar la voz", dijo a Efe Pierre, quien en 2010 recibió el Premio Internacional a las Mujeres con Coraje de la primera dama de EE.UU., Michelle Obama, y de la secretaria de Estado, Hillary Clinton.

Para la activista, Duvalier, conocido como "Baby Doc", encabezó unas de las dictaduras "más sangrientas y represivas en América", y su retorno al inestable y empobrecido Haití "representa un retroceso".

"Si bien es cierto que hace 25 años que salió (De Haití) y que la nueva generación no tiene en mente la represión, los crímenes y los saqueos (...) hay una generación que sufre y padece los desmanes de este señor", apostilló Pierre, quien en 2010 también fue condecorada por el presidente haitiano, René Préval, por su lucha a favor de los derechos de los haitianos que viven en República Dominicana.

Duvalier gobernó Haití de 1971 a 1986 como sucesor de su padre, Francois Duvalier, quien lo había hecho desde 1957.

Los Duvalier lideraron un régimen al que se considera responsable de numerosos crímenes y del desvío de sumas millonarias pertenecientes a los fondos del Estado.

En 1987, "Baby Doc" fue juzgado ante un tribunal por una demanda civil por el presunto desvío en beneficio propio de 120 millones de dólares de fondos del Estado, y en 1991 se presentó otra demanda por el supuesto robo de 800 millones que al parecer tenía en distintos bancos de Estados Unidos, Suiza y Francia.

El pasado martes, el exdictador quedó en libertad tras prestar declaración en la Fiscalía de Puerto Príncipe, pero acusado de desvío de capitales durante su mandato (1971-1986).

Un día después cuatro haitianos, entre ellos una ex portavoz de la Organización de las Naciones Unidas (ONU), presentaron denuncias por crímenes de lesa humanidad contra Duvalier

Para Pierre, la puesta en libertad del exdictador y las posteriores declaraciones de sus abogados de que éste no descarta retornar a la política es "algo insólito", pero señala que en Haití "todo es posible"

"Si bien dicen que la ley no puede juzgarlo porque los casos prescribieron, debe haber una forma de inhabilitarlo", sugirió, al tiempo que lamentó que en Haití "el pueblo decida algo, pero los que toman las decisiones decidan otra cosa".

"Los crímenes siguen vivos en la memoria de la gente que los vivió, las huellas quedan y están ahí", subrayó la activista de ascendencia haitiana, que también ha sido galardonada con el prestigioso Premio Robert F. Kennedy de los Derechos Humanos.

La mujer también reprochó el momento elegido por Duvalier para regresar a Haití, un año después del potente terremoto que asoló la capital de ese país y otras ciudades dejando unos 300.000 muertos, igual cantidad de heridos y 1,5 millones de damnificados.

Pierre afirmó que "Baby Doc" entró a Haití "con la anuencia de alguien", y adelantó que partidarios de su régimen, algunos residentes en la República Dominicana y que tienen poder económico, preparan su regreso al vecino país para apoyar los planes del exdictador.

Jean Claude Duvalier apareció de sorpresa el domingo en Puerto Príncipe después de 25 años de exilio en Francia y todavía no ha explicado los motivos de su retorno al país caribeño.

Derechos de autor, la coartada

2011-01-20T20:08:00.000-04:00

Siguiendo el caso español, se puede decir que lo que buscan los políticos son más herramientas de control y coherción sobre la sociedad civil y las posibilidades que ella ha encontrado en la red. Esto es un hecho que no pueden ocultar. Los primeros grandes vampiros de los artistas son sus empresas editoras y represantantes ¿de cuándo aquí tanta preocupación? (Fran)

Sarkozy quiere un G-20 sobre los derechos de autor

miércoles, 19 de enero, 17.41

El presidente francés, Nicolas Sarkozy, anunció el miércoles su intención de convocar una reunión del G-20 para abordar la protección de los derechos de autor en Internet. Seguir leyendo el arículo

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"Espero que antes de (la reunión del) G-20 en Cannes (prevista para principios de noviembre) haya una cumbre de países del G-20 sobre el asunto de los derechos de autor para que intentemos avanzar de manera conjunta, y no unos contra otros, (sino) unos con los otros", declaró durante la presentación de sus previsiones al mundo de la educación y la cultura.

Aunque no mencionó específicamente la conocida como ley Hadopi contra las descargas ilegales, criticada desde numerosos sectores tanto en su principio como en su eficacia, el jefe del Estado admitió que ha habido "muchos malentendidos" en un asunto "extremadamente difícil".

"No se puede por una parte seguir consumiendo como siempre imágenes, música, autores, creación, y no garantizar el respeto al derecho de la propiedad de aquel que ha puesto toda su emoción, todo su talento y toda su creatividad", dijo.

"Es una cuestión que es mucho más importante que el aspecto económico, porque el día en que no se remunere la creación, se mata la creación".

El Hadopi es una autoridad encargada de sancionar las infracciones a los derechos de autor en Internet creada por una polémica ley que establece la posibilidad de privar del acceso a Internet a los infractores.

La norma, que pasó una dura tramitación parlamentaria, tuvo que ser modificada tras el rechazo parcial del Consejo Constitucional y entró en vigor en octubre. En los tres primeros meses la oficina envió 100.000 cartas de advertencia a internautas sospechosos de haberse descargado ficheros de manera ilegal.

Antes de la cumbre del G-8 celebrada en la localidad francesa de Deauville en mayo del año pasado, Sarkozy ya recordó su intención de convocar una reunión con los grandes operadores de Internet, una cuestión que abordó la semana pasada en Washington con el presidente Barack Obama.

"Vamos a poner sobre la mesa un asunto central, el de una Internet civilizada, no digo una Internet regulada, digo una Internet civilizada", agregó.

A mediados de diciembre, en un encuentro con representantes franceses de la Red, dejó caer que la ley Hadopi podría ser modificada y recordó un proyecto de creación de un consejo que sería consultado antes de cualquier decisión importante relativa al sector.

El nacimiento de un nuevo fascismo: Tea Party

2011-01-20T19:01:00.006-04:00

sCuando vemos la manera en que se impone la prensa canalla sobre toda pretención de objetividad e imparcialidad periodística, cuando vemos la manera en que se manipula a la opinión pública mediante el miedo y las fobias, no podemos dejar de sospechar la orquestación aquí y allá de esta manera de hacer política; nueva en algunos países, olvidada en algunos , viejas y conocidas en otros. Honduras y los 10 periodistas asesinados hasta la fecha, su golpe de Estado y su gobierno ilegítimo, no logran justificar la política elaborada a partir de principios como "anti" y "contra". Profundamente ignorantes -no por falta de oportunidades sino por decisión propia-, estos movimientos cultivan la idelogía de los semiletrados: los mitos y los prejuicios de clase y de casta (al decir de un sociólogo de mi país). A pesar de las latitudes cambiantes, tienen puntos en común: el monopolio de los medios y el intento de regresar en el tiempo para reconstruir una segunda Guerra Fría. Esta es la coartada tras la cual se niegan a debatir las soluciones a los problemas ecológicos -de hoy y del porvenir-, tras la cual evitan la rendición de cuentas a la sociedad. El movimiento Tea Party en los Estados Unidos, cierta oposición política en Argentina y Bolivia, el genocidio llamado "fujimontecinismo" en Perú... el surgimiento o no de narco Estados, como se viene advirtiendo en tono discreto y preocupante desde algún tiempo atrás.

A Dios gracias, hablar seriamente de democracia en América Latina exige mayor generosidad y visión que aquellas campañas y abucheos en contra o a favor de alguno de los bandos (Hugo Chávez en Venezuela, Raúl Castro en Cuba) como parecieran empecinarse en demostrar mentes lúcidas, pero entrampadas en urgencias políticas del día a día, las fobias y los pleitos añejados por la burla y la sorna, como si encontraran cierta amarga satisfacción en ver la casa propia incendiarse. (Fran)

El fascismo recargado

Sáb, 15/01/2011 - 05:00

Por Alberto Adrianzén M.(*)

El escritor norteamericano John Power escribió en el año 2004: “Si George W. Bush desapareciera mañana todo lo verdaderamente horrible de esta presidencia permanecería igual... El mundo de Bush no es tan sólo el resultado de un ganador que se regodea en su triunfo. Es un conjunto de ideas, valores, símbolos y políticas”. El atentado contra Gabrielle Giffords, la legisladora demócrata por Arizona acaecido hace unos días confirma lo dicho por Power.

Giffords ha sido una de las víctimas de la campaña de Sarah Palin, dirigente nacional del movimiento ultraconservador Tea Party y ex candidata a la vicepresidencia por el Partido Republicano, quien en su portal de Internet incluyó una lista de 20 congresistas a combatir por apoyar la legislación de Obama sobre Salud. Los nombres de esa lista, como se ha informado, aparecían debajo de un mapa en el que los estados a los que pertenecían estos legisladores estaban marcados con la cruz de una mira telescópica de un rifle. Además, la señora Palin escribió en su Twitter: “No retrocedan, al contrario ¡Recarguen!”. Palin ha llamado a resistir la supuesta marcha secular hacia el socialismo que la administración Obama quiere imponer a EEUU.

Jesse Kelly, opositor de Giffords en el mismo distrito electoral en 2010 y miembro de la extrema derecha del Partido Republicano, fue aún más lejos al proponer como lema de su campaña: “Dele al blanco para la victoria en noviembre. Ayude a retirar a Gabrielle Giffords de su puesto. Dispare un M16 completamente automático con Jesse Kelly”. Kelly, un ex-marine, aparecía en sus afiches con su uniforme de campaña y empuñando un fusil.

Esta ola fundamentalista y ultraconservadora comenzó a expresarse con fuerza luego del atentado del 11-S, sin embargo, como afirma Morris Berman en un libro, La edad oscura americana. La fase final del imperio, fue el año 2005 cuando alcanzó su mayor nivel: “A principios de 2005 el New York Times informó que, de manera creciente y en todo el país, profesores de secundaria estaban dejando fuera del programa de estudios el tema de la evolución porque se metían en problemas con su director si se enteraba que se estaba impartiendo”. No es extraño que 4 de cada 10 estadounidenses crean firmemente en la versión bíblica de la creación del ser humano (creacionismo), según una encuesta de Gallup a fines del año pasado.

El problema no es solo que una visión fundamentalista de la vida se haya hecho sentido común sino también que la misma sea abiertamente maniquea y apocalíptica, además de vengativa. Berman señala, como ejemplo de ello, la serie de novelas Left Behind (Dejando atrás) de Tim LaHaye (uno de los fundadores del grupo ultraconservador Mayoría Moral) y de Jerry Jenkins, que vendieron, a principios de 2003, más de 62 millones de ejemplares. Y aunque en estas novelas el bien siempre triunfa, lo que importa son las imágenes que transmiten de cómo se vencerá al mal: “los judíos que se han aferrado a su fe son condenados al Fuego Eterno, junto con los católicos, musulmanes, hinduistas y devotos de otras ‘religiones aberrantes’. Los mares se convierten en sangre, las langostas atormentan a los no creyentes y 200 millones de jinetes demoniacos barren con una tercera parte del planeta; se trata de una especie de limpieza étnica cósmica, por así decirlo” (M. Berman).

Y para terminar, Bob Beckel, comentarista de la cadena Fox News, pidió públicamente hace unas semanas el asesinato de Julian Assange, responsable de publicar los llamados Wikileaks: “Un muerto no podría filtrar cosas. Ese hombre es un traidor, es desleal y violó todas las leyes de EEUU. No estoy a favor de la pena de muerte, así que habría sólo una forma de hacerlo, por fuera de la ley pegarle un tiro al hijo de puta”.

Sarah Palin ha dicho que las culpas son personales, pero ya sabemos quiénes están detrás del atentando contra Gabrielle Giffords. El panorama no puede ser más sombrío: es el nacimiento de un nuevo fascismo.

(*) albertoadrianzen.lamula.com

Letter from Birmingham Jail

2011-01-17T20:08:00.000-04:00

Civil Rights & Black Identity

Letter from Birmingham Jail
August 1963
by Martin Luther King Jr.

King's famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail," published in The Atlantic as "The Negro Is Your Brother" and excerpted below, was written in response to a public statement of concern and caution issued by eight white religious leaders of the South. It stands as one of the classic documents of the civil-rights movement.

While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling our present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom, if ever, do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all of the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would be engaged in little else in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I would like to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.

I think I should give the reason for my being in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the argument of "outsiders coming in"

I am in Birmingham because injustice is here ...I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider ...

We have waited for more than three hundred and forty years for our God-given and constitutional rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say "wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she cannot go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son asking in agonizing pathos, "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger" and your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodyness"—then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience ...

You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, it is rather strange and paradoxical to find us consciously breaking laws. One may well ask, "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: there are just laws, and there are unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "An unjust law is no law at all."

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine when a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law, or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality ...

There are some instances when a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I was arrested Friday on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong with an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade, but when the ordinance is used to preserve segregation and to deny citizens the First Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and peaceful protest, then it becomes unjust.

Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was seen sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar because a higher moral law was involved. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks before submitting to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience.

We can never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. But I am sure that if I had lived in Germany during that time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers even though it was illegal. If I lived in a Communist country today where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I believe I would openly advocate disobeying these anti-religious laws ...

I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are presently misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with the destiny of America. Before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson scratched across the pages of history the majestic word of the Declaration of Independence, we were here ...If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands ...

Never before have I written a letter this long—or should I say a book? I'm afraid that it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else is there to do when you are alone for days in the dull monotony of a narrow jail cell other than write long letters, think strange thoughts, and pray long prayers?

If I have said anything in this letter that is an understatement of the truth and is indicative of an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything in this letter that is an overstatement of the truth and is indicative of my having a patience that makes me patient with anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.

Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood,
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
Volume 212, Number 2, pp. 78-88

Argentina: formas modernas de sclavitud

2011-01-09T16:12:00.000-04:00

La organización criminal

Por Horacio Verbitsky

La psicóloga Zaida Gatti dirige la Oficina de Rescate y Acompañamiento a las Personas Damnificadas por el Delito de Trata, del Ministerio de Justicia y Derechos Humanos de la Nación. Zaida dijo que las autorizaciones paternas a los menores que reclutó Nidera se firmaron en una comisaría o juzgado de paz, pero o no consignaban el destino, o no designaban un adulto responsable o el adulto responsable no era el que estaba a cargo. Se consignaban destinos diferentes al real, como la provincia de Córdoba y en dos casos los permisos no los firmaban los padres, sino los cabecillas. Los sellos de esos documentos eran ilegibles, lo que hace dudar de su autenticidad. Las víctimas, entrevistadas por quince psicólogas de la oficina, dijeron que los ómnibus charter provistos por la empresa carecían de las condiciones necesarias de seguridad, no tenían ventanas y circulaban con las puertas abiertas. Los cabecillas eran encargados de reclutar a los miembros de cada cuadrilla y dependían de los capataces, que a su vez respondían a los ingenieros de Nidera. No les informaron dónde trabajarían, ni durante cuántos días, ni por qué paga ni en cuales condiciones. Varios dijeron que antes de llegar a El Algarrobo habían trabajado en otra finca de Nidera. La jornada era de once horas, de lunes a lunes, pero a veces se prolongaba y nunca se suspendía por lluvia. Los trailers en los que se hacinaban de a 18, en cuchetas superpuestas como en los campos de concentración, carecían de energía eléctrica, agua corriente, cocina o baños, que improvisaron con los elementos que encontraron tirados en el predio. No había ni un baño químico. Utilizaban agua de pozo y cocinaban sobre fogones en el piso. Según Zaida Gatti esos alojamientos son incompatibles con las condiciones mínimas exigidas por la ley de Contrato de Trabajo. La única ropa que recibieron fue una capa de lluvia y, en algunos casos, guantes y antiparras. En cambio, los capataces tenían viviendas con energía eléctrica. En el campamento había alacranes, ratas, arañas y víboras, contra los cuales no les suministraron protección alguna. Los responsables demoraban la atención médica cuando era solicitada y los capataces suministraban remedios sin prescripción médica. Uno de los trabajadores fue picado por una araña, pero recién lo llevaron a un centro asistencial después del allanamiento. Zaida cree que la vida de ese muchacho estuvo en peligro. La mayoría de los trabajadores contaron a las psicólogas que no podían salir del campo allanado y algunos recibieron amenazas del capataz Hollo, quien les dijo que “el que se pase los límites del predio o cruzare campo traviesa podría recibir un tiro”. Algunos trabajadores indicaron que se les asignaron 24 pesos en crédito por día para alimentos y elementos de higiene personal, que serían descontados del pago final. Como no había refrigeración, consumían los alimentos perecederos en mal estado. Dijeron que sus precios duplicaban el valor de mercado y que muchos de los no perecederos poseían la leyenda “prohibida su venta”, porque eran de distribución gratuita en los programas bonaerenses de asistencia social. Si uno quería irse, toda su cuadrilla debía abandonar el lugar, sin cobrar. Hasta el allanamiento no habían percibido remuneración alguna y los pocos pesos que algunos tenían (entre 40 y 100 pesos) los traían desde Santiago. No se encontraron recibos de sueldos. Según Zaida Gatti, están reunidos todos los elementos que tipifican la trata de personas por una organización criminal: la captación en la provincia de origen por parte de cabecillas que tratan de ganar la confianza de familias que viven en una situación de extrema vulnerabilidad, el engaño (porque el consentimiento fue para condiciones que no se conocían), y el traslado al lugar de la explotación posterior, aun con el asentimiento de las personas víctimas de la trata. Su indefensión se agrava porque algunos son analfabetos y otros apenas pasaron por el primer ciclo de instrucción formal. La actitud observada por las especialistas es de sumisión y de resignación, como consecuencia del entorno abusivo al que se encuentran expuestos debido a su falta de autonomía económica. Aunque tenían conciencia del abuso y expresaron su insatisfacción, todos dijeron que no podían retornar a sus hogares sin el dinero prometido. La cartera laboral bonaerense promueve una negociación con la empresa para que les pague. Un abogado de Nidera llamó al teléfono celular de la Coordinadora de la Oficina de Rescate y pidió conocer el lugar donde se encontraban alojados los menores. “Obviamente no fue suministrada la información ni se estableció vínculo con el mismo”, dice el informe de Gatti. Agrega que la Unión de Trabajadores Rurales y Estibadores (UATRE) sólo se presentó después del allanamiento. La práctica sindical en otros casos ha sido convencer a los trabajadores para que cobren y se vayan sin declarar ante la justicia. Durante otro procedimiento realizado por el mismo fiscal en el vecino establecimiento La Luisa, los representantes del sindicato querían que se abriera una mesa de negociación con los trabajadores para que se regularizara su situación y se quedaran trabajando. Tanto el fiscal como los representantes de la Oficina de Rescate rechazaron la idea ya que las condiciones no eran aptas para que continuaran allí.

