Snob

In Bong Joon-Ho’s Oscar-winning film Parasite, class disparities are telegraphed through aesthetics, architecture, and even the characters’ personal body odors. But one scene in particular deftly illustrates the economic gap between the wealthy Parks and the lower-income Kim family—by way of a humble instant-noodle dish.

The scene in question begins with the Parks leaving for a camping trip, only to turn around and head for home when it starts to rain. On their drive back, Mrs. Park calls her housekeeper, Mrs. Kim, to request that she prepare a bowl of “ram-don” for her young son—and that it be ready by the time they arrive home. Mrs. Kim hangs up and is left wondering what on earth “ram-don” might be. In a frenzy, she throws together two types of instant noodles and some cubed steak and, miraculously, it passes muster.

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El propietario pedirá permiso para mesas y sillas, y un toldo fijo que el Plan Especial no autoriza en el casco histórico

When commitment feels rare and everyone’s lonely, Change of Heart is a Valentine's Week investigation of what makes relationships so hard—and how they can be better.

“Men Are From Mars, Women are From Venus” is undeniably a relationship guide published in 1992 by John Gray (PhD). As a homosexual advice columnist from the world of tomorrow, I was giddy at the opportunity to poke holes in a title that seemed so nakedly retrograde. And I was right, because it’s bad and I enjoyed myself. But while skewering it, I couldn’t help but appreciate what the bestseller tapped into, the thing that made it such a runaway success: a human need to memeify and flatten complicated concepts, especially ones about how different groups of people are supposed to behave.

But let’s start with the book itself, eh? The first thing you need to understand is that, far from a mere metaphor, John Gray PhD takes the whole “different planets” bit very seriously. There’s actual lore: Men on Mars were going about their Martian lives, building and achieving things, when, one day, they caught a glimpse of the women on Venus, who were braiding their hair or whatever. The men decided to invent space travel just to disrupt the women’s lifestyle and go chill with them. The men and women got along fine because, as Gray (PhD!) repeatedly stresses, “They understood their differences.”

Things went left, however, when the Martians and Venusians decided to go to Earth (on the aforementioned Spaceships for Him™) and forgot about their differences because they inhaled Earth’s atmosphere, and oxygen is genderqueer juice, I guess. (Gray submits this as a framing device, but part of me thinks he sort of buys into it wholesale and was low-key hoping it would take off.) This sets up the crux of Gray’s understanding of The Two Genders: There is a fundamental language barrier between them, rooted in immutable (space) identities. The key to overcoming it is awareness itself: cognizance of this fact, so that we might maneuver around it.

We are given a compelling opening example. Gray comes home to find his Venusian wife suffering. “I’m in pain,” she explains femininely, and adds, “You’re a fair-weather friend.” Gray, who has a small Martian brain, replies that she didn’t call to tell him she was hurting and so he couldn’t have known. They fight over this, and Gray prepares to leave his wife (unclear on for how long) when she asks him to stay. “Just be with me,” she says. Gray obliges and they hold each other, and gender is conquered for the day. “That day, for the first time, I didn’t leave her,” Gray wrote. “I stayed, and it felt great. I succeeded in giving to her when she really needed me. This felt like real love.”

It’s not super clear why she would be so mad at him for not knowing about her pain. But it makes sense in terms of Gray’s narrative objective. Women seek to share, while men seek to fix. In generous terms, women are articulators, while men are doers: When a woman hurts, she wants to open up about it. When a man hurts, he wants to locate the problem and resolve it.

The rest of the book is spent hammering this idea home. Men are drawn to careers with uniforms, we are told, because uniforms denote competence. “Even their dress is designed for this,” Gray elaborates. “Police officers, soldiers, businessmen, and chefs all wear uniforms or at least hats to reflect their competence and power.” (So there’s your answer to the big “why hats?” question, perhaps gender's most stymieing mystery of all.) Women, meanwhile, dress according to their mood. According to Gray, I would technically be “a woman.”

You have to hand it to John Gray on this front: He made his worldview very, very easy to understand. It was such an accessible idea that it became more than a book. It became a board game. It became infomercials and merchandise. It became a meme.

Flattening out the world and making it easier to understand—even while totally confusing it and incorporating extraterrestrials into your explanation—is the point of mimesis. But when memes simplify complex ideas about gender down to more easily packaged and communicated base sentiments, a lot is (necessarily) left out. Memes, in Gray's time as now, assist in facilitating the underlying desire to agree on a set identity in contrast to others, and the itch to compare and exclude and align ourselves—men are like this, women are like this, queers are like this—still exists. It openly relies on gendered assumptions that we are still comfortable making, despite knowing more about the mutability, expression, and diversity of gender across the spectrum.

Indeed, we’ve made significant strides in doing away with the “men are like this, women are like that” mindset in large part because of the writing, thinking, and increased visbility of LGBTQ people, specifically. But before we pat ourselves on the back too much for how far we’ve come, let’s also consider how people express their progressivism in mimetic ways that John Gray himself would probably see as an enormous business opportunity.

Examples abound, and I don’t consider them all high-stakes or intentionally cruel or even unfunny. Some of them are very funny to me, personally: The straights are at it again. Guys will put up a card table and throw down an air mattress and call it decor. White women would like to speak to a manager. They are all named Karen. Oh my God, I’m totally obsessed with pumpkin spice lattes. Men are garbage and furthermore don't know how to dress; heterosexuality is a disease. You get the gist.

It’s not like we’ve evolved so far from Gray's whole “space gender!” thing, either—Gray (whose credentials are dubious, by the way), harnessed a familiar desire for Why We Are the Way We Are to be both simple and divinely out of our hands. Astrology memes have never been more popular, with some (not all) interpretations imagining immutable personality types predetermined at birth. (It’s no small wonder that a member of the astro-meme community made a Problematic™ dip into phrenology last year.)

Queer people are entirely invisible in Gray’s book, even as they were disproportionately being impacted by the AIDS crisis while it was being written. Casually rendering a vulnerable swath of the population invisible seems especially egregious, in retrospect. We would never, right?

Recently, a prominent writer cracked a joke about a news story wherein a woman texted her date, “You’re not a serial killer, right?” The man ended up being exactly that, and the woman was killed. “Siri, show me heterosexuality,” the writer joked above a screenshot of the headline. The intent was, in my opinion, not malicious: Being a straight woman sucks and is dangerous because you have to deal with men, who are all too often violent with women. That’s the joke. “Ugh, being straight.”

Others pointed out that the woman was a Black sex worker and the man who killed her targeted vulnerable people like her. There are multiple factors here that give more dimension to the contextless joke—it’s not mere “heterosexuality.” It’s about class. It’s about race. It is, in reality, far afield from what relatively privileged people have to worry about or experience.

Memes imagine a universal experience, and it’s so tempting to deal in these flat, blunt "truisms"—their failure to capture reality is also why we're allured by them; they are easy. Sometimes, I'm reminded of jokes I've made about “straight people” from the gay perspective, where my imagined target is cisgender straight men, but in not making that specification, I end up including trans straight people. The universal always favors the people whose experiences are considered most important.

This isn’t me saying “memes are bad.” Memes practically raised me. But memes are no substitute for the truth, and the truth is too unwieldy to be contained in such an unreliable format. There are no shortcuts when tackling the complexities of relationships. In my capacity as an advice columnist, I take extra care to make sure I’m not relying on stereotypes or convention when answering people’s questions. I think that’s something Men are From Mars doesn’t do, as I’ve made amply clear. But I also think we haven’t evolved too far from its core argument.

We rely on the tropes and performances memes have delivered to us, and we use them as tools of community-building, as a language unto itself that can help build common identity and signal a shared understanding of an experience. Of course, I am intimately familiar with how LGBTQ people do this. But this book made me realize that, of course, the majority, the dominant culture has memes too. It’s just that they become so prolific, they often become “conventional wisdom.”

“Men are from Mars, and women are from Venus” sounds dumb to our modern sensibilities. But I bet a lot of what we’re saying today will sound that way in the future, too, if we’re lucky enough to have one. In any case, real scholars know that men are not from Mars. They go to Jupiter to get more stupider.

Usually it’s much easier to destroy than to create, but getting rid of institutions can be difficult. Once something is put in place, and people become used to it, it’s hard for them to even begin to imagine a world without it. It took a hard, decades-long fight to get the eight-hour workday. Child labor laws seem obvious and indispensable today, but they came after generations of kids were sent up chimneys and down mine shafts and into cotton fields. Today we have free public schools all over the country, but we did not always. It took decades of effort by reformers and educators to make universal free public schooling a reality. Someday, perhaps, universal free public college will seem just as natural and permanent. 

The National Health Service (NHS) is the pride of Britain. Most respondents in a public poll called it the country’s single greatest achievement—this in the land that gave us Shakespeare, Stonehenge, cheddar cheese, and Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of The Moon. The NHS provides every U.K. resident, from their birth to their death, with healthcare that is free at the point of use. It is good at what it does: Despite the scare stories about wait times and rationing, it is still often ranked one of the best health systems in the world, beating out Canada, France, Germany, Australia, and (of course) the United States. Efforts to privatize and dismantle it have never succeeded—British people are so protective of the service that even Conservative governments have to lavish praise on the NHS and affirm their dedication to its socialistic founding principles. 

Americans may have a hard time understanding just how much easier British people’s lives are thanks to the NHS. If you need to go to the doctor, you register with one, book an appointment, go, get treated, and leave. They do not have to be “in your network.” There are no co-pays, no deductibles. If you lose your job, your healthcare is unaffected. Nor does it make a difference if you move to a different part of the country. You will not be billed for your ambulance ride. You will not be billed for your appointment. You will not be given a $629 band-aid or a $5,000 ice pack or an $18,000 bottle of formula. You will not spend hours on the phone with an insurance company trying to figure out why some parts of your hospital visit were covered and others weren’t. You will feel free—free to think about getting well instead of about how to pay for treatment. As my British colleague Aisling McCrea has written, Americans who love freedom and hate bureaucracy should be clamoring for socialized medicine.

But to appreciate how remarkable the NHS is, it’s also necessary to remember that for most of British history, it didn’t exist. This unique egalitarian institution, which guarantees every person access to a good standard of care, even if they are otherwise destitute, is frequently celebrated as an embodiment of “Britishness” or the national spirit. British society, however, has historically been notable for its distinctly un-equal character. Britain is a land with a vicious and rigid class system, where status is signified by the subtlest of differences. (E.g., do you say “napkin” or “serviette,” “jam” or “preserve,” “sofa” or “settee”?) It is strange, when we think of Dickensian England with its earls and its chimneysweeps, to think that socialized medicine would be fully instituted here before the middle of the next century. The United States, the famous land of “equal opportunity,” doesn’t even guarantee sick infants equal care. 

Why, then, does Britain have an NHS? Partly because socialists fought for it, and stubbornly refused to accept the status quo. The so-called father of the NHS, Aneurin Bevan, was a radical and obstinate democratic socialist, who as Minister of Health battled the British Medical Association and was determined to implement a system that satisfied the left’s core principles. It would be free at the point of use, it would be comprehensive in its coverage, and it would be open to all. 

Though he was on the radical left of the Labour Party, and ended up on the margins in the years before his death in 1960, Bevan was known as one of the greatest orators Britain had produced, and colleagues found him surprisingly warm, congenial, and pragmatic. Those who fought him over the NHS found that he was willing to do business and understood the need to work within existing political reality. Bevan was no utopian. He wanted a health system that actually worked for the people it served. Thanks in part to his skillful stewardship of the service during its early days, that is exactly the kind of system the country got, and the editor of the British Medical Journal later said Bevan was the “most brilliant Minister of Health this country has ever had.”

But it would be a mistake to attribute too much responsibility to Bevan alone. In fact, by the time he became Minister of Health, much of the political work was already done. Over the course of decades, a consensus had emerged among policy-makers and the general public that there needed to be some kind of overhaul of British medicine. In fact, in some quarters there was even a sense that a kind of national health service was “inevitable” and the only question was what form it would take. Rudolf Klein, in The Politics of the NHS, writes that “the acceptance of the need for a national health service long predates” World War II, and there was a prevailing belief that “the logic of circumstances, rather than the ideology of politicians or the demands of pressure groups” would create a national health service.

Sir Arthur MacNalty, the Chief Medical Officer of the Ministry of Health, had said in 1939 that “it is a revolutionary change, but it is one that must inevitably come, because the voluntary system with all its excellent attributes is unsuited to the modern needs of the whole population.” The famous “Beveridge Report,” issued in 1942 by Liberal economist William Beveridge, had sketched the foundations of the postwar welfare state, which would tackle the “five giants” of “Want… Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness.” The dense report became an unexpected bestseller, and Britons everywhere were talking about it and overwhelmingly approved of its vision. When the end of the war came, there was a public expectation that the proposals made years earlier would now be acted upon. 

In fact, Klein writes that in some ways Bevan’s NHS was modest, but that “the virulent hostility of Bevan’s critics… flattered his achievement and exaggerated the extent to which he broke with the sedimentary consensus that had been built up over the previous years.” Winston Churchill’s government, in 1943, had published a white paper proposing “a comprehensive health service for everybody in the country” and Churchill himself had said that:

“The discoveries of healing science must be the inheritance of all: that is clear. Disease must be attacked whether it occurs in the poorest or the richest man or woman, simply on the ground that it is the enemy: and it must be attacked in the same way that the fire brigade will give its full assistance to the humble cottage as it will give it to the most important mansion… Our policy is to create a national health service, in order to secure that everybody in the country, irrespective of means, age, sex, or occupation, shall have equal opportunities to benefit from the best and most up-to-date medical and allied services available.”

These words would place Churchill among the far left of the contemporary U.S. Democratic Party. The idea of treating hospitals like fire departments is actually even more socialistic than current “Medicare For All” plans, which provide a government insurance scheme but do not envision government-provided medical services. 

War also created the basic infrastructure for the service. It “generated confidence that it was actually possible to run a complex web of hospitals and services,” and made it so that a state health service had been “already practically established for the purposes of a national emergency.” Furthermore, there had been some kinds of free medical care before the war; the NHS was building on existing infrastructure. 

It still took a political fight. Nearly 90 percent of British Medical Association doctors expressed disapproval of the NHS. A meeting of the BMA unanimously resolved that it was “so grossly at variance with the essential principles of our profession that it should be rejected absolutely by all practitioners.” Doctors who did support the service were often ostracized by their peers, and the Socialist Medical Association represented only a small fraction of practitioners. Bevan had to carefully make compromises to placate the doctors without sacrificing any of the core principles of the service. 

When the NHS was set to debut, there was a sense of apprehension in the government. Nobody knew whether the experiment would work. Countless impoverished people had been unable to afford care, and there was fear that as soon as medicine became free, the system would become overwhelmed by the demand, with people using far more services than the system could afford, stretching it beyond capacity, causing substantial cost overruns, and diminishing the ultimate quality of care. Familiar warnings were heard: Socialized medicine would lead to equally shared misery.

The nightmare did not come to pass. A 1962 report found that the fears “so far proved to have been largely unfounded.” While the service was more costly than expected, and Conservative governments soon introduced new user fees, British health care has been impressively efficient. Today, the NHS ranks highly on measures of outcomes, and Britain does not spend an especially high percentage of its GDP on healthcare. While the system is under strain, having been threatened by privatization and the failure to adequately expand its budget, it remains good at what it does, and most of its problems could easily be fixed by a government adequately committed to maintaining the service well.

The founding of the NHS offers some useful lessons for our own time. First, even a country with a rigid and ancient class system can achieve some measure of “socialist” institutions. (We can argue about whether the NHS “is socialism,” but Bevan certainly thought it was, saying “a free health service is pure Socialism and as such it is opposed to the hedonism of capitalist society” and calling it “the greatest Socialist achievement of the Labor government.”) Victorian Britain turned into NHS Britain, a remarkable transformation that should offer encouraging evidence of the possibilities for change in the contemporary United States.

The bad news is: The interests opposed to Medicare For All are far stronger and more entrenched than those that tried to stop the NHS. Britain did not have the kind of giant powerful health insurance lobbying industry we have today, and the fight for single-payer in the U.S. will be far more vicious and difficult than the battle for the NHS is postwar Britain. But we do see that the opposition of the medical establishment is not always an insurmountable political obstacles. The vast majority of doctors opposed the establishment of the NHS. They were defeated, and once it was passed, they grudgingly accepted it, and have made no serious effort to get rid of it.

The first task, however, is to build political consensus. It took years from the first proposal of a national health service to its eventual passage and implementation. Advocates spent those years convincing people that the service was not only necessary, not only possible, but also virtually inevitable. This is the phase we are in here today: We have to show people what needs to be done, and build a strong public mandate for the introduction of a new system. They did it in 1948 Britain, we can do it in the 2020 United States. 

The failure of its de-aging technology transforms what might’ve been a plodding, overlong film into a masterful meditation on memory and fate.

CHICAGO — 28-year-old aging punk Johnny “Ratfuck” Pitzki has entered the “I don’t even really listen to punk anymore” phase of his life, complete with a new wardrobe and total disregard for the scene, apathetic sources confirmed.

“Yeah… I dunno. Punk is just kinda getting boring to me. A bunch of old white guys screaming about who knows what, I get it,” Ratfuck explained while yawning and fingering the brim of his new fedora. “I’m just really getting into, like, alt country and acid jazz. Oh, and afro-Latin pop fusion. Any genre that starts with an ‘A’, basically. I just want to be challenged now.”

“I’m so over proving myself in the pit to a bunch of trust fund losers,” he later added. “Now it’s about expanding my musical horizons, and listening to a lot of podcasts about budgeting.”

Pitzki’s close associates are not enthused.

“He’s being a total fucking poser,” declared Kate Ramsay, drummer of their band, Ratfuck and the Fuck Rats. “I had a real bad feeling when Ratfuck showed up to band practice wearing a weird button-up with palm trees printed on it — apparently he traded in his Assück shirt for it. And he was wearing these weird things on his feet. They weren’t boots… they were smaller, and had weird air bubbles in the sole. He said when he walked in them his knees didn’t hurt. Sellout.”

Dr. Jason M. Smith, Professor of Punk at DePaul University, noted with a sigh that this phenomenon is nothing new.

“Most punks will eventually reach this phase,” Dr. Smith said as he pulled up an incredibly detailed PowerPoint presentation on aging punks. “Johnny is 28 in normal person years, which means he’s about 58 in punk years. He started at the Epitaph/Fat phase when he was 12, moved on to a straight edge phase, then the Goth/Indie Rock rock phase, and now he’s here.”

“The final phase will, of course, be his lonely and untimely death,” he added.

Ratfuck has since quit his band, changed his name back to Jonathan Finch, and is now a DJ spinning soul music for other hip white people who defend Morrissey online.

The post Aging Punk Enters “I Don’t Even Really Listen to Punk Anymore” Phase of Being Punk appeared first on The Hard Times.

Adam Sandler was awarded Best Male Lead for his role in Uncut Gems at the Independent Spirit Awards on Saturday night, and gave us the speech we all wanted to hear at the Oscars t... More »

Antes de nada debe quedar claro que escribo isto a raíz da publicación no suplemento Sermos Galiza ( sábado 1-02-2020) da reportaxe de Héctor Pena titulada “As mil frontes do libro galego”. Os datos cos que vou elaborar este artigo saen de aí, e non existiría este artigo sen a reportaxe do devandito Héctor Pena. Que son uns datos que reflicten unha situación moi grave a meu ver; agardei, mais non vin eco ningún da devandita reportaxe. Parece que o que lle suceda á literatura galega, á industria literaria galega, é como a procesión dos caladiños, todo é resignación, ninguén abre a boca para nada.

Na reportaxe falan os editores. Xosé Ballesteros (XB), presidente da Asociación Galega de Editores (AGE); Henrique Alvarellos (HA), vicepresidente da AGE; Fran Alonso (FA), vogal da AGE; e Xoán Costa (XC), presidente de NÓS DIARIO.

………………………………………..

-Todo comezou, segundo a nosa reinterpretación das entrevistas, coa desaparicón de A NOSA TERRA (XB), ao que eu engadiría SOTELO BLANCO OU EVEREST, mesmo a emblemática ESPIRAL MAIOR o pasou moi mal. Como di XB “ estamos nun escenario de sálvese quen poida, e ás editoras galegas non lles quedou outra que “ achicarse” ou desaparecer.

Evidentemente isto non tería acontecido se os empregos perdidos con eses peches foran de Citroën, do naval, da industria téxtil, ou “da pesca” (HA) por poñer uns exemplos. Porén, falo de memoria, eu non lembro que ningún sindicato alzase a voz, por exemplo…

– A Xunta destina, dos seus orzamentos, “un 0,6 á cultura, cando todos os parámetros internacionais falan de que un 2% debe ser o mínimo” (HA)

-En Catalunya ou Eukal Herria teñen “ axudas á produción editorial” (XB) que aquí non existen. Axudas si hai para a tradución “ que normalmente van a empresas non galegas” (XB). E o máis grave destas axudas é que todas as ramas da industria as teñen (HA). Esta é unha queixa que reproduce Fran Alonso cando demanda que a Xunta debería ir da súa man, debería atendelos como mínimo, mais o certo é que NUNCA se reuníu con eles (XB). Máis que un Conselleiro de Cultura e Turismo ( salientado meu) deberiamos ter un Conselleiro de Xacobeo, Turismo e Gaiás…

-Este escenario é para o PP o ideal, porque así compiten a literatura galega coa castelá en igualdade de condicións. Opinión miña: mentira, a literatura castelá, coma calquera outra literatura, dunha maneira ou doutra si recibe axudas. Ademais de que non é en “igualdade de condicóns”. Non hai máis que ir ás librarías e ver o espazo que ocupa cada literatura.

-Héctor Pena lembra que a Asociación de Bibliotecarios de Galiza denunciou a NÓS DIARIO que as compras de libros se reduciron un 50%. Henrique Alvarellos engade que a cifra é superior: “Desde 2008 a axuda á adquisicón de novidades editoriais baixou en 80%”. REPETIMOS, UN 80%. En responsabilidade comprtida por Xunta e Goberno central. Fran Alonso engade tamén a responsabilidade dos concellos, porque a Xunta tramita”esas compras a través das bibliotecas” públicas, “pero hai concellos que non o fan, caso de Vigo”. O estado das biliotecas públicas, partillamos eu, que cada vez son menos, non deixa de ser absolutamente laméntábel, partindo de instalación ás veces moi inapropiadas deica chegar a unhas existencias de exemplares bastante ou moi desactualizada; poucas son as que se salvan. Claro, as bibliotecas públicas son un elemento democratizador da cultura, que non é precisamente un dos obxectivos do PP, máis ben o contrario.

-Tamén denuncia XB que a industria editorial galega non pode asistir a feiras internacionais (asunto clave, engado eu), non hai axudas, desapareceron ( engado eu, outra volta). Porén o que si hai é un stand da Xunta baixo o epígrafe Galicia é o bon camiño, con fotos do Camiño de Santiago; pero as editoras galegas “non podemos nin opinar”. A cultura está ao servizo do turismo, engade XB, que anteriormente denuciara como a Xunta, que é a que pon  os cartos cre que a cultura é súa por esa razón.

-Un dos nichos de mercado que aliviaban a situación editorial galega era o libro de texto, porén tamén a Xunta-PP o dinamitou. De maneira vergoñenta, trampulleira e indo a facer o maior dano posíbel (opinión miña). Fala Xoán Costa dos PDF fotocopiados. Fala Fran Alonso do proxecto DIXGAL, no que non se tivo en conta a industria editorial galega e Xunta-PP recorreu vergoñentamente a editoriais foráneas. Lembramos moi ben como foi todo, porque entón aínda estabamos en activo, como de repente as aulas se encheron de pizarras electrónicas, que non eran precisamente barateiras, porque dese xeito pretendían eliminar o libro de texto partindo da complicidade das familias: máis económicos os libros electrónicos, e menor peso para o alumnado. Por riba, denuncia FA,  Galiza é a única Comunidade que renova os libros cada seis anos.

Alén diso tamén se denuncia (XB, HA, FA) que a porcentaxe de negocio que representa o libro electrónico en galego é ridícula

-Tamén segundo FA, o 56% da poboación galega é lectora, mais só un 3,5% dese 56% é lector habitual en galego. E a Xunta-PP tan tranquilos, non existe promoción da lectura desde as institución, cousa que tamén se denuncia. Próelles o corpo só pensar niso

-Outro aspecto a denunciar (HA) é que (institucionalmente provocada) a a falsísima idea da gratuidade da cultura. A cultura debe ser de balde, igual ca os concertos e outras actividades

-Para non pasar por alto: XB lembra que falta literatura de peso, autorías que poidan chegar a ser clásicos, como Suso de Toro, Rivas ou Ferrín.

-Deixo para o remate unha das denuncias que me parece máis grave, porque me toca de cheo. XB fala da atomización da oferta ( cremos que se refire ás tiraxes editoriais á baixa) e tamén da ATOMIZACIÓN DA CRÍTICA. Algo que dá moito que pensar e no que non vou profundizar despois de que teña denunciado a suplantación da crítica pola apoloxía. Algo para pensar, no momento en que nunca tant@s crtítc@s houbo.

É máis, fala abertamente da “desaparicón da crítica”, con excepcións mais “dramática”.

Finalmente queremos lembrar que tamén se fala da Lei do Libro, que está aí, pola que tanto loitou Manolo Bragado, mais que é papel mollado, pois nunca se levou a cabo sequera parcialmente.

…………………………….

Só é a voz dos editores, unha parte do sistema literario galego, mais unha parte fundamental.

Con denuncias o suficientemente graves como para que a comunidade literaria galega comece DUNHA VEZ a facerse oír, que para a resignación dos caladiños xa chegan os polítcos do PP en Madrid e a Semana Santa. O que está a pasar co CDG ou ERREGUETE non vén máis que a confirmar esta situación.

E lembren, isto só é un eco da reportaxe antes referida. Para contrastar ou ampliar información a ela nos remitimos.

"It's not uncommon to find black bears in the county. But to find bear cubs in a cardboard box in your property, wrapped up in sweatshirts to keep them warm, yeah, that's pretty strange." That's what North Carolina Sheriff Kevin Jones told CNN after his office got a call about a box of "puppies" from a man who discovered them on his front lawn last month.

From the article:

The North Carolina sheriff's office explained that they had responded to a man's call last month, who told them that someone left the puppies outside his house. The man explained he was gone for just a short amount time and the animals were there when he returned, the sheriff's office said.

Sheriff Jones said the person who dropped off the cubs probably stumbled across them, put them in a box and simply left them at the man's house when they realized they couldn't keep them.

The cubs were taken by the North Carolina Wildlife Resource Commission, and will be released back into the wild when they are older.

Image: Camden County Sheriff's Office

Netflix ha publicado su primer informe Enviromental Social Governance, recogiendo diversos aspectos de responsabilidad con el medio ambiente, diversidad en el empleo y más asuntos de interés social. Y entre esas cosas ha desvelado la censura que ha aplicado a algunas de las series y películas de su catálogo.

En concreto, a fecha de febrero de 2020, nos encontramos con un total de nueve series, películas y documentales que Netflix ha sido obligada a retirar debido a exigencias de organismos gubernamentales de distintos países.

Las películas ofensivas del streaming

Eso sí, aclaran que su apuesta es siempre por los creadores y que estas retiradas son solo en el catálogo de los países demandantes. Y en la lista, como veréis a continuación, nos encontramos con algún caso bastante curioso:

• 'The Bridge' en Nueva Zelanda: en 2015, eliminaron este documental sobre los suicidios que se realizan desde el Golden Gate a petición de la New Zealand Film and Video Labeling Body por ser clasificada como "inaceptable" en el país.
• 'La chaqueta metálica' ('Full metal Jacket') en Vietman: la cinta de Stanley Kubrick no es del agrado de las autoridades vietnamitas que, en 2017, ordenaron eliminar la película de la plataforma.
• 'La noche de los muertos vivientes' (Night of the living dead) en Alemania: el país europeo tiene un largo historial de películas de terror prohibidas en su territorio y la cinta escrita por Romero y dirigida por Tom Savini no es una excepción. Netflix eliminó la película del catálogo alemán en 2017 por parte de un comité de protección de menores.
• 'Colocados en la cocina' ('Cooking on high'), 'The Legend of 420' y 'Descolocados' ('Disjointed') en Singapur: la guerra contra las drogas del país del sudeste asiático llega al extremo de eliminar los contenidos que pueden hacer apología del consumo de marihuana como estas obras en 2018.

• Episodio 'Saudi Arabia' de 'Patriota no deseado' ('Patriot Act') en Arabia Saudí: uno de los últimos célebres casos vino por el episodio de 2019 en el que Hasan Minhaj explora las sombras del Príncipe saudí.
• 'La última tentación de Cristo' ('The Last Temptation of Christ') en Singapur. La controvertida cinta de Martin Scorsese sigue estando prohibida en varios países casi desde su estreno. En 2019 tuvo que ser retirada del catálogo singapurense.
• 'Especial de navidad de Porta das fundos' ('The Last Hangover') en Singapur: el grupo cómico brasileño responsable de la también polémica 'Primera tentación de Cristo' no tiene suerte con sus representaciones de Jesús. En 2020 Netflix retiró el programa del catálogo.

Aquí no incluyen, al parecer, retiradas ordenadas judicialmente como la de la 'Primera tentación de Cristo' en Brasil. Es curioso cómo este triste ranking está liderado por Singapur con cinco obras: tres con motivos de drogas y dos por motivos religiosos.

Desde Netflix ya avisan de que este listado, que es todo lo censurado desde su lanzamiento, se irá actualizando anualmente. Esperemos que la lista no engorde demasiado de un año a otro.

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La noticia Todas las películas y series que Netflix ha retirado a petición de los gobiernos fue publicada originalmente en Espinof por Albertini .

It is a sad reflection on American politics that Pete Buttigieg is taken seriously as a presidential contender. After all, the question voters should ask themselves when choosing a candidate is: What have you done with your life that can give me confidence you mean what you say? Every politician will tell you what you want to hear at election time. Anyone can look at the mood of the electorate and craft policies that will be popular. But so few leaders actually deliver on their lofty promises, and you need to know what kind of person they really are, whether they can be relied on to fight for you when it counts. You need someone who has been consistent in sticking up for the right thing. 

Pete Buttigieg, as I have documented at length before, has spent his life doing little more than try to advance himself to higher and higher levels of status and power. When he was at Harvard, he passed by the “social justice warriors” (his term) fighting to get a living wage for the school’s janitors, so that he could go and have pizza with governors and media elites. As a newly minted Rhodes Scholar, with the privilege to do almost anything in the world, he chose to go to McKinsey, a totally amoral consulting firm that advises dictators and drug companies on how to optimize their evil. There, he almost certainly helped craft layoffs and insurance rate hikes at Blue Cross (instead of denying this, he pivots quickly to trashing single-payer healthcare). He worked on McKinsey’s contract with the Department of Defense in Afghanistan, which funneled millions of dollars of taxpayer money to the consulting firm for seemingly doing almost no work. (The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan could not find anything that McKinsey had produced for the $18 million the government gave it except a 50-page report highlighting the economic development opportunities in Afghanistan.) When asked about it, Buttigieg simply says it’s all a secret. 

Buttigieg’s company appears to have stolen millions from the U.S. government (or at least, the Inspector General has no idea where the money went except into McKinsey’s pocket), in addition to their work on helping corporations fire people and pump more opiates into more bodies. Let’s be clear: McKinsey is sociopathic. They have no hesitation about advising murderous autocrats like Mohammed bin Salman (of bombing school buses and dismembering dissidents with bonesaws infamy), and they even disgusted ICE employees by considering plans to optimize immigration detention centers by spending less on feeding detainees. (Then they lied about what they did.) Yet when Buttigieg was first asked about McKinsey, he could see nothing wrong with the firm and refused to accept that he had any moral responsibility whatsoever for the kind of work he chose for himself. He said that McKinsey’s job is simply “answering questions and solving problems,” and they are only “as moral or immoral or amoral as the American private sector itself.” (So very immoral, then.) 

Up until the moment his presidential campaign began, Pete Buttigieg cared little about issues facing working people and people of color. Don’t believe me? Read his memoir, and see how much he talks about evictions, homelessness, the racial wealth gap, gentrification—all problems that plagued South Bend during his time as mayor. He talks about upgrading the city to “smart sewers,” and “rightsizing” the city from its “contagion of blight” through a controversial program of rigid code enforcement and demolishing homes in disproportionately black areas. He does not talk about issues of justice, or even seem to understand what those issues might be.

Mayor Pete’s oft-discussed “black voter problem” is better described as “the fact that black people, having had to live in a racist world, are often able to see through white lies,” and know when yet another white person is bullshitting them with opportunistic empathy. Pete’s record on black issues as mayor was bad: He fired the black police chief who “was well liked and had built confidence between the black community and the police department,” after the chief allegedly recorded white police officers making racist remarks. Buttigieg has repeatedly denied knowing what is on the (unreleased) tapes, but a Young Turks investigation found that he was told about them, and his legal team has had “detailed, explicit” descriptions of what was on the tapes since 2013. Buttigieg has declared over and over that he fired the police chief because he was under federal investigation, but this too was not true.

The obvious fact is that Buttigieg was simply uninterested in the relationship between the black community and the police. The number of black police officers in South Bend plummeted over the course of Buttigieg’s tenure, and by the time Buttigieg announced his run for president, the force was only 6 percent black in a city where ¼ of residents are black. Michael Harriot, in a detailed and scathing report on Buttigieg’s indifference, said it was very clear that Buttigieg ignored racism in the department and then lied about doing so. At one point, “half of all black SBPD officers were raising their voices and risking retaliation to call attention to the problems”—problems including white officers receiving promotions not advertised to black officers, white officers not backing up black officers, and black officers being disciplined more harshly than white officers. Harriot documents just how dishonest Buttigieg’s own retroactive portrayal was: 

Not only is there a mountain of evidence showing that the city’s black officers felt marginalized, but we could not find a single black complainant who said Buttigieg responded to their concerns personally or in writing. When The Root asked Buttigieg if he was aware black officers had raised issues of racism and discrimination, his campaign would only say that Buttigieg was aware “that some officers had filed complaints with the EEOC, and those were ultimately dismissed.” They also claimed they couldn’t respond because “doing so in the middle of a legal process would’ve been inappropriate.”Maybe Pete Buttigieg can’t see. Perhaps the black officers were not loud enough for Buttigieg to hear. Or maybe he’s deaf. There is ample evidence proving the black cops complained loudly about racism on the force before anyone filed an EEOC complaint. TYT and The Root have examined a slew of court records, memos, and emails, which revealed that the SBPD’s dwindling supply of black cops alerted every available resource to them of the discrimination in Mayor Pete’s police force…. It’s what black officers specifically, repeatedly, told the South Bend Common Council, the BOPS and Mayor Pete in memos, emails and complaints obtained by The Root and TYT. The claim is reflected in at least five discrimination lawsuits filed in federal courts. The accusations were leveled in our conversations with current and former SBPD officers. Included in the documents were letters signed by 10 black SBPD officers—a significant cohort of the force’s black members—in which they describe several problems within the department. 

In fact, Buttigieg consistently spins or outright lies to make his record look better than it was. Black South Bend city council member Henry Davis Jr. said of Buttigieg that “he tolerated [systemic racism], he perpetuated it, and [at the debate] he lied to millions of Americans about it,” referring to Buttigieg’s denial that marijuana arrests of Black residents escalated during his time as mayor. He made these kinds of deceptive statements more than once. Citizens of South Bend had long asked for a citizens’ review board to oversee police. In his 2017 State of the City address, Buttigieg proudly announced that there was now a citizens’ review board. But as black city council member Regina Williams-Preston noted, this was utterly “disingenuous.” Buttigieg had done nothing except start referring to the agency that already oversaw the police as a “citizen’s review board.” “It’s the same thing we’ve always had… Just because you say that doesn’t make it so. To me it was a betrayal.” A betrayal, yes, and a bit of political gaslighting: telling people they were crazy—they had had a citizens’ review board all along! (Even that board went from 80 percent male to 100 percent male under Buttigieg’s tenure.)

Buttigieg mixes fudged facts with public statements of contrition and pledges to do better, which might be plausible if he weren’t simultaneously lying about what he did (e.g., by presenting misleading statistics to imply he addressed African American poverty, when he didn’t—at the end of his term “poverty among African-Americans stubbornly [remained] almost twice as high as for African-Americans nationwide”) and portraying himself in a way that makes it seem as if he did nothing bad. (A thing self-serving people frequently do is apologize for something and say they were wrong, while simultaneously presenting what they did in a way that obscures how bad it actually was and therefore makes it seem as if they’re being generous and humble by apologizing for something that there was no need to apologize for. I have previously documented how Bill Clinton does this.) Buttigieg apologized for the racial problems in the department by saying he “couldn’t get it done,” which implies that he was sincerely trying, when, as Harriot shows, he simply wasn’t. By apologizing profusely, and releasing new racial justice policies with great fanfare (including touting support for his Douglass Plan” from black people who had never signed on to it), Buttigieg believes that he can overcome his record with rhetoric. 

In my initial article about Buttigieg last year, I warned that he would rapidly change his language to suit his audience, in the hopes that nobody will remember what he sounded like five minutes ago. I also noted that he would be very good at this; Buttigieg is a polyglot who masters languages quickly. So he has gone from being an “all lives matter” guy who talks about how kids in “minority neighborhoods” don’t have “someone they know personally who testifies to the value of education” to being as woke as necessary to win. When Michael Harriot expressed disgust with the latter remark, Pete quickly sat down for an interview with Harriot, where he Listened and Learned and Promised To Do Better. Buttigieg will surely do this every time a constituency needs to be appeased: He will do his research, release a plan, and dull the discontent. 

Of course, there are many people who take politicians at their word, and see their sudden evolutions on issues as sincere rather than opportunistic. Sure, Mayor Pete has a record of completely ignoring black concerns until they caused a scandal that could harm his political career, but maybe he has Learned and Grown. Maybe even though he showed zero interest in issues of social justice in his 2018 memoir, and revealed himself to be a narcissist whose constituents were invisible, he has had a revelation since it was published. Again, I don’t think it’s possible to accept an apology when someone is still lying about what they did, but even Pete’s rhetoric during the campaign has been slippery and dishonest, suggesting over and over again that he adopts positions out of convenience. 

Back before his campaign had any policies, and he was still speaking purely in platitudes (he still deploys sentences of jaw-dropping vacuity), Buttigieg said that this was intentional: Democrats had hitherto focused too much on policy and too little on philosophy. Plainly this was only because the policies were being focus grouped and poll-tested, because he subsequently began debuting and touting big policies. Buttigieg supports those policies with dishonest talking points: Defending his decision to not to advocate free universal public college, he said that doing so would be a handout to billionaires, which it wouldn’t. Defending his shift from being a staunch supporter of Medicare For All to trashing Medicare For All, Buttigieg implied that M4A removes people’s insurance coverage, which it doesn’t, and spoke up to defend insurance industry jobs (to see why this is ridiculous, imagine how it would sound if fire services currently operated the way healthcare operates). It is hard to believe that Buttigieg offers up these talking points because he believes them; he’s smart enough to know they’re misleading.

Where Pete’s positions and record would be embarrassing, he simply avoids answering the question, in the hopes nobody will follow up. When the New York Times asked him whether, as president, he would support U.S.-backed coups and war with Iran, he refused to answer. The potentially embarrassing parts of his consulting work are confidential. (When he does give clear positions on things, they either shift at his convenience—such as pledging to stand up for Palestinians and then changing his mind—or often offer troubling hints about how he would wield power, such as being “troubled” that Barack Obama offered whistleblower Chelsea Manning clemency after she was tortured.)

Witness this extraordinary exchange with reporters asking him about making his fundraisers more transparent: 

REPORTER:

Earlier today you said you were open to having a conversation about opening up fundraisers and that’s a question that reporters have been asking for months now. So, I’m wondering when do you expect to actually have that conversation and give an answer on that?

BUTTIGIEG:

I don’t have a timeline for it.

REPORTER:

As the candidate can’t you just direct your team to open these fundraisers?

BUTTIGIEG:

Yes. 

REPORTER:

And why haven’t you done that?

BUTTIGIEG:

There’s a lot of considerations and I’m thinking about it. Next question. 

REPORTER:

Can you give us an example of those considerations? 

BUTTIGIEG:

No. 

Buttigieg evidently realizes that the U.S. media does not grill politicians particularly hard, and it’s possible to just ignore what’s inconvenient to answer. As Glenn Greenwald commented, the “aggressive arrogance and utter contempt for basic transparency” Buttigieg shows here is “stunning” and does not bode well at all for a Buttigieg presidency. (Imagine if he adopted this attitude toward disclosing the federal government’s actions.) 

It is very plain that Buttigieg is a corporate candidate. He has dozens of billionaire donors, and is heavily backed by lobbyists, pharmaceutical executives, and finance executives. (The list is a who’s who of the American power elite.) He tried to disguise who his donors are, selectively disclosing them in order to hide the Wall Street fat cats, only opening up access to his fundraisers after months of pressure for transparency. Against “the advice of both staffers of color” and public relations advisers, Buttigieg’s campaign pressed forward with a funrdaiser by Rahm Emanuel’s attorney, who was “known for trying to block video evidence in the investigation of the death of Laquan McDonald from being released.” (Amid uproar, the fundraiser was finally canceled.) Buttigieg has declined to say whether he will follow the corrupt practice of rewarding big donors with ambassadorships, which means he will. When confronted about having big-dollar fundraisers in wine caves, he responds by pleading poverty (no excuse when he could have built a grassroots campaign like Bernie Sanders) and pointing to other candidates’ hypocrisy. (And the wine cave attendees have spoken up to pretend they are not actually wealthy and imply it only costs $11 to attend instead of $2,800.) 

What is particularly annoying about Pete Buttigieg is that it is extremely obvious what kind of person he is, because he’s virtually a caricature of the “empty suit” politician. (Watch this sketch about a fictitious senatorial candidate and see if it doesn’t seem almost word-for-word like a parody of Buttigieg.) In his memoir, he recounts being flummoxed when a voter asks him how he can prove he’s not just offering pleasing rhetoric—he can’t, because that’s exactly what he is doing. But because our politics have become so divorced from the real world, so focused on image instead of substance, and Buttigieg seems like the kind of person who might be president on a show like The West Wing, he has a chance. The media like him not because of anything he has done (undistinguished tenure as mayor of the fourth largest city in Indiana, mostly memorable for a handful of race scandals), but because he has, in his words, the right “alignment of attributes.” He is made for TV: a Rhodes Scholar veteran from the “heartland,” whose identity would make his election a civil rights victory. Much of Buttigieg’s “Indiana heartland boy” image is manufactured—his memoir downplays the fact that he was the child of Notre Dame professors raised on an elite college campus. (He claimed never to have seen “exposed brick” or clock towers until reaching the Big City of Cambridge, Massachusetts—which, for what it’s worth, a correspondent of mine has claimed is false.)

Unfortunately, this kind of politics is downright dangerous. More than ever, we need someone who isn’t a hollow careerist putting on a “folksy” image, but who cares passionately about fighting for justice. The threats of climate change and war are too great to leave in the hands of someone who doesn’t seem to care about the lives of working people. Buttigieg has already dialed back his ambition on climate change, and his plan falls woefully short of what is necessary, even if we could trust him to passionately fight on the issue, which we can’t. (The McKinsey approach to climate change will probably involve “optimizing climate mitigation for maximal economic growth” or something.) 

Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary offers the chance to repudiate this kind of politics once and for all, for voters to show that they demand something real and substantive, and someone who has shown over their career that they actually give a shit about ordinary people. Let us hope New Hampshire voters seize the chance to show this man that they will not be manipulated, that they see what Pete is doing and have no intention of rewarding it. 

Geeks Worldwide is reporting that Mad Max director, George Miller, has resolved his legal issues with Warner Bros. which were holding him back from filming the follow-up to Mad Max: Fury Road. The GWW piece claims that Miller will begin filming in Australia in the fall. No word yet on theme or who might already be signed on to the project.

Image: George Miller by Jasin Boland CC Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International

The controversial academic, addicted to benzos, has been taken to an undisclosed location in Russia and placed in a medically-induced coma, according to a video released by his daughter (script). She affirms that her father has been treated successfully in Russia, stating that "doctors here have the guts to medically detox someone from benzodiazepines."

On December 18th, Donald Trump became the third U.S. president in history to be impeached by the House of Representatives. The second to be indicted before completing a first term, the 45th commander-in-chief must now survive a Senate trial before seeking reelection later this year. As many nonpartisan analysts predicted, the charges appear to have only improved his chances with the electorate as his approval rating saw an uptick after the articles were approved on grounds of “obstruction of Congress and abuse of power.” After dragging the country through three years of Russiagate which never panned out, the Democrats appear to be scoring yet another own goal. Even a near brush with war against Iran does not seem to have impacted Trump’s favorability, which could have been seen as a reversal of his campaign pledges to end America’s forever wars that were arguably a significant factor in his unlikely victory.

It was Trump’s rhetoric as a peace candidate suggesting rapprochement with Russia which made him a target of the political establishment and intelligence community, who subsequently blamed his shocking win on still unproven allegations of election interference by the Kremlin. Since he took office, Trump has done nearly everything short of declaring war on Moscow to appease the bipartisan anti-Russia consensus in Washington but to no avail. One such step was the decision to provide military aid to Ukraine amid its ongoing war in the eastern Donbass region against Russian-speaking separatists, a move the Obama administration decided against because of Kiev’s rampant corruption. Trump’s predecessor tapped his Vice President, Joe Biden, to head up an anti-corruption drive in Ukraine who instead used the opportunity to personally enrich his family by landing his son, Hunter, a job on the executive board of the country’s largest private gas company, Burisma Holdings.

Biden led the U.S. role in the 2014 coup d’etat in Ukraine which overthrew the democratically-elected government of Viktor Yanukovych after he turned down a European Union Association Agreement for an economic bail-out from Russia that was the flashpoint for the subsequent Donbass war. Contrary to the Trump-Russia ‘collusion’ narrative, one figure who tried to lobby Yanukovych into signing the pro-austerity treaty was none other than Paul Manafort, the future Trump campaign manager indicted during the Russia probe for failing to register as a foreign agent while consulting for the deposed Ukrainian president. Manafort’s influence went against Russian interests in favor of the EU and was years before Trump was ever a candidate, but this did not stop the Democrats from later misconstruing it as evidence he was a back channel to the Kremlin. Meanwhile, Biden’s hand in the junta was revealed in an infamous leaked phone call between Victoria Nuland, Obama’s Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, and Geoffrey Pyatt, then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine.

Nuland, who is the wife of leading neoconservative figure Robert Kagan, also spilled the beans that the U.S. invested as much as $5 billion dollars on regime change in Kiev when we were led to believe the Maidan was a spontaneous, popular revolt. Shortly after the putsch, Hunter Biden joined the board of directors at Burisma despite having no experience in Ukraine or the energy sector. The embattled fracking company was founded by a notorious oligarch and corrupt minister from the Yanukovych era, Mykola Zlochevsky, yet who unlike the former did not have to flee to Russia and curiously escaped prosecution in a money laundering case under the new Western-friendly regime — did he obtain immunity with Hunter Biden’s appointment? When the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, Viktor Shokin, reportedly began to investigate the energy firm, the elder Biden did not just blackmail the post-Maidan government of Petro Poroshenko into sacking him by threatening to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees but openly bragged about it on camera.

As a reward, Poroshenko — nicknamed the “Chocolate King” for his background as a business tycoon in the confectionary industry — was touted as a reformer by the Obama administration despite multiple Wikileaks diplomatic cables featuring U.S. officials describing him as a “disgraced oligarch” “tainted by credible corruption allegations” and “a deeply unpopular politician that has widespread support among party leaders due to his past financial/organizational roles.” Incredibly, Poroshenko would replace Shokin with a former Minister of Internal Affairs, Yuriy Lutsenko, who had previously been imprisoned for embezzlement and corruption himself. It is still a matter of debate whether the top prosecutor was even actually looking into the activities of Burisma, but what is not in dispute — except to corporate media — is the criminal nature of Biden’s conduct who clearly allowed his family to profiteer off U.S. meddling in the country. After he became a 2020 presidential candidate and frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, the subject of Biden’s past wrongdoing was broached by Trump last July during a phone call with current Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky.

The controversial exchange occurred just a day after former FBI director Robert Mueller delivered his anticlimactic testimony before congress where the lead investigator in the Russia investigation did not appear familiar with the details of his own inquiry. The call transcript shows that Trump asked the newly elected Zelensky if he would assist U.S. Attorney General William Barr in determining whether there was truth to the rumors that the infamous Democratic National Committee (DNC) computer server given by the FBI to CrowdStrike Holdings was located in Ukraine. CrowdStrike was one of the cybersecurity firms hired by the DNC which questionably determined it was Russian intelligence which perpetrated alleged cyber attacks during the 2016 election. In other words, Trump wanted to find out if it was actually Kiev which “meddled” and framed the Kremlin. While he did not offer Zelensky compensation, it is true Trump asked for the favor shortly after mentioning the javelin missiles being provided to Ukraine in the military assistance. However, Biden’s extortion and the firing of Shokin is only raised later in the conversation and whether or not either matter was contingent upon the military aid is dubious and implicit at best. At the time of the correspondence, Zelensky and his government were unaware that the nearly $400 million in aid had been withheld and did not learn of its freezing until a month later, making any alleged quid pro quo doubtful.

The ambiguity of the conversation has not prevented Democrats from surmising that the security aid was suspended on the condition that Zelensky cooperate with Trump’s requests. While the exploits were arguably unethical, for the content of the exchange to be considered sufficient grounds for impeachment would set a very low bar and virtually ensure any future president can be indicted on a technicality for politicized reasons. In the meantime, the focus has shifted to Trump’s firing of former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, because if threatening to withhold foreign aid alone qualifies, Biden is not only guilty of the same crime but more explicitly. Forget that from a procedural standpoint, without the required constitutional majority in the GOP-controlled Senate, the chances of removing Trump are dead in the water anyway. This can only mean the trial is really meant to be a smokescreen for Biden’s own palm-greasing in Ukraine while legally requiring his biggest primary rival, Senator Bernie Sanders, to spend time away from the campaign trail in attendance.

Not only has the legitimate question of whether the former Vice President and his son should also be probed been dismissed by mainstream media as a “conspiracy theory,” but completely lost in the political theater of the proceedings is if Washington ought to be providing defense assistance and fueling a proxy war with Russia to begin with. The Russiagate hoax successfully transformed the entirety of the Democratic Party into new cold warriors and its Ukrainegate sequel has only continued that hawkish trajectory. To make matters worse, Western media coverage of the scandal has omitted that many of the militias fighting with the Ukrainian army in Donbass are far right, neo-Nazi groups previously instrumental in transforming the 2014 Maidan protests into violence. One of the three main political parties which formed the opposition to Yanukovych was the ultra-nationalist Svoboda party whose leader, Oleh Tyahnybok, personally met with Biden in 2014 despite having been barred from entering the U.S. for his anti-semitism just a year prior.

Svoboda and its militant offshoots like the Azov regiment fighting in Donbass are the self-proclaimed ideological progeny of the fascist collaborators led by the Ukrainian nationalist, Stepan Bandera, who sided with Nazi Germany during its invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. In the Cold War, the CIA provided covert assistance to the post-war remnants of Bandera’s faction as it waged a failed insurgency in the 1950s. In post-Soviet Ukraine, a disturbing campaign of historical revisionism has rewritten Bandera‘s fifth column as nationalist heroes who fought solely for Ukrainian independence. This is not reflected in the historical record which shows they not only participated in the Third Reich’s war crimes but shared their racist ideology, as admitted in the CIA’s own declassified documents:

Altogether, during the 5 weeks of its existence the Bandera “state” destroyed over 5,000 Ukrainians, 15,000 Jews, and several thousand Poles. The “Ukrainian State” of Stepan Bandera ended its short but ignominious existence in August 1941, when it was announced in Lvov that Western Ukraine had been incorporated as the “District of Galicia” in the “General Governorship” (occupied Poland). And then a “new order,” Hitler style began to be introduced in the Ukraine. This in short, the story of Bandera’s “one-day holiday,” which his followers, relying on people’s forgetfulness, now try to present as a glorious and heroic page in the history of the Ukrainian liberation movement. In reality, it would be best, especially for the supporters of a free Ukraine, to erase from the history of their .. movement this infamous Hitlerite, fascist episode, which brought nothing. but shame and sorrow to the Ukraine.

Despite provisions in the aid barring weapons from going to the Azov detachment, the U.S. military has continued to provide them with arms and training. We are already witnessing blowback for this decision in the case of Jarrett William Smith, an ex-Army soldier arrested by the FBI for planning to assassinate former Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke and plotting terrorist attacks against major news networks. Smith had made plans to travel to Ukraine to fight with the Azov battalion and had previously volunteered in the Donbass war in 2017 with another Ukrainian neo-fascist paramilitary, the Right Sector.  Smith reportedly sought help in making contact with Azov from another AWOL soldier, Craig Lang, currently under house arrest in Ukraine and wanted for extradition to the U.S. for killing a Florida couple. Lang, who is considered a hero in the country for serving as a private mercenary with Right Sector, also spent time with Georgian Legion, a unit formed by ethnic Georgians conscripted on the Ukrainian side in the War in Donbass whose members are believed to have perpetrated the ‘false flag’ sniper attacks on the Maidan that was blamed on the government of Yanukovych.

Coincidentally, just as Americans are following the impeachment, trending on the internet streaming service Netflix is a new documentary by a pair of Israeli filmmakers that touches upon U.S. harboring of a Ukrainian Nazi called The Devil Next Door. The series recaps the fascinating case of John Demjanjuk, a retired autoworker and Ukrainian-born immigrant living in Cleveland, Ohio, who is suddenly accused of being a notoriously sadistic Nazi guard at Treblinka concentration camp in eastern Poland during World War II known as “Ivan the Terrible” and is extradited to Israel in 1986 to face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. After impassioned but inconsistent eyewitness testimony by camp survivors, he was mistakenly found guilty of being the mysterious guard by an Israeli court and sentenced to death until his conviction was overturned under appeal in 1993. Years later, Demjanjuk is identified as a different prison guard at another camp in Sobibor and re-convicted, this time more convincingly by a German court. He maintained until his death in 2012 that he was again a victim of mistaken identity and during the war was a POW himself after serving in the Red Army until his capture by the Germans who then “forced” him to work as a guard at Trawniki, but never Sobibor. However, newly discovered photos of Demjanjuk at the death camp were just released which contradict his denials and increase the likelihood he was a willing defector.

The documentary sheds light on how Demjanjuk was able to gain safe harbor in the U.S. because of amendments to the Displaced Persons Act of 1948 which restricted immigration of those persecuted by the Nazis while giving preferential treatment to Polish and Ukrainian nationals who hid under new aliases in refugee camps while fleeing the Soviets. U.S. immigration services were only able to detect the entry of formal members of the Nazi regime while their local collaborators like Demjanjuk often snuck through unnoticed. The show also speaks briefly of the U.S. embrace of many “former” Nazis such as Wernher von Braun and the thousands of other German scientists recruited in Operation Paperclip who were employed by the U.S. government during the Cold War in order to gain an advantage over Moscow in the space race. However, the series neglects to mention the CIA’s support for Stepan Bandera’s Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), much less their descendants in Kiev today who are renaming city streets after SS veterans and tearing down Soviet statues to replace them with effigies of fascist quislings. Unfortunately, it is unlikely viewers will make any connection between the show and the current political scandal gripping Washington.

Netflix did receive objections over The Devil Next Door from the Polish government and its right-wing populist Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, who accused the streaming giant of “rewriting history” in its production by using a map of the country’s post-1945 borders while implying that Poland shared culpability for Nazi war crimes that occurred in its territory. Much of western Ukraine became eastern Poland overnight with the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and the German occupation, one of the reasons why a native of northwestern Ukraine like Demjanjuk ended up in the neighboring country. Like the Banderites doctoring history in Kiev, Polish nationalists are seeking to revise the historical record of the many Poles who collaborated with the Germans in the slaughter of their fellow compatriots as well. This historical negationism continued in Poland’s recent row with Russia over the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in which Morawiecki despicably made a false equivalency between the USSR and Nazi Germany with a disturbing reinterpretation encouraged by the U.S. who seek to take credit for the Soviet accomplishment of freeing the concentration camp in 1945. Nothing is sacred to the Atlanticists who are willing to politicize anything in the name of their geostrategy of encircling Moscow and ultimate goal of conquering Eurasia.

That the Democrats are not impeaching Trump for an actual unconstitutional offense like the diverting of military funds to his border wall without congressional approval is revealing of its true motivations. Trump only crossed a line when he went after another member of the political establishment and fleetingly halted the U.S. war machine in its aggression toward Moscow. It is reminiscent of what some have argued were the real reasons for the impeachment of Richard Nixon that resulted from the Watergate scandal. Similarly, Nixon was forced to resign in 1974 after he targeted other members of the elite in the wire-tapping and break-in of the DNC headquarters, not his use of the CIA to violate its own charter for domestic espionage on American citizens active in the anti-war movement. Like Trump’s rhetoric toward Moscow, Nixon had also broken with foreign policy orthodoxies both in his unprecedented restoration of diplomacy with China and détente with the Soviet Union negotiating arms control.

The dangerous consequences of the campaign against Trump for deviating from the anti-Russia foreign policy dogma can be seen in the unparalleled recent NATO war games and the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists pushing the hand of the Doomsday Clock forward to just 100 seconds to midnight, its closest ever approach which even exceeds that of the beginning of the Cold War in the early 1950s. Trump would never have armed Ukraine to begin with if not for the constant pressure of the Russia investigation and the need to not appear soft on Moscow. It is clear that the impeachment is nothing more than an inter-war between different factions of the elite and not only has it reduced the American people to onlookers, it may get us all killed in a nuclear holocaust in the process. For an excellent in-depth investigation of the roots of the crisis, Revealing Ukraine, the anticipated follow-up to the 2016 documentary Ukraine on Fire directed by Igor Lopatonok and produced by Oliver Stone, is highly recommended.

One of the things I get annoyed about is the fact that we have different types of charging cables for different types of smart devices. It seems that I’m not the only one annoyed by this, as the European Parliament just voted in favor of setting a standard for charging cables.

“Continuing fragmentation of the market for chargers for mobile phones and other small and medium-sized electronic devices translates into an increase in e-waste and consumer frustration,” the resolution said.

For the resolution to become a law, the European Commission would have to draft a law and vote on it in July. But the idea of adopting a charging cable standard has overwhelming support in Europe, as evidenced by the 582-40 vote. With some exceptions, chargers use either USB-C, micro-USB, or Apple’s Lightning Cable. The vast majority of the industry uses micro-USB and is slowly adopting USB-C.

Apple’s Lightning Cable will be most affected by this law, should it ever be made.

More details over at Vice.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: FelixMittermeier/ Pixabay)

Dicía Ramón Villares nunha presentación do seu libro Galicia. Una nación entre dos mundos (2019) unha frase sinxela pero reveladora: ...

The company grew from a scrappy startup to a digital media player. Now it's clinging to life after mass layoffs.

Spoiler: Facebook killed it, intentionally, by lying about viewing numbers.

Pilar Pereira, unha das actrices fundamentais na historia do teatro galego moderno, vén de falecer aos 82 anos de idade.   Pilar Pereira, nada en Compostela en 1937, posúe unha das carreiras máis amplas da escena galega. Durante máis de seis décadas, a actriz desenvolveu o seu traballo en Galicia, España, Francia, Bélxica ou América […]

The post Falece Pilar Pereira, actriz fundamental do teatro galego moderno appeared first on Erregueté.

Máis de 140 asociacións e colectivos da Península asinan un manifesto que esixe a fin dos campionatos e batidas de raposos en Galicia e, en concreto, o que terá lugar este sábado nos concellos lucenses de Portomarín, Guntín , Paradela e Monterroso.

O manifesto, que xa se lles entregou ás corporacións locais destes catro concellos, pide que os municipios amosen o seu rexeitamento a estes campionatos, como ocorreu en Poio, e soliciten á Xunta que non outorgue ningún permiso máis para estas matanzas no seu territorio. Nestes momentos, aínda se están engadindo mási asociacións.

As entidades destacan no documento os 75.000 raposos mortos nas últimas seis tempadas de caza en Galicia. “O raposo é un regulador necesario no medio natural, sanea as poboacións e limita a superpoboación doutros animais. Con todo, o seu papel no ecosistema é absolutamente ignorado por aqueles que deberían protexelo”, destacan. “Este acto de caza non só é inhumano e cruel, senón tamén é totalmente ilóxico e amosa unha enorme incomprensión e descoñecemento da ecoloxía básica”.

Entre os colectivos asinantes atópase a Plataforma pola Convivencia Ética coa Fauna Silvestre, ADEGA, Verdegaia, Agrocuir, Aloia Protectora de Animales Tui, Amigos da Terra , Aministía Animal, Asociación LIBERA!, Asociación Monte Galego, Coa Crea, Lugo sen Mordazas, Modepén Lugo, Plataforma Auga Limpa Plataforma Como Eliminar os Eucaliptos de Galiza, Plataforma Salvemos a Comarca de Ordes, Plataforma Salvemos Catasós, Sindicato Labrego Galego, Equo ou En Marea.

O artigo Os cazadores mataron máis de 75.000 raposos nas últimas seis tempadas de caza en Galicia publicouse primeiro en Nós Televisión.

Alicia recuerda su comentado paso por el programa de citas de Cuatro: "Que me la sude todo no me quita de motivarme para hacer locuras como salir en la tele en hora punta liándola sin haber avisado a nadie", escribe.

La entrada La pequeña confesión de Alicia: su paso por First Dates se publicó primero en pikara magazine.

Hay que recorrer kilómetros y kilómetros de planicie, atravesando secarrales, campos en barbecho, matas de palmitos y plantaciones de olivos —también de marihuana, pero ésa es otra historia—. Una vez el coche toma la última curva, las cúpulas y las nueve torres de la Catedral Basílica de Nuestra Madre del Palmar, levantada por el arquitecto utrerano Juan Luis de Quinta, se desperezan detrás de los muros de hormigón tras los que se parapeta de las miradas de los curiosos. Es apabullante. Mucho más grande de lo que cualquiera pudiese imaginarse. Levantada en medio de la nada, impresiona más que cualquier catedral 'oficial'. Una fantasía refulgente y pop en pleno campo utrerano. Hay algo de irrealidad, de ilógico. De rotura del espacio-tiempo y la razón. Si uno espera el tiempo suficiente, el portalón de madera se abre y deja entrar a alguna furgoneta repartidora o salir a alguna monja en bicicleta vestida con hábitos pardos y cuñas de esparto. Antes de cerrar la puerta, una cabeza se asoma y escruta el exterior a la caza de extraños.

La Orden de los Carmelitas de la Santa Faz es, probablemente, una de las anomalías más disparatadas de la historia de la Iglesia Católica en España. Una escisión con su propio Papa —cuatro hasta el momento, el primero ciego tras un accidente de tráfico, el tercero condenado a seis años de cárcel por intento de robo derivado en una reyerta en la que acabó apuñalado—, su propia catedral y sus propias apariciones marianas. Una iglesia cismática contraria al Concilio Vaticano II —¡los marxistas han tomado el poder!— que ha santificado a Franco, a Primo de Rivera, a Colón y a Don Pelayo. Una orden hermética y secretista, envuelta en escándalos sexuales y financieros a los que seguro se apuntaría Jordan Belfort... si los hubiese conocido a tiempo.

¿Qué es esta locura que mezcla éxtasis divinos, videntes invidentes, estigmas, orgías, desbarre etílico y papas en la cárcel? "¿Por qué nadie me ha avisado de esto?", se debe de estar flagelando Paolo Sorrentino. "¡Un cónclave entre Pedro III y Juan Pablo III, ya!", deberían gritar las multitudes. Por ello Sorrentino debería ver 'El Palmar de Troya', la serie de cuatro capítulos que estrena Movistar+ el 6 de febrero, en la que Israel del Santo disecciona a la Iglesia Palmariana a través de imágenes de archivo —impresionan mucho las escenas de los videntes trepidando con los ojos en blanco o las grabaciones de los mediums hablando por boca de la Virgen—, recortes de periódicos, entrevistas con antiguos miembros de la orden —no tan interesantes como lo anterior— y de expertos en la historia de la congregación y dramatizaciones que, lamentablemente, desmerecen el conjunto. El documental —al menos sus dos primeros capítulos, que son a los que ha tenido acceso la prensa— no hace justicia al delirio palmariano.

Porque tal y como cuenta el primer episodio, 'Bendita tú eres', hasta 1968 El Palmar de Troya era una pedanía de cuatro mil habitantes, la mayoría campesinos pobres descendientes de los presos políticos que en 1947 participaron en la construcción del embalse de Torre del Águila, situado a unos cinco kilómetros. Una zona humilde, por no decir miserable, sin un fervor destacable en una España nacionalcatólica. Imaginen un rótulo al estilo 'Mindhunter': "30 de marzo de 1968. El Palmar de Troya (Sevilla)". Rafaela, Josefa, Ana y Ana recogen flores del campo en la finca de La Acaparrosa, cerca de un pozo, cuando ven aparecer un toro de cuernos verdes, un hombre ahorcado y una mujer muy bella, a la que identifican como La Virgen. Había dos opciones: creerlas o no creerlas. Y las creyeron.

Rafaela, Josefa y las dos Anas vieron un toro de cuernos verdes, un hombre ahorcado y a una mujer muy bella a la que identificaron como la Virgen

De ahí el revuelo se extendió de pueblo en pueblo y comenzaron las peregrinaciones de los devotos. Y aquí la primera señal de que la aparición mariana de El Palmar iba a ser diferente a las demás: en la finca empezaron a tener lugar milagros, apariciones y éxtasis a gogó. Hasta el punto de que Rosario Arenillas, una mujer de la zona, empezó a hablar con la voz de la Virgen. Incluso algunos de los 'videntes' empezaron a sufrir los estigmas. El metraje en Súper 8 rescatado por Del Santo es abrumador: hombres y mujeres convulsionando en el suelo, caras desencajadas y voces inquietantes frente a un público compuesto vecinos de El Palmar y los pueblos de alrededor. También niños. Y, entre ellos, Manuel y Clemente. Ellos.

A quienes, por cierto, Javier Palmero dedicó en 1986 una película protagonizada por Juan Jesús Valverde y Ángel de Andrés.

"En El Palmar de Troya pudo haber habido una historia preciosa, incluso milagrosa, si no hubiera sido por la presencia de Clemente [Rodríguez] y Manuel Alonso". Porque los que más tarde serían los dos primeros papas de la Iglesia Palmariana ni siquiera llegaron los primeros a la finca de La Alcaparrosa. Pero poco a poco se hicieron con el poder y se autoproclamaron líderes —lo harían varias veces a lo largo del periplo cismático—. "Se conocieron prácticamente cuando ya se había empezado a hablar de las apariciones y decidieron ir juntos", recuerda en la serie documental el periodista Manuel M. Molina, autor de 'Los secretos del Palmar de Troya: historia de una herejía'.

Al principio, Manuel y Clemente iban a La Alcaparrosa a curiosear

La serie reconstruye cómo Clemente —quien había querido meterse a cura pero que no lo aceptaron— y Manuel empiezan a ser habituales de los rituales extáticos. "Venían a curiosear, a mirar", sentencia Antonