Make no mistake about it

Chavez es un populista autoritario, cuyo legado Venezuela sufrira por mucho tiempo. Para mí lo más dañino de su regimen es el debilitamiento de las instituciones (como lo hacen también Uribe y Garcia). Un ejemplo de esto es la forma como se ha visto afectado el establisment científico, hasta hace poco una de las mejor financiadas en toda Latinoamérica.  ESte post de Devil´s Excrement lo cuenta muy claramente.

Aunque se podria argumentar que el establishment  científico venezolanos a pesar de haber recibido por varios años mucho dinero no han llegado a tener la notoriedad de  Brazil o Argentina, o que existieran pequeños feudos científicos en diversos institutos y que la diáspora o “brain drain” empezó antes de Chavez, y sobretodo que tengan una mentalidad elitista al pensar que los cientificos deben estar en una jaula de oro ajenos a los problemas y necesidades de la sociedad, como lo expresa el horror de DE sobre un ”concept of science whose purpose is to give service to the people, solving their problems so that they will have better quality of life”.

 Los defectos de las instituciones científicas venezonalas podían corregirse orientando el financiamiento y priorizando las áreas que necesita la sociedad no supeditando los institutos científicos y los científicos al presidente y sus ideas políticas:

At all levels of the national scientific establishment, inexperienced professionals with little scientific or technical knowledge or background have been appointed to positions of authority. They have been chosen on the basis of their loyalty to the political party in power. This approach precludes a constructive dialogue with the R&D community and curtails academic freedom of research. Carta a Science

ESte es sólo un ejemplo de lo que esta pasando en Venezuela que Chavez gobierna como si fuera su hacienda, regalando una casa aqui, un tractor alla, mandando doctores importados por aculla o repartiendo tierra personalmente. No se ve un intento de que los sistemas de salud, educación, justicia sean autónomos y eficientes sino la cosecha personal del presidente de más votos y apoyo popular.

Por eso Chavez debe ser criticado y desenmascarado, como se debe hacer con todo régimen que pretenda ser autoritario.  El ejercicio democrático no consiste solo ir a votar cada cierto tiempo sino ejercer una vigilancia constante de los gobernantes. Pero si hay tantas formas de criticarlo por que la prensa y la blogosfera mainstream recurren a la mentira y el ataque racista?

En la prensa internacional AP y Washington Post se llevan los laureles por la forma tergiversada y propagandistica en que hacen sus artículos sobre Venezuela y Chavez.

Ver el poster completo en BoRev

En la prensa nacional creo que no se salva ninguno y sus artículos son un insulto a la inteligencia de sus lectores y es preocupante también que siempre le dan un spin racial y xenofóbico, que elicitan una reacción de “hate speech” en sus comentaristas. Para muestra un botón del aparentemente “serio” Caretas

El argumento que usan para blindarse de las criticas a sus reiterados usos de imagenes que deshumanizan o utilizan referencias raciales para criticar a Chavez  es que en Latino América se dice gorilas a los militares, como lo demuestran las innumerables caricaturas sobre el golpe de Honduras, pero a diferencia de estas  donde se representa un militar genérico no personalizado, en los medios nacionales es un reiterado uso de esas alegorias para atacar a Chavez o a Venezuela, además por la reacción que se logra de los comentaristas es la intención de los directores de estos medios que sus lectores lo odien por ser un antidemocrático o por ser negro?

• Críticas más inteligentes y sustanciosas a Chavez son necesarias y escasas en la blogósfera peruana. Asesinato en el margen sería uno de ellos.
• Una pena que un economista en GCC haya borrado su post emblemático de la crítica histérica “Chavez es hitler”.
• En la blogósfera continental esta el muy bueno de Devil´s Excrement: anti-chavista pero no histérico.

Por el otro lado desemascarando a la prensa internacional facilista y mentirosa estan:

• IncaKola News, bastante neutral.
• BoRev: pro-chavista pero con criterio.

 (Imagen de Caretas encontrado en este post donde se ilustra otras formas de racismo mediático)

“Chinese need to be controlled”

Ahora que todos estan preocupados con continuar el embargo a Cuba, “the communist evil country”, otros paises comunistas con iguales o peores records en derechos humanos pasan piola, es más hasta el reconocido actor Jackie Chan les manda rosas (claro si el gobierno de USA piensa igual).  Y ha causado mucha controversia entre los defensores de la democracia y derechos humanos en China y el mundo. Yo no sé por que les toman tanta atención a lo que dicen los artístas, aunque ahora como el mundo del espectáculo es más fuerte que el de las ideas…

Chan told a business forum in the southern Chinese province of Hainan that a free society may not be beneficial for China ’s authoritarian mainland.

“I’m not sure if it’s good to have freedom or not,” Chan said Saturday. “I’m gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we’re not being controlled, we’ll just do what we want.”

Y la respuesta no se dejo esperar

“He’s insulted the Chinese people. Chinese people aren’t pets,” Hong Kong pro-democracy legislator Leung Kwok-hung told The Associated Press. “Chinese society needs a democratic system to protect human rights and rule of law.”