Trabajo rural digno o esclavo: un debate ideológico

Por Carlos A. Tomada *

Es muy grave que todavía existan prácticas esclavizantes y serviles en el trabajo. Y resulta indignante que haya quienes justifiquen estas prácticas.

Acabo de leer en un diario –influyente por cierto– que las graves denuncias sobre casos de esclavitud deben ser investigadas “sin contaminaciones políticas e ideológicas”. Esto resulta un contrasentido, porque esas prácticas se sustentan, precisamente, en fundamentos políticos e ideológicos. Es desde ese mismo lugar en donde hay que encontrar la solución del problema. A una política de explotación se la combate con una que propicie derechos, obligaciones y regulaciones. A una ideología que tiene como valor supremo la rentabilidad a cualquier precio y el desdén por el trabajo, se le debe contraponer una que se fundamente en el trabajo como derecho humano de ayer, de hoy y de siempre.
Es inadmisible aceptar o defender el trabajo en términos de servidumbre o esclavitud. Es inaudito que en 2011 haya quienes todavía quieran seguir desarrollando su actividad empresaria de esta manera.
Esto es lo que vinimos a combatir con la gestión iniciada desde 2003 por Néstor Kirchner. Lo hicimos y lo hacemos de la misma manera que lo venimos planteando con el trabajo infantil y con la informalidad laboral. Por eso pusimos este debate sobre la mesa cuando no era materia de discusión y se habían “naturalizado” estas prácticas indecentes. Por eso la prédica y la didáctica sobre los beneficios de la registración y sobre los derechos de los trabajadores. Por eso la recuperación de la inspección laboral. Por eso desde el Ministerio de Trabajo venimos recorriendo el país con otros organismos del Estado. ¿Falta aún? Sí, falta seguir profundizando para que todos se sumen a esta cruzada. Son más de 30 años de retroceso. Desde mediados de los ’70 hasta el 2003 el empleo en negro, ilegal, sin protección creció permanente, año tras año. Ahora que retrocede, ahora que de 10 puestos de trabajos que se crean, ocho son en blanco, hay que redoblar la fiscalización. Es un buen ejemplo la tarea que venimos haciendo en forma conjunta con el Ministerio de Trabajo de la Provincia de Buenos Aires. ¿Falta? Sí, sigue faltando todavía. Por eso es que la presidenta Cristina Fernández de Kirchner envió al Congreso una nueva ley de trabajo rural que evite la explotación, que mejore los controles, que restablezca equilibrios.
Por suerte están los que desarrollan su actividad económica en forma correcta y organizan la producción de manera rentable con trabajo decente. Tenemos que tener en claro el problema: esto no es un hecho aislado, es una práctica permanente de algunos con la que hay que terminar. Así lo hemos ido detectando en varias provincias, ciudades y establecimientos. Porque desgraciadamente también están los que quieren “ideológicamente” trabajar en el pasado; sin leyes, sin obligaciones, sin considerar la dignidad de los trabajadores.
Que nadie se llame a engaño. Esto que se visualizó en San Pedro y Ramallo es gravísimo. No tiene ninguna justificación. Aunque haya editoriales que quieran hacerlo basándose en la ley vigente. Otra vez “lo” político. Esa es una ley sancionada, en respuesta a intereses y concepciones decimonónicas, por la dictadura militar con la firma de Videla y Martínez de Hoz. Sin comentarios. Por eso, la Presidenta envió en 2010 al Parlamento una ley que equipare los derechos de los trabajadores rurales a los de todos los trabajadores.
Vamos a actuar con todo el rigor de la ley (porque fue nuestro gobierno el que sancionó la Ley 26.364 sobre el delito de trata de personas), porque nuestro proyecto tiene convicciones políticas, que se sustentan en la justicia social, la ampliación de derechos, la reparación de la deuda social y en más y mejor trabajo para todos y todas. A eso no pensamos renunciar.
* Ministro de Trabajo, Empleo y Seguridad Social.

Gente linda

Por Horacio Verbitsky

Otro campamento de 80 trabajadores reducidos a servidumbre fue descubierto en la estancia Santa Celestina de la localidad de El Paraíso, en Ramallo, de la empresa Satus Ager, cuyas condiciones laborales son similares a las de El Algarrobo, de Nidera. Satus Ager fue creada en 1996, produce semillas de maíz y soja en contraestación, que exporta al hemisferio norte. Sus directivos son Félix Cirio, ex subsecretario de Agricultura del ingeniero Felipe Carlos Solá; su primo, el licenciado en Ciencias Políticas Félix Lanusse, Miguel y Juan Zimmermann, Ricardo Javier Cardinale y el ingeniero agrónomo Martín Jarmoluk. Mientras la Gendarmería realizaba el procedimiento se presentó el ex fiscal, ex interventor federal en Santiago del Estero y ahora abogado de la empresa de su familia, Pablo Lanusse. Preocupada por la salud de sus trabajadores, Satus Ager mantiene en el paraje La Resbalosa, de Santiago del Estero, una posta sanitaria denominada Fundación de Asistencia Médica Nuestra Señora de Loreto, que dirige Marcela Lanusse. También creó un taller de oficios para mujeres anotadas en la bolsa de trabajo de UATRE. Por eso obtuvo el premio al Desarrollo de las Personas de Dow AgroSciences.

Debate

2011-01-09T15:24:00.000-04:00

Trabajo rural digno o esclavo: un debate ideológico

Por Carlos A. Tomada *

Es muy grave que todavía existan prácticas esclavizantes y serviles en el trabajo. Y resulta indignante que haya quienes justifiquen estas prácticas.

Nuestra derecha, siempre tan moderna: el secreto a voces de sus vínculos con el narcotráfico

2011-01-09T00:39:00.001-04:00

Un esquema que se repite: discurso político de mano dura, corrupción, impunidad, narcotráfico, frivolidad (modelaje), clan familiar.

(Página 12, 7 enero 2011)

Fueron detenidos en Barcelona los hijos de los brigadieres Juliá y Miret, que llevaban 900 kilos de cocaína en un avión de su compañía, Medical Jet. Juliá fue el jefe de la Fuerza Aérea durante el menemismo, vinculado con el sistema de negocios de Yabrán. Miret fue secretario de Planeamiento durante la dictadura.

DOS HIJOS DE JULIA Y UNO DEL BRIGADIER MIRET DETENIDOS CON 900 KILOS DE COCAINA Una línea aérea todo servicio Transportaban casi una tonelada de cocaína en un avión de su empresa Medical Jet y los detuvieron en Barcelona. Uno de ellos, Gustavo Juliá, fue gerente del PAMI durante el gobierno de Duhalde y fue denunciado por la Oficina Anticorrupción.
(Por Horacio Cecchi)

LA CARRERA Y LAS EMPRESAS DEL EX JEFE DE LA FUERZA AEREA Los negocios del clan Juliá El brigadier general José Antonio Juliá fue investigado por su relación con empresas de Alfredo Yabrán y por enriquecimiento ilícito. Fundó Medical Jet SA luego de su pase a retiro y se benefició con los contratos del PAMI.

Foto: El brigadier José Antonio Juliá, padre de los dos hermanos detenidos el domingo, junto a Carlos Menem.

(Página 12, 8 enero 2011)
Meses antes del vuelo que introdujo casi una tonelada de cocaína en España, la empresa de los hijos del brigadier Juliá trasladó a Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, a dos implicados en la causa de la “narcomodelo” colombiana detenida en Argentina: entre ellos, otro colombiano sospechado de proveer la cocaína que iba a ser trasladada a Europa

Foto: La Guardia Civil española exhibió el cargamento secuestrado en el avión de Medical Jet.

UN ENIGMATICO VIAJE DE MEDICAL JET, LA EMPRESA DE JULIA, A SANTA CRUZ DE LA SIERRA Los aviadores y la narcomodelo La PSA pidió a la Justicia que investigue el vínculo entre la droga secuestrada en Barcelona, transportada por los hijos de los brigadieres, con un vuelo en que su empresa llevó a Bolivia a cuatro hombres vinculados con la famosa Angie Sanclemente. (Por Raúl Kollman y Carlos Rodríguez)

(Página 12 - 9 enero 2011)

ESPAÑA Y ARGENTINA FIRMARON CONVENIOS DE COOPERACION PARA CONTROLAR EL TRAFICO DE DROGAS Los narcos que caen en la emboscada El tráfico de drogas que tiene a España como la gran puerta de entrada a Europa motivó encuentros entre las Aduanas de ese país y la Argentina. La detección de un cargamento de más de 800 kilos en un auto del Rally fue producto de seguimientos acordados. (Por Raúl Kollmann)

Foto: Matías Miret, Eduardo Juliá y Gustavo Juliá, detenidos en Barcelona con un cargamento de 944 kilos de cocaína.

¿Cristianos cuando les conviene?

2011-01-08T15:59:00.002-04:00

La política y la religión forman una mezcla explosiva. Más en estos días. El presidente Barack Obama, que ha crecido en un ambiente de tolerancia religiosa, parece haber percibido muy bien los riesgos que tiene esta parte del mundo que llamamos Occidente de continuar en la ruta de la confrontación; una situación creada en contra del parecer y las protestas de la comunidad inernacional. Lo que vemos hoy no es más que el resultado que se les advirtió a quienes buscaron la guerra como manera de solución.

En los países pobres ser cristiano tiene una contenido distinto y demandas distintas a las de los países ricos o del Primer Mundo. Ser rico o pobre es una diferencia demasiado grande, a veces insalvable.

Ellos, ahora quieren advertir en nombre del cristianismo de peligros que sus propios actos de injusticia crearon en países pobres, quizás más cercanos a nosotros por el simple hecho de vivir sometidos a sus caprichos, intereses y vaivenes políticos. ¿En qué se inspiran sus palabras.? Continúan con sus políticas xenófobas que cierran las puertas a los desesperados y criminalizan a los inmigrantes, que no es otra cosa que gente en buscan de escapar de la miseria generada en sus países de origen.

En países que se reconocía como "occidentales, cristianos y democráticos" se aplicó la peor de las barbaries de manera organizada y sistemática, con la bendición de algunos y la vergüenza de otros. Es el caso de Argentina y sus 30 mil desaparecidos, las Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo que aún andan en busca de reconocer a sus nietos secuestrados y distribuidos entre allegados a la dictadura, hijos de desaparecidos. Si algún día se llega a escribir una historia verdadera del cristianismo en Occidente, tendrá que decirse con claridad que la persecución de los cristianos y sus asesinatos fue hecho a manos de sus propios hermanos, gente que decía ser cristiana que mató en nombre de Dios.

Es el caso, también, del genocidio cometido contra 200 mil mujeres quechuas esterilizadas en contra de su voluntad por la dictadura de Alberto Fujimori en Perú, régimen que tuvo también aprobación y complicidad desde la jerarquía eclesiática con la justificación de luchar en contra del comunismo. Que no era otra cosa más que una banda de iluminados fanáticos que fue eficazmente desarticulada en cuanto se aplicaron criterios policiales correctos. Y no contamos el resto de muertos y desparecidos que los 800 mil muertos y desparecidos en las cuatro décadas de la pasada Guerra Fría.

Son horas terribles para los cristianos de Oriente Medio, sin duda, y quienes ocasionaron esto deben inspirarse en un verdadero sentimiento de justicia y paz. Antes fue el comunismo, hoy es el terrorismo: no más estereotipos y estigmatizaciones, satanización del otro, para ocultar oscuros intereses. Pedir perdón 70 veces 7 al hermano por haberlo ofendido, como enseñó Jesús de Nazareth; tal vez este sea el primer paso hacia la verdadera paz y reconciliación.

Occidente, el Gran Occidente, tiene una carga muy pesada que cargar. No aprendió de sus errores en el siglo XX, o extrajo conclusiones que le interesó simplemente. Desde la Iglesia de los pobres, los perseguidos, humillados y desaparecidos, deben esperar fraternidad para la paz y la justicia, no para guerras coloniales o punitivas. O mejor: tal vez tendríamos que buscar el diálogo y la solidaridad sin la intermediación de quienes han ocasionado todo este dolor y sufrimiento. (Fran)

La Iglesia en la picota

Foto: Las madres de la Plaza Mayo siguen en su lucha por alcanzar justicia.

El 23 de diciembre, organizado por la Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo, se llevó a cabo el juicio ético a la Iglesia cómplice de la dictadura militar. Se resaltó que el juicio no era a toda la Iglesia ni era contra la fe o contra el cristianismo, sino contra la Iglesia cómplice.

Se recalcó que hubo otra Iglesia comprometida, cuyos militantes fueron perseguidos, secuestrados, encarcelados, torturados y “desaparecidos” como todos los militantes populares. En el juicio expuse conceptos centrales de una verdadera Teología de Mal, que ya había expuesto en Teología y dominación y que, por diversos motivos, habían pasado inadvertidos. Varios me expresaron asombro y horror. Me parece, pues, importante reproducir algunos conceptos entonces publicados, previa readecuación al momento presente. Ello echa un poco de claridad sobre los hechos aberrantes que salen a luz a raíz de los juicios a los máximos responsables del genocidio.

Soldados de dios. Los crímenes de la dictadura militar fueron impulsados por una determinada mística del soldado cristiano que ha sido coherentemente mantenida por los vicarios y el provicario castrense, en el período que va del ’76 al ’83. La concepción de la presencia de “Dios en el soldado”, que defendía el provicario Victorio Bonamín en 1976, es la misma que está presente en la concepción de los militares argentinos como “soldados del evangelio” que sostiene el vicario castrense José Medina en 1982.

Tanto Bonamín como Medina son buenos exponentes de esta concepción del militar cristiano. Pero tal vez sea el vicario y presidente de la Conferencia Episcopal Argentina, Adolfo Tortolo, la voz más autorizada. Sus conceptos al respecto son sobrecogedores y permiten en cierta manera comprender la “furia mística” de ciertos militares como Videla. “El cristiano toma en sus manos -como hombre que vive su conciencia sacerdotal- el don de la vida natural y la ofrece a Dios destruyéndose o inmolándose en reconocimiento de la infinita majestad de Dios y en prueba de su entrega definitiva al Ideal. Esto nos lleva a la ofrenda en aras de un Ideal cuya raíz es Dios; al servir a la Patria hasta morir por ella”.

Ya tenemos los conceptos que fundamentarán la mística del soldado cristiano, capaz de morir y de matar: la “Infinita Majestad de Dios”, Dios todopoderoso, el cual exige destrucción o inmolación. Dios es un Ideal que se alimenta de la destrucción de la vida natural. Necesita sangre. De Dios deriva la Patria, que viene a ser una encarnación divina; en consecuencia un Ideal que solo vivirá de inmolación y destrucción.

La imagen de Cristo“El amor a la Patria es sagrado [...] Cristo amó a su Patria, sojuzgada entonces por Roma. Dignificó y santificó de este modo el valor de la Patria. El amor a la Patria, que debe ser generoso y leal en cualquier hombre, debe serlo doblemente en el cristiano. Si morir por la Patria es dulce para cualquier hombre de bien, más dulce lo es para el cristiano que contempla el universo a la luz de la fe, y a la luz de la fe considera el Ideal de la Patria. Este amor a la Patria debe darse en grado eminente y heroico en quienes integran las Fuerzas Armadas de una Nación.” Un amor “en grado eminente y heroico” a un Ideal que exige inmolación y destrucción puede ser terrible, puede llevar a la furia de la destrucción “más allá del bien y del mal”.

Continúa el vicario castrense: “La vocación militar está signada por el riesgo permanente. Riesgo que la Fortaleza espiritual dinamiza y nutre. En las Fuerzas Armadas debe darse una clara y decidida vocación a la muerte como ideal inherente a su más entrañable Ideal Militar, condición ‘sine qua non’ para vivir el sentido heroico de la vida y para realizarse con el plasma que plasma héroes”. La “Fortaleza espiritual”, es decir, la mística que proporciona la legitimación teológica que realiza el vicariato, “nutre y dinamiza” el “riesgo permanente” de los militares, ese jugarse siempre al borde de la muerte que los caracteriza, porque al Ideal Militar le es inherente la vocación a la muerte. Allí está presente la Iglesia con su teología de la muerte para sostener espiritualmente a los caballeros de la muerte.

