John Lanchester -Marx a los 195

Antes de reflexionar acer-ca de lo que Marx hubie-ra pensado de un mundocomo el nuestro, debe-mos empezar por aclararque él no era empírico.No creía que pudiéramosllegar a la verdad sólo contomar trozos de informa-ción de nuestra propiaexperiencia, data points según los científicos, conlos que después integraríamos una imagen de la rea-lidad compuesta de los fragmentos recopilados. Elpensar que muchos de nosotros actuamos casi siem-pre de este modo provoca una ruptura importanteentre Marx y lo que hoy conocemos como sentido co-mún, noción que, por cierto, el mismo Marx detesta-ba: la veía como la forma en la que determinado or-den, ya fuera político o social, transforma su propiaconstrucción de la realidad en un conjunto de ideasaparentemente neutral que después será considera-do parte natural de las cosas. Ya que el empirismotoma sus pruebas de un orden preexistente de lascosas, tiene la cualidad innata de aceptar como rea-lidad hechos que no son más que la prueba de prejui-cios subyacentes y de presión ideológica. Para Marx,el empirismo fue y será un método para confirmar elstatu quo. A él le habría disgustado en especial aque-lla tendencia moderna de debatir a partir de los “he-chos”, como si fueran trozos neutrales de la realidad,libres de cualquier marca histórica, interpretación osesgo ideológico, así como de las circunstancias mis-mas que los originaron. 

Christine Lagarde -La guardiana de la economía mundial

La primera directora gerente del Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI) se ha convertido en una pionera en todos los centros de poder mundial. Curtida como abogada de negocios en EE UU, exministra de Economía de Francia, carismática, esquiva e implacable, cara a cara se muestra menos diva de lo que cabe esperar. "El FMI ha sido el chivo expiatorio en algunos países" durante la crisis, afirma a lo largo de esta conversación en París, en la que también desvela su lado más personal.  Entrevistar a Christine Lagarde, directora gerente del Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI), exige preparativos propios de un jefe de Estado y una condicionalidad que, salvando las distancias, parece inspirada en los rescates de la temida troika FMI, Banco Central Europeo y Comisión Europea. Después de un mes de tira y afloja con el gabinete de prensa en Washington, la cita queda supeditada a algunas premisas. Enviar un cuestionario en inglés, una biografía y una foto del periodista, y no hacer preguntas sobre dos asuntos: la política francesa y el 'caso Bernard Tapie', el escándalo en el que Lagarde se vio implicada en 2007, cuando era ministra de Economía y el Estado abonó 403 millones de euros al empresario. Tras una nueva negociación, más breve, el gabinete aceptará un par de preguntas sobre ambas cosas. En la entrevista, Lagarde se limitará a esquivarlas con evasivas.

John Lanchester -Marx at 193

In trying to think what Marx would have made of the world today, we have to begin by stressing that he was not an empiricist. He didn’t think that you could gain access to the truth by gleaning bits of data from experience, ‘data points’ as scientists call them, and then assembling a picture of reality from the fragments you’ve accumulated. Since this is what most of us think we’re doing most of the time it marks a fundamental break between Marx and what we call common sense, a notion that was greatly disliked by Marx, who saw it as the way a particular political and class order turns its construction of reality into an apparently neutral set of ideas which are then taken as givens of the natural order. Empiricism, because it takes its evidence from the existing order of things, is inherently prone to accepting as realities things that are merely evidence of underlying biases and ideological pressures. Empiricism, for Marx, will always confirm the status quo. He would have particularly disliked the modern tendency to argue from ‘facts’, as if those facts were neutral chunks of reality, free of the watermarks of history and interpretation and ideological bias and of the circumstances of their own production.

Toni Morrison & Junot Díaz

"I think the most sustained love of mine," Díaz has said, "the one that's carried me through all these years, is my relationship with Toni Morrison. I'm telling you, I'm one of those people who's still cracking my head on many of the ideas Toni Morrison both suggested and elaborated on in her work." Witness a powerful event as Díaz comes face to face with his literary hero to celebrate her remarkable career.
Toni Morrison is the Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Humanities, Emerita at Princeton University. Her ten major novels, The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, Beloved, Jazz, Paradise, Love, A Mercy and Home have received extensive critical acclaim. She received the National Book Critics Award in 1978 for Song of Solomon and the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Beloved. Both novels were chosen as the main selections for the Book of the Month Club in 1977 and 1987 respectively. In 2006 Beloved was chosen by the New York Times Book Review as the best work of American fiction published in the last quarter-century. In 1993 Ms. Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.Toni Morrison is a Trustee of the New York Public Library, a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a member of the American Philosophical Society, the North American Network of Cities of Asylum, and the Author's Guild where she served on the Guild Council and as Foundation Treasurer. She served on the NEA National Council of the Arts for six years.Junot Díaz's first book, the short story collection Drown, established him as a writer with "the dispassionate eye of a journalist and the tongue of a poet" (Newsweek). His first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, established him as a bestseller and earned critical acclaim; Wao was named #1 Fiction Book of the Year" by Time magazine and spent more than 100 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. In his new book, This Is How You Lose Her, Díaz again offers a collection of short stories, all deeply concerned with love -- obsessive love, illicit love, fading love, maternal love. Diaz is a 2012 MacArthur Fellow and Pulitzer Prize-winner.Junot Díaz was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New Jersey. He is the recipient of the Eugene McDermott Award, a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, and a Lila Acheson Wallace Reader's Digest Award. He is the fiction editor at the Boston Review and on the Board of the Pulitzer Prize, and is the Rudge and Nancy Allen Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He lives in New York City.