Another lawmaker, Albert Ho, called the comments “racist,” adding: “People around the world are running their own countries. Why can’t Chinese do the same?”

Y por la plata y el prestigio baila el mono, o como los artistas sin consciencia son comprados por el mejor postor

Although Chan was a fierce critic of the brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in June 1989, which killed at least hundreds, he has not publicly criticized China’s government in recent years and is immensely popular on the mainland.

He performed during the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics and took part in the Olympic torch relay .

Chan also is vice chairman of the China Film Association, a key industry group.

No sé por que pero me recuerda a MVLL y su amor por Alan…o será a los chicharrones…

LA nota completa en Yahoo Movies & Gossips

Cine y TV

Llegará el día en que esto pase en el Perú?

Hola mi nombre es Sacheen Littlefeather. Yo soy una Apache y soy la presidenta del Comite nacional de Imagen afirmativa de los Nativo americanos. Yo estoy representando a Marlon Brando esta noche, el me ha pedido que les de un discurso muy largo que yo no puedo compartir con ustedes ahora – debido al tiempo – pero estare contenta de compartirlo con la prensa despues.
El lamentablemente debe rechazar, no puede aceptar este muy generoso premio. Y la razon de esto es el tratamiento a los Indios norteamericanos que la industria cinematografica da en la actualidad… perdon… y en la television, en peliculas repetidas, y tambien lo ocurrido recientemente en Wounded Knee (lugar tomado por Nativos norteamericanos y activistas se sucedieron enfrentamientos armados con las fuerzas de seguridad de USA).
Yo ruego en este momento que no haya perturbado esta noche y que deseemos que en el futuro nuestros corazones y nuestro entendimiento se encuentren con amor y generosidad.
Gracias en representacion de Marlon Brando.

 

Visto primero en Coalición para la Eliminación del Racismo ver post completo.

Aquí el discurso que mando Marlon Brando.

Perhaps at this moment you are saying to yourself what the hell has all this got to do with the Academy Awards? Why is this woman standing up here, ruining our evening, invading our lives with things that don’t concern us, and that we don’t care about? Wasting our time and money and intruding in our homes.

I think the answer to those unspoken questions is that the motion picture community has been as responsible as any for degrading the Indian and making a mockery of his character, describing his as savage, hostile and evil. It’s hard enough for children to grow up in this world. When Indian children watch television, and they watch films, and when they see their race depicted as they are in films, their minds become injured in ways we can never know.

El humor racista

NEW YORK – After two days of protests, the New York Post apologized Thursday for a cartoon that some have interpreted as comparing President Barack Obama to a violent chimpanzee gunned down by police. But the newspaper also said its longtime antagonists exploited the image for revenge.

The newspaper had stood by the cartoon, which its editor called “a clear parody” about the death of Travis, the chimp that Connecticut police killed Monday after it mauled a friend of its owner. Editor-in-chief Col Allan had said the intent was to ridicule Washington’s efforts to revive the economy.
Some protesters said the cartoon not only underscored racist tropes but even suggested that Obama should be shot.

“Since when can you call for the killing of the president of the United States?” demanded City Councilman Charles Barron. Yahoo News

y el Peru?

“Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and I believe continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards,” Holder said.

Race issues continue to be a topic of political discussion, but “we, as average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race.”

“If we’re going to ever make progress, we’re going to have to have the guts, we have to have the determination, to be honest with each other. It also means we have to be able to accept criticism where that is justified,” Holder told reporters after the speech.

In the speech, Holder urged people of all races to use Black History Month as a chance for honest discussion of racial matters, including issues of health care, education and economic disparities.

Source: Yahoo news

Familia y sociedad

Interesante artículo de Nancy D. Polikoff It’s not a gay thing…or is it? en Utne.

I propose family law reform that would recognize all families’ worth. Marriage as a family form is not more important or more valuable than other forms of family, so the law should not give it more value. Couples should have the choice to marry based on the spiritual, cultural, or religious meaning of marriage in their lives; they should never have to marry to reap specific and unique legal benefits. I support the right to marry for same-sex couples as a matter of civil rights law. But I oppose discrimination against couples who do not marry, and I advocate solutions to the needs all families have for economic well-being, legal recognition, emotional peace of mind, and community respect.

[...] I call this approach valuing all families. The most important element in implementing this approach is identifying the purpose of a law that now grants marriage unique legal consequences. By understanding a law’s purpose, we can identify the relationships that would further that purpose without creating a special status for married couples.

[...]The gay rights movement [in the 60's & 70's] was part of broader social movements challenging the political, economic, and social status quo and seeking to transform society into one in which sex, race, class, sexual orientation, and marital status no longer determined one’s place in the nation’s hierarchy. Marriage was losing its ironclad grip on the organization of family life, and lesbians and gay men benefited overwhelmingly from the prospect of a more pluralistic vision of relationships.