Pero el vicario castrense no deja de seguir internándose en estas profundas sendas de la mística de la muerte: “El héroe está hecho de renuncias personales, de grandeza de alma, de fe integral, ajena a toda servidumbre espuria. El héroe está situado inmediatamente después que el santo -sin olvidar que todo santo es héroe- así sea héroe con el heroísmo de la humildad y del silencio”. El texto habla de por sí. El héroe, o sea, el militar, viene inmediatamente después del santo, o sea del sacerdote, sin olvidar que todo santo o sacerdote es héroe o militar, el santo y el héroe, la cruz y la espada, la Iglesia y el Estado. El sacerdote u hombre de Iglesia es un santo-héroe y el militar un héroe-santo, anverso y reverso de la misma realidad, con hegemonía del santo pero que sólo puede hacerla valer con la fuerza del héroe.

Luego viene la estremecedora conclusión: “No es necesaria la efusión de sangre para ser héroe. Basta vivir el terrible cotidiano, sin dejar de cultivar la perspectiva de una senda que exija la efusión de sangre”. Creo que no es necesario agregar nada más. Aquí está en toda su trágica dimensión lo sustancial de una Teología de la Dominación, que se manifiesta crudamente como Teología de la Muerte, que sirvió para mantener el espíritu de los militares que sólo mediante un genocidio creían poder volver atrás la historia para revivir los supuestos idílicos tiempos de la perfecta unión entre la cruz y la espada.

Inspiración de fe
La Teología de la Dominación en su versión más acabada de la Teología de la Muerte desarrollada por los vicarios castrenses, con su correspondiente mística del soldado cristiano, debía ser aplicada por los capellanes militares, cuya labor era, como la definió Bonamín, “formar espiritualmente y doctrinariamente a los cadetes y soldados”. Monseñor Antonio Plaza, al estrenarse como flamante capellán de la policía bonaerense, la de Camps, aseguró que la Iglesia brindaría “fortaleza espiritual” a los integrantes de los cuadros policiales y a sus familias “para templarlos ante la adversidad”.

Los capellanes militares junto con los integrantes de las Fuerzas Armadas y policiales, en los centros clandestinos, en sus relaciones con las familias de los militares, eran la cruz junto a la espada, el espíritu que animaba a la materia, lo sagrado que daba sentido a lo profano, es decir, a los secuestros, torturas y desapariciones. En efecto, de acuerdo con la mística que se deriva de la concepción del Dios mayestático que exige inmolación y destrucción, el capellán Mackinnon podía invocar a Dios “para que nuestro uniforme no tenga otra mancha que la de la sangre propia o ajena derramada por una causa justa; porque esta sangre no mancha, dignifica”.

Esta acción mostró su eficacia en los centros clandestinos. Hay testimonios sobre la existencia de interrogadores cursillistas, además del conocimiento que tenemos de la existencia de toda una brigada que llevaba el nombre de “Colores”, el himno del cursillismo, cuyo representante principal, apellidado precisamente Colores, se caracterizaba por la manera en que gozaba las torturas. Había militares que en los centros clandestinos usaban el rosario, militares torturadores que se consideraban cruzados, inquisidores, enviados de Dios en contra de los diablos; torturadores que interrogaban sobre la fe de sus víctimas; y por supuesto la continua proclamación de “los valores occidentales y cristianos” por los que se lucha.

Rubén Dri *
Visiones Alternativas
* Filósofo, profesor consultor de la Facultad de Ciencias Sociales (UBA)

Advierten una purga religiosa

Existe el peligro de una purga religiosa contra cristianos que viven en el Oriente Medio, alertó ayer el presidente de Francia, Nicolas Sarkozy. “No podemos tolerar lo que se parece cada vez más a un plan particularmente perverso de depuración religiosa en Oriente Medio”, afirmó.

También manifestó su inquietud por los resultados de un reciente sondeo realizado en Alemania y Francia, según recoge la agencia Ria Novosti, que revela que al menos el 40 por ciento de los entrevistados en ambos países ven en los musulmanes una amenaza a su identidad nacional.

Sarkozy calificó de “irracional” esa actitud al destacar que el Islam no tiene nada que ver con los fanáticos religiosos que matan por igual a cristianos, judíos, suníes y chiíes.

De otro lado, la Iglesia copta de Egipto pidió no dejarse intimidar ante el atentado islamista que sufrió uno de sus templos en el país la semana pasada, dijo su máxima autoridad, el papa Shenouda III, durante la homilía de la Navidad.

Publicado: 08 de enero del 2011

Matan inmigrantes

Foto: Las denuncias sobre estos abusos recrudecieron tras el asesinato de un adolescente mexicano de 14 años muerto a tiros por elementos de la Patrulla Fronteriza de Estados Unidos cuando jugaba con cuatro amigos bajo el llamado “Puente Negro”, en Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, frontera estadounidense.

En medio de los intentos de expulsar a los inmigrantes y negar la nacionalidad a los niños nacidos en Estados Unidos que sean hijos de “ilegales”, la Patrulla Fronteriza de ese país ha iniciado la cacería de latinos en su frontera, que ya ha cobrado más de 35 víctimas sin que estos crímenes se castiguen.

Lo más grave de la situación es que ninguno de los casos de asesinatos de inmigrantes en la frontera con México han podido ser judicializados o procesados, pues el gobierno de Estados Unidos es juez y parte, según denunció Enrique Morones, director de la organización Ángeles de la Frontera.

“Los agentes locales del lugar de las agresiones investigan a los agentes fronterizos, a pesar de las múltiples peticiones de que sean otras instancias las que realicen la investigación conjunta”, anotó.

De otro lado, Kat Rodríguez, de la Coalición para los derechos humanos en Arizona, expresó que “en los últimos siete años ha habido siete muertes de inmigrantes baleados (en ese estado) por agentes y no han castigado a nadie”.

También destacó que los policías justifican el uso desproporcionado de la fuerza con supuestas pedradas que reciben. “Es absurdo pensar que una persona que está huyendo y de espaldas le lance rocas a un policía armado”, agregó.

También explicaron que el único caso que concluyó con una condena de 11 y 12 años de cárcel, respectivamente, fue el de los ex agentes Ignacio Ramos y Alonso Compeán tras balear en 2005 a un traficante de Drogas, pero que la presión republicana en el Senado logró la liberación de ambos en 2008.

Publicado: 08 de enero del 2011

América Latina emigra: escape del empobrecimiento

2011-01-07T16:23:00.001-04:00

Provincia de Buenos Aires

Detectan centenares de casos de trabajo semi esclavo e infantil

Unas 120 personas provenientes de Santiago del Estero fueron halladas trabajando en condiciones de semi esclavitud en Ramallo y Arrecifes. En Tres de Febrero hallaron a 6 menores y 28 mayores trabajando en un taller textil clandestino

07.01.2011

El nuevo hallazgo en Ramallo y Arrecifes se produjo luego de que entre el lunes 27 de diciembre y el martes 4 se detectaran otras 430 personas trabajando en similares condiciones en campos de San Pedro para las semilleras Nidera y Southern Seeds Production S.A: sin electricidad ni agua potable, amenazados físicamente, y muchos de ellos engañados en el pago de sus haberes por no saber leer ni escribir.

Los últimos operativos fueron realizados por la Unión Argentina de Trabajadores Rurales y Estibadores (UATRE) y se dio intervención a la fiscalía Nº 6 de San Nicolás. Sumados estos más los operativos anteriores ya son unos mil las personas encontradas en condiciones paupérimas de trabajo.

Cabe recordar que los trabajadores rurales que desempeñaban sus labores en condiciones de semi esclavitud en campos de la zona de San Pedro, en el noreste bonaerense, cobraron sus haberes y regrasaron a su provincia de origen, Santiago del Estero, mientras que le fiscal que entiende en la causa dijo que los responsables detenidos podrían afrontar penas de entre 5 y 15 años de prisión.

En tanto, los Ministerios de Trabajo de Nación y Provincia encabezaron ayer un operativo de inspecciones en un taller textil ubicado la calle Pereyra 3859 de Ciudadela, partido de Tres de Febrero; donde se detectaron a 6 menores trabajando y a 28 mayores desarrollando tareas sin respetar la legislación laboral vigente.

Los trabajadores, en su mayoría de origen boliviano, se encontraban encerrados bajo llave, sin poder salir ni entrar del establecimiento y se desempeñaban en condiciones deficientes en materia de salud y seguridad, con dos baños individuales, problemas en las instalaciones eléctricas, con poca ventilación y con ausencia de matafuegos en condiciones de ser utilizados.

A su vez, además de no poseer documentación laboral que acredite su vínculo laboral, se pudo constatar que las personas trabajaban de lunes a sábado, 12 horas, de 7 a 19 para las marcas Riffle Dening Manufactured y Riffle Jeans y Vanderholl.

Dentro de las irregularidades, se reveló que había un niño de 3 años cortando hilo y dos chicos de 14 y 15 años manipulando máquinas de gran porte. Además, pudo constatarse que las mujeres vivían en el mismo lugar; mientras que los hombres eran dirigidos todos los días a dormir a habitaciones radicadas a 600 metros. En el lugar de trabajo, eran controlados por un reloj y un planillero que verificaba el cumplimiento de las horas trabajadas.

NUEVOS ALLANAMIENTOS

La olla destapada del trabajo esclavo

Un nuevo procedimiento judicial reveló que 120 trabajadores, provenientes de Santiago del Estero, trabajan "en condiciones ilegales y de esclavitud" en una estancia de la empresa Status Ager SA, en la localidad bonaerense de Ramallo y otras dos órdenes judiciales investigan dos casos similares. Como reveló Página/12, en la semana, se allanaron dos fincas rurales en San Pedro por presunta reducción a la servidumbre. En la causa judicial está involucrada la transnacional agrícola Nidera.

"Se encontraron 120 personas trabajando en condiciones de esclavitud, entre ellos niños", informó el titular del gremio de los judiciales, Julio Piumato, respecto de orden de allanamiento que realizó la Fiscalía Federal de San Nicolás, a cargo de Paula Moretti.

Piumato informó que "los trabajadores estaban divididos en dos cuadrillas, una de 40 personas y otra de 80, que trabajaban a ambos lados de la ruta 9, a la altura del kilómetro 195, en tareas rurales".
Y agregó que estos trabajadores "viven en condiciones de esclavitud y duermen en carros", y que "se sospecha que también podría haber trata de personas, ya que se encontraron micros en los que los trabajadores podrían haber sido trasladados" desde la provincia de Santiago del Estero.
La empresa involucrada en este hecho ilícito es la alimenticia Status Ager SA, productora de semillas de maíz y soja desde 1996. Según figura en su página de Internet, la empresa posee dos instalaciones de acondicionamiento, emplea a más de 100 personas, y cultiva 6.500 hectáreas anualmente en la Pampa Húmeda y, sus exportaciones a Estados Unidos, Canadá y Europa la coloca como "la empresa líder en exportación de semillas".
Por otra parte, el juez Carlos Villafuerte Ruzo, a cargo del Juzgado Federal N° 2 de San Nicolás, ordenó una serie de allanamientos en dos causas abiertas por supuesta violación a la ley 26.364, relacionada con la trata de personas.
Uno de los allanamientos, a cargo de la DDI San Nicolás, tiene lugar en un campo ubicado en las afueras de la ciudad de San Pedro, y es encabezado por el propio Villafuerte Ruzo.
El otro operativo se desarrolla en la localidad de El Paraíso, en cercanías de la ciudad de Ramallo, y está a cargo de efectivos de Gendarmería Nacional.
Como informó Página/12, en los últimos quince días, el ministerio de Trabajo y el fiscal Nicolás Rubén Gianorio, titular de la UFI 6 de San Nicolás,realizaron dos operativos en los que también se encontraron personas oriundas de Santiago del Estero, un total de 189, que estaban trabajando "en condiciones infrahumanas" en dos estancias del municipio de San Pedro.
En el marco de estos hallazgos, también se está investigando la posibilidad de la existencia de una organización criminal dedicada a reclutar personas con destino a trabajo esclavo, para establecimientos rurales.
Dos empresas estuvieron involucradas en los dos últimos allanamientos, en el mes de diciembre, una fue la multinacional Nidera, y la otra Southern Seeds Production SA (SSP).
Según dan cuenta los funcionarios de las fiscalías que intervienen en estos allanamientos, los trabajadores duermen hacinados en trailers de chapa, sin baño, sin agua corriente y, en algunos casos, sin luz.
Además, no cuentan con condiciones mínimas de higiene, salud y seguridad para realizar sus tareas. Las empresas involucradas cuentan, a partir de estos allanamientos, con un plazo de tiempo para presentar la documentación que acredite a los trabajadores y, de no tenerla, se les aplicará una multa de 5.000 pesos por cada uno de los trabajadores contratados en forma irregular.

Realizan marcha a favor de migrantes con fuerte dispositivo policial

viernes 7 de enero, 11:09 AM

Arriaga, Chis., 7 Ene. (Notimex).- Con un amplio dispositivo policial, se desarrolla la marcha que integrantes del llamado proyecto "Paso a paso hacia la Paz" organizaron para mostrar su apoyo al sacerdote Alejandro Solalinde Guerra, defensor de los derechos del migrante.

"No es usual la presencia de tanta policía en el parque", señaló Josefa Macías, quien atiende a sus clientes habituales en el centro de la ciudad en su puesto de tacos y refrescos, quien agregó que es posible que la presencia de los elementos del orden se deba a la marcha que anunciaron.

Un grupo de 50 policías armados, uniformados con ropa de civil y granadas antimotines, se congregaron en el Centro de la ciudad, acompañado de grupos de policías locales y efectivos del grupo Beta del Instituto Nacional de Migración (INM).

De igual forma, se puede observar a trabajadores con chalecos del gobierno de Chiapas, adscritos a la Secretaría estatal de Salud, quienes fueron comisionados al centro de la ciudad, para "hacer búsqueda" de migrantes que pudieran requerir de sus servicios.

Asimismo, medios de comunicación locales, estatales y nacionales han sido destacados en esta marcha pacífica a favor de los migrantes y en apoyo al sacerdote, quien dirige el albergue "Hermanos en el Camino" ubicado en Ixtepec, Oaxaca, el cual da atención a migrantes.

En tanto, las vías del tren abandonadas son mudos testigos de la movilización que han emprendido activistas defensores de los derechos de los migrantes, cuya marcha arribó al Centro de la ciudad a las 10:00 horas.

UN INMIGRANTE MURIO BALEADO POR UN AGENTE FRONTERIZO DE ESTADOS UNIDOS

“La Migra” cruzó y mató en México

Un adolescente mexicano murió en el norte de México tras recibir un disparo de un agente de la Patrulla Fronteriza de Arizona, fuerza conocida en México como “La Migra”. La fiscalía mexicana está investigando el caso. Mientras tanto, el ombudsman de México denunció que durante el año pasado hubo más de 214 secuestros masivos de migrantes en ese país.

Ramses Barrón Torres tenía 17 años y fue encontrado muerto en las primeras horas del miércoles, después de haber sido herido por uniformados estadounidenses que estaban apostados en la zona fronteriza de Arizona. La bala alcanzó al muchacho cuando estaba tratando de escalar la valla que divide a México de los Estados Unidos, dijeron desde la policía federal mexicana. Pero el chico no murió en el lugar sino que tres personas lo llevaron hasta el hospital de Nogales, una ciudad de 200 mil habitantes ubicada en el norteño estado de Sonora. “Lo dejaron allí y huyeron”, explicó Eliazar Alvarez, vocero de la Secretaría de Seguridad Pública de Nogales.
Selma Berenice Barrón, la madre del adolescente, fue quien confirmó la identidad del chico. La joven mujer de 37 años habría visto que Ramses presentaba lesiones en diferentes partes del cuerpo. Como confirmó la autopsia, la bala disparada desde el lado estadounidense le habría atravesado el brazo derecho, entrado por el pecho y perforado el pulmón. La fiscalía de Nogales abrirá una nueva causa por el homicidio del muchacho. El portavoz de la Patrulla Fronteriza, David Jimarez, dio explicaciones esquivas sobre las circunstancias que rodearon la muerte del chico. “Hubo un agente involucrado en una balacera en Nogales, Arizona, pero los detalles son poco precisos. No tenemos información de las lesiones resultado de ese incidente”, se atajó el vocero.
La del miércoles no fue la primera muerte de un migrante en manos de los agentes estadounidenses apostados en la frontera. En mayo del año pasado, un inmigrante fue golpeado salvajemente y sometido a descargas eléctricas mientras se negaba a ser deportado. Tiempo después, murió por las heridas que le provocaron los uniformados. Un chico de catorce años también fue asesinado cuando supuestamente lanzaba piedras al lugar donde estaba la patrulla fronteriza.
Nogales, donde murió Barrón Torres, es una ciudad dividida por un gran muro de metal y es uno de los puntos más concurridos por los migrantes de México, Centroamérica y Sudamérica que quieren cruzar hacia Estados Unidos. También el paso por Nogales es uno de los más vigilados por la Patrulla Fronteriza, que todas las noches utiliza alta tecnología para cazar a los migrantes que tratan de escabullirse.
El ataque a Barrón Torres se da en medio de un creciente clima hostil contra los migrantes que se irradia desde Arizona, donde actualmente se debaten medidas discriminatorias que incluirían negarles la ciudadanía a los hijos de los indocumentados. En el estado comandado por la republicana Jan Brewer se adoptó en julio pasado una ley que busca frenar la migración y que está actualmente en vigencia, aunque la Justicia suspendió las partes más discriminatorias de la norma, que incluía un permiso para que la policía parara y pidiera documento a todo aquel que, por portación de cara, pudiera parecer un inmigrante “ilegal”.
Aldo Saracco, primer visitador general de la Comisión de Derechos Humanos de Sonora, dijo a Página/12: “Los migrantes no son animales para que los traten y cacen de la forma en que lo hicieron con este jovencito de 17 años. Tratar de entrar a los Estados Unidos no los convierte en delincuentes”. El especialista agregó: “Definitivamente desde la implementación de la Ley Arizona se intensificó la caza de migrantes aunque no hubo la repatriación masiva que esperábamos”.
En tanto, el ombudsman mexicano, Raúl Plascencia, informó ayer que en 2010 se registraron 214 casos de secuestros masivos de inmigrantes en ese país. “No son secuestros individuales sino masivos, de hasta 100 o 150 migrantes y después se los traslada a un punto donde son víctimas de extorsión”, explicó el defensor de los derechos humanos. A mediados de diciembre, un contingente de 50 centroamericanos fue raptado en el estado sureño de Oaxaca y aún se desconoce el paradero de esas personas. Aunque un sacerdote que atiende un refugio para migrantes de la zona, Alejandro Solalinde, informó que habrían sido liberados en los últimos días en el norte de México. Como ejemplo más crudo de la denuncia del ombudsman aparece la masacre de Tamaulipas, ocurrida en agosto del año pasado, cuando 72 migrantes fueron asesinados en un rancho de ese estado norteño después de haber sido capturados por la banda narco Los Zetas.
Informe: Luciana Bertoia.