Arundhati Roy

Smiley & West

Arundhati Roy, author of the new text, "Capitalism: A Ghost Story", has an update from the front lines of the world's biggest democracy, India. Plus, TransAfrica founder Randall Robinson reflects on his friendship with Nelson Mandela, and a listener from Virginia has a Biblical response to West's comments on same-sex marriage.

Poet Maya Angelou’s Tribute to Nelson Mandela

Poet Maya Angelou’s Tribute to Nelson Mandela: We Lift Our Tearful Voices to Say ‘Thank You’ | Democracy Now!

La Gente Que Me Gusta - Mario Benedetti

Me gusta la gente que vibra, que no hay que empujarla, que no hay que decirle que haga las cosas, sino que sabe lo que hay que hacer y lo hace.

Me gusta la gente que cultiva sus sueños hasta que esos sueños se apoderan de su propia realidad. Me gusta la gente con capacidad para asumir las consecuencias de sus acciones. La gente que arriesga lo cierto por lo incierto para ir detrás de un sueño, quien se permite huir de los consejos sensatos dejando las soluciones en manos de nuestro padre Dios.
  
Me gusta la gente que es justa con su gente y consigo misma. La gente que agradece el nuevo día, las cosas buenas que existen en su vida, que vive cada hora con buen ánimo dando lo mejor de sí, agradecido de estar vivo, de poder regalar sonrisas, de ofrecer sus manos y ayudar generosamente sin esperar nada a cambio.

Me gusta la gente capaz de criticarme constructivamente y de frente, pero sin lastimarme ni herirme. La gente que tiene tacto. Me gusta la gente que posee sentido de la justicia. A ESTOS LLAMO MIS AMIGOS.

Me gusta la gente que sabe la importancia de la alegría y la predica. La gente que mediante bromas nos enseña a concebir la vida con humor. La gente que nunca deja de ser aniñada. Me gusta la gente que con su energía, contagia. Me gusta la gente sincera y franca, capaz de oponerse con argumentos razonables a las decisiones de cualquiera.

Me gusta la gente fiel y persistente, que no desfallece cuando de alcanzar objetivos e ideas se trata. Me gusta la gente de criterio, la que no se avergüenza en reconocer que se equivocó o que no sabe algo. La gente que, al aceptar sus errores, se esfuerza genuinamente por no volver a cometerlos.

Me gusta la gente que lucha contra adversidades. Me gusta la gente que busca soluciones. Me gusta la gente que piensa y medita internamente. La gente que valora a sus semejantes no por un estereotipo social ni cómo lucen. La gente que no juzga ni deja que otros juzguen.

Me gusta la gente que tiene personalidad. Me gusta la gente capaz de entender que el mayor error del ser humano, es intentar sacarse de la cabeza aquello que no sale del corazón.

La sensibilidad, el coraje, la solidaridad, la bondad, el respeto, la tranquilidad, los valores, la alegría, la humildad, la fe, la felicidad, el tacto, la confianza, la esperanza, el agradecimiento, la sabiduría, los sueños, el arrepentimiento y el amor para los demás y propio, son cosas fundamentales para llamarse GENTE.

Con gente como esa, me comprometo para lo que sea por el resto de mi vida, ya que por tenerlos junto a mí, me doy por bien retribuido.

David Grossman - Israel

“The country’s borders have shifted so many times with each war that it’s like living all your life in a house with moving walls. Only by living in peace with our neighbors, the Palestinians, can Israel feel like home, without us feeling like occupiers, without feeling like foreigners.”

“Palestinians have the natural right to a state and a society, to a homeland, and I wish they could have a normal life without the burden of occupation. I cannot tolerate the thought that Israel intervenes in their lives, and it casts a shadow,” said Grossman, criticizing the Israeli government’s “on-going failure” to enter into negotiations with the Palestinians.

“Peace for Israel is essential to its future survival. Right now we do not have confidence in a future.”

Dr. Maya Angelou

Oprah & Dr. Maya Angelou | News | Maya Angelou

Interview with Vandana Shiva and Jane Goodall

VIDEO: Extended Interview with Vandana Shiva and Jane Goodall

Animating Noam Chomsky: "Is the Man Who is Tall Happy?"

The innovative documentary introduces viewers to Chomsky’s theories and ideas through a series of conversations brought to life by Gondry’s vibrant hand-drawn animations. As Chomsky speaks, Gondry’s rapidly moving pencil illustrates his words. The men discuss everything from Chomsky’s pioneering work in childhood language acquisition to his views on education, religion and astrology. Gondry’s past films include the Academy Award-winning "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," the musical documentary "Dave Chappelle’s Block Party" and "The Science of Sleep." He has also directed dozens of music videos by artists including Björk, Kanye West, Paul McCartney and The Rolling Stones.