[...] A backlash resulted in restrictions on women’s reproductive freedom, gay rights laws were repealed, and welfare mothers were sold out. Conservatives employed the rhetoric of “traditional family values” to fight any proposal advancing recognition and acceptance of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, and used antigay propaganda to raise money and garner votes for a wide-ranging conservative agenda.

[...] Both these movements focus on marriage. Neither starts by identifying what all families need and then seeking just laws and policies to meet those needs. The marriage movement’s leading spokespeople argue that the intrinsic purpose of marriage is uniting a man and a woman to raise their biological children. They oppose marriage for same-sex couples and want marriage to have a special legal status.

The marriage-equality movement wants the benefits of marriage granted to a larger group: same-sex partners. With few exceptions, advocates for gay and lesbian access to marriage do not say that “special rights” should be reserved for those who marry. But the marriage-equality movement is a movement for gay civil rights, not for valuing all families. As a civil rights movement, it seeks access to marriage as it now exists.

[...] Today more people live alone, more people live with unmarried partners, and more parents have minor children who live neither with them nor with their current spouse. The laws that affect families need to be evaluated in light of contemporary realities. A valuing-all-families approach does this by demanding a good fit between a law’s purpose and the relationships that are subject to its reach.

Obama’s race

(…) some people argue that one of the reasons Mr. Obama was able to defeat Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was that a large number of white voters saw him as “postracial.”

(…) But where is the line? Does it change over time? And if it is definable, then how black can Mr. Obama be before he alienates white voters?

(…)“White people are weary of the kinds of black people who are dedicated to indicting whites as racists. So, to be ‘too black’ is to carry an air about you that whites have something to answer for.”

(…)Mr. Obama’s campaign so de-emphasized race that for most of the 17-month nomination contest much of the news media became obsessed with the question of whether he was “black enough” to win black votes

(…) For decades, pollsters have found that one of the prejudices white Americans commonly hold about African-Americans is a belief that blacks are less patriotic, despite serving in the armed forces in greater proportion than their share of the population.

(…)For instance, Mr. Patterson said research consistently showed that roughly one in five whites continues to hold racist views. Indeed, a poll by the Pew Research Center in March found that 20 percent of white Democrats over the age of 44 found interracial dating unacceptable; only 3 percent of white Democrats under 44 felt that way.

Articulo en el NY Times

Race in the USA elections

Video de MSNBS, “Meet the Press” sobre el racismo y las elecciones en USA.

y el debate que se armo: “todo el mundo habla de raza en la campana pero nadie quiere hablar de racismo…la razón por la que alguien vota en contra de alguien por su color de piel no es una razón positiva, …el racismo es algo negativo”

El porcentaje de americanos que respondio afirmativamente a la pregunta “esta USA listo para un presidente negro?” ha subido de 30% a 70%

Y la segunda parte. ”We have to talk about it”

Buscando un video para ilustrar el post me encuentro con este

a pesar de esto Hillary Clinton gano en Puerto Rico, por que los hispanos apoyan mayormente a Hillary? Será cierto que los hispanos son en general más racistas contra los negros?

USA incluida en lista negra

[..] “We find it to be offensive for us to be on the same list with countries like Iran and China. Quite frankly it’s absurd,” said the US ambassador to Canada, David Wilkins.

[...] The manual lists US interrogation techniques such as forced nudity, isolation, sleep deprivation and the blindfolding of prisoners under its “definition of torture”.

[...]It also refers to the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, where a Canadian man, Omar Khadr, is being held. Critics say it ridicules Ottawa’s claims that he is not being mistreated.

[...]Other countries on the watch list include Afghanistan, China, Iran, Israel, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Syria.

BBC News Si no quieren ser incluidos en listas negras, de paises donde se cree los prisioneros pueden ser sujetos a tortura, pues que sean más claros y transparentes en rechazar la tortura como una “táctica militar”. La única forma de vencer a los terroristas es primero estableciendo la superiodad moral de las repúblicas democráticas, no cayendo en sus mismos metódos. Cierren Guantanamo!! Juicio transparente a los detenidos!!

Negando el genocidio armenio

The issue was not the program itself, but its sponsor, the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish advocacy group, which has taken a stand against a proposed Congressional resolution condemning the Armenians’ deaths as genocide.

“If you deny one genocide,” said Dr. Jack Nusan Porter, a child of Holocaust survivors and a genocide studies scholar who attended the meeting, “you deny all genocides.”

The House resolution condemning the killings of Armenians as genocide is nonbinding and largely symbolic, but Turkey’s reaction has been swift and furious. It has recalled its ambassador from Washington and threatened to withdraw critical logistical support for the Iraq war.

Jewish leaders have long sought to focus attention on the killings of Armenians, starting with the American ambassador to Turkey in 1915, Henry Morgenthau Sr., who wrote in a cable that the Turkish violence against Armenians was “an effort to exterminate the race.” Several members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee who voted for the resolution, including a key sponsor, Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, are Jewish.

“If this were an organization that were denying the Holocaust, would they be allowed to do anything in town, even if what they are doing is the most beneficial of programs?” (…)

Articulo del NYTimes