Proponen negar la ciudadanía a los hijos de indocumentados

(6 enero 2011) Estados Unidos. Iniciativa presentada por varios congresistas estatales del Partido Republicano. Los indocumentados que buscan “anclarse” con sus hijos son una “invasión” y un “veneno” para Estados Unidos, aducen los parlamentarios.

Teresa Bouza. Washington. EFE.

Varios representantes estatales de EEUU propusieron negar la ciudadanía a los hijos de inmigrantes indocumentados, una iniciativa polémica con la que dicen querer proteger al país de la que describen como “invasión” migratoria.
La 14 enmienda de la Constitución de Estados Unidos garantiza ahora la ciudadanía a todos los nacidos en el país, algo que la media docena de representantes estatales dijo querer cambiar.
Legisladores republicanos de Arizona, Carolina del Sur, Georgia, Oklahoma y Pensilvania buscan introducir proyectos de ley en sus asambleas legislativas para exigir que los padres prueben su estatus migratorio antes de obtener un certificado de nacimiento estándar para sus bebés.
Esos políticos contemplan la posibilidad de crear dos tipos de certificados de nacimiento, uno para los niños de ciudadanos y otro para los hijos de indocumentados.
Su esperanza es que la iniciativa desate una oleada de litigios que permita que el conflicto se resuelva finalmente a su favor.
Los promotores de la iniciativa dijeron que los indocumentados son una “invasión” y un “veneno” y adujeron que muchos inmigrantes sin papeles cruzan la frontera con el único fin de tener hijos en EEUU y “anclarse” en el país.
“Económicamente esta tendencia es insostenible”, dijo Jack Murphy, senador estatal de Georgia, quien considera que la inmigración ilegal cuesta miles de millones de dólares anuales a EEUU.
Los hijos de indocumentados no pueden impedir la deportación de sus padres y sólo pueden presentar la documentación para solicitar que se conviertan en residentes legales tras cumplir 21 años.
Thomas Sáenz, presidente del Fondo Mexicoamericano para la Defensa Legal y la Educación (Maldef), dijo que lo que proponen los legisladores estatales es “inconstitucional”. “Lo que están planteando es que distintos estados tengan distintos ciudadanos, algo completamente inviable en los tiempos en que vivimos, en los que la gente se mueve regularmente por todo el país”, explicó Sáenz.
Para el responsable de Maldef la iniciativa es “una manifestación más de un grupo pequeño pero cada vez más visible” que se caracteriza por sus posturas antiinmigrantes y antilatinos y que quiere construir su carrera política “a base de demonizar a un grupo de gente y de crear divisiones en el país”.
Activistas como Jack Mahony fueron desalojados hoy de la rueda de prensa en la que se explicó la propuesta, en Washington, tras interrumpir el acto al grito de “esta iniciativa es inhumana, ignorante y racista”.
“El lenguaje que se está usando en la sala es un insulto para los padres fundadores de Estados Unidos cuya visión se asentó en una sociedad abierta y hospitalaria”, explicó Mahony a los medios.
Similar opinión comparte Michael Wilson, otro de los activistas expulsados del acto, quien pronosticó que propuestas como la planteada hoy no saldrán adelante.
La convocatoria mereció también el rechazo de grupos pro inmigrantes como la Unión de Libertades Civiles (ACLU), que señaló en un comunicado que los estados no deberían negar los certificados de nacimiento estándares a algunos de sus residentes.
“La igualdad ante la ley de todos los nacidos en EEUU es uno de los motores centrales de la igualdad que defiende la Constitución”, afirmó Lucas Guttentag, director del Proyecto de Derechos de los Inmigrantes de ACLU.

Datos

Enmienda. La 14 enmienda de la Constitución estadounidense se adoptó en 1868 y restó validez a un dictamen del Tribunal Supremo de 1857 que sostenía que ni los esclavos liberados ni sus descendientes podrían convertirse en ciudadanos.
Jurisprudencia. La enmienda sostiene que la ciudadanía es aplicable a “todas las personas nacidas o naturalizadas en EEUU y sujetas por lo tanto a la jurisdicción” del país.

La buena onda de Lincoln Chafee
1] El nuevo gobernador de Rhode Island, Lincoln Chafee, derogó una orden que reprimía a los indocumentados y ordenó a la policía estatal que ponga fin a un acuerdo que le permite asistir al gobierno federal en la materia. La orden de 2008 obligaba a todos los organismos estatales y contratistas del gobierno a verificar por medio del sistema federal E-verify el estatus inmigratorio de empleados nuevos. También obligaba a la policía estatal a entrar en un acuerdo con las autoridades federales de inmigración.
2] Dos hermanos hispanos de Colorado, veteranos de la Guerra de Vietnam y criados en EEUU, podrán permanecer un año más en este país luego de que un juez decidiera postergar hasta el 2012 la ejecución de la orden de deportación, ordenada por el Departamento de Seguridad Nacional.

Xenofobia: ¿es la solucion?

2011-01-06T22:12:00.000-04:00

Calcula CNDH secuestros masivos de 10 mil migrantes en seis meses

jueves 6 de enero, 02:43 PM

(Ampliación)

México, 6 Ene. (Notimex).- En los últimos seis meses los secuestros masivos en México afectaron a casi 10 mil migrantes provenientes en su mayoría de Centroamérica y en cada evento el promedio de plagiados fue de 50, aseguró el ombudsman nacional, Raúl Plascencia Villanueva.

En entrevista el presidente de la Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos (CNDH) destacó que en el Informe sobre Secuestros de Migrantes que se presentará en breve se planteará la necesidad de tomar en cuenta que esa acción implica retener a un sinnúmero de personas.

"No son secuestros individuales, sino masivos donde se logra detener por parte de los delincuentes hasta 100 ó 150 migrantes y después se les traslada a un punto donde son víctimas de extorsión", mencionó.

Detalló que en este caso los 10 mil plagios de migrantes ocurrieron en cerca de 200 hechos de abril a septiembre de 2010, es decir en seis meses, por lo que en promedio son 50 los afectados en cada uno de ellos, aunque el promedio anual es de 20 mil secuestros al año.

Plascencia Villanueva explicó que el Informe sobre Secuestros de Migrantes en México "busca establecer una metodología, un análisis más riguroso por estados, por nacionalidad de los migrantes, con testimonios, que permita en buena medida tener una panorámica de qué es lo que está sucediendo".

El presidente de la CNDH refirió que los estados y zonas donde esa problemática se acentúa son Chiapas, Oaxaca y Tamaulipas, así como la parte sur de Veracruz, la zona de Tabasco que colinda con la frontera de Guatemala y algunas regiones de Coahuila y San Luis Potosí.

Mencionó que el diagnóstico incluye testimonios de los migrantes que dan cuenta de la manera en que operan bandas organizadas de delincuentes bien estructuradas no sólo para perpetrar el secuestro, sino también para el cobro de los rescates y operar con un margen de impunidad que les permita no ser detenidos.

Externó que los grupos delincuenciales dedicados al secuestro de migrantes piden como rescate de sus víctimas entre cinco mil dólares y 15 mil dólares dependiendo de la condición de cada una de ellas.

Raúl Plascencia recordó en ese sentido las agresiones de las que han sido objeto los defensores civiles de derechos humanos por ayudar a los migrantes, por lo que urgió a que se investiguen esos hechos y se tomen medidas para evitar que se repitan.

Republicanos en EE.UU. buscan negar la ciudadanía a hijos de ilegales

(AP)

Campaña de los legisladores, que ahora son mayoría en la Cámara de Representantes, fue tildada de racista y “miserable”

EL COMERCIO Jueves 06 de enero de 2011 - 12:25 pm

Washington (Reuters). Legisladores estadounidenses lanzaron una campaña para negar la ciudadanía a los niños que nazcan en Estados Unidos cuyos padres sean inmigrantes ilegales, una medida que grupos de derechos humanos y activistas hispanos criticaron como poco viable y miserable.

Legisladores de Pensilvania, Oklahoma, Carolina del Sur, Georgia y Arizona revelaron un modelo legal que dicen sería promovido en 40 estados para negar el derecho a ciudadanía por nacer en el territorio de Estados Unidos a los hijos de inmigrantes ilegales, un derecho consagrado en la Enmienda 14 a la Constitución, lo que motivaría la revisión de esta.

La Enmienda 14, que garantiza la ciudadanía a “todas las personas nacidas o naturalizadas en Estados Unidos, y se someten la jurisdicción del mismo”, fue adoptada en 1868, después de la Guerra Civil de Estados Unidos para garantizar la ciudadanía a los ex esclavos afroamericanos.

La ley propuesta exigiría que todos los certificados de nacimiento indiquen la ciudadanía y situación inmigratoria de los padres, incluso si se encuentran en el país de manera ilegal.

“Desde hace mucho he considerado el derecho de ciudadanía por nacer en el país como el Santo Grial del debate de la inmigración ilegal”, dijo el representante estatal republicano de Oklahoma Randy Terrill en un comunicado. “Ha creado un incentivo perverso para que los ciudadanos extranjeros violen la ley de Estados Unidos y ha demostrado ser un desastre político para nuestra república”, agregó.

TAMBIÉN FUERON TILDADOS DE RACISTAS
La conferencia de prensa en Washington, donde se anunció el plan, fue interrumpida por manifestantes que llamaron racistas a los legisladores, provocando una pelea entre partidarios y opositores.

El presidente Barack Obama asumió el poder hace dos años, prometiendo una reforma a la inmigración que incluiría una seguridad más estricta en la frontera con México y una vía para la ciudadanía para millones de inmigrantes ilegales.

Él no ha logrado grandes avances y los republicanos, que obtuvieron una enorme victoria en las elecciones legislativas, están prometiendo que serán duros con la inmigración ilegal.

La propuesta de los legisladores fue criticada por grupos de derechos civiles, activistas a favor de la reforma al sistema de inmigración y activistas hispanos, quienes dicen que la medida es “incendiaria, poco viable e inmoral”.

“Estas posturas enviarían a los hospitales, familias y a la sociedad al caos, exigiendo que el gobierno ingrese a cada sala de partos para determinar la paternidad del niño y la situación de sus padres”, dijo Janet Murguia, presidenta del Consejo Nacional de La Raza.

“Esto es claramente un ataque contra la Enmienda 14”, dijo la analista de política Michele Waslin del Centro de Política sobre Inmigración, agregando que “claramente se opone a las ideas fundamentales en las que se funda Estados Unidos y es miserable”.

Presentan en Nebraska ley migratoria parecida a la de Arizona

jueves 6 de enero, 02:22 PM

LINCOLN, Nebraska, EE.UU. (AP) - Un senador estatal de Nebraska presentó el jueves una iniciativa contra los inmigrantes indocumentados parecida a una controvertida ley aprobada el año pasado en Arizona.

El senador estatal Charlie Janssen prometió en mayo presentar la iniciativa durante esta sesión, a pesar del enorme trabajo que tiene el legislador para cerrar un fuerte déficit en el presupuesto y rediseñar las fronteras políticas del distrito en los próximos 90 días.

"Este proyecto de ley tiene como objetivo frenar la inmigración ilegal y proteger a los ciudadanos del estado de Nebraska de varias maneras", dijo Janssen. "Protegerá a los contribuyentes de tener que pagar por la educación, beneficencia y gastos médicos de los indocumentados".

Al igual que la ley de Arizona, el proyecto de ley exigiría a los policías que, cuando hagan valer otras leyes, pregunten además por el estatus migratorio de quienes sospechen que se encuentran en el país sin papeles de residencia legal. También se requeriría que los que no son ciudadanos estadounidenses porten documentos que demuestren su estatus legal. No llevar los documentos sería considerado un delito menor.

El proyecto de ley también criminaliza el hecho de albergar, esconder o transportar un indocumentado. Esa violación estaría considerada un delito menor.

Los críticos aseguran que el proyecto de ley incita la caracterización racial.

Un juez federal bloqueó secciones de la ley de Arizona en julio, incluyendo las provisiones que pedían a la Policía que comprobara el estatus migratorio de una persona, al hacer valer otras leyes, y exigiera que los inmigrantes demostrasen que se encuentran en el país de forma legal.

La iniciativa de Janssen se diferencia de la ley de Arizona en que no permite que policías detengan indiscriminadamente a inmigrantes sospechosos de estar en el país ilegalmente.

La iniciativa de Nebraska intenta evitar la categorización racial diciendo que las sospechas de un agente no deberían basarse solamente en la raza de una persona, su color de piel, religión, género u origen nacional, dijo el fiscal general del estado Jon Bruning.

Nebraska es uno de los 21 estados buscando aprobar legislación similar este año, añadió.

Democracia en Estados Unidos

2011-01-06T20:07:00.001-04:00

Image credit: The Heads of State

Why Our Best Officers Are Leaving

Why are so many of the most talented officers now abandoning military life for the private sector? An exclusive survey of West Point graduates shows that it’s not just money. Increasingly, the military is creating a command structure that rewards conformism and ignores merit. As a result, it’s losing its vaunted ability to cultivate entrepreneurs in uniform.

By Tim Kane

John Nagl still hesitates when he talks about his decision to leave the Army. A former Rhodes Scholar and tank-battalion operations officer in Iraq, Nagl helped General David Petraeus write the Army’s new counterinsurgency field manual, which is credited with bringing Iraq’s insurgency under control. But despite the considerable influence Nagl had in the Army, and despite his reputation as a skilled leader, he retired in 2008 having not yet reached the rank of full colonel. Today, Nagl still has the same short haircut he had 24 years ago when we met as cadets—me an Air Force Academy doolie (or freshman), him a visiting West Pointer—but now he presides over a Washington think tank. The funny thing is, even as a civilian, he can’t stop talking about the Army—“our Army”—as if he never left. He won’t say it outright, but it’s clear to me, and to many of his former colleagues, that the Army fumbled badly in letting him go. His sudden resignation has been haunting me, and it punctuates an exodus that has been publicly ignored for too long.

Why does the American military produce the most innovative and entrepreneurial leaders in the country, then waste that talent in a risk-averse bureaucracy? Military leaders know they face a paradox. A widely circulated 2010 report from the Strategic Studies Institute of the Army War College said: “Since the late 1980s … prospects for the Officer Corps’ future have been darkened by … plummeting company-grade officer retention rates. Significantly, this leakage includes a large share of high-performing officers.” Similar alarms have been sounded for decades, starting long before the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan made the exit rate of good officers an acute crisis. When General Peter Schoomaker served as Army chief of staff from 2003 to 2007, he emphasized a “culture of innovation” up and down the ranks to shift the Army away from its Cold War focus on big, conventional battles and toward new threats. In many respects (weapons, tactics, logistics, training), the Army did transform. But the talent crisis persisted for a simple reason: the problem isn’t cultural. The military’s problem is a deeply anti-entrepreneurial personnel structure. From officer evaluations to promotions to job assignments, all branches of the military operate more like a government bureaucracy with a unionized workforce than like a cutting-edge meritocracy.

After interviewing veterans who work at some of the most dynamic and innovative companies in the country, I’m convinced that the military has failed to learn the most fundamental lessons of the knowledge economy. And that to hold on to its best officers, to retain future leaders like John Nagl, it will need to undergo some truly radical reforms—not just in its policies and culture, but in the way it thinks about its officers.

All They Can Be?

It would be easy to dismiss Nagl’s story, except you hear it almost every time you talk to a vet. In a recent survey I conducted of 250 West Point graduates (sent to the classes of 1989, 1991, 1995, 2000, 2001, and 2004), an astonishing 93 percent believed that half or more of “the best officers leave the military early rather than serving a full career.” By design, I left the definitions of best and early up to the respondents. I conducted the survey from late August to mid-September, reaching graduates through their class scribes (who manage e-mail lists for periodic newsletters). This ensured that the sample included veterans as well as active-duty officers. Among active- duty respondents, 82 percent believed that half or more of the best are leaving. Only 30 percent of the full panel agreed that the military personnel system “does a good job promoting the right officers to General,” and a mere 7 percent agreed that it “does a good job retaining the best leaders.”

Is this so terrible? One can argue that every system has flaws and that the military should be judged on its ultimate mission: maintaining national security and winning wars. But that’s exactly the point: 65 percent of the graduates agreed that the exit rate of the best officers leads to a less competent general-officer corps. Seventy-eight percent agreed that it harms national security.

The shame of this loss of talent is that the U.S. military does such a good job attracting and training great leaders. The men and women who volunteer as military officers learn to remain calm and think quickly under intense pressure. They are comfortable making command decisions, working in teams, and motivating people. Such skills translate powerfully to the private sector, particularly business: male military officers are almost three times as likely as other American men to become CEOs, according to a 2006 Korn/Ferry International study. Examples abound of senior executives who attribute their leadership skills to their time in uniform: Ross Perot, Bill Coleman, Fred Smith, and Bob McDonald, the new CEO of Procter & Gamble, to name a few. The business guru Warren Bennis reflected in his recent memoirs, “I never heard anything at MIT or Harvard that topped the best lectures I heard at [Fort] Benning.”

Why is the military so bad at retaining these people? It’s convenient to believe that top officers simply have more- lucrative opportunities in the private sector, and that their departures are inevitable. But the reason overwhelmingly cited by veterans and active-duty officers alike is that the military personnel system—every aspect of it—is nearly blind to merit. Performance evaluations emphasize a zero-defect mentality, meaning that risk-avoidance trickles down the chain of command. Promotions can be anticipated almost to the day— regardless of an officer’s competence—so that there is essentially no difference in rank among officers the same age, even after 15 years of service. Job assignments are managed by a faceless, centralized bureaucracy that keeps everyone guessing where they might be shipped next.

The Pentagon’s response to such complaints has traditionally been to throw money at the problem, in the form of millions of dollars in talent-blind retention bonuses. More often than not, such bonuses go to any officer in the “critical” career fields of the moment, regardless of performance evaluations. This only ensures that the services retain the most risk-averse, and leads to long-term mediocrity.

When I asked veterans for the reasons they left the military, the top response was “frustration with military bureaucracy”—cited by 82 percent of respondents (with 50 percent agreeing strongly). In contrast, the conventional explanation for talent bleed—the high frequency of deployments—was cited by only 63 percent of respondents, and was the fifth-most-common reason. According to 9 out of 10 respondents, many of the best officers would stay if the military was more of a meritocracy.

Entrepreneurs in Uniform

During World War II, German generals often complained that U.S. forces were unpredictable: they didn’t follow their own doctrine. Colonel Jeff Peterson, a member of the faculty at West Point, likes to illustrate this point using a parable about hedgerows. After the Normandy invasion in 1944, American troops found that their movements were constrained by the thick hedgerows that lined the countryside of northern France. The hedges frequently channeled American units into German ambushes, and they were too thick to cut or drive through. In response, “Army soldiers invented a mechanism on the fly that they welded onto the front of a tank to cut through hedgerows,” Peterson told me.

American troops are famous for this kind of individual initiative. It’s a point of pride among officers that the American way of war emphasizes independent judgment in the fog and friction of battle, rather than obedience and rules. Lieutenants, even corporals and privates, are trained to be entrepreneurial in combat. This emphasis doesn’t just attract inspirational leaders and efficient managers—it produces revolutionary innovators. From the naval officer Alfred Thayer Mahan, whose insights on sea power transformed warfare at the beginning of the 20th century, to General Billy Mitchell, the godfather of the Air Force, to General Petraeus, who’s now implementing his counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, the U.S. military has a long and proud tradition of innovative thought.

Creativity of this sort is increasingly celebrated by economists who study growth, many of whom now believe that innovation is essentially the only factor that drives long-term increases in per capita income. Since innovation relies entirely on people—what economists call human capital— academics are showing more appreciation than ever for Joseph Schumpeter and his pioneering focus on entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs, Schumpeter noted, take risks, experiment with new technologies and ideas, and bring about the “creative destruction” that enables capitalism to flourish. Likewise, martial progress relies on innovative officers, especially those who question doctrine and strategy.

But the Pentagon doesn’t always reward its innovators. Usually, rebels in uniform suffer at the expense of their ideas. General Mitchell was court-martialed for insubordination in 1925; and who can forget the hostile treatment afforded General Eric Shinseki in 2003 after he testified that “something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers” would probably be required to stabilize post-invasion Iraq?

In a 2007 essay in the Armed Forces Journal, Lieutenant Colonel Paul Yingling offered a compelling explanation for this risk-averse tendency. A veteran of three tours in Iraq, Yingling articulated a common frustration among the troops: that a failure of generalship was losing the war. His critique focused not on failures of strategy but on the failures of the general-officer corps making the strategy, and of the anti-entrepreneurial career ladder that produced them: “It is unreasonable to expect that an officer who spends 25 years conforming to institutional expectations will emerge as an innovator in his late forties.”

Despite the turnaround in Iraq since engineered by General Petraeus and his allies, it is hard to escape the impression that the military has indeed become less hospitable to entrepreneurs at the strategic level in the past few decades. Schumpeter predicted that as capitalist economies evolved, innovation would become routinized in large organizations, obviating the need for individual entrepreneurs. Until the 1980s, this idea was widely accepted in corporate America, and certainly in the defense industry. But Schumpeter’s prediction was upended definitively when the knowledge economy evolved out of the industrial economy, and symbolically when Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started Apple Computer in a California garage. In America today, capitalism is entrepreneurial: our economy is defined by individuals failing or succeeding on the strength of their ideas. Crucially, the military has not recognized this shift. And the Army, in particular, has not changed from its “inefficient industrial era practices,” as a report by the Strategic Studies Institute put it last year. It still treats each employee as an interchangeable commodity rather than as a unique individual with skills that can be optimized.

It’s Not Business, It’s Personnel

The most blatantly anti-entrepreneurial aspect of the Army is the strict time-in-service requirement for various ranks. Consider the mandatory delay for becoming a general. Active-duty officers can retire after 20 years of service. But to be considered for promotion to general requires at least 22 years of service, and that applies to even the most talented and inspiring military officer in the nation.

John Nagl might have been that officer. His 2002 book, Learningto Eat Soup With a Knife, anticipated the kind of insurgency warfare America was likely to face in the new century, and it proved a prescient warning as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan dragged on. After serving in Iraq, Nagl helped General Petraeus write the Army’s counterinsurgency doctrine in 2005 and 2006. Conventional wisdom holds that the “surge” broke Iraq’s insurgency the following year. But the surge was more than just the 30,000 or so additional soldiers and marines who were deployed. The key was instead a new emphasis on stability and development, inspired in large part by ideas laid out in Nagl’s book.

In 2008, Nagl hit the 20-year mark, and what happened? He retired. Since he was not yet a full colonel, let alone a general, it was clear that he could be more influential as a civilian. He is now the head of the Center for a New American Security, known in Washington as President Obama’s favorite think tank. Had he stayed in the Army, odds are he would have been a career colonel, or a professor at the Army War College. Now his work at CNAS regularly reaches the White House and the National Security Council. While I assumed the loss of Nagl would be seen as an outrage within the military, most officers I spoke to shrugged it off as typical.

The more experts I talked with, the more I realized that targeting one inefficient policy, like the time-in-service requirement, wasn’t going to work. I asked the survey respondents to grade different aspects of the military in terms of fostering entrepreneurial leadership, using a standard Athrough-F scale. The “recruitment of raw talent” received 12 percent A’s and 43 percent B’s. Formal training programs and military doctrine also got good marks. What emerged as the weakest area was personnel. The evaluation system received 51 percent D’s and F’s. Job assignments got 55 percent failing grades. The promotion system got 61 percent. And lastly, the compensation system received 79 percent D’s and F’s.

Simply put, if the Army hopes to stanch the talent bleed, it needs to embrace an entrepreneurial structure, not just culture. That doesn’t mean more officers who invent new weapons, but rather a new web of incentives rewarding creative leadership. The military has reinvented itself in this manner before. West Point’s Jeff Peterson recounted the standard story line of the Army’s soul-searching after Vietnam. After eight years of committing hundreds of thousands of soldiers to a war that was lost on many levels, the Army returned to a strategic comfort zone, with its leadership thinking about conventional wars instead of the messy counterinsurgency it had just muddled through. While this story isn’t wrong on the whole, Peterson argues that it ignores the radical transformations that took place in the 1970s. He pulled James Kitfield’s book Prodigal Soldiers from his bookshelf and encouraged me to read it.

Kitfield chronicles a revolution in that era in how the Army treated, organized, and trained its soldiers. No change was bigger than the adoption of an all-volunteer force in 1973. It was a radical idea at the time, so controversial that many in the Army expected it to fail, or even to destroy the military. Instead, the all-volunteer force served as the beginning of a renaissance in the ranks, across all the services, and paved the way for a newly professional military. Instead of staying in for just two years, enlistees now commonly stayed for five years, or 10, or a career. The Army started paying better and, more important, making investments in its human capital. But make no mistake, moving to a volunteer force was not an incremental reform. It was radical. This connection may explain why almost 60 percent of the West Point respondents favored “radical reform” of the personnel system.

Radical reform may not sound like much of a blueprint, but the all-volunteer force must be understood in terms of a philosophical shift: the military rejected centrally planned accessions in exchange for a market mechanism. Faced with having to attract and retain volunteers, the military filled its requirements for labor with the right price: better pay, better housing, better treatment, and ultimately a better career opportunity than it had ever offered.

A Market Alternative

Today’s Army requires a similar philosophical shift if it is to generate more-entrepreneurial leadership and start retaining its most talented officers. When presented with 10 proposed policy changes, the panel of West Point grads was strongly in favor of five, marginally in favor of three, split on one, and strongly against the last. Dead last was reauthorizing the draft instead of the all-volunteer force, a proposal that drew support from only 14 percent of respondents. So what did they think would help?

The Army should start by breaking down its rigid promotion ladder. The most strongly recommended policy, which 90 percent agreed with, is to allow greater specialization. Under the current system, company and platoon commanders are often “promoted” to staff jobs—that is, transferred from commanding troops in battle to working behind a desk on a general’s staff—even if they’d prefer to specialize in a lower-ranking position they enjoy. Rather than take an advancement they don’t want, many quit the Army altogether. Expanding early-promotion opportunities for top performers and eliminating year-group promotions also have strong support (87 and 78 percent, respectively). All of this might be hard to do while maintaining centralized management of rank and job assignments, but three-quarters of the panel favored ditching that system entirely in favor of an internal job market.

Indeed, an internal job market might be the key to revolutionizing military personnel. In today’s military, individuals are given “orders” to report to a new assignment every two to four years. When an Army unit in Korea rotates out its executive officer, the commander of that unit is assigned a new executive officer. Even if the commander wants to hire Captain Smart, and Captain Smart wants to work in Korea, the decision is out of their hands—and another captain, who would have preferred a job in Europe, might be assigned there instead. The Air Force conducts three assignment episodes each year, coordinated entirely by the Air Force Personnel Center at Randolph Air Force Base, in Texas. Across the globe, officers send in their job requests. Units with open slots send their requirements for officers. The hundreds of officers assigned full-time to the personnel center strive to match open requirements with available officers (each within strictly defined career fields, like infantry, intelligence, or personnel itself), balancing individual requests with the needs of the service, while also trying to develop careers and project future trends, all with constantly changing technological tools. It’s an impossible job, but the alternative is chaos.

In fact, a better alternative is chaos. Chaos, to economists, is known as the free market, where the invisible hand matches supply with demand. The Strategic Studies Institute report makes this very point. “Giving officers greater voice in their assignments increases both employment longevity and productivity,” it concludes. “The Army’s failure to do so, however, in large part accounts for declining retention among officers commissioned since 1983.”

Here is how a market alternative would work. Each commander would have sole hiring authority over the people in his unit. Officers would be free to apply for any job opening. If a major applied for an opening above his pay grade, the commander at that unit could hire him (and bear the consequences). Coordination could be done through existing online tools such as monster.com or careerbuilder.com (presumably those companies would be interested in offering rebranded versions for the military). If an officer chose to stay in a job longer than “normal” (“I just want to fly fighter jets, sir”), that would be solely between him and his commander.

Each of the four military branches is free to design its own personnel system, with minimal Pentagon interference. Yet each uses a similar centralized-planning department. It would take only one branch to lead the way by adopting the best practices of corporate America—where firms manage vast workforces by emphasizing flexibility, respect for individual talent, and executive responsibility. During my study, I surveyed ex-military officers at Citi, Dell, Amazon, Procter & Gamble, TMobile, Amgen, Intuit, and countless venture-capital firms. At every company, the veterans were shocked to look back at how “archaic and arbitrary” talent management was in the armed forces. Unlike industrial-era firms, and unlike the military, successful companies in the knowledge economy understand that nearly all value is embedded in their human capital.

I traveled to Silicon Valley to learn about the organizational design of firms there, and also to learn about the talent ecosystem. Nowhere is there a military-style 20-year retirement framework that distorts career decisions, and no one offers the security of lifetime employment. Instead, Silicon Valley attracts talent because it knows the importance of flexibility. Companies, unlike military units, are born and die out constantly, and the massive flow of labor across and within companies is highly turbulent. Not only can ambitious visionaries become top executives in half a decade, but employees can do the one thing they love for decades without worrying about getting “promoted” to management positions they don’t want. In the glassy buildings of Menlo Park, “being all you can be”—whether it’s coding C++, designing Web campaigns, or excelling in some other niche—isn’t just a slogan.

One Silicon Valley executive I spoke with, whom I’ll call Captain Smith, contrasted his time as a Marine company commander with his current job leading hundreds of employees, from software engineers to sales managers. Like other veterans in corporate America, he credits his military training with sharpening his leadership skills. But the analytical mind he uses to devise business models is just as sharp in assessing the military’s inept talent management. What’s the impact of merit on promotions in the Marines? “Virtually none,” says Smith. “On average, the best officers got out; the worst officers got out.” There are notable exceptions, he said. “But the larger trend I observed drives any organization toward mediocrity.”

When I asked him about Silicon Valley’s lessons for the military, he mentioned his firm’s internal market for matching engineers and projects, where the bottom line is that engineers rule. Team leaders have to advertise their projects and try to attract engineers, and it’s uncommon for an engineer to be told what he or she will do. Happier workers mean higher productivity. “I don’t want to oversimplify,” he says. “But this is about incentives and control.”

In contrast, only one in five of the West Point graduates thinks the Army today does a good job matching talents with jobs. And nearly two-thirds agree that using an evaluation system that singled out the best and worst members of a given unit—for advancement or release—would yield a more entrepreneurial leadership. Such a system, popularized by Jack Welch of General Electric, would give commanders better information, and also make personnel ratings a lot more useful than the politically correct write-ups in abundance now. It would also recast the personnel officers as headhunters, focused on giving advice, rather than orders, to job-seekers and to hiring commanders.

I asked Smith—a supremely tech-savvy, gung-ho leader—whether he would consider rejoining if the Marines recruited him to serve as a general officer, perhaps to command their cyber-security efforts. I anticipated that his resolute willingness to serve would offer a vivid contrast to the military’s closed-mindedness. But he surprised me. He thought quietly for a minute. Then, shaking his head, he said something much more damning: “I can’t see it,” the Silicon Valley marine said. “Even if they made that offer … I have no confidence that I could pierce the bureaucracy.”

Tim Kane is a senior fellow in research and policy at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and a former Air Force intelligence officer.

La cultura política de Estados Unidos (The Atlantic)

2011-01-05T18:38:00.000-04:00

Meet the First Filibusters: The 16th and 17th Century Pirates of the Caribbean

Jan 4 2011, 3:52 PM ET 1

The filibuster may be unconstitutional, creating as it does a mechanism for a Senatorial veto.

One thing's for sure: Filibusters are also pre-constitutional. They are even pre-colonial.

The original filibusters were pirates of the Caribbean, and the contemporary Senate procedure continues to bear traces of the word's origins in the disruptive and lawless practices of the privateers who boosted the goods of ships traveling under Spanish sail. Later, the word came to describe an American movement with a base in the pre-Civil War South to seize Spanish West Indian and Central American lands and goods in the name of Manifest Destiny.

The word derives from a Dutch term for pirate and began to be applied to efforts "to hold the Senate floor in order to prevent a vote on a bill" in the in the 1850s, according to the Senate Historical Office. It is believed to derive from the Dutch word vrijbuiter, which means "to plunder," with vrij meaning "free" and buit meaning "booty."

And booty, according to Michael Sheen, a retired Chicago English teacher who writes the WordMall blog, means "collective plunder or spoils" such as "household goods seized and carried off" by armies.

These "freebooters" or "filibusters" traveled under no nation's sail -- they used various iterations of the Jolly Roger, instead -- and often sought to "privateer" goods and gold being transported by Spanish ships in the Caribbean, from slaves to gold. The word to describe them was first recorded in English in the late 16th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Filibustering first took on a political meaning in the early 19th century when it was transferred from pirates who seized goods to individuals who sought to seize goods, land -- and states.

According to PBS's The History Detectives:

In the 1800s, the term took on new meaning, referring to a group of adventurers who, without the consent of the American government, tried to assume power in a number of Latin American and Caribbean countries. Filibusters were intent on overpowering the 'lesser peoples' despite neutrality laws that forbid Americans from privately engaging in warfare with other countries. Cuba, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Mexico were all victims of filibusters from 1830 to 1860.
Famous filibusters were larger than life characters such as Narciso Lopez, a Venezuelan-born soldier who, aided by sympathetic Southern money, liberated Venezuela from Spanish rule. He then attempted three times to free Cuba.
William Walker, a southerner from Tennessee, annexed parts of Mexico and named himself president. In his proclamation of control over Lower California (then part of Mexico), Walker explains why the territory was rightfully his, an explanation that neatly sums up the filibuster movement.
Thus abandoning the peninsula, and leaving it as it was "a waif on the waters," Mexico cannot complain if others take it and make it valuable. On such considerations have I and my companions-in-arms acted in the course we have pursued. And, for the success of our enterprise, we put our trust in Him who controls the destinies of nations, and guides them in the ways of improvement and progress.
Despite the vehement objections of the Mexican government and the anger of the U.S. authorities, many Americans thought this was a triumph for filibustering. However, Walker eventually gave up, finding it too difficult. He was tried by the U.S. and acquitted.