Noam Chomsky in Conversation with French Filmmaker Michel Gondry

For Chomsky, the basic essential nature of language is, first of all, uniform for all languages, which is why children can learn any of them.  It is also fundamentally very simple. But when you look at the data of language, it looks extremely complex. But that’s true of anything you don’t understand. If there’s anything you don’t understand that looks hopelessly complex, the idea is to try to see if you can extricate from the complexity fundamental principles, which somehow make things fall into place which otherwise didn’t make any sense, like the one principle that was mentioned at the end of the film about seeking a minimal structural distance. You can pursue that much farther. And a lot of things fall into place, including the way in which quite complex sentences are interpreted, if you continue to pursue the idea that there just has to be fundamentally simple processes that interplay in a way which yields observed complexity. 

De jóvenes rebeldes a diputados

Cuatro exdirigentes que lideraron las grandes protestas de 2011, entre ellos Camila Vallejo, desembarcan en el Parlamento chileno

Camila Vallejo en un mitin el pasado 10 de noviembre. / MARTIN BERNETTI (AFP)

Cuatro exdirigentes del movimiento estudiantil de 2011, que protagonizó las revueltas callejeras en demanda de educación pública y gratuita, se convirtieron ayer en diputados. Tienen menos de 27 años, obtuvieron la mayoría en sus respectivos distritos y se reconocen de izquierda, aunque provienen de distintas vertientes políticas.

El rostro de esta generación es la comunista Camila Vallejo, de 25 años, que logró un 43,6% en la comuna de La Florida, una localidad de clase media y con alto número de electores del sur de Santiago de Chile. Se le unirán Karol Cariola, secretaria general de las Juventudes Comunistas; Giorgio Jackson, líder del movimiento Revolución Democrática, y Gabriel Boric, la principal figura de Izquierda Autónoma, heredera de los grupos radicales de los años noventa.

Naomi Klein: How science is telling us all to revolt‏

Global capitalism has made the depletion of resources so rapid, convenient and barrier-free that “earth-human systems” are becoming dangerously unstable in response. 
There was one dynamic in the model, however, that offered some hope. Brad Werner -a geophysicist from the University of California, San Diego- termed it “resistance” – movements of “people or groups of people” who “adopt a certain set of dynamics that does not fit within the capitalist culture”. According to the abstract for his presentation, this includes “environmental direct action, resistance taken from outside the dominant culture, as in protests, blockades and sabotage by indigenous peoples, workers, anarchists and other activist groups”.

MVLl: El Nobel y el Cuartel

Caretas, Actualidad Candente, Investigación y Humor - MVLl: El Nobel y el Cuartel

First Elected Socialist Seattle Council Member in a Century

First Elected Socialist Seattle Council Member in a Century | Common Dreams

Tabla de equivalencias del tiempo en internet

Thinking as the activity of operating with signs‏

     The nature of thinking

We wrongly interpret thinking as a medium.  

This is a puzzlement caused by the mystifying use of our language.  

This kind of mistake recurs again and again in philosophy.

We are tempted to think that things are hidden.  
Yet nothing of the sort is the case.  
It is not new facts about time which we want to know.  
All the facts that concern us lie open before us. (p. 6)

"It is misleading then to talk of thinking as a 'mental activity'.

We may say that thinking is essentially the activity of operating with signs.  
This activity is performed by the hand, when we think by writing;

by the mouth and larynx, when we think by speaking; and if we think by

imagining signs or pictures, I can give you no agent that thinks.  If then

you say that in such cases the mind thinks, I would only draw your attention

to the fact that you are using a metaphor, that here the mind is an agent

in a different sense from that in which the hand can be said to be the agent 

of writing". (p. 6-7)

"If again we talk about the locality where thinking takes place we have right to

say that this locality is the paper on which we write or the mouth which speaks.

And if we talk of the head or the brain as the locality of thought, this is using

the expression "locality of thinking" in a different sense." (p.7)

"We think with our mouth" or "we think with a pencil on a piece of paper". (p. 7)

"Perhaps the main reason  why are we so strongly inclined to talk of the head as the

locality of our thoughts is this: the existence of the words "thinking" and "thoughts"

alongside of the words denoting (bodily) activities, such as writing, speaking, etc…."

"… thinking essentially consists in operating with signs." (p. 15)

It is misleading "if we say 'thinking is a mental activity' (p. 16), 

Thinking is an activity of the hand.  The mind does not think.  The hand is the agent in

writing.  The locality where thinking take place, the paper or the mouth.  Wrongly we talk

of the head or the brain as the locality of thought.  We think with our mouth (p. 43)

We think with a pencil or a piece of paper.  Thinking is a bodily activity: writing, speaking

is something not nothing.

The word = its use

The idea of our visual field being located in our brain arouse from a grammatical

misunderstanding (p.9)

Thinking, hoping, wishing, believing not independent of thought, hope, wish (p. 41)

Thinking is not a private experience.

"Make the following experiment: say and mean a sentence, e.g.: "it will probably rain

tomorrow".  Now think the same thought again, mean what you just meant, but without

saying anything (either aloud or to yourself).  If thinking that it will rain tomorrow

accompanied saying that it will rain tomorrow, then just do the first activity and leave

out the second. -If thinking and speaking stood in the relation of the words and the melody

of a song, we could leave out the speaking and do the thinking as we can sing the tune

without the words." (p. 42)

It is imposible to think without saying anything.

