Saturday, May 19, 2007

SONETO XVII

(Pablo Neruda)


"...porque no sé amar de otra manera,..."




http://www.chameleon-translations.com/sample-Neruda-Soneto_XVII.shtml

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn7OHDZjfTI



SONETO XVII

(Pablo Neruda)


No te amo como si fueras rosa de sal, topacio

o flecha de claveles que propagan el fuego:

te amo como se aman ciertas cosas oscuras,

secretamente, entre la sombra y el alma.


Te amo como la planta que no florece y lleva

dentro de sí, escondida, la luz de aquellas flores,

y gracias a tu amor vive oscuro en mi cuerpo

el apretado aroma que ascendió de la tierra.


Te amo sin saber cómo, ni cuándo, ni de dónde,

te amo directamente sin problemas ni orgullo:

así te amo porque no sé amar de otra manera,


sino así de este modo en que no soy ni eres,

tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía,

tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño.



I do not love you as if you were a rose made of salt or topaz

or an arrow of carnations spreading fire:

I love you the way certain dark things are loved,

secretly, between the shadow and the soul.


I love you like the plant that never blooms,

but conceals within itself the light of those flowers;

and, thanks to your love, the darkness of my body

houses the suffocating aroma that arose from the earth.


I love you without knowing how, when, or where from;

I love you straightforwardly, with neither problems nor pride:

I love you thus, not knowing how to love you otherwise


than this way whereby neither ‘you’ nor ‘I’ exist…

so close that your hand on my chest is mine,

so close that your eyes grow heavy when I tire.


* - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - *

M@rcómo;

Norwich, U(n) K(lavel);

19/5/07




... life will always find a way to survive




Are you connected?

Does talk of Prince William joining Facebook, or Lily Allen blogging on MySpace, leave you baffled? Fear not! Here's our late adopter's guide to the social networking revolution





http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2080312,00.html

Are you connected?

Does talk of Prince William joining Facebook, or Lily Allen blogging on MySpace, leave you baffled? Fear not! Here's our late adopter's guide to the social networking revolution

Wednesday May 16, 2007

The Guardian

This week came the news that "William Wales" had joined the social networking site Facebook. Yesterday there was much argument about whether it was a hoax or not. Would Prince William really post a profile on the net? The answer is: well, why not? After all, this is how most people his age keep tabs on their mates.

With websites such as Facebook and MySpace constantly being talked about in the media, it must be easy to feel like a 20th-century luddite if you aren't already part of the in-crowd. Here lies a great disconnect at the heart of 21st-century socialising: either you're in (and use every social networking website you can) or you're out (and don't use them at all).

It's important to remember, then, that while millions gobble up Facebook and the like, it's still a minority sport. Of course, "early adopters", drawn like magpies to the latest, shiniest things, will sign up for every new website they find, and no doubt already think Facebook old hat. But if you're one of the millions of people who feels left out, or simply left cold, by the social networking revolution, then don't worry: our guide, written by dedicated fans, will help turn you from an outcast into a social networking superstar.

Bobbie Johnson, technology correspondent

Facebook

By Helen Pidd

By midday yesterday, the Facebook group I Poked Prince William had amassed 85 members. But before the tabloids get their cheque books out to buy up Mark from Northern Ireland and a bra-clad woman from London called Sally, it probably needs explaining that, in Facebook parlance, "poke" means nothing more dirty than giving someone an electronic wave. All 23 million members of Facebook are able to look up the names of fellow Facebookers and give them an interwebular nudge. If your pokee pokes you back, you can look at their full profile for a week, and they yours. This is fun, as profiles are normally private. Useful, too: how else can you check out whether this William Wales guy is for real? But mostly people like doing it because it sounds rude (indeed, one of my favourite Facebook groups is called Enough of the Poking, Let's Just Have Sex, and boasts almost 180,000 members).

But don't worry about that for now. What you really need to know is that Facebook is simply a way of keeping in touch with your friends online. Unlike MySpace, it is not a gift for stalkers and spammers, because you have a lot more control over who can find you: you can decide what comes up if someone puts your name into Facebook's search engine. Ordinarily, you can also see a thumbnail of someone's profile picture, and a list of people they are friends with.

The latter function means that Facebook is like a souped-up, free version of Friends Reunited. Wondering if I'm the Helen Pidd you went to school with and can't tell from the little photo on my page? The number of people from Morecambe High School I'm friends with will tell you I am, and save you the shame of poking the wrong person.

Still confused? When you join up, you first create a profile. This includes a carefully chosen picture, titbits about one's life, a facility for uploading and sharing an unlimited number of photos, a "status" function that sends out a one-line alert to all of your friends telling them what you're up to (eg "Helen needs to get a life"), and a public "wall". All your friends can see what people write on your wall. This important fact is often forgotten: at a party on Saturday I had to reprimand a friend for having a nauseatingly saucy conversation with someone on his public wall.

About that party ... it was organised by Michael, someone I went to school with. He invited 95 of his Facebook friends. When I arrived at the do, I saw a guy from the year below me at school who I hadn't seen since the last day of exams. "I didn't know you were still mates with Michael," I said. Turns out he wasn't really: they had lost touch and found each other again on Facebook.

MySpace

By Laura Barton

There comes a time when you have to choose a side. Good or evil. Blur or Oasis. Marmite or peanut butter. In 2005, after a long period of social-networking neutrality, I chose MySpace.

Like all the others, MySpace is a social networking site, but the difference is that its social glue is music. Along with normal people's profiles, bands have their own pages, maintained by themselves or their record company, where they can upload examples of their music, and news about upcoming shows and releases.

This has presented a new way for music fans (and record labels) to find music, and serves as a worthy alternative to listening to radio, attending gigs, reading the music press or knowing what is on general release. It also provides a way for musicians to communicate more directly with their fans. Lily Allen, for example, blogs regularly on her MySpace - just this week she wrote openly of being in "a sea of tears" and researching liposuction and gastric bypass surgery after people had made ludicrous comments about her weight in the press.