Perhaps it is appropriate given the history of the filibuster movement that the longest filibuster in U.S. history came from a Southern senator, the late Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who held out for 24 hours and 18 minutes in opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957. After all, according to PBS, "The filibuster cause was successful largely thanks to a strong support base in the South" where "parades were held in their honor, songs written and their adventures glorified."
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Garance Franke-Ruta - Garance Franke-Ruta is a senior editor at The Atlantic and oversees politics coverage for TheAtlantic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @thegarance.

Meet the New Boss

Jan 5 2011, 4:03 PM ET 1

Updated 4:27 p.m.

The deal is done: With a wave of his huge wooden gavel, John Boehner took control of the House of Representatives.

The gavel is an outsized block of wood that looks like the sawed-off top of a sledgehammer, far bigger than the medium-sized one Boehner handed to Pelosi four years ago. Boehner's gavel was made by one of his constituents in western Ohio and given to the new speaker as a gift. The symbol of Boehner's new power fits well with his straightforward, old-boy demeanor, a facet of his persona that the outgoing speaker praised as she introduced him.

The House of Representatives was abuzz today, sort of like the first day of high school. Members patted shoulders and shook hands congenially; little kids scurried around behind their lawmaker parents, outside the House chamber and in it. After a quorum call around noon, members all filed in to sit or stand less in reverence than in friendly anticipation, waiting for power to change hands officially.

Lawmakers milled about the floor, talking to one another, finding seats in short supply as members' children (toddlers and teenagers alike, sitting in chairs and laps) accompanied them to see their parents sworn in. Members stood behind the last row of seats, leaning on the banister, spilling into the aisles.

A cheer erupted as Boehner and Pelosi stepped up to the dais in the front of the room. As Pelosi began her speech, a little girl in the visitor's gallery started to cry.

"It is a high honor to welcome all the members of Congress and their families to the House of Representatives," Pelosi said. And with a cheer, the ceremony began.

Pelosi spoke about bipartisanship and a "shared commitment to the way forward" but eventually steered into more controversial territory, listing the achievements of the Democratic Congress, to Democratic clapping and Republican silence, a la a State of the Union address.

"Patients can no longer be thrown off their insurance," Pelosi declared. "Taxpayers will be saved $1.3 trillion." She mentioned the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and the recent repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." And for a few minutes, as Democrats clapped and Republicans shot stony glances at their former tormentor, congeniality was sucked out of the room.

Pelosi saved some kind words for Boehner, calling him "a man of conviction, a public servant," who has "earned the confidence of his conference." She thanked her colleagues for making her the first woman speaker, which everyone, Democrat and Republican alike, applauded.

And then the enormous gavel was handed over. "It's larger than most gavels here, but [it's] the gavel of choice for Speaker Boehner." The chamber laughed.

Boehner took the gavel from Pelosi with a hug, looking ready to wield this immense wooden thing. Republicans whistled and cheered; Democrats stood to clap along with them. Bipartisanship was back, if only for a minute or two. Boehner took the gavel in both hands, twisting it slightly, feeling its weight, and promptly teared up—a signature move of his—wiping his nose with a handkerchief as the Republican whooping got even louder. When he banged it, grins widened on all the Republican faces, seated in the left half of the room.

As Boehner stepped up to the podium and began speaking, another child started crying. That was something of a theme for the day.

"We gather here today at a time of great challenges. Nearly one in ten of our neighbors are looking for work. Health-care costs are still rising for families and small businesses. Our spending has caught up with us, and our debt will soon eclipse the size of our entire economy. Hard work and tough decisions will be required of the 112th Congress," Boehner said. "No longer can we fall short. No longer can we kick the can down the road. The people voted to end business as usual, and today we begin carrying out their instructions."

Republicans stood and clapped. Democrats did not.

As all this was happening, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, an architect of GOP obstructionism in the Obama era, sat still in the very middle of the House chamber. Apparently there alone, and the only senator in the room that I could notice, McConnell wore a deep red tie and fixed his eyes steadily on Boehner the entire time, his arms folded, clapping reservedly when the time was right. McConnell has been Boehner's Senate counterpart over the last four years, and while Boehner is genial and easy to like, McConnell is careful and disciplined. His mastery of the GOP Senate caucus and steadfast opposition to Democrats put a stop to aggressive bills Pelosi was able to pass, turning the Senate into a morass for Democratic ambitions since the beginning of 2009. McConnell's resistance and helping Boehner get where he is today. Almost everything, from the Kentucky senator's vantage, had gone to plan.

A child, seated with a lawmaker in the front row of the chamber, started throwing a silent tantrum. He stood up and waved his arms up and down, then stormed down the aisle, eventually escorted out by his sister. Boehner remained unfazed.

Keeping his hands folded neatly on the podium, raising his left index finger to make points, Boehner pledged a "renewed focus on our Constitution" and, amidst this big moment, injected some humility by reciting the God's curse on Adam: "Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

"The American people have humbled us. They have refreshed our memories as to just how temporary the privilege to serve is. They have reminded us that everything here is on loan from them. That includes this gavel, which I accept cheerfully and gratefully, knowing I am but its caretaker. After all, this is the people's House. This is their Congress. It's about them, not us," Boehner said. "What they want is a government that is honest, accountable and responsive to their needs. A government that respects individual liberty, honors our heritage, and bows before the public it serves."

"A great deal of scar tissue has built up on both sides of the aisle: We cannot ignore that, nor should we.My belief has always been, we can disagree without being disagreeable," Boehner said.

In the most bipartisan moment of the day, Boehner was sworn in by the oldest and longest-serving member of the House, the 84-year old John Dingell, a Democrat from Michigan (who was the only member not to stand when Pelosi and Boehner took the podium). Dingell ambled up to a small lectern and read the oath of office to Boehner.

And with Boehner's affirmation, the 112th Congress had begun.

Afterward, members gladhanded and made their way out of the chamber. Republicans were celebratory, but restrained. "We have to avoid celebrating too much when so many people are out of work," New York's Peter King, one of the biggest Republican firebrands on national security issues in particular, told me after Boehner's speech.

"It's always nice to go back in the majority, certainly nothing compares to the first time, 10 years ago, but this is a close second I guess," said a smiling Jeff Flake, when I asked him how this stacks up to other moments in his political career.

On his way out of the Speaker's Lobby that sits adjacent to the House floor, Dana Rohrabacher, the 12-term congressman from outside L.A., gave a shoulder pat to a new member, the Tea-Party-backed Allen West of Ft. Lauderdale.

"Sir, it's gonna be great," Rohrabacher told West. "We're gonna shake things up here."

"We got to. The people are counting on us," West replied.

"You got it."

And with so many handshakes, the transaction was complete.

Illustration credit: Alex Hoyt (with iPad Brushes)

Strict Obstructionist

Mitch McConnell is a master manipulator and strategist—the unheralded architect of the Republican resurgence. Now that his relentless tactics have made his party victorious, he is poised to take down the president and win the Senate majority he covets—if he can fend off the Tea Party and keep his own caucus together.

By Joshua Green

Stephen Voss

If you were to look for the very last moment when the Democrats might have avoided, or at least mitigated, the wave that swept over them in November, it may have come on Tuesday, September 14, just after lunchtime. That’s when Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate leader from Kentucky, emerged from a weekly caucus meeting to address reporters gathered beneath the Ohio Clock in the U.S. Capitol and take care of an important piece of business. Two days earlier, on the CBS show Face the Nation, McConnell’s counterpart in the House of Representatives, John Boehner of Ohio, had blundered in answering a hypothetical question by suggesting he would consider something short of a full extension of the Bush-era tax cuts. The White House intended to frame the election as a choice between the party of the middle class (Democrats) and the party of the rich (Republicans) by splitting the extension into two votes: one tax cut for the middle class, and another for the rich. Republicans had steadfastly refused—until Boehner flinched. The next day’s New York Times headline was “Boehner Shifts on Tax-Cut Bill Backed by Democrats.” Sensing controversy and a change in momentum, the media were eager to pounce. Boehner had wisely vanished, leaving McConnell to repair the damage.

Flanked by his leadership team, McConnell stepped to the microphone and proceeded to extinguish any hope of a compromise. In his curt southern manner, he declared that Republicans were united in wanting to extend all the tax cuts; that several Democrats had voiced unease about the White House strategy; and that he would relish the chance to talk about the Bush tax cuts, whose expiration, he warned, would “throw a wet blanket over the recovery.”

McConnell, 68, is owlish, phlegmatic, and gray, and often looks bothered, as though lunch isn’t agreeing with him. He has been described as having “the natural charisma of an oyster.” Yet you sense that this is not so much a burden as a choice, that he has pared away any qualities extraneous to his political advancement. McConnell has the relentless drive and ambition you frequently encounter in Washington. But unlike so many others, he longs to be not president but majority leader of the Senate—a position conferred by his peers and not voters, so geniality and popularity with the press don’t interest him. “Every answer he ever gives is geared toward strategy within the Senate,” says his friend Senator Robert Bennett of Utah, meaning this as a compliment.

McConnell nevertheless manipulates the press masterfully, using methods that are head-smackingly obvious and yet still elude most politicians. He knows exactly what he wants to say, repeats it with emphasis, then stops. He will not be drawn out, and has no compunction about refusing questions. He would never make Boehner’s mistake, because he won’t entertain hypotheticals. “We don’t issue a whole lot of currency,” his spokesman says. What McConnell does say makes news.

At the press conference, reporters jockeyed to throw him off message and extract some further bit that might drive the story forward. His unvarying reply when asked about Boehner was: “It does not make sense to raise taxes in a recession,” a phrase he uttered nine times in barely as many minutes. The effect was like watching a swarm of mosquitoes encounter a bug zapper. After he wrapped up the proceedings, the reporters broke their huddle and scurried to buttonhole individual senators. McConnell ignored them and walked off. The story soon dried up. No vote took place. And the elections were, as McConnell intended them to be, an unadulterated referendum on President Obama.

Inmigrantes en EE.UU.

2011-01-05T16:39:00.000-04:00

The Economist

Spanish moves north

Jan 3rd 2011, 20:28 by G.L. | NEW YORK

EVERYONE knows the number of Spanish-speakers in the United States is increasing—but where in the United States? Last month the Census Bureau released data from its latest American Community Survey showing the percentage of people aged five and over who speak Spanish at home. This survey took place over five years from 2005 to 2009, so it's not a snapshot, but with that caveat in mind, it does show small but notable differences from the 2000 census, both in the overall percentage of Spanish speakers (up to 12.1% from 10.7% in 2000) and in where they are concentrated: increasingly in the north and centre of the country.

The maps below show those differences, but to see them it's actually easier to click on the maps, open them full-size in separate browser tabs and flip between them. What you'll notice is:

smaller concentrations of Spanish-speakers in parts of the southern states that used to be in Mexico: New Mexico, Arizona, south-west Texas and southern Colorado
a distinct increase in the north-west: northern California, Oregon, Washington and western Idaho
patches of increase all across the central states, and more noticeably, in Florida, Georgia and the eastern seaboard
most impervious to change are the far north—Montana and the Dakotas—and deep south: Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama

I'm not sure what this all adds up to, but I'm sure some of our readers know the answer. One interpretation I can think of is that second- and third- (or even later) generation Hispanics in old Mexico are becoming more prosperous and moving northwards, while keeping their Spanish in the family. Another is that those in the south are anglicising, while new immigrants are seeking opportunities further afield from the border. It may also be that undocumented Hispanics in the north are less wary of census-takers than they used to be. These explanations aren't all mutually exclusive, of course. What's interesting is that either way, the deep south remains a redoubt of ~~whiteness~~ non-Hispanics.

The Utopian

2011-01-04T13:53:00.001-04:00

Why Europe Is, and Will Remain, Powerful

By Joseph Nye.

Predictions of European decline rely on an outmoded understanding of power. On all issues that require power with - rather than over - others, Europe has impressive capacity.
A defense of Europe’s relevance.

(Diciembre 22, 2010 http://www.the-utopian.org/post/2424081389/why-europe-is-and-will-remain-powerful)
____________________________________________________

The closest thing to an equal that the United States faces at the beginning of the 21^st century is the European Union. Although the American economy is four times larger than Germany’s, the total economy of the European Union is slightly larger than that of the U.S. in purchasing power parity, and Europe’s population of nearly 500 million is considerably larger than America’s 300 million. American per capita income is higher than that of the EU, because a number of the new entrants into the European Union were poorer than the original West European core countries, but in terms of human capital, technology, and exports, Europe is very much a peer competitor for the United States. Until the Spring crisis of 2010 when fiscal problems in Greece and elsewhere created anxiety in financial markets, many economists speculated that the Euro might some day replace the dollar as the world’s primary reserve currency. Instead, European governments (and the IMF) had to organize a $925 million rescue program to try to restore market confidence, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned that if the Euro fails, “then not only the currency fails…Europe will fail, and with it the idea of European unity.”^{^[i]}

In military terms, Europe spends less than half of what the United States does on defense, but has more men under arms, and includes two countries that possess nuclear arsenals. In soft power, European cultures have long had a wide appeal in the rest of the world, and the sense of a Europe uniting around Brussels has had a strong attraction for its neighbors. Europeans have also been important pioneers and played central roles in international institutions. The key question in assessing Europe’s resources is whether Europe will develop enough political and social-cultural cohesion to act as one on a wide range of international issues, or whether it will remain a limited grouping of countries with strongly different nationalisms and foreign policies. In other words, what is Europe’s power conversion capability?

The answer varies with different issues. On questions of trade and influence within the World Trade Organization, Europe is the equal of the United States and able to balance American power. The creation of the European Monetary Union and the launching of the Euro at the beginning of 1999 made Europe’s role in monetary affairs and the International Monetary Fund nearly equal to that of the U.S. (though the 2010 crisis over Greek debt dented confidence in the Euro.) On anti-trust issues, the size and attraction of the European market has meant that American firms seeking to merge have had to seek approval from the European Commission as well as the U.S. Justice Department. In the cyber world, the EU is setting the global standards for privacy protection.

At the same time, Europe faces significant limits on its degree of unity. National identities remain stronger than a common European identity, despite six decades of integration, and national interests, while subdued in comparison to the past, still matter.^{^[ii]} The enlargement of the European Union to include 27 states (with more to come) means that European institutions are likely to remain sui generis, and unlikely to produce a strong federal Europe or a single state. None of this is to belittle European institutions and what they have accomplished. Legal integration is increasing, and European Court verdicts have compelled member countries to change policies. On the other hand, legislative and executive branch integration has lagged, and while Europe has created a president and a central figure for foreign relations, the integration of foreign and defense policy is still limited. In the words of Lord Patten, a former member of the European Commission, “unlike the US we do not matter everywhere.”^{^[iii]}

Over the decades Europe has seen alternations between excessive optimism and bouts of “Euro-pessimism” such as the current period. As one journalist reported in 2010, “this year, the 27 nation European Union was supposed to come of age as an actor on the world stage, bolstered by the Lisbon Treaty, which streamlines the EU’s cumbersome institutions. Instead, Europe is starting to look like the loser in a new geopolitical order dominated by the U.S. and emerging powers led by China….No Europeans were invited when U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao held the make-or-break meeting on Dec. 18 that brokered the modest Copenhagen accord. The Chinese invited the leaders of India, Brazil and South Africa. That meeting and Europe’s absence was the ‘seminal image’ of 2009.”^{^[iv]} Moreover, after the 2008 financial crisis, the fiscal problems of several EU members, particularly Greece, exposed the limits of fiscal integration in the Eurozone and raised questions about role of the Euro.

The National Intelligence Council report foresees a Europe in 2050 that will be “a hobbled giant distracted by internal bickering and competing national agendas”. As The Economist noted, “talk of Europe’s relative decline seems to be everywhere just now….You may hear glum figures about Europe’s future weight and with some reason. In 1900, Europe accounted for a quarter of the world’s population. By 2060, it may account for just 6% — and almost a third of these will be more than 65 years old.”^{^[v]} Europe does face severe demographic problems, but size of population is not highly correlated with power, and “predictions of Europe’s downfall have a long history of failing to materialize.” In the 1980s, analysts spoke of Euro-sclerosis and a crippling malaise, but in the ensuing decades Europe showed impressive growth and institutional development. “The EU’s modus operandi – sharing power, hammering out agreements, resolving conflict by endless committee – can be boring and even frustrating to watch. But in an increasingly networked and interdependent world, it has become the global standard.” ^{^[vi]} As the director of the European Council on Foreign Relations put it, “the conventional wisdom is that Europe’s hour has come and gone. Its lack of vision, divisions, obsession with legal frameworks, unwillingness to project military power, and sclerotic economy are contrasted with a United States more dominant even than Rome…But the problem is not Europe – it is our outdated understanding of power.”^{^[vii]}

The political scientist Andrew Moravcsik makes a similar argument that European nations, singly and collectively, are the only states other than the U.S. able to “exert global influence across the full spectrum from ‘hard’ to ‘soft’ power. Insofar as the term retains any meaning, the world is bipolar , and is likely to remain so over the foreseeable future.” The pessimistic prognosis is based on a 19^th century realist view in which “power is linked to the relative share of aggregate global resources and countries are engaged in constant zero-sum rivalry. ^{^[viii]} Moreover, as he points out, Europe is the world’s second military power with 21 per cent of the world’s military spending compared to 5 per cent for China, three per cent for Russia, two percent for India, and 1.5 percent for Brazil. Tens of thousands of troops have been deployed outside of home countries in Sierra Leone, Congo, Ivory Coast, Chad, Lebanon, and Afghanistan. In terms of economic power, Europe has the world’s largest market, and represents 17 per cent of world trade compared to 12 per cent for the U.S., and Europe dispenses half of the world’s foreign assistance compared to 20 per cent for the U.S.