Ludwig Wittgenstein.  The Blue and Brown Books.
Harper & Row.  New York.  1965 (based on the second edition published in 1960)

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot's prison letters to Slavoj Žižek

Dear Nadezhda,

I hope you have been able to organise your life in prison around small rituals that make it tolerable, and that you have time to read. Here are my thoughts on your predicament.

John Jay Chapman, an American political essayist, wrote this about radicals in 1900: "They are really always saying the same thing. They don't change; everybody else changes. They are accused of the most incompatible crimes, of egoism and a mania for power, indifference to the fate of their cause, fanaticism, triviality, lack of humour, buffoonery and irreverence. But they sound a certain note. Hence the great practical power of persistent radicals. To all appearance, nobody follows them, yet everyone believes them. They hold a tuning-fork and sound A, and everybody knows it really is A, though the time-honoured pitch is G flat." Isn't this a good description of the effect of Pussy Riotperformances? In spite of all accusations, you sound a certain note. It may appear that people do not follow you, but secretly, they believe you, they know you are telling the truth, or, even more, you are standing for truth.

Calle 13 on Revolutionary Music, WikiLeaks & Puerto Rican Independence

Calle 13’s René "Residente" Pérez on Revolutionary Music, WikiLeaks & Puerto Rican Independence | Democracy Now!

Noam Chomsky: Canada on Fast-Speed Race 'to Destroy the Environment'

Noam Chomsky: Canada on Fast-Speed Race 'to Destroy the Environment' | Common Dreams

Te ofrezco -Jorge Luis Borges

¿Con qué puedo retenerte?

Te ofrezco estrechas calles, atardeceres desesperados, la luna de los suburbios derruidos.

Te ofrezco la amargura de un hombre que ha visto mucho tiempo la luna solitaria.

Te ofrezco mis ancestros, mis hombres muertos, los fantasmas que los vivos han honrado en bronce: el padre de mi padre muerto en la frontera de Buenos Aires, dos balas atravesaron sus pulmones, barbado y muerto, fue envuelto por sus soldados en cuero de vaca; el abuelo de mi madre—con tan sólo veinticuatro años—encabezando una cargada de trescientos hombres en Perú, ahora fantasmas en caballos esfumados.

Te ofrezco cualquier acierto que mis libros puedan encerrar, cualquier virilidad o humor en mi vida.

Te ofrezco la lealtad de un hombre que nunca ha sido leal.

Te ofrezco el centro de mí mismo que salvé de algún modo—el corazón central que no utiliza palabras, no trafica con sueños y está intocado por el tiempo, por la desdicha, por las adversidades.

Te ofrezco el recuerdo de una rosa amarilla vista al atardecer, años antes de que nacieras.

Te ofrezco explicaciones de ti mismo, teorías sobre ti mismo, autenticas y sorprendentes noticias de ti mismo.

Te puedo dar mi soledad, mi oscuridad, el hambre de mi corazón; trato de sobornarte con la incertidumbre, con el peligro, con la derrota.

Isabel Allende - Maya's Book

Author Isabel Allende will be in conversation with Berkeley professor Beatriz Manz about her novel, Maya's Notebook. In it, Allende narrates the tumultuous life of Maya Vidal. Raised by her Chilean grandparents in Berkeley, California, Maya steps off the straight and narrow when her grandfather dies and ends up addicted and on the run in Las Vegas. Eventually found by her grandmother, Maya is sent to Chiloe, a remote island off the coast of southern Chile, to hide from her pursuers. There she tries to rebuild her life, sheltered by a septuagenarian recluse still haunted by his years as a political prisoner.

The Lies That Will Kill the US

The Lies That Will Kill America | Common Dreams

Dark Matter ; the Undetectable Mass

THE QUANTUM REVOLUTION - Michio Kaku

Quantum Mechanics

Real Time with Bill Maher： Income Inequality

Real Time with Bill Maher：- Obamacare

"Prisoners of Profit": Despite Widespread Abuse, Private Juvenile Jail Firm Expands Empire

Democracy Now looks at a major new investigation into how Youth Services International, a private prison company that runs juvenile detention centers, is rapidly expanding its services, despite a record of abuse and neglect over the past 25 years. Despite allegations that include the neglect and abuse of young prisoners and the bribing of public officials to win contracts, Youth Services International has expanded its contracts to operate juvenile prisons in several states. More than 40,000 boys and girls in 16 states have gone through these facilities in the past two decades. This comes as nearly 40 percent of all detained juveniles are now committed to private facilities, and in Florida, it is 100 percent. We are joined by Chris Kirkham, business reporter at The Huffington Post, where he has just published his new two-part investigative series, "Prisoners of Profit: Private Prison Empire Rises Despite Startling Record of Juvenile Abuse." Kirkham explains: "When oversight is not as strong as it can be, companies are only going to be incentivized to do what the government that’s paying them makes them do. And so in these cases if the oversight is lacking, if there is not constant monitoring, I think there is an incentive to cut costs and services."