Elsewhere, you'll find numerous "celebrity" sites that have been constructed either by the celebrities themselves or "fans": from Noel Edmonds to Jennifer Aniston, to Barack Obama, Tony Blair and George Bush. Last year, the Conservative party had to deny that David Cameron's MySpace (www.myspace.com/david_cameron) was a crude attempt to win the youth vote.

MySpace is a little older than some of the other networking sites - it was founded in 2003 and is now the the fifth most popular website in any language. It acquires some 230,000 new users every day and, as of last October, boasted an estimated 106m accounts. In 2005 it was bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation for $580m (£290m), a development that caused many users to bridle.

Signing up via the MySpace homepage is relatively easy. Designing your profile page is somewhat harder, as it involves making some potentially tricky decisons: choosing a profile picture, a quote, and a song, whether you want to "pimp" your page (ie, decorate it). You will also need to supply a little blurb about yourself, your hobbies, the music, films, books you like, who you'd like to meet, and choose your "top friends".

The technology feels fairly clunky but I find that curiously attractive. The site has a range of functions: email, bulletins, blogs, friend comments, photographs, groups, videos and music. Other members can request your friendship (and you theirs), though you can set your profile to private if you really want to keep the busybodies out.

It might seem, I suppose, an odd thing to spill out so many personal details on a website, to conduct private conversations in public, to chat to unknown people in Arizona just because you both like the Moldy Peaches. But I rather like the fact that in this impersonal city where I now live, where no one looks each other in the eye or speaks to strangers on the bus, there is all this warmth bubbling away online.

Bebo

By Natalie Hanman

"Bright, colourful and cheesy" is how one Beboer - a Bebo.com user - describes this social-networking site. Which might be why it has a reputation for attracting even younger users than its online competitors, with most of its visitors (30%) aged 18 to 24.

Bebo, founded in 2005, quickly expanded to enable sociable young web users to do all they could possibly desire: from uploading photos, posting comments and sending emails, to quizzes, picture slide-shows and blogs.

The whiteboard feature on a user's easily personalised profile is a particular pull, on which other users can draw colourful pictures - typically detailing what your friends got up to the night before. Now, according to the latest weekly audience figures from Hitwise, Bebo is the most popular website in the "net communities and chat" category, just beating MySpace to the top spot. A recent deal with online music store 7Digital, plus the appointment of Angel Gambino, former vice-president of commercial, strategy and digital media at MTV, is all part of its push into the music side of social networking, with plans to allow users to share and download their favourite tracks. In the words of a Bebo spokesman: "It's much more intuitive and engaging than Barack Obama having a MySpace profile."

Twitter

By Bobbie Johnson

Twitter is much simpler than the other social-networking sites that fill up the internet. All it asks is one thing - "What are you doing?" - and you answer, either via your mobile or your computer. Twitter then tells all your friends, via a text on their mobiles or a message online, and they send their own messages back. That's it.

At first, using Twitter is like walking into a noisy party where you don't know anybody, filled with confusing chatter. Too many friends and you quickly drown in the minutiae of other people's lives.

But once you start getting used to it, it's more like dipping your finger into a fast-flowing river: things fly by and you catch hold of the ones you want.

For some, it's just blogging for the lazy. Others use it to message their mates en masse. Like all these networks, Twitter's real strengths only appear when you have the right friends. Still, with the service doubling in size every few weeks, it won't be long until somebody you know is using it already. Just one thing - when you sign up, make sure you add me to your friends list, yeah?

Second Life

By Aleks Krotoski

You may have heard of Second Life, a brave new world taking the internet by storm, promising to change your view of reality, make you a millionaire and give you powerful tools to realise your full potential. Behind the headlines lies a compelling space that may change how we use the internet.

When you join Second Life - which you can do for free - you create your digital persona, or avatar. This little person can be personalised as you see fit. You can choose everything from the size of your nose to the colour of your nails.

Inside Second Life, which has six million users, everything looks pretty much like the outside world: there are clubs, shops, universities, offices and theatres. Unlike most online spaces, where you interact with a website on your own, you're surrounded by other people, in avatar form, experiencing the same things at the same time. You can sit down together on sofas and have coffee and a chat (using either your voice or your keyboard), go to a festival and dance among the throngs to the music being streamed live - for real - from a bar in Los Angeles, or discuss the finer points of the art in a gallery.

What makes it special is what people have done with it. As a world built for and by an international population of adults with an average age of 33, the space is littered with innumerable examples of superb interactive design by real-world architects, musicians, artists and others. As more services arrive from the outside, it has become a new way for consumers to go online to browse and buy, teach and train, socialise and surf.

Second Life is a place for self-expression and for hanging out with friends, limited only by the boundaries of your imagination. Aleks Krotoski is studying towards a PhD at the University of Surrey, exploring the social networks of Second Life. Almost every other website

The sheer, unabashed popularity of MySpace, Facebook and other big social sites has been impossible for the rest of the web to ignore. The result is that right now almost every major site is trying desperately to build some kind of social-network element in order to appear hip.

This desperate rush to create a network for every occasion is reminiscent of the dotcom boom, when slapping a web address on any half-baked idea was a licence to print money. But soon you'll see it everywhere: newspapers such as the Sun have already joined in, niche-interest sites are grabbing hold of it with both hands and it won't be long before you see it on the BBC website.

Sometimes the social web works brilliantly. Flickr.com, the photo website, is a well-regarded pioneer because it served a brilliant purpose: making it simple to share your pictures with family and friends.

Often, though, new networks seem like the handiwork of some internet Frankenstein with pound signs in place of brain cells. The number of "me too" services and rip-offs is growing faster than it is possible to count.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for example, have developed their own network for pets, the appropriately named SNIF (Social Networking in Fur). With a simple chip in your pet's collar, you can track down appropriate canine chums - or stay away from the dogs you don't like.

