What will stay of Cuba

... there is a historical polemic about the socialistic character of Cuba for many years.

In my opinion, this polemic is based on certain questions of soaked enough that have to do with the legal entitlement of the means of production in the island, less of the principal ones, as well as of the ground. But, frankly, leaving aside this question, which becomes at times a little Byzantine, the true thing is that scarcely possible socialism recognition stays as soon as about one the eye to the grotesquely discriminatory treatment towards the population as regards the tourism; or as soon as it is repaired in the slightly subtle detour of the legal look towards the prostitution generalized in tourist areas; or towards the wide sleeve with which the authorities treat the businessmen who go there «to do homeland»; or, clearly, towards the notable prevailing racism and homophobia in a society whose culture is not in that differently from that of many other countries of his environment (although fifty years of supposed socialism should have given to change these things a bit).

More in A this side of the Rubicon. The comments, there.

Finally, Izquierda Unida condemns the Cuban dictatorship

Finally Close left has condemned the Cuban dictatorship. It was yesterday, in Pamplona, where there was celebrated VIII Assembly of Izquierda Unida of Navarre-Nafarroako Ezker Batua. For 41 affirmative votes, 32 in against and 2 abstentions the Navarrese partners - what luck, to be able to show proudly the militancy in IU, as it happens in Valladolid and Pamplona, in contrast to Madrid - demanded from the Cuban authorities that «should set free all the conscience prisoners, imprisoned for exercising his right to the freedom of expression, meeting or association», as well as that «should finish all the forms of harassment and intimidation against the citizens who try to exercise according to the law his fundamental Human rights». The Navarrese partners also have agreed to demand «from the Cuban authorities that should adopt the necessary measurements in order that the ideological and partial pluralism is allowed for the full exercise of the right the political participation». You have the finished resolution in the blog of don Miguel Izu.

Will we see the day in which that one, and not other one is the IU politics on Cuba?

Savater, bullfighting?

I cannot conceal, am going to do it although some zangolotinos fops are going to put me to broth in the comments, which admired Fernando Savater. In the personal thing, his resistance seems praiseworthy and extremely courageous to me to the terrorism member of ETA. In the political thing and in the intellectual thing, it looks like to me a very interesting type for his called constantly to something so complicated always like putting the reason ahead of the prejudice at the time of realizing captures of position. His ascription to UPyD, a political party that probably is going to do to my own party a lot of electoral damage to him - because the political damage we have done it to ourselves ourselves - and of which I feel so nearby as distant, reduces not even only one milligram of the admiration that I feel for him. The only thing that creaks me of his political behavior this vice species is for the perfection that some intelligentsia has when compromenten in politics, which seems that they play to everything or nothing, as if the politics was developing in the luminous world of the ideas, and not where really it does it, that it is inside the cavern, that she is always dark, cold, humid and daubed.

For these reasons, I have surprised an act of Fernando Savater about which a kind reader has informed me by e-mail. Savater, apparently, is bullfighting. I like. Or yes, because you already know that I am antibullfighting. What I surprise is that he has accepted to defend the bullfights of all reading such a stupid manifesto - and so opposite to his positions - as the one that he has read. It is not own of Fernando Savater, at least not of Fernando Savater whom I admire, who is Fernando Savater to whom the idea of Spain «blows of it», which tells in the video that heads these lines that the national ideas are metaphysical entelechies that he is not interested in, to turn into the voice of a manifesto that defends the bullfights «like one of the signs from identity of our country and our culture», that »are part of our heritage cultural and as such must be respected and protected by the Government of the nation».

It had been interesting that Fernando Savater, to capture his signature in the manifesto, had improved it contributing arguments that were not alluding to the national identity, which perhaps they are, and this is for what one expects from an intellectual of his size, when one asks him to sign a proclamation. Regrettably it has not done it, so perhaps we have to think that don Fernando should be, after all, one more patriot.

Admirable, like many others, but patriot.

The testament

... if such it was doing, my bogey would come to him to harm...

The earthquake that put the brad to the thrust of the empire

For don Lucien de Peiro

Last January 12, shortly before the five of the evening, an earthquake of 7 grades of magnitude shook Haiti during a minute. In only two weeks 150.000 bodies of human beings recovered without life and the official number of deceased overcomes the 220.000 almost two months later. To many kilometers, on February 27 at half after three in the morning, a new earthquake destroyed to a Latin-American country: Chile. This one was 8.8 magnitude grades and it extended for space of three minutes. At the moment 800 deceased have been taken into account and it does not seem that the number could be equal to that of the tragedy of Haiti.

The NASA has gone so far as to say that the earthquake of Chile displaced up to 8 centimeters the axis of the Earth and reduced ligerísimamente the duration of the day in which it took place. And so, in Chile, at dawn, with most of citizens in his beds, with a magnitude that it places between more serious that they have never measured themselves and during three longest minutes, the earthquake took ahead (at the moment) a few hundreds of persons. On the other hand, in Haiti, with most of the awake citizens, with a clearly low magnitude and with a duration of only a minute, the earthquake took ahead tens thousands of persons. What would have happened in Haiti if they had surprised the earthquake at three o'clock in the morning, had lasted 2 more minutes and had reached 8.8 magnitude grades? I do not even want to think it.