In terms of relative power, if the EU endeavored to become a global challenger to the United States in a traditional realist balance of power, these assets might counter American power. But if Europe and America remain loosely allied or even neutral, these resources could reinforce each other . As The Economist speculated a decade ago, in terms of military security, it is possible that “by about 2030, both Europe and America will be having the same trouble with some other part of the world” such as Russia, China and Muslim southwest Asia.^{^[ix]}

Nor is economic divorce likely. New technology, flexibility in labor markets, strong venture capital and an entrepreneurial culture make the American market attractive to European investors. The United States spends 2.7 per cent —twice as much as Europe – on universities and R&D. Direct investment in both directions is higher than with Asia and helps knit the economies together. More than a third of trade occurs within transnational corporations. Moreover, while trade inevitably produces some degree of friction in the domestic politics of democracies, it is a game from which both sides can profit if there is a will to cooperate, and U.S.-European trade is more balanced than U.S. trade with Asia.

At the cultural level, Americans and Europeans have sniped at and admired each other for more than two centuries. For all the complaints about Hollywood films or McDonald’s, no one forces Europeans to eat there, though millions do each year. And despite the frictions between parts of Europe and the George W. Bush administration, Barack Obama became almost a cult figure in his popularity in much of Europe. In some ways, the inevitable frictions between the two continents show a closeness rather than a distance. It is also true that American consumers can benefit from European efforts to raise standards in anti-trust actions or internet privacy. And in a larger sense, Americans and Europeans share the values of democracy and human rights more with each other than with other regions of the world. Even in a traditional realist assessment of balance of power resources, neither the US nor Europe are likely to threaten the vital or important interests of the other side.^{^[x]} Power struggles over conflicting interests are likely to remain at a more mundane level. And on issues that require power with rather than over others, the Europeans have impressive capacity.

This is an exclusive excerpt from Joseph Nye’s forthcoming book, The Future of Power.

Joseph Nye is a Harvard University Distinguished Services Professor, and a former chair of the US National Intelligence Council.

The Atlantic, enero 2011

2011-01-04T13:31:00.001-04:00

Fighting the Next War

The case for a new national security act

By Gary Hart

The Heads of State

In 1947, after three years of debate and considerable controversy, Congress passed the National Security Act, which President Truman signed on July 26. That law unified the separate Army and Navy Departments, including the Marine Corps, into what became the Department of Defense; created the new United States Air Force from the previous Army Air Forces; and established the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency. Along with the various memoranda and directives that implemented its intentions, the act became the guidepost for the conduct of the Cold War.

The Cold War, of course, ended two decades ago. It is time to consider a new national security act—one more appropriate for a multipolar world. The twin revolutions of globalization and information are remaking economic and political structures. New threats to security—failing states, the rise of stateless nations, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, ethnic nationalism and religious fundamentalism, climate degradation, mass South-North migrations, global pandemics, fragile energy networks, and resource competition, to name a few—generally don’t lend themselves to military solution. No one nation, not even the United States, can deal with them alone.

Warfare itself is changing. Organized violence by nation-states, though still plausible, is diminishing. Instead, unconventional conflicts involving stateless nations, tribes, clans, gangs, ethnic nationalists, and religious fundamentalists are clearly rising. Sooner or later some lethal combination of drug cartels, arms syndicates, international mafias, and terrorist groups will acquire weapons of mass destruction.

All of these factors require a more sophisticated understanding of security than that which defined the Cold War. Neither al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, the Taliban in Pakistan, the mafia in Russia, nor the drug cartels in Mexico fear our strategic weapons, large Army divisions, or carrier task groups. We need a new statutory basis to do for 21st-century security what the National Security Act of 1947 did: lay the legal groundwork for defensive policies that address the realities of a new era.

Laws are not panaceas. But simply drafting and debating a National Security Act of 2011 would offer the therapy of reflection. Where are we now? Where are we trying to go? Who can help us get there? Whom should we realistically be afraid of? How might they threaten us? What are the limits of military power? Most of all: what can we do now to reduce threats in the future?

Underlying these questions are foundational issues like civilian-military relations, chains of command, and decision-making authority, especially in crises such as 9/11—issues that should be subject to greater public debate.

In November 1993, I wrote to President Bill Clinton suggesting that he stood roughly where Harry Truman did in 1945 and that, using the Truman model, he might ask a small group of advisers to consider a new national security strategy and, if necessary, a new national security act for the post–Cold War era. Not until 1998 did the president join then–Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich in creating the Commission on National Security, and even then we were not given the mandate to consider a new law.

But such a reform is needed now more than ever. The 20th-century equation of national interest with national security produced two results: America’s role in the world was almost totally defined in military and security terms; and the vast defense structure created in 1947 became the overwhelmingly dominant force in defining our national priorities.

This has meant that the Department of Defense, the National Security Council, and the ever-growing intelligence community all took their share of national resources, and only then was the remainder parceled out for domestic investment needs. If we wanted large-scale investment in education, a national highway system, and national research laboratories, we lumped them all under “national security.”

Even more troubling were the political implications of the security state. If one ideology or party defined itself as the “security” party, it could dominate national power. Whoever dominated national security dominated the state.

The security state also required a constant threat. The Soviet Union served that purpose for 45 years. Now al-Qaeda has to suffice. A new national security apparatus should assume a less mythical and far more manageable profile, and it should no longer focus on the search for monsters to destroy.

In 1947, President Truman established an army of industry. In the 21st century, we must establish an army of intelligence, information, and usable technology. Thomas Jefferson wrote that asking the nation to rely on the laws and policies of one generation for the changing needs of the next was the same as asking a grown man to wear the coat he wore as a boy. The 21st-century United States must lay aside the coat worn by its 20th-century self.

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Gary Hart, who represented Colorado in the U.S. Senate from 1975 to 1987, is a professor at the University of Denver. He was co-chairman of the U.S. Commission on National Security for the 21st Century.

The War Machine

Jan 4 2011, 7:35 AM ET

Crooked contractors, radical overspending, and other stories of the military-industrial complex from the Atlantic archives.

Atomic War or Peace (November 1947)
By Albert Einstein
"I am not saying that the United States should not manufacture and stockpile the bomb," the great physicist wrote just two years after Hiroshima. "But deterrence should be the only purpose of the stockpile of bombs."

An Open Letter to President Kennedy (January 1961)
By William R. Matthews
In a plea to America's newly elected leader, the author insisted that abating the expensive arms race would free up funds to make the whole world more productive.

The Steep Bill for Vietnam (September 1972)
By David Halberstam
Lyndon Johnson's administration intentionally lowballed the cost of the war, hoping to keep the details as secret as possible. In response, the American economy went haywire.

The Spend-Up (July 1986)
By James Fallows
When the Reagan Administration came to Washington, it promised to repair a "decade of neglect" in military spending. Instead, Fallows argued, our military arsenal became more expensive but not larger.

The Rush to Deploy SDI (April 1988)
By Charles E. Bennett
The author argued that Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative was a misguided effort--defying scientific opinion, bypassing internal Pentagon review procedures, stalling Congress, and pressuring the military.

The American Way of War (June 2002)
By Michael Kelly
With its 12 nuclear aircraft-carrier battle groups, its stealth bombers, its cruise missiles, and its generations-ahead fleet of warplanes, wrote Kelly, the United States stands alone in the world and in history.
Uncle Sam Buys an Airplane (June 2002)
By James Fallows
How Lockheed Martin beat Boeing for the biggest military contract in history--and how that one contract could change the way the military builds and pays for its weapons.

America's Elegant Decline (November 2007)
By Robert D. Kaplan
Our Navy is stretched thin, Kaplan wrote, and the way we manage dwindling naval resources will go a long way toward determining our future standing in the world.

The Last Ace (March 2009)
By Mark Bowden
The U.S. government, wrote Bowden, faces a difficult decision: Should it stock the Air Force with Boeing's expensive, cutting-edge F‑22? Or should it plunge America back to a time when the cost of air supremacy was paid in the blood of ace pilots?

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Glenn Harlan Reynolds - Glenn Harlan Reynolds is the Beauchamp Brogan Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee. He hosts "InstaVision" on PJTV.com.

The Unexpected Return of 'Duck and Cover'

Jan 4 2011, 8:00 AM ET 3

Sixty years ago, in 1951, Ray Maurer and Anthony Rizzo produced a film for the federal government's Civil Defense agency in response to Soviet nuclear tests. Featuring an animated turtle named Bert and real-life schoolchildren from New York, the film, Duck and Cover, became an icon of the Cold War, seen by many as evidence of the absurdity of the government's response to the nuclear threat. Against the threat of a nuclear attack, how much good would diving under a desk really do? Originally aimed at teaching children how to respond to a surprise nuclear strike, by the 1980s Duck and Cover was a piece of 1950s kitsch, mocked in such anti-nuclear films as The Atomic Cafe.

But now "duck and cover" is back, not as kitsch but once again as serious advice from the federal government. Faced with growing concerns about a nuclear attack on one or more major cities -- this time from terrorists, or bombs smuggled instead of dropped by countries like Iran or North Korea -- authorities are once again looking to educate citizens about what to do in the event of a nuclear attack. And that advice sounds a lot like what they were saying in my grandfather's day: Duck and cover.

As outlined in a lengthy planning document developed by a federal interagency committee led by the Executive Office of the President and released last summer, national and especially local authorities should be making plans to educate people to take cover and shelter in place after a nuclear detonation.

This has inspired a certain amount of snark from the Obama Administration's critics.

So was the advice crazy back then, and is it crazy now? The answers are "probably not," and "no." The snark, though understandable, is misplaced.

Even short-term sheltering (a day or two) before attempting to evacuate the area will dramatically increase the number of survivors. The difficulty, as the planning document puts it, will be overcoming people's "natural instincts to run from danger and reunify with family members." Overcoming those instincts will require preparation and education on the part of public health and school authorities.

When Americans think about nuclear war, we tend to think about the apocalyptic scene at the end of Dr. Strangelove, a war involving thousands of megaton-yield hydrogen bombs. (A megaton is the equivalent of a million tons of TNT, or about 60-70 times the power of the Hiroshima atomic bomb, which had an explosive power of around 15 kilotons, the equivalent of 15,000 tons of TNT). But in 1951, neither the United States nor the Soviet Union had yet tested a hydrogen bomb, and the duck-and-cover era authorities were basically preparing people for a rerun of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with us on the receiving end of relatively small numbers of (relatively) small nuclear weapons. "Duck and cover" advice is particularly effective there.

An atomic explosion can blind you, burn you, crush you with explosive power, or poison you with radiation. The "duck and cover" advice, based in no small part on the experience of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors, was designed to do what could be done to minimize that.

When an atomic bomb explodes, several things happen in short order. First is a flood of "prompt" radiation created by the nuclear fission that produces the explosion. The good news -- if you can call it that -- is that if you are close enough to get a lethal dose of prompt radiation, you're close enough that you're likely to be killed by other bomb effects before it becomes an issue. Next comes the "flash," a brilliant pulse of light created as the air around the bomb is heated to millions of degrees; this starts out as ultraviolet, falls quickly into the visible light range, and then into the heat-ray infrared range within a few seconds. The flash can blind, or burn exposed skin, and start fires. Next comes the blast, as the superheated air expands outward, initially at supersonic speeds. The blast is dangerous on its own, and also because it crushes buildings and creates clouds of flying glass and debris.

Given that light travels almost instantaneously, for everyone outside the immediate vicinity of the bomb the flash will arrive before the blast. Furthermore, the fire-setting infrared part of the flash peaks a few seconds later than the initial burst of light. So those who see a brilliant flash of light -- and know what it means -- have a few seconds to get under some sort of cover to protect themselves from what comes next.

After these "prompt effects" of initial radiation, flash, and blast have passed, there is an additional hazard. A nuclear explosion sucks air, dust -- and, if it's close to the ground, vaporized soil, buildings, etc. -- up into the fireball, where some components are transformed into radioactive isotopes that then fall out of the cloud and back to earth over the next few hours, hence the term "fallout." The radiation from fallout can be severe -- the bigger the bomb, and the closer it is the the ground, the worse the fallout, generally -- but it decays according to a straightforward rule, called the 7/10 rule: Seven hours after the explosion, the radiation is 1/10 the original level; seven times that interval (49 hours, or two days) it is 1/10 of that, or 1/100 the original, and seven times that interval (roughly two weeks) it is 1/1000 the original intensity. Because it is dust, fallout travels with the wind.

A terrorist bomb is likely to be relatively small -- possibly only a fraction of the Hiroshima bomb's explosive power -- and likely exploded at ground level. This means that the area totally destroyed by the explosion is likely to be much smaller than the area exposed to lesser damage or to fallout radiation (this nuclear weapons effects calculator from the Federation of Atomic Scientists will let you see the effect of different sized bombs burst at different heights). Because of this, Homeland Security people in the Obama Administration have been encouraging a duck-and-cover approach, followed by advice to "shelter in place" against fallout rather than trying to evacuate the area.

A terrorist atomic bomb might be small by Dr. Strangelove standards, but by any other standard its effects would be catastrophic. An area composed of dozens of city blocks would be essentially destroyed; a larger area surrounding it would be heavily damaged and filled with injured people; and an even larger area surrounding that one would be somewhat damaged, with roads blocked, powerlines down, and widespread confusion.

Those few survivors -- mostly badly injured, unless they happened to be inside a bank vault at the time, or something -- in the central area are likely pretty much on their own. The chance that emergency services can get into the zone and find them before the fallout starts to settle is virtually zero. Those in the middle zone may get some help, but not right away. Those in the outer zone, however, will be tempted to flee, and that's what the authorities want to discourage.

The radiation from fallout is blocked by pretty much anything that has mass. (Here's the government's Citizen Corps guide). If you're in the basement of a typical home, you can expect to receive less than a tenth the radiation you'd receive outdoors. If you're in an interior room halfway up a tall building (fallout is dust, and settles on the ground, or on roofs), or in an underground parking garage, you may receive less than a hundredth the radiation. And you can further reduce the dosage by piling up anything heavy (books, furniture, etc.) overhead and by sealing windows and doors with duct tape and plastic to help keep the radioactive dust out. (The government used to publish pamphlets on how to improvise a fallout shelter in your basement; those will probably come back.)

In the face of a Strangelovian apocalypse, this degree of protection might only have produced a slower death, but for those facing a terrorist bomb such protection is likely to be adequate, and much safer than, say, being stuck in traffic on the Beltway when the fallout begins to settle. Also, people sheltering in place won't tie up roads, making it easier for emergency services to get where they're needed. So the Obama Administration wants to encourage people to shelter in place rather than head for the hills in the event of a nuclear attack. Even sheltering for a few hours, or a couple of days, lets radiation levels fall dramatically and avoids road tie-ups for later evacuation.

But will people follow that advice? To follow it, they've first got to hear it, and usual sources of information like radio, TV, and the Internet may not be working. (Not only will power likely go out -- because of those downed powerlines -- but one of the other prompt effects of a nuclear explosion is something called Electro-Magnetic Pulse. A nuclear burst at the edge of the atmosphere could fry electronics over hundreds of miles; a ground-level one does less damage, but makes reliance on electronics near the blast site iffy.). So if you want people to know what to do, you have to tell them in advance.

But telling them in advance has its own risks. To some, duck-and-cover may be amusing kitsch, but when I showed the film to my teenage daughter while researching this piece, she found it terrifying. (Welcome to my Cold War childhood). And, as a recent New York Times article noted, the question of how to educate people without panicking them, or creating political backlash, has generated considerable discussion within the Obama Administration. (One message, using an attack on Las Vegas as an example, was torpedoed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, of Nevada, who thought it bad publicity for a town already hit hard by the recession.)

It has also generated some criticism from those who remember how much flak Bush Homeland Security czar Tom Ridge got for similar proposals -- right down to the duct tape and plastic sheeting -- when the Department of Homeland Security was new. It's understandable that people might snark about that, but physics is no respecter of political differences. That the Obama Administration is pursuing a policy driven by science, rather than by politics, is something that should be praised, not criticized.

Of course, one question not driven -- directly, anyway -- by science is the question of how likely a nuclear attack might be. On that subject, the Obama Administration, presumably, has better intelligence than I do. But I note that the feds seem to be highly interested in an experimental new drug for treating radiation sickness. That's not encouraging.

If the likelihood of a nuclear attack is hard to judge, what's beyond dispute is that we are in many ways much less prepared to deal with one than we used to be. Fallout shelters in public buildings are no longer marked and stocked, and public knowledge about nuclear weapons and their effects isn't what it was during the Cold War era. In the course of teaching nuclear-related cases in my Administrative Law and National Security Law courses, I've observed that most of my students (military veterans and a few emergency-services types excepted) know next to nothing about A-bomb related things that were common knowledge a couple of decades ago. Replenishing that popular knowledge base seems worthwhile, as long as there are nuclear weapons on the planet.