In the longer term, though, the success stories could be the ones where brainiacs learn to put the power of social networks to help users, rather than just monopolise their time. One example is the UK-based internet radio service Last.fm, which matches your taste in music to other people and uses that "attention data" to play you new tracks by groups it thinks you'll like.

Who was it that made the audacious claim that "there's no such thing as society"? She obviously didn't use MySpace.

· The following amendment was made on Wednesday May 16 2007. MySpace was bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation for $580m, which is equivalent to £290m, not £29m as we said in this article. This has been corrected.

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2080463,00.html

The rules

The dos and don'ts of social networking online

Helen Pidd

Wednesday May 16, 2007

The Guardian

· If you are planning on committing, or being accused of, a newsworthy crime at any point in the future, don't set up a profile on any site. Us muck-raking journalists will be all over it before anyone has even raised your bail.

· Remember that it is quite common for potential employers to look you up on social networking sites to see if you are really the sophisticated professional you created for the purposes of your CV. I recently looked up a work-experience person on Facebook: he was naked in his profile picture. You know who you are.

· Remember that there are certain things you cannot ever change in your personal profile after you sign up. Why, for instance, did I ever think it was a good idea to call myself Piddophile on MySpace?

· If you're going to decline someone's offer of friendship, especially on Facebook, where it is rare for random people to get in touch, don't write back saying, "Do I know you?????" You have probably slept with them. Just ignore them and hope they go away.

· Politicians: if you need to put up a Facebook or MySpace profile to promote your policies, you are screwed.

· Don't invite work colleagues into your online life. Remember that old friends throwing about playground nicknames or recalling that time you wet yourself on the school bus may not seem so funny in a work context.

· Don't start sending messages or comments via Facebook or MySpace to people with whom you previously corresponded by email. That extra click or two to read your one-line witticisms is annoying.

· Remember that work IT departments see everything

· Another Facebook one: don't discuss private things on public walls. And it's bad form to flirt on other people's walls too.

· If you split up with someone with whom you are also friends on MySpace, don't remove them from your "Top Friends" section. It hurts.

· Never, ever, look up exes on any social-networking sites. That hurts, too.

Helen Pidd

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2080314,00.html

'I don't need long-lost m@tes'

Patrick Barkham

Wednesday May 16, 2007

The Guardian

The day before the latest manifestation of our heir to the throne's premature mid-life crisis, a 32-year-old friend emailed me. "Have you joined Facebook yet?" he asked. Prince William allegedly signing up to a social-networking website so he can converse with his toff pals is about what you'd expect from him. But my mate has a busy job and a vibrant social life.

"No, I have not joined Facebook yet," I (nearly) replied, "because I am no longer an adolescent, my development has not been arrested, I don't need long-lost m@tes from nursery school, I don't want to join the Drunken Text Message Appreciation Society, I don't have time to check my 'newsfeed' for vital titbits such as 'William Wales updated his profile. He is now looking for whatever he can get (3.56am)' and I certainly don't fancy spending out-of-work hours 'relaxing' behind another computer screen."

"You just don't get social networking, do you?" sighs another thirtysomething Facebook friend.

Incase uz didn no, I do. Like most "ppl" I'm socially networking every minute I'm awake, using newfangled contraptions (email, text message, carrier pigeon) to arrange and enhance real face time. I don't need Facebook time.

Facebook, MySpace and Bebo are just about acceptable if you're too young to enter a pub. If you're not, and want to do the online equivalent of hanging outside the school gates, go ahead. But they'll be sniggering at you. "My sister's a teacher and she said her pupils who are all on it thought it was hilarious that I should be on it at my age," admits a 31-year-old Facebook addict.

Online oldsters: the internet is robbing you of real life. If you're single, every second spent perusing other people's photos on Facebook is a second less to catch the eye of a gorgeous passerby in the street. If your mind-numbing job plonks you behind a computer all day, every minute spent on Facebook is a minute lost to do something about your stultifying situation. And every sensory-deprived hour spent social networking online is an hour less to savour the thrilling marvel of the living, breathing, pulsating real world.

* - * - * - * - * - * - *- * - * - * - * - * - * - *

M@rconectado;

Norwich, G(reat) B(ebo);

19/5/07

... Un espejo en el SUR.





Friday, May 18, 2007

Send in the clown

Jo Wilding's unembedded reports from Fallujah brought home the horror of the American assault on the city. But when she wasn't blogging, she was wearing stilts and trying to cheer up Iraq's traumatised children. She tells Emine Saner why she risked her life for total strangers


http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2081231,00.html

Send in the clown

Jo Wilding's unembedded reports from Fallujah brought home the horror of the American assault on the city. But when she wasn't blogging, she was wearing stilts and trying to cheer up Iraq's traumatised children. She tells Emine Saner why she risked her life for total strangers

Thursday May 17, 2007

The Guardian

It is hard to imagine how Jo Wilding's kidnappers reacted when she told them what she was doing in Iraq. They were in Fallujah, a city under siege in 2003 - and this British woman was claiming to be a clown, in a circus she had brought to a country in the middle of a war. "We could have been anyone," she recalls, "there to spy or assassinate someone. The only foreigners there were Americans - and they were there to kill them."

She seems remarkably generous about her kidnappers: "From their point of view, what else could they have done?" In fact, she does not even refer to them as kidnappers: "I don't really think of it as hostage-taking because they didn't take us for political or financial gain. It was purely for security reasons: they wanted to know who we were." But when she writes about it in her book, Don't Shoot the Clowns, her fear is palpable.

How to describe Wilding? She's 32, a mother and a newly qualified barrister, who lives in Brighton with her partner. But she is also an activist, blogger, unembedded journalist, documentary star, human rights worker and a clown with a talent for making balloon animals. "Jo was the only one of us foreigners in Iraq who I was absolutely sure was doing something useful," says Naomi Klein, the author of No Logo. The journalist and film-maker John Pilger is another fan. "Living with families and without a flak jacket, she all but shamed the embedded army of reporters in her description of the atrocious American attack on an Iraqi city," he wrote last year. He said her dispatches from Iraq, posted on her blog, were "some of the most extraordinary I've read". The writer, director and academic Jonathan Holmes has written a new play, Fallujah, which draws heavily on Wilding's experiences, among others.