I wonder how many dead persons it has caused the earthquake in both cases, especially in Haiti, because I do not realize not well that the earthquake that triumphed to the Caribbean country was the real person in charge of so many deaths. I incline to think that the number of dead persons in Haiti explains herself for other causes, for other reasons more related to the paupérrimas living conditions of his citizens. That's why to understand them, to understand the chilling number of almost a quarter of million human beings that with so many violence contrasts with also chillingly (but not so much) Chilean number, we should do a revision to the history of Haiti. Let's do it succinctly of the hand of Naomi Klein:

When the Haitians gained his independence of France in 1804, they had all the right to claim repairs to the powers that had taken advantage for three hundred years of the stolen work. France, anyhow, was sure that they had been the Haitians who had stolen the property of the slaves' proprietors refusing to work free. For it, in 1825, with a fleet of ships of war moored on the Haitian coast threatening to enslave the ancient colony again, king Carlos X came to gather: 90 million Francs in gold – ten times the annual revenue of Haiti in this moment-. Without aptitude to refuse, and without possibilities of paying, the young nation was moored to a debt that would be late 122 years in be paying. (...)

In 2003 the Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, faced an oppressive economic sequestration, announced that Haiti would demand the French government for the theft perpetrated time behind. «Our argument», said to me the ex-lawyer of Aristide, Ira Kurzban, «it was that the contract was an agreement without validity because it was based on the re-esclavización threat on times in which the international community was considering the slavery to be an evil». The French government was the sufficiently worried as to send a mediator Port-au-Prince so that it was supporting the case out of the courts. Finally, nevertheless, his problem was eliminated: while the arrangements of the judgment were carried out Aristide was demolished. The judgment disappeared, but for many Haitians the repair claims still continue. (...)

From 1957 until 1986, Haiti was governed by the diet desafiantemente cleptocrático of Duvalier. In contrast to the French debt, the case against Duvalier was exhibited in several courts that traced the Haitian funds up to an elaborated network of bank accounts in Switzerland and magnificent properties. In 1988 Kurzban gained a key trial against Jean-Claude «Baby Doc« Duvalier when a Court of District in Miami passed that the laid down leader «had embezzled more than 504 million dollars of public funds».

The Haitians, of course, still keep on waiting for the restitution of this money – but this was only the beginning of his losses-. During more than ten years the creditors of the country insisted that the Haitians had to pay the astronomical debts contracted by Duvalier, estimated in 844 million dollars, big part of which belonged to institutions like the IMF and the World Bank. Only in debt services, the Haitians have to pay 10 million dollars per year. (*)

From Havana they ask me: who has the hardest face, the empire or his footmen? My answer is that it finds it hard to answer to this question, because we speak about very hard faces, about granitic rocks, about practically indestructible facial frameworks. I do not have doubts that the earthquake of Haiti gave the brad to tens thousands of persons who had been massacred, sentenced in advance for two centuries of development that has not ended yet, two centuries of real terrorism, with multitude of persons died to hands of the genocidal empires of shift that enslaved them by means of practically free work and severe famine, empires that created the conditions so that the consequences of a serious earthquake as that of January 12 were multiplying dramatically.

(*) Translation done for the magazine sinpermiso for Camila Vollenweider.

Are the public pensions in danger?

I have just bent this book that there has recommended to me one of his three authors, don Alberto Garzón Espinosa. Are the public pensions in danger? the questions that we all do, the answers that always conceal us there is the title of the volume edited by Atacc in which don author dedicated - Vicen ç Navarrese and Juan Torres López - and the new one, proper Alberto Garzón, they treat dedar answer to some interogantes: which són the real threats? Who is interested in that the pensions are deprived? Do take reason those who say that they are unviable? What is convenient to do to guarantee his future?, and great more - to dismantle the neoliberal speech with which they try to legitimize with airs pseudo scientist the dismantling, or at least a big clipping, to the public pensions system. If they are interested in, they can bend free the book in version PDF.

Already present the PP, only lacking ETA

So once the PP has appeared, only the ETA is missing. First was the criminal branch of the Spanish right: Spanish phalange of the JONS. Then, the branch picarona and ladronzuela of the Spanish right: the People's Party, which operates after his man of straw, the presididario Thong. It stays already only that there comes the ETA to put the brad to the admirable citizen Baltasar Garzón, that you already will know that the only Spanish judge is a - what shame of judicature the one that serves solicitous to the aforesaid wretches in his dark ends - that has dared to apply democratic criteria of universal jurisdiction and to try to sue the persons in charge of the bloody pro-Franco dictatorship - and extract the victims of the ditches, which it is not a turkey snot - one of the Spanish judges most compromised in the struggle against the corruption, and one of that more tireless and boldly it has worked to finish with the terrorist band.

Will it come, the third sinister musketeer in help of others two against the common enemy? Things veredes...