Hugo Chavez - Un transformador consumido por el poder

Ante el desgaste y el desprestigio que cubrían a la antigua clase política, Chávez apareció como una opción.  En su estancia en el poder polarizó a la sociedad, implantó políticas públicas dirigidas a los sectores populares, limitó los privilegios de los sectores más ricos, cambió la Constitución y se hizo de importantes medios de domunicación.  También maximizó el clientelismo e ignoró la corrupción de los suyos, instauró y lideró una “democracia autoritaria” en cuya cima se encontraba un “autócrata electo” (él mismo) y en cuya base estableció consejos comunales, enfrentó a Estados Unidos e ilusionó a diversos sectores de la izquierda, entre muchos otros aspectos de su controvertida actuación.

Chris Hedges - Let’s Get This Class War Started

Let’s Get This Class War Started | Common Dreams

Sherry Turkle on Being Alone Together

If you think a lot of people are looking down these days, it’s because they are. We often see people focused so intensely on the latest text or tweet coming from their smartphone, that they seem virtually oblivious to the world around them. This week, Bill talks to MIT professor Sherry Turkle, who has studied our relationship with technology for over three decades, about what this constant engagement means for our culture and our society. Turkle, author of Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other, says our devices are not only changing the way we communicate and interact with each other, but also who we are as human beings. “What concerns me as a developmental psychologist is watching children grow in this new world where being bored is something that never has to be tolerated for a moment,” Turkle tells Moyers. “Everyone is always having their attention divided between the world of people [they're] with and this ‘other’ reality.”

The Fifth Estate - Julian Assange

The film "The Fifth Estate" charts the relationship between Assange and Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Brühl), a German hacker who joined WikiLeaks in 2007 and later wrote one of the books that Mr. Condon and Mr. Singer drew upon. Daniel is initially impressed by Assange’s courage and idealism and dazzled by his charisma. Leapfrogging from city to city, sleeping on couches and living out of a backpack, Assange is like a cyber-anarchist Joan of Arc, a clean-shaven, silver-haired wizard in the kingdom of the scruffy.

He is suspicious of authority, committed to truth-telling and instinctively drawn to the side of the underdog. He also shows tendencies toward paranoia, monomania and rudeness. 

Where a Bicycle Is Sweetly Subversive

‘Wadjda,’ by Haifaa al-Mansour, Made in Saudi Arabia

Girl with a bike: Haifaa Al Mansour's inspiring 'Wadjda' is first feature filmed entirely inside Saudi Arabia

Girl with a bike: Haifaa Al Mansour's inspiring 'Wadjda' is first feature filmed entirely inside Saudi Arabia

Single-Payer Prescription for What Ails Obamacare

Single-Payer Prescription for What Ails Obamacare | Common Dreams

Costa Gavras -Taking on Capitalism, U.S. Torture & Dictatorships

Taking on Capitalism, U.S. Torture & Dictatorships, Costa-Gavras on Decades of Political Filmmaking | Democracy Now!

Tariq Ramadan -Violences en Egypte

RTS Info : Violences en Egypte : l’analyse de Tariq Ramadan

The Elegant Universe

Einstein's Dream

Brian Green on quantum mechanics and string theory.

Two Years After Occupy Wall Street

Two years after the Occupy Wall Street movement shifted the conversation on economic inequality, Democracy Now looks at its origins in New York City’s Zuccotti Park and its continued legacy in a number of different groups active today. 
DN speaks with Nicole Carty, actions coordinator with The Other 98 Percent, and a facilitator of general assemblies and spokescouncil meetings during Occupy, where she was a member of the Occupy People of Color Caucus.  Also joining DN is Nathan Schneider, editor of the website Waging Nonviolence, and a longtime chronicler of the Occupy movement for Harper’s Magazine, The Nation, The New York Times, and The Catholic Worker.  Scheider’s new book, "Thank You Anarchy: Notes from the Occupy Apocalypse," chronicles Occupy’s first year.

Manhattan retained the dubious distinction of having the biggest income gap of any big county in the US.  The mean income of the lowest fifth was $9,635, compared with $389,007 for the top fifth and $779,969 for the top 5 percent -more than an eightyfold difference between bottom and top.  The New York Times

Naomi Klein - A global Green Marshall Plan

With her newest, yet-to-be named book, Naomi Klein turns her attention to climate change.
Naomi Klein's books and articles have sought to articulate a counternarrative to the march of corporate globalization and government austerity.  She believes climate change provides a new chance for creating such a counternarrative.  "The book I am writing is arguing that our responses to climate change can rebuild the public sphere, can strengthen our communities, can have work with dignity."
Klein came to the idea that climate change could be a kind of a "people's shock," an answer to the shock doctrine – not just another opportunity by the disaster capitalists to feed off of misery, but an opportunity for progressive forces to deepen democracy and really improve livelihoods around the world. 

No Logo: how brand names manipulate public desires while exploiting the people who make their products. 
The Shock Doctrine or how free-marketeers often use crises – natural or manufactured – to ram through deregulatory policies.

Inequality for All. Record Income Gap Is Undermining US Democracy

The divide between the 1 percent and the 99 percent is as great as ever. According to one recent study, the top 1 percent has captured about 95 percent of the income gains since the recession ended. “Since the recovery, almost all of the gains have gone to the very, very top.  People who are in the top 1 percent are doing even better than they did before the Great Recession, better than they have done since 1928,” says former Labor Secretary Robert Reich.  “Most Americans are on a downward escalator.  Median wage in the United States, adjusted for inflation, keeps on dropping.”  Reich is the focus of the new film, “Inequality for All.” 