Wilding and her friends Jenny, David, Ahrar and Donna were leaving Fallujah when their car was fired at by US marines. They were forced to turn back into the path of the mujahideen, and one of the rebel fighters jumped into their car and directed them to a nearby Jeep. Forced to get out of the car, some were tied up and the group was separated, but all were driven to the same house, where they were individually interviewed and watched by armed guards. Did she think they would kill her? "I wasn't convinced they were going to kill us, but I wasn't convinced they wouldn't, either. This was before anyone had been beheaded, but it was frightening. It was also terribly boring. We had nothing to do - we were just sitting there in a room waiting, not knowing how long we were going to be there or what was happening. Also, this was Fallujah - it was being bombed and houses were being raided." Wilding's story checked out - one of the others had a video camera with footage of the circus and Wilding on stilts, dressed as a clown - but she still spent the night wondering how and when the kidnappers would kill them. Then, in the morning, just as suddenly as they had been captured, they were allowed to go.

They had been in Fallujah delivering supplies - disinfectant, needles, bandages, food, water - to a hospital in the US-controlled part of the city and were using an ambulance to bring injured people to a makeshift hospital in a small clinic in another area of the city. There, with no anaesthetic and where bags of blood were kept in a fridge and warmed up under the hot tap in a bathroom, a young boy was brought in. "He had been shot in the head. His family had been trying to get into the car to flee and they [US soldiers] shot him. I think they had just been told to shoot at anyone. Certainly they had been told that ambulances had been carrying weapons and I know from my own experience that they were shooting at ambulances." Wilding says she was in an ambulance on their way to get to a pregnant woman who had gone into labour too soon, when marines shot at the ambulance, through the windscreen. A tyre was shot out and the ambulance driver screeched back in reverse to the hospital. With the ambulance out of action, they never reached the woman.

Wilding first went to Iraq in 2001. After hearing an activist give a talk about the effect of the sanctions placed on Iraq, she had been involved in the campaign against them. In 2001, she was arrested after throwing rotten fruit at Tony Blair at a protest, but much of her campaigning involved acts of solidarity such as sending over vitamins. They were token acts: even if you were able to send vast quantities, vitamins would not make much of a difference in a country whose economy had been crippled by the sanctions and whose people had a desperate need for food and medicine. "In the end, I felt I needed to go there and see for myself what was happening to people. Also to take things, such as aspirin, medical journals, a medical training CD-rom. Doctors were faced with new illnesses they couldn't treat and they weren't getting up- to-date medical information."

Her visa allowed her to stay for only 10 days, but in that time she saw a great deal and struggled to make sense of it. "I had read a lot about it but it can't prepare you for the reality. There were consumer goods on the street, but there were things you just couldn't get, such as medicine. You could buy fresh fruit but it was way beyond most people's income. A lot of people were completely dependent on the food ration, and they would sell part of their food ration to buy medicines or to pay for bus fares. Going into the hospitals, I knew I was going to see a lot of children who were desperately ill, but I don't think you can prepare for what it feels like when you're there. A child went into a coma in front of us. He had leukaemia and the doctor said they just didn't have enough platelet bags to treat him. His mother was pinching his cheek and slapping his face, trying to wake him up and howling with grief. There was this stick-thin nine-month-old baby and her body was just the shape of her skeleton. You could hear her rattling breathing."

The attacks of September 11 happened shortly after she came home, and in 2003, when it became clear that Iraq would be invaded, Wilding decided to go back. She went with Julia Guest, a film-maker whose documentary A Letter to the Prime Minister is about Wilding's trip. She decided to return there because she felt it was important that the voices of ordinary Iraqis were heard above the din of cruise missiles, cluster bombs and army and political rhetoric. "The mainstream news focused primarily on what was being said by military and political figures and not on what Iraqi people were saying, partly because it was so difficult for journalists to hear them. I was just writing about what happened day to day and putting it out on the internet." Her blog started out quite small, but soon thousands of people all over the world were reading it.

Wilding admits she was scared. "You go on a leap of faith. I didn't know what was going to happen, how long I was going to go for. I hadn't decided I was staying for the war, it was something to take as it came. I didn't know if I would be able to leave once it had started. You can imagine the rumour mill: everyone western is going to be hung off a lamppost, we're all going to be taken hostage ... every worst possible scenario. I had a conversation with a young Iraqi woman and she said, 'Why are you staying here? Most Iraqi people would leave if they had anywhere else to go.' But there were people who didn't have that choice and didn't have a voice that was going to be heard outside. The news covers the first house that's hit and maybe the second, but it stops being news when hundreds of houses are hit and so there's nobody to document the more mundane things. I think that's important. You can't talk about democracy and 'Do you agree with the war or not, did we do the right thing?' if you don't know what we actually did and what actually happened to people. I was just in one city and I talked to a fraction of the people who were affected but still, I think I was able to hear and then tell a lot of people's stories. The number of people who read the blog and responded to it backed that up."

She got the idea for the circus after seeing her friend Shane blowing bubbles for a boy they met in a hospital in Baghdad during the bombardment. His sister had been killed and the rest of his family injured when a rocket tore the upper storey off their house. "He followed the bubbles with his eyes and then he put out his hand and popped one and smiled. It wasn't going to heal the trauma he had been through, but that image really stayed with me," says Wilding. "The idea wasn't completely random - I knew that circuses had gone to other places during conflicts and it was a way of bringing a little bit of normality for a period of time."

But still, a circus in Iraq - wasn't that the last thing they needed? "They need medicine, blankets, decent food and basic security. They need to be able to go to school, they need everything. They don't need clowns. I remember really doubting it, thinking this was just the most stupid, patronising, trivial thing. But then you could see that it wasn't trivial, you see the children starting to laugh. I remember seeing these two men standing at the side of one show, hugging each other." The group of four clowns performed for street children and went to several schools and squatter camps.

The schools were in an appalling state, but nothing could prepare her for the squatter camps, crammed full of displaced families. They weren't classed as refugees because they were still in their own country and they did not receive aid. In one camp, 125 families were living without adequate food and water, shelter and medical care. There was no sewerage system. A two-month-old girl died because of the cold and a four-year-old boy had his legs badly burned from the open paraffin stove his family used in their shack built of breezeblocks and canvas; with no medical care, he lay there with his legs oozing pus and blood and riddled with infections. A young man had his fingers blown off because he would take bullets apart to sell the tiny bits of scrap metal.

"I was angry that there was all this money - the planes, bombs, guns, the contracts that were given to Halliburton - going to people who didn't need it. There were these children dying for lack of blankets and basic medicine and shelter," says Wilding, her voice rising with fury. "They were living around open sewers, without anything. How could you not be angry? They was always so much need and so little you could do that I was never thinking, 'I'm so clever, look what I've done.' It was always, 'Is that all you did?' People were always asking me to help on a more material level, for cooling fans, money for operations, all sorts of things. A woman at the camp asked for clean knickers and sanitary towels." Even with the £10,000 Wilding had raised for the trip, she could not meet every need, although she did help pay for the installation of drains and pipes in the camp.

She had been in Iraq for six months and westerners had increasingly become targets. Wilding realised she was putting herself and the people around her - drivers, translators, the groups of children that would gather round her wherever she went - in danger. She decided to come home. "There didn't seem anything more I could usefully do, let alone justify the risk that I was putting other people in."

What was it like to be back? "The overwhelming thing I felt was incredibly lucky. I would cycle to university, essentially in complete safety. I would come home to my safe house, turn on the light switch and know I'd got electricity, or turn on my taps and know clean water was going to come out.

"At the same time I was incredibly angry that that had been taken away from millions of people who had no control over what was happening. When I gave birth to my son [at home], I knew that an ambulance would be with me in minutes if I needed it. I should be able to take that for granted and so should women over there. I met one woman who told her daughters not to get pregnant because what happens if they went into labour at night and they couldn't get to hospital? There are refugees who are just living in this limbo where the best they can hope for is to stay alive. It's the most appalling disaster."

· Fallujah by Jonathan Holmes is at the Old Truman Brewery, London E1. A Letter to the Prime Minister will be screened at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London SW1, on May 23. Don't Shoot the Clowns is published by New Internationalist, price £8.99.

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M@rcirco;

Norwich, U(n) K(rusty);

18/5/07

P.D.RISUEÑA."...como me decía mi abuelita:El que al último RIE, RIE mejor..." - Pedro NAVAJAS (Ruben BLADES).

... ping ... pong.





Felipe IV de España, mis valedores, uno más de los pequeñajos que han trepado al poder. Al que vivió entre las fechas 1605 y 1665 aludí aquí mismo el pasado viernes; que como rey fue un irremediable mediocre y que en una de esas tanto le pesó la corona que entregó las llaves del gobierno a un tal Conde-Duque de Olivares, el Camilo Mouriño de aquel entonces. Que el mediocre falleció de pura tristeza, según las crónicas, destino que es de los pobres de espíritu, y eso cuando no les da por compensar su enanismo jugándole al dictador. Macabro. En aumentativo.