There's something else worthy of praise in the Obama Administration's approach, something that goes well beyond the terrorist-nukes field. The Times article mentioned above includes this quote from Brian Kamoie of the National Security Council: "We're working hard to involve individuals in the effort so they become part of the team in terms of emergency management."

The feds' estimate is that it will be at least a couple of days before significant outside aid arrives at the scene of a terrorist nuclear attack. But as experience from disasters like Katrina demonstrates, outside aid always takes longer to arrive than you expect. A philosophy of empowering individuals, and encouraging preparedness on the part of ordinary citizens, will pay dividends in the event of all sorts of disasters, whether natural or "man-caused."

Encouraging people to take even modest steps to prepare themselves in advance will undoubtedly save lives, even if the terrorist attack never comes and Washington is, instead, struck by an asteroid, an earthquake, or a hurricane. As we head into a 21st century that appears to be a lot less secure than 1990s prognostications suggested, it's probably best to prepare for the worst.

Contra la guerra

2011-01-04T13:24:00.001-04:00

The Tyranny of Defense Inc.

Image credit: The State of the Union

In 1961, Dwight Eisenhower famously identified the military-industrial complex, warning that the growing fusion between corporations and the armed forces posed a threat to democracy. Judged 50 years later, Ike’s frightening prophecy actually understates the scope of our modern system—and the dangers of the perpetual march to war it has put us on.

By Andrew J. Bacevich

American politics is typically a grimy business of horses traded and pork delivered. Political speech, for its part, tends to be formulaic and eminently forgettable. Yet on occasion, a politician will transcend circumstance and bear witness to some lasting truth: George Wash- ington in his Farewell Address, for example, or Abraham Lincoln in his Second Inaugural.

Fifty years ago, President Dwight D. Eisenhower joined such august company when, in his own farewell address, he warned of the rise in America of the “military-industrial complex.” An accomplished soldier and a better-than-average president, Eisenhower had devoted the preponderance of his adult life to studying, waging, and then seeking to avert war. Not surprisingly, therefore, his prophetic voice rang clearest when as president he reflected on matters related to military power and policy.

Also see:

From the Archives: "The War Machine"
Crooked contractors, radical overspending, and other stories of the military-industrial complex from the Atlantic archives.

Ike’s farewell address, nationally televised on the evening of January 17, 1961, offered one such occasion, although not the only one. Equally significant, if now nearly forgotten, was his presentation to the American Society of Newspaper Editors on April 16, 1953. In this speech, the president contemplated a world permanently perched on the brink of war—“humanity hanging from a cross of iron”— and he appealed to Americans to assess the consequences likely to ensue.

Separated in time by eight years, the two speeches are complementary: to consider them in combination is to discover their full importance. As bookends to Eisenhower’s presidency, they form a solemn meditation on the implications—economic, social, political, and moral—of militarizing America.

During Eisenhower’s presidency, few credited him with being a great orator. Yet, as befit a Kansan and a military professional, Ike could speak plainly when he chose to do so. The April 16 speech early in his presidency was such a moment. Delivered in the wake of Joseph Stalin’s death, the speech offered the new Soviet leadership a five-point plan for ending the Cold War. Endorsing the speech as “one of the most notable policy statements of U.S. history,” Time reported with satisfaction that Eisenhower had articulated a broad vision for peace and “left it at the door of the Kremlin for all the world to see.” The likelihood that Stalin’s successors would embrace this vision was nil. An editorial in The New Republic made the essential point: as seen from Russia’s perspective, Eisenhower was “demanding unconditional surrender.” The president’s peace plan quickly vanished without a trace.

Largely overlooked by most commentators was a second theme that Eisenhower had woven into his text. The essence of this theme was simplicity itself: spending on arms and armies is inherently undesirable. Even when seemingly necessary, it constitutes a misappropriation of scarce resources. By diverting social capital from productive to destructive purposes, war and the preparation for war deplete, rather than enhance, a nation’s strength. And while assertions of military necessity might camouflage the costs entailed, they can never negate them altogether.

“Every gun that is made,” Eisenhower told his listeners, “every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” Any nation that pours its treasure into the purchase of armaments is spending more than mere money. “It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.” To emphasize the point, Eisenhower offered specifics:

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities … We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

Yet in Cold War Washington, Eisenhower’s was a voice crying in the wilderness. As much as they liked Ike, Americans had no intention of choosing between guns and butter: they wanted both. Military Keynesianism—the belief that the production of guns could underwrite an endless supply of butter—was enjoying its heyday.

At the time, the idea that militarizing U.S. policy might yield economic benefits outweighing the costs seemed eminently plausible. The authors of the National Security Council report “NSC-68,” the 1950 blueprint for U.S. rearmament, had made this point explicitly: boosting Pentagon spending would “increase the gross national product by more than the amount being absorbed for additional military and foreign assistance purposes.” Building up the nation’s defenses could serve as a sort of permanent economic stimulus program, putting people to work and money in their pockets. The experience of World War II had apparently validated this theory. Why shouldn’t the same logic apply to the Cold War?

So Americans disregarded Ike’s brooding about a “cross of iron” and a trade-off between guns and butter. The 1950s brought new bombers and new schools, fleets of warships and tracts of freshly built homes spilling into the suburbs.

Eisenhower and his fellow Republicans were more than happy to pocket the credit for this win-win outcome. Yet the president, if not his party, also sensed that beneath the appearance of Ozzie-and-Harriet prosperity, momentous and not altogether welcome changes were taking place. The postwar boom in which the American middle class took such satisfaction was reconfiguring, redistributing, and redefining American power. Washington itself ranked as a principal beneficiary of this process—and, within Washington, the several institutions comprising what some were calling the “national-security state.”

This national-security state derived its raison d’être from—and vigorously promoted a belief in—the existence of looming national peril. On one point, most politicians, uniformed military leaders, and so-called defense intellectuals agreed: the dangers facing the United States were omnipresent and unprecedented. Keeping those dangers at bay demanded vigilance, preparedness, and a willingness to act quickly and even ruthlessly. Urgency had become the order of the day.

In his 1956 book, The Power Elite, C. Wright Mills, a professor of sociology at Columbia, dubbed this perspective “military metaphysics,” which he characterized as “the cast of mind that defines international reality as basically military.” Those embracing this mind-set no longer considered genuine, lasting peace to be plausible. Rather, peace was at best a transitory condition, “a prelude to war or an interlude between wars.”

Perhaps nothing illustrates military metaphysics more vividly than the exponential growth of the U.S. nuclear stockpile that occurred during Eisenhower’s presidency. In 1952, when Ike was elected, that stockpile numbered some 1,000 warheads. By the time he passed the reins to John F. Kennedy in 1961, it consisted of more than 24,000 warheads, and it rapidly ascended later that decade to a peak of 31,000.

As commander in chief, Ike exercised only nominal control over this development, which was driven by an unstated alliance of interested parties: generals, defense officials, military contractors, and members of Congress. True, Eisenhower had established “massive retaliation”—the threat of a large-scale nuclear response to deter Soviet aggression—as the centerpiece of U.S. national-security doctrine. Yet even as this posture was intended to intimidate the Kremlin, the president expected it to offer Americans a sense of security, thereby enabling him to rein in military expenditures. In that regard, he miscalculated badly.

During the Eisenhower years, military outlays served as a seemingly inexhaustible engine of economic well-being. Keeping the Soviets at bay required the design and acquisition of a vast array of guns and missiles, bombers and warships, tanks and fighter planes. Ensuring that U.S. forces stayed in fighting trim entailed the construction of bases, barracks, depots, and training facilities. Research labs received funding. Businesses large and small won contracts. Organized labor got jobs. And politicians who delivered all these goodies to their constituents hauled in endorsements, campaign contributions, and votes. Throughout the 1950s, unemployment stayed tolerably low and inflation minimal, while budget deficits ranged from trivial to non-existent. What was not to like? As a result, Pentagon budgets remained high throughout the Eisenhower era, averaging more than 50 percent of all federal spending and 10 percent of GDP, figures without precedent in the nation’s peacetime history.

For its beneficiaries, girding for war was a gift, and one they expected would never stop giving. The presumption that military capabilities qualifying as adequate today would surely not suffice tomorrow—the Reds, after all, weren’t standing still—generated a ceaseless quest for bigger, better, and more. Every ominous advance in Russian capabilities offered a renewed rationale for opening the military-spending spigot. Whether the edge attributed to the Soviets was real or invented mattered little. The discovery during the 1950s of a “bomber gap” and later a “missile gap,” for example, provided political ammunition to air-power advocates quick to charge that the nation’s very survival was at risk. Alarm bells rang. Congressional committees summoned expert witnesses. Newspapers and magazines nervously assessed the implications of these new vulnerabilities. Ultimately, appropriations poured forth. That both “gaps” were fictitious was beside the point.

None of these developments—the excessive military outlays, the privileging of institutional goals over the national interest, the calculated manipulation of public opinion—met with Eisenhower’s approval. Knowing at the time that the United States enjoyed an edge in bomber and missile capabilities, he understood precisely who benefited from threat inflation. Yet to sustain the illusion he was fully in command, Ike remained publicly silent about what went on behind the scenes. Only on the eve of his departure from office did he inform the nation as to what Washington’s new obsession with national security had wrought.

In 1961, as in 1953, his central theme was theft. This time, however, rather than homes or schools, Ike suggested the thieves might walk off with democracy itself.

The Cold War, he emphasized, had transformed the country’s approach to defending itself. In the past, “American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well.” But this reliance on improvisation no longer sufficed. The rivalry with the Soviet Union had “compelled” the United States “to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions.” As a consequence, “we annually spend on military security alone more than the net income of all United States corporations.”

The “economic, political, even spiritual” reach of this conglomeration was immense, Eisenhower explained, extending to “every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government.” Although the president could not bring himself to question explicitly the need for this shift in policy, he warned of its implications. “Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved,” he said. “So is the very structure of our society.” With corporate officials routinely claiming the Pentagon’s top posts, and former military officers hiring themselves out to defense contractors, fundamental values were at risk. “In the councils of government,” Eisenhower continued,

we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted.

Having defined the problem, Eisenhower then advanced a striking solution: ultimate responsibility for democracy’s defense, he insisted, necessarily rested with the people themselves. Rather than according Washington deference, American citizens needed to exercise strict oversight. Counting on the national-security state to police itself—on members of Congress to set aside parochial concerns, corporate chieftains to put patriotism above profit, and military leaders to hew to the ethic of their profession—wouldn’t do the trick. “Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

Reaction to the president’s speech was tepid at best. The headline in TheBoston Globe reported “Ike Says Farewell After Half Century in U.S. Service” and left it at that. With the country agog over Jack and Jackie, the mood of the moment did not invite introspection. Eisenhower’s insistence that citizens awaken to looming danger attracted little attention. His valedictory qualified, at the time, as a one-day story.

So Ike departed, but military metaphysics survived intact and found particular favor in the upper echelons of the next administration. On the campaign trail, Kennedy had promised higher defense spending, enhanced nuclear capabilities, and a reinvigorated confrontation with Communism. Once in office, he proved as good as his word.

In the five decades since Eisenhower left the White House for his retirement home in Gettysburg, much has changed. The Soviet Union has disappeared. So too, for all practical purposes, has Communism itself. Yet in Washington, an aura of never-ending crisis still prevails—and with it, military metaphysics.

The national-security state continues to grow in size, scope, and influence. In Ike’s day, for example, the CIA dominated the field of intelligence. Today, experts refer casually to an “intelligence community,” consisting of some 17 agencies. The cumulative size and payroll of this apparatus grew by leaps and bounds in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Last July, TheWashington Post reported that it had “become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.” Since that report appeared, U.S. officials have parted the veil of secrecy enough to reveal that intelligence spending exceeds $80 billion per year, substantially more than the budget of either the Department of State ($49 billion) or the Department of Homeland Security ($43 billion).

The spending spree extends well beyond intelligence. The Pentagon’s budget has more than doubled in the past decade, to some $700 billion per year. All told, the ostensible imperatives of national security thereby consume roughly half of all federal discretionary dollars. Even more astonishing, annual U.S. military outlays now approximate those of all other nations, friends as well as foes, combined.

In Ike’s day, competition with the Soviet Union provided the rationale for such outsized expenditures. Today, with no remotely comparable competitor at hand, devotees of military metaphysics conjure a variety of arguments to justify the Pentagon’s budgetary demands. One such, usually made with an eye toward China, is that relentlessly outspending any and all would-be challengers to U.S. preeminence will dissuade them from even mounting an attempt. A second transforms modest threats into existential ones, with the mere existence of a Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Osama bin Laden mandating extraordinary exertions until the United States eliminates every last such miscreant—a day that will never come.

The threat inflation that led to the bomber and missile “gaps” of the 1950s remains a cherished Washington tradition. In memos written after September 11, then–Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld urged his staff to “keep elevating the threat” and demanded “bumper sticker statements” to gin up public enthusiasm for the global war on terror. The key, he wrote, was to “make the American people realize they are surrounded in the world by violent extremists.” What worked during the Cold War still works today: to get Americans on board with your military policy, scare the hell out of them.

In the meantime, the revolving door connecting the world of soldiering to the world of arms purveyors continues to turn. For those at the top, the American military profession is that rare calling where retirement need not imply a reduced income. On the contrary: senior serving officers shed their uniforms not merely to take up golf or go fishing but with the reasonable expectation of raking in big money. In a recent e-mail, a serving officer who is a former student of mine reported that on a visit to the annual meeting of the Association of the United States Army—in his words, “the Sodom and Gomorrah of the Military Industrial Complex”—he was “accosted by two dozen former bosses, now in suits with fancy ties and business cards, hawking the latest defense technologies.”

If anything, Eisenhower’s characterization of the cozy relations between the military and corporate worlds understates the contemporary reality. C. Wright Mills came closer to the mark when he wrote of “a coalition of generals in the roles of corporation executives, of politicians masquerading as admirals, of corporation executives acting like politicians.” Add to that list the retired senior officers passing as pundits (often while simultaneously cashing the checks of weapons manufacturers), policy wonks pretending to be field marshals, and journalists eagerly competing to carry water for heroic field commanders. Throw in the former members of Congress who lobby their successors on behalf of defense contractors, and the serving members who vote in favor of any defense appropriations that send money to their districts, and one begins to get a sense of the true topography.

With what result? Not peace, and not prosperity. Instead, American soldiers traipse wearily from one conflict to the next while the nation as a whole suffers from acute economic distress. What has gone amiss?

In the wake of 9/11, when the George W. Bush administration committed the United States to a global war on terror, it was blithely confident that the U.S. military could win such a conflict handily. Events in Iraq and Afghanistan have since demolished such expectations. The irrefutable lesson of the past decade is this: we know how to start wars, but don’t know how to end them. During the well-armed Eisenhower era, American weapons were largely silent. Today, engagement in actual hostilities has become the new normal, exacting a steep price. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost at least $1 trillion—with the meter still running. Some observers estimate that total costs will eventually reach $2 trillion or even $3 trillion.

Furthermore, military Keynesianism has proved to be a bust. In contrast to the 1950s, military extravagance is depleting rather than adding to the nation’s wealth. In the Eisenhower era, the United States, a creditor nation, produced at home the essentials defining the American way of life—everything from oil to cars to televisions. Today, we import far more than we export, with ever-increasing debt as one result. Furthermore, in the 1950s, we were mostly at peace; today we are mostly at war—and, as a result, more of the resources provided to the military go abroad and stay there.

Certain enterprises flourish, notably private security firms such as DynCorp, MPRI, and, of course, the notorious Blackwater (now known as Xe). At MPRI, they like to say “We’ve got more generals per square foot here than in the Pentagon.” But even if those generals are doing fine, the grandchildren of Ozzie and Harriet, coping with 9.8 percent unemployment and contemplating the implications of trillion-dollar deficits, see little benefit from our exorbitant Pentagon outlays. If paying Pashtun drivers to truck fuel from Pakistan into Afghanistan is producing any positive economic side effects, the American worker is not among the beneficiaries.

In short, the guns-and-butter trade-off that Eisenhower foresaw in 1953 has become reality. To train, equip, and maintain one American soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan for just one year costs a cool million dollars. Meanwhile, according to 2010 census figures, the number of Americans falling below the poverty line has swollen to one in every seven.

Thanks to its allies and abettors, the military-industrial-legislative war complex remains stubbornly resistant to change—a fact President Barack Obama himself learned during his first year in office. While reviewing his administration’s policy in Afghanistan, the president repeatedly asked for a range of policy alternatives. He wanted choices. According to Bob Woodward of TheWashington Post, however, the Pentagon offered Obama a single path—the so-called McChrystal “surge” of additional troops. As recounted in Woodward’s book Obama’s Wars, the president complained: “So what’s my option? You’ve given me only one option.” The military’s own preferred option was all he was going to get. (Just months before, Woodward himself had helpfully promoted that very option, courtesy of a well-timed leak.)

No doubt Dwight Eisenhower would sympathize with President Obama, having himself struggled to exercise the prerogatives ostensibly reserved to the chief executive. Yet Ike would hardly be surprised. He would reserve his surprise—and his disappointment—for the American people. A half century after he summoned us to shoulder the responsibilities of citizenship, we still refuse to do so. In Washington, military metaphysics remains sacrosanct. No wonder we continue to get our pockets picked.

---

Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of international relations and history at Boston University. His most recent book is Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War.

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La felicidad del Mundo

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* De The Independent, de Gran Bretaña. Especial para Páginal12.

Traducción: Celita Doyhambéhère.

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