La trilogía de Linklater

Before Sunrise no es tanto una historia de amor como un vistazo a un instante pasajero. El director, quien en 1995 tenía 35 años, subraya la naturaleza etérea del primer encuentro entre Jesse y Celine con decenas de diálogos e imágenes: “somos polvo estelar”, advierte una gitana, después de leerles el futuro; un poema escrito por un vagabundo alude al azar del destino (lodged in life, like two branches in the river, flowing downstream). Como colofón está el final de la película, donde el espectador regresa a los sitios que Jesse y Celine visitaron: permanentes mientras que ellos, y el día que vivieron, desaparecen. En ese sentido, Before Sunrise no es el comienzo de un romance sino un fósforo que se prende y se apaga frente a nosotros: el desenlace, con esas tomas lánguidas de Viena despertando, huele a humo. Linklater se atreve a plantear un dilema que, de manera más bien obvia, pone a prueba el talante de nuestra disposición. Los románticos creerán que Jesse y Celine vuelven a encontrarse seis meses después; los cínicos saben que jamás volverán a verse. La película parece estar tan enamorada de su propia interrogante que es evidente que no tomará partido, ni habrá una segunda parte. Si la hubiera, el ejercicio –el dilema y la noción del instante transitorio– aparentemente perderían toda contundencia. En la duda, y en lo efímero del encuentro, está el valor de la cinta. O eso creía Linklater en 1995: el mundo del amor se divide en cínicos y románticos; la belleza está en esos instantes inolvidables que se esfuman, inexorables, en el tiempo.

Latin America and the US

In the last decade, Latin America has undergone a series of historic transformations. Major political shifts, unprecedented economic growth, and political leaders challenging US influence and championing regional autonomy, have combined to reshape an emerging new continent.

With ideologies and policies as varying as Venezuela’s Bolivarian socialism, Colombia’s economic liberalism and the centrism of Brazil and Argentina being exercised throughout the region, Empire examines the geopolitical shifts across Latin America and asks what challenges may yet lie ahead

Mario Mendoza. Ser artista es aprender a percibir de otro modo

El miedo al otro nos está llevando a conflictos con nosotros mismos 

El ‘hikikomori’ es el registro extremo de ese miedo: chicos que pueden llevar diez años sin salir de su habitación, viviendo con los horarios invertidos. Ellos revelan una tendencia que nos arrastra a todos. Japón tiene la tasa de comercio sexual más baja del mundo porque la gente casi no se toca. Poseen tecnologías sofisticadas de realidad virtual para satisfacer su deseo sin necesidad de estar con alguien. Ellos nos demuestran que estamos en el umbral de una nueva época. Nuestro deseo esta siendo metamorfoseado. Preferimos satisfacernos a nosotros mismos que entrar en el contacto con el otro. Es menos peligroso.

Chris Hedges

# 1 http://thezeitgeistmovementforum.org/societal-breakdown/1138-chris-hedges-real-news-network.html

# 2 http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10449

# 3 http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10456

# 4 http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10461

# 5 http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10468

# 6 http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10482

# 7 http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10486&updaterx=2013-07-26+00%3A28%3A41

Cornel West on Obama’s Response to Trayvon Martin

Cornel West response to President Obama’s comments on the acquittal of George Zimmerman and racism in the United States.
On Obama’s remarks comparing himself to Trayvon Martin, Cornel West says: "Will that identification hide and conceal the fact there’s a criminal justice system in place that has nearly destroyed two generations of precious, poor black and brown brothers?  Obama hasn’t said a word until now — five years in office and can’t say a word about a 'new Jim Crow.' … Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder — will they come through at the federal level for Trayvon Martin? 

Junot Díaz: Represento el silencio de mi comunidad

¿Ya te aburriste de responder si eres un escritor latino o estadounidense?

Claro que me importa esa pregunta. Es un tema muy interesante para mí, porque el inmigrante representa algo que esa pregunta no puede integrar. La simultaneidad del inmigrante significa que gente como yo pertenece a esas dos culturas, que yo pertenezco a la cultura dominicana y a la cultura gringa. A veces me preguntan cuál de las dos está ganando y yo respondo que esta vaina no es una competición Es como una familia utópica donde un padre dice que no tiene hijo favorito.

Sé que si tengo hijos que nazcan en este país sí se van a sentir gringos, pero yo como inmigrante nunca me podré sentir como un gringo aunque haya vivido tantos años aquí. Nunca me he sentido cómodo en este país y no digo “cómodo” como quien está sentado en una silla buena, lo digo porque siempre estoy pendiente de lo que estoy diciendo en inglés. Un amigo mío lo define como estar gago, como tener un tartamudeo invisible que te obliga a pensar en cada palabra para no cagarla...

Glenn Greenwald: Obama Makes "False" Surveillance Claims

Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who broke the NSA surveillance story, joins Democracy Now one day after both President Obama and whistleblower Edward Snowden gave extensive interviews on the surveillance programs Snowden exposed and Obama is now forced to defend.  Speaking to PBS, Obama distinguished his surveillance efforts from those of the Bush administration and reaffirmed his insistence that no Americans’ phone calls or emails are being directly monitored without court orders. Greenwald calls Obama’s statements "outright false" for omitting the warrantless spying on phone calls between Americans and callers outside the United States.  "It is true that the NSA can’t deliberately target U.S. citizens for [warrantless] surveillance, but it is also the case they are frequently engaged in surveillance of exactly that kind of invasive technique involving U.S. persons," Greenwald says. After moderating Snowden’s online Q&A with Guardian readers, Greenwald says of the whistleblower: "I think what you see here is a person who was very disturbed by this massive surveillance apparatus built in the U.S. that spies not only on American citizens, but the world, with very little checks, very little oversight. He’s making clear his intention was to inform citizens even at the expense of his own liberty or even life."

The Struggle Against Dogmatism: Wittgenstein and the Concept of Philosophy

Oskari Kuusela - Marie McGinn
One of the most perplexing, and to some irritating, aspects of Wittgenstein's later philosophy is his apparent insistence that he is not putting forward philosophical theses, or making any claim with which others could possibly disagree or which it is possible to dispute. It can be hard to see how this can be understood as anything other than an attempt by Wittgenstein to privilege his own conceptions of meaning or of psychological phenomena, or as a claim to the absolute and indisputable correctness of his observations on rules, understanding, sensations, the propositions of mathematics, and so on. The idea that Wittgenstein's later philosophy is in some way implicitly dogmatic has been encouraged by interpretations, such as the one developed in great detail by Peter Hacker and Gordon Baker in their commentary on the Philosophical Investigations, which hold that Wittgenstein does not put forward theses insofar as he is merely describing the rules for the use of expressions; his remarks are held to be indisputable insofar as anyone who understands the relevant expressions must agree to Wittgenstein's descriptions, and recognize that any deviation from them inevitably results in nonsense. On this conception of it, the kind of conceptual investigation that Wittgenstein is engaged in results in the articulation of the grammatical rules implicit in our use of expressions, and provides a base from which unanswerable criticisms of the use that philosophers make of the expressions of our language can be mounted. Wittgenstein's idea that his aim is to make philosophical problems 'completely disappear' is, on this interpretation, taken to be equivalent to an intention to show that they one and all depend upon a demonstrably deviant, and therefore nonsensical, employment of words.

El Poema Más Bello del Mundo

Cada vez que yo pasaba por la casa donde vivió Stephane Mallarmé, rue de Rome, Distrito XVII, París, para tomar mi metro, miraba la placa de bronce que informaba que allí había vivido el poeta a fines del siglo diecinueve, y es en ella donde se celebraban los famosos martes literarios que frecuentaban los grandes poetas simbolistas: Rimbaud, Verlaine, Valery, Lecompte-de-Isle quienes habían coronado a Mallarmé como el Príncipe de los Poetas, y le habían ceñido la Corona de Laurel, como en los Juegos Olímpicos de la antigua Grecia. Había sido un poeta oscuro y legendario, oscuro porque sus cincelados versos parnasianos “oscurecían la oscuridad” de sus enigmáticos poemas, y en los últimos años de su vida se había dedicado obsesivamente a escribir “El Libro Perfecto” cuya ejecución puntual y verdadera se describía en un folleto titulado “A Propósito del Libro”, publicado poco antes de su muerte ocurrida en 1898. Explicaba cuántas páginas debía tener este mítico libro, qué formato, qué tipografía, qué papel y de qué gramaje, qué carátula, cómo y por cuántas personas debería ser leído ante el público, y cuántas personas deberían asistir a esa lectura. Porque el Libro Perfecto no podía ser otra cosa que un libro de poemas; qué duda cabe! que contuviese en sus páginas toda la belleza y la sabiduría del mundo, y no una vulgar novela, que era para alimento de las masas, como aquellos esperpentos “naturalistas” de Zolá cuyos capítulos venían en el suplemento de los periódicos, para atraer a la ignorante clase media incipiente que agotaba la edición. No por nada los simbolistas despreciaban a los burgueses arribistas, de esos que pueblan las novelas de Balzac.

Noam Chomsky on the Heroism of Bradley Manning

The linguistics professor, activist, and public intellectual on secret trade deals, killing polio workers, fighting for the commons in Turkey and terrorism
What do Takism Square, Google Glass, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and NSA data gathering have in common?
Chomsky always provides perspective, even when one is pretty well informed about the topics he addresses. The Magna Carta was about protecting The Commons.  It was the origin of habeas corpus, - something the world's indigenous people are trying to teach us about.

Influence & Massive Growth of Surveillance, Cyberwar

James Bamford on NSA Secrets

James Bamford discusses the National Security Agency’s secret expansion of government surveillance and cyberwarfare.  In his latest reporting for Wired magazine, Bamford profiles NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander and connects the dots on PRISM, phone surveillance and the NSA’s massive spy center in Bluffdale, Utah. Says Bamford of Alexander: "Never before has anyone in America’s intelligence sphere come close to his degree of power, the number of people under his command, the expanse of his rule, the length of his reign or the depth of his secrecy." The author of "The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America," Bamford has covered the National Security Agency for the last three decades, after helping expose its existence in the 1980s.

Big Brother’s Prying Eyes

How we can protect our privacy when Big Government and Big Business morph into Big Brother

Whatever your take on the recent revelations about government spying on our phone calls and Internet activity, there’s no denying that Big Brother is bigger and less brotherly than we thought. What’s the resulting cost to our privacy — and more so, our democracy? Lawrence Lessig, professor of law and director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University and founder of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, discusses the implications of our government’s actions, Edward Snowden’s role in leaking the information, and steps we must take to better protect our privacy.

“Snowden describes agents having the authority to pick and choose who they’re going to be following on the basis of their hunch about what makes sense and what doesn’t make sense. This is the worst of both worlds. We have a technology now that gives them access to everything, but a culture if again it’s true that encourages them to be as wide ranging as they can,” Lessig tells Bill. “The question is — are there protections or controls or counter technologies to make sure that when the government gets access to this information they can’t misuse it in all the ways that, you know, anybody who remembers Nixon believes and fears governments might use?”

Few are as knowledgeable about the impact of the Internet on our public and private lives as Lessig, who argues that government needs to protect American rights with the same determination and technological sophistication it uses to invade our privacy and root out terrorists.

“If we don’t have technical measures in place to protect against misuse, this is just a trove of potential misuse…We’ve got to think about the technology as a protector of liberty too. And the government should be implementing technologies to protect our liberties,” Lessig says. “Because if they don’t, we don’t figure out how to build that protection into the technology, it won’t be there.”

“We should recognize in a world of terrorism the government’s going to be out there trying to protect us. But let’s make sure that they’re using tools or technology that also protects the privacy side of what they should be protecting.”

Venezuela -conspiración permanente

En su primer mes de gobierno, Nicolás Maduro ha denunciado varias conspiraciones, un apartheid mediático destinado a “invisibilizarlo”, dos o tres proyectos de golpes de Estado, un nuevo plan de magnicidio, más de un complot internacional y alguna guerra de cuarta o de quinta generación. Todo eso cabe en tan solo treinta días. Y todavía más: Maduro ha viajado a la cumbre de Unasur, a Cuba, a Argentina, Uruguay y Brasil... y en todos lados siempre ha sostenido un mismo discurso. Reactivo, en contraofensiva, hablando permanentemente de la oposición. Maduro, de pronto, es un exceso de adjetivos. Se comporta como si todavía estuviera en campaña electoral.

La sospecha de que su gobierno no es del todo legítimo gravita a su alrededor. No es un pájaro. Es una nube que no lo deja en paz, que danza junto a él de manera insistente. Nada parece salirle como lo tenía planeado. La imagen del caos se ha mudado y ahora empieza a estar asociada al chavismo. También la violencia cabe en estos primeros treinta días. En la Asamblea Nacional, los partidarios del oficialismo atacaron a puñetazo limpio a los parlamentarios de oposición, a quienes ya se les había negado el derecho de palabra mientras no reconocieran públicamente que Maduro es el presidente legítimo de Venezuela. Por más que el poder ensayó distintos trucos para responsabilizar a las víctimas de la agresión, los videos tomados con teléfonos celulares desbarataron cualquier farsa. Pocos días después, Iris Varela, ministra de Asuntos Penitenciarios y alta dirigente del partido de gobierno, declaró con franqueza que “la oposición se merecía sus coñazos”.

Jorge Drexler a la enésima potencia

Conocí a Jorge Drexler vía Twitter, de manera accidental: me empezó a seguir un tal @drexlerjorge, que me llamó la atención por su perfecto dominio de las formas métricas, tanto tradicionales como adaptadas por él mismo a los 140 caracteres. Creyéndome gracioso, le envié un mensaje directo, en el que le expresaba mi simpatía y le manifestaba mi gozosa perplejidad ante la existencia de un verdadero nerd de la poesía que se hiciera pasar por un celebrado músico uruguayo. Él me agradeció, siguiéndome el juego, y empezamos a corresponder. Meses después, le pedí su dirección postal para enviarle un libro; el (supuesto) falso Drexler me respondió que pasaría por Buenos Aires, y que mejor nos viéramos en persona. Ya sobre la fecha, y tras avistar un afiche en la avenida 9 de Julio que anunciaba un concierto del verdadero Jorge Drexler, le escribí para recordarle la cita; en respuesta, me puso en contacto con su tour manager, que muy amablemente me avisó que habría a mi disposición un pase para el backstage. Con cierta decepción, comencé a sospechar que tal vez estuviera en presencia del auténtico Drexler, pero guardé la secreta esperanza de que todo se tratara de una broma tan elaborada como inútil. La noche del show, me presenté en el teatro, deseoso de que los empleados del Gran Rex se rieran de mi pretensión de codearme con una celebridad; lejos de ello, me entregaron, solícitos, mi entrada y mi pase. Concluido el concierto, me presenté en el backstage, donde Drexler me recibió con un abrazo: “¡Zaidenwerg, querido! ¿Cómo estás?” A esto le siguió una conversación tan deliciosa como surreal, en la que además de charlar de poesía, aproveché que la otorrinolaringología fue su primera profesión para pedirle su consejo médico. Además, le solicité una entrevista, para que el público ajeno a Twitter pudiera conocer esa otra cara de Drexler, tan verdadera al fin como la otra. Más de un año después, he aquí el resultado.