http://elvaledor.com.mx/index.php/2007/05/16/felipe-el-mediocre/

Felipe el mediocre

Publicado por Tomás Mojarro en 16th Mayo 2007

Felipe IV de España, mis valedores, uno más de los pequeñajos que han trepado al poder. Al que vivió entre las fechas 1605 y 1665 aludí aquí mismo el pasado viernes; que como rey fue un irremediable mediocre y que en una de esas tanto le pesó la corona que entregó las llaves del gobierno a un tal Conde-Duque de Olivares, el Camilo Mouriño de aquel entonces. Que el mediocre falleció de pura tristeza, según las crónicas, destino que es de los pobres de espíritu, y eso cuando no les da por compensar su enanismo jugándole al dictador. Macabro. En aumentativo.
Este Felipe IV mediocre de facha, intelecto y carácter, iba a ser el destinatario del célebre Memorial que en la mesa del augusto comedor le deslizó a lo subrepticio aquel mi señor don Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas, genio de genios del Siglo de Oro español. Léanlo, y verán si exagero.
En los pareados del Memorial, Quevedo echa en cara al parvo Felipe ser el causante de achaques y tribulaciones que chicoteaban al noble pueblo español, y que iban del enriquecimiento inexplicable de algunos voraces Slim a la extrema miseria de los entenados del reino. Esto, a mediados del XVII español. Males fueron aquellos que la España del Cid soportaba desde los inicios de tan funesta dinastía. El Memorial iba a llevar de la mano a Quevedo hasta acogedora mazmorra del rey, rencoroso como todos los de su alzada, vengativos que son. Mis valedores.
Muchas excelencias se le advierten al Memorial, entre ellas una para nosotros fundamental: las acusaciones con que Quevedo chicotea la cara al monarca son las que nosotros pudiéramos enderezar contra cualquiera que haya posado sus reales en el sillón de Los Pinos. Lean, reflexionen y aplíquense al ejercicio de la comparación, aleccionadora; porque nunca las comparaciones, más allá del dicharajo embustero, resultan odiosas. Vale
Católica, sacra y real majestad - que Dios en la tierra os hizo deidad; -Un paisano pobre,
sencillo y honrado - humilde os invoca y os habla postrado.
El honrado, pobre y buen caballero - de plano, no alcanza ni pan ni carnero. -Perdieron su esfuerzo pechos españoles -porque se sustentan con tronchos y coles - Cebada que sobra los años mejores - de nuevo la encierran los revendedores. - Madrid a los pobres pide mendicante - y en gastos perdidos es Roma triunfante. - En vano es que agosto nos colme de espigas –
si más lo almacenan logreros que hormigas. - En vegas de pasto realengo vendido -ya todo ganado se da por perdido.
Perpetuos se venden oficios, gobierno - que es dar a los pueblos verdugos eternos.
- Si a España pisáis, apenas os muestra -tierra que ella pueda deciros que vuestra. -Los que tienen puestos, lo caro lo encarecen - y los otros lloran, revientan, perecen.
Crecen los palacios, ciento en cada cerro -y al pobre del pueblo, castigo y encierro.
Ved tantas miserias como se han contado - teniendo las costas del papel sellado. - Plazas de madera costaron millones, - quitando a los pobres vigas y tablones. - Un ministro, en paz, se come de gajes - más que en guerra pueden gastar diez linajes. - Nunca tales gastos son migajas pocas, - porque se las quitan muchos de las bocas. - Los ricos repiten por mayores modos: - ya todo se acaba, pues robemos todos. - Y asi en mil arbitros se enriquece el rico, - y todo lo pagan el pobre y el chico.
El vulgo es, sin rienda, ladrón y homicida - Burla del castigo, da coz a la vida. - ¿Qué importan mil horcas, dice algunas vez, - si es muerte más fiera hambre y desnudez? - Si el rey es cabeza del reino, mal pudo - lucir la cabeza de un cuerpo desnudo. - Consentir no pueden las leyes reales - pechos más injustos que los desiguales.
Loa plumas compradas por Dios jurarán - que el palo es regalo, y las piedras, pan. - Contra lo que vemos, quieren proponernos - que son paraíso los mismo infiernos. - La fama, ella misma, si es digna, se canta - no busca en ayuda algazara tanta - Del mérito propio sale el resplandor, - y no de la tinta del adulador. - Y así, de esas honras no hagáis caudal - mas honrad al vuestro, que es lo principal. - Servicios son grandes las verdades ciertas. - Las falsas lisonjas son flechas cubiertas. Porque por lo demás todo es cumplimiento -de gente servil, que vive del viento.
Si en algo he excedido, merezco perdones. - ¡Dolor tan del alma no afecta razones..!
¿Encontraron ustedes algún parecido entre la España de ayer y el México de hoy? Y la crueldad de los débiles: apenas leer el Memorial, Felipe el mínimo ordena ¡A la mazmorra con el acusador! ¡Con mi señor don Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas, genio de genios del Siglo de Oro español. Porque así se escribe la historia Válganos Dios. (Felipe.)


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M@rquevedo;
Norwich, U(n) K(amilo);
18/5/07


... Shut up and learn.

La tragedia que amenaza nuestra especie


No puedo hablar como economista o como científico. Lo hago simplemente como político que desea desentrañar los argumentos de los economistas y los científicos en un sentido u otro. También trato de intuir las motivaciones de cada uno de los que se pronuncian sobre estos temas. Hace solo veintidós años sostuvimos en Ciudad de La Habana gran número de reuniones con líderes políticos, sindicales, campesinos, estudiantiles, invitados a nuestro país como representantes de los sectores mencionados. A juicio de todos, el problema más importante en aquel momento era la enorme deuda externa acumulada por los países de América Latina en 1985. Esa deuda ascendía a 350 mil millones de dólares. Entonces los dólares tenían un poder adquisitivo muy superior al dólar de hoy.


http://www.voltairenet.org/article147976.html

Reflexiones del Comandante en Jefe

La tragedia que amenaza nuestra especie

por Fidel Castro Ruz*

No puedo hablar como economista o como científico. Lo hago simplemente como político que desea desentrañar los argumentos de los economistas y los científicos en un sentido u otro. También trato de intuir las motivaciones de cada uno de los que se pronuncian sobre estos temas. Hace solo veintidós años sostuvimos en Ciudad de La Habana gran número de reuniones con líderes políticos, sindicales, campesinos, estudiantiles, invitados a nuestro país como representantes de los sectores mencionados. A juicio de todos, el problema más importante en aquel momento era la enorme deuda externa acumulada por los países de América Latina en 1985. Esa deuda ascendía a 350 mil millones de dólares. Entonces los dólares tenían un poder adquisitivo muy superior al dólar de hoy.

De los resultados de aquellas reuniones enviamos copia a todos los gobiernos del mundo, con algunas excepciones como es lógico, porque habrían parecido insultantes. En aquel período los petrodólares habían inundado el mercado y las grandes transnacionales bancarias prácticamente exigían a los países la aceptación de elevados préstamos. De más está decir que los responsables de la economía aceptaron tales compromisos sin consultar con nadie. Esa época coincidió con la presencia de los gobiernos más represivos y sangrientos que ha sufrido el continente, impuestos por el imperialismo. No pocas sumas se gastaron en armas, lujos y bienes de consumo. El endeudamiento posterior creció hasta 800 mil millones de dólares mientras se engendraban los catastróficos peligros actuales, que pesan sobre una población que en apenas dos décadas y media se ha duplicado y con ella el número de los condenados a vivir en extrema pobreza. En la región de América Latina la diferencia entre los sectores de la población más favorecida y los de menos ingresos es hoy la mayor del mundo.

Mucho antes que lo que ahora se debate, las luchas del Tercer Mundo se centraban en problemas igualmente angustiosos como el intercambio desigual. Año tras año se fue descubriendo que las exportaciones de los países industrializados, elaboradas generalmente con nuestras materias primas, se elevaban unilateralmente de precio mientras el de nuestras exportaciones básicas se mantenía inalterable. El café y el cacao ―para citar dos ejemplos― alcanzaban aproximadamente 2 mil dólares por tonelada. Una taza de café, un batido de chocolate, se podían consumir en ciudades como Nueva York por unos centavos; hoy se cobra por ellos varios dólares, quizás 30 o 40 veces lo que costaba entonces. Un tractor, un camión, un equipo médico, requieren hoy para su adquisición varias veces el volumen de productos que se necesitaba entonces para importarlos; parecida suerte corrían el yute, el henequén y otras fibras producidas en el Tercer Mundo y sustituidas por las de carácter sintético. Mientras, los cueros curtidos, el caucho y las fibras naturales que se usaban en muchos tejidos eran sustituidos por material sintético de sofisticadas industrias petroquímicas. Los precios del azúcar rodaban por el suelo, aplastados por los grandes subsidios de los países industrializados a su agricultura.

Las antiguas colonias o neocolonias, a quienes se les prometió un porvenir maravilloso después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, no despertaban todavía de las ilusiones de Bretton Woods. El sistema estaba diseñado de pies a cabeza para la explotación y el saqueo.

Al inicio de esta toma de conciencia no habían aparecido todavía otros factores sumamente adversos, como el insospechado derroche de energía en que caerían los países industrializados. Estos pagaban el petróleo a menos de dos dólares el barril. La fuente de combustible, con excepción de Estados Unidos donde era muy abundante, estaba fundamentalmente en países del Tercer Mundo, principalmente en el Oriente Medio, además de México, Venezuela y ulteriormente en África. Pero no todos los países calificados en virtud de otra mentira piadosa como “países en desarrollo” eran petroleros, 82 de ellos son los más pobres y como norma necesitan importar petróleo. Les espera por tanto una situación terrible si los alimentos se transforman en biocombustibles, o agrocombustibles como prefieren llamarlos los movimientos campesinos e indígenas de nuestra región.

La idea del calentamiento global como terrible espada de Damocles que pende sobre la vida de la especie, hace apenas 30 años ni siquiera era conocida por la inmensa mayoría de los habitantes del planeta; aún hoy existe gran ignorancia y confusión sobre estos temas. Si se escucha a los voceros de las transnacionales y su aparato de divulgación, vivimos en el mejor de los mundos: una economía regida por el mercado, más capital transnacional, más tecnología sofisticada, igual a crecimiento constante de la productividad, del PIB, del nivel de vida y todos los sueños del mundo para la especie humana; el Estado no debe interponerse en nada, no debiera incluso existir, excepto como instrumento del gran capital financiero.

Pero las realidades son tercas. Uno de los países más industrializados del mundo, Alemania, pierde el sueño ante el hecho de que un 10 por ciento de la población está desempleada. Los trabajos más duros y menos atractivos son desempeñados por los inmigrantes que, desesperados en su creciente pobreza, penetran en la Europa industrializada por todos los agujeros posibles. Nadie saca al parecer la cuenta del número de habitantes del planeta, que crece precisamente en los países no desarrollados.

Más de 700 representantes de organizaciones sociales se acaban de reunir en La Habana para discutir sobre varios de los temas que en esta reflexión se abordan. Muchos de ellos expusieron sus puntos de vista y dejaron entre nosotros imborrables impresiones. Hay material abundante sobre el cual reflexionar, además de los nuevos sucesos que ocurren cada día.

Ahora mismo, como consecuencia de la puesta en libertad de un monstruo del terror, dos personas jóvenes que cumplían un deber legal en el Servicio Militar Activo, aspirando a disfrutar del consumismo en Estados Unidos, asaltaron un ómnibus, forzaron con su impacto una de las puertas de entrada de la terminal de vuelos nacionales del aeropuerto, llegaron hasta un avión civil y penetraron en él con los rehenes, exigiendo el traslado al territorio norteamericano. Días antes habían asesinado a un soldado que estaba de posta, para robar dos fusiles automáticos, y en el propio avión privaron de la vida con cuatro disparos a un valiente oficial que, desarmado y capturado como rehén en el ómnibus, intentó evitar el secuestro de la nave aérea. La impunidad y los beneficios materiales con que se premia desde hace casi medio siglo toda acción violenta contra Cuba, estimula tales hechos. Hacía muchos meses no ocurría nada parecido. Bastó la insólita liberación del conocido terrorista, y de nuevo la muerte visitó nuestros hogares. Los autores no han sido juzgados todavía, porque en el transcurso de los hechos ambos resultaron heridos, uno de ellos por los disparos que hizo el otro dentro del avión, mientras luchaban contra el heroico oficial de las fuerzas armadas. Ahora muchas personas en el exterior esperan la reacción de los Tribunales y el Consejo de Estado ante un pueblo profundamente indignado con los acontecimientos. Hace falta una gran dosis de serenidad y sangre fría para enfrentar tales problemas.

El apocalíptico jefe del imperio declaró hace más de cinco años que las fuerzas de Estados Unidos debían estar listas para atacar preventiva y sorpresivamente 60 o más países del mundo. Nada menos que un tercio de la comunidad internacional. No le bastan, al parecer, la muerte, las torturas y el destierro de millones de personas para apoderarse de los recursos naturales y los frutos del sudor de otros pueblos.

Mientras tanto el impresionante encuentro internacional que acaba de tener lugar en La Habana reafirmó en mí una convicción personal: toda idea siniestra debe ser sometida a críticas demoledoras sin concesión alguna.

7 de mayo del 2007 Fidel Castro Ruz

Presidente de Cuba. Comandante en Jefe de la Revolución.

Los artículos de esta autora o autor

http://www.guardian.co.uk/cuba/story/0,,2082683,00.html

The band plays on as communist Cuba embraces heart of capitalism

The cigars are out, the beer flows and it's BMWs all round as Bavaria puts aside ideological differences in $500m deal with Castro regime

Kate Connolly in Munich

Friday May 18, 2007

The Guardian

In front of a picture of a skinny boy in his underpants hugging a water pump and flanked by a 1950s car, Thomas Lang, a Bavarian businessman, proudly describes his delight at striking a deal with the Cuban government.

"We've been asked to send 808 pumps to help the country's infrastructure get on its feet," he tells an audience at Munich's chamber of trade and industry (IHK), noting the dearth of clean drinking water for the Caribbean island's 11.4 million inhabitants.

Mr Lang's firm, Wilo-EMU, represents one of hundreds of companies in this most capitalist of German states that have agreed to help communist Cuba's command economy, which, despite the United State's embargo, has of late found a new lease of life, largely thanks to help from Venezuela and China.

In its blurb to businesses, the IHK claims: "Cuba has far more to offer than beautiful beaches and cigars. Its rotten infrastructure offers German companies splendid business possibilities."

Cuba has a thirsty need for German technology to replace its rusting Soviet-era equipment. Bavaria even has its own "ambassador" to Cuba to oversee developments and before his recent illness Fidel Castro held through-the-night talks with German engineers about diesel motors and electricity generators prior to deals being struck.

A $500m (£250m) agreement has been struck between the Free State of Bavaria and Cuba, under which the German companies are providing the island with an array of generators, antennas, motors, and medical technology. By comparison, the US had just $340m trade with Cuba last year, mostly in agriculture.

The most delicious part of the deal for Bavarian traditionalists is the request for the luxury carmaker BMW to provide all of Cuba's ambassadors with its Series 1, 3 and 5 models. Even Raúl Castro, who is standing in for his sick brother, is to get a Series 5 car.

As far as the Cubans are concerned, Bavarians have proven themselves to be loyal participants in the revolution. By improving infrastructure they are helping to put socialism on a solid footing for the post-Castro generation.

"There are many points of the Cuban revolution that are interesting for Bavarian firms," Eduardo Escandell, deputy trade minister, tells the suits. "We're happy you want to take part." And please, he adds, continue buying Cuban cigars, rum and honey in return.

His words sealed a "memorandum of understanding" between the Cuban government and Bavaria this week as part of the island's attempts to broaden its international interests - as well as thumbing its nose at the 45-year-old US embargo. "For 50 years we've suffered from the blockade but we've also survived without America for 50 years," Mr Escandell told the Guardian.

"We will continue this fight. We need products, and we're happy that Bavarian companies can provide them. It's not about politics, because trade is trade."

Lederhosen

As if to cement the deal in spirit, a band of lederhosen-clad men called the Cuba-Bavarians strikes up, switching from oompah-pah to cha-cha-cha numbers on their guitars and guiros [a percussive gourd] with ease. Beerhall drinking songs and Che Guevara tributes fill the air. The new-found understanding between Germany's richest region and the communist state is striking. What, after all, have the two in common?

More than meets the eye, as German commentators are keen to point out. Bavaria has been ruled by the same party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), for half a century; Castro has ruled Cuba for 48 years. Both understand the benefits of continuity in power.

But the potential for conflict is huge. At its popular beer-hall rallies, the CSU rails against any way of thinking that does not tally with its Catholic, white, conservative, male-dominated values.

Communism is despised by the CSU to the extent that the party has invited members of the Cuban opposition to its Alpine training lodge to school them in ways of overthrowing Mr Castro.

But talk steered away from sensitive issues this week. Instead, the stress was on pragmatism. "Bavarians pride themselves on their mix of tradition and modernity - the so-called laptop and lederhosen approach," says Stephan Mey, of Augsburg-based MAN Diesel, which is selling generators to Cuba. "The Catholic side of our character means we're always a bit flexible. If we do something we know we shouldn't we can always go to confession afterwards."

Cooperation is not without risks. The European Union has frowned on dealing with Cuba since Mr Castro's arrest four years ago of 90 critics of his regime and the US is quick to punish firms that break its embargo. German companies with US subsidiaries, or which are listed on the New York Stock Exchange, have had to set up in places such as Egypt.

But Mr Castro's illness has slowed the cooperation. "We noticed when he was ill that payment process was much more sluggish," says Mr Mey of MAN. "The power vacuum has been obvious."

Ingo Friedrich, CSU vice-president, says the Cuba deal secures a foothold in its future. "Fidel Castro's days are numbered. The earlier one plans for the time after Castro, the better."

Sipping a beer, Fidel Antonio Castro Smirnov disagrees. "Fidel Castro is stronger than ever," says the 27-year-old grandson of el máximo líder, who is studying physics in Munich. "His 20-hour days are over but he will be around to do business with the entire world for a long while yet."

One-party states - The unlikely link

Population

Bavaria: 12.4 million

Cuba: 11.4 million

Anthem

Bavaria: Gott mit dir, du Land der Bayern (God be with you, land of Bavaria)

Cuba: La Bayamesa (Bayamo Song)

Capital known for

Munich: Oktoberfest, beer and BMWs

Havana: Día de la Revolución, cigars and 1950s Cadillacs

Unemployment

Bavaria: 6.2%

Cuba: 1.9%

GDP per head

Bavaria: $38,800

Cuba: $3,900

Run by

Bavaria: Christian Social Union, the majority party since 1957

Cuba: Communist Party of Cuba, since 1965 (although revolution was in 1959)

Top exports

Bavaria: Cars

Cuba: Sugar

Exports to

Bavaria: US, Italy and rest of Germany

Cuba: Netherlands, Canada and China

Football

Bavaria: Bayern Munich, one of the most successful clubs in football history

Cuba: The national team was the first in the Caribbean to reach the World Cup, in 1938. It has never returned - baseball is the national sport

Music

Bavaria: famous for yodelling and schuhplattler dancers

Cuba: famous for mambo, rumba and salsa

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El otro día La "Mujer Maravilla" me acusaba que mi "poste" se veía muy sesgado, muy de M@rco. 'Tonz, pus les traigo a sus mercedes dos noticias diferentes sobre Castro y Cuba. Y un videito de pilone.

¡Ah! Espero que no haya partido de fut programado entre Cuba y la Alemania. ¡Santas coincidencias, Batman! Por ahí hay ya uno entre México y Colombia. ¿No?

M@rcaballero;

Norwich, G(ran) B(alsero);

18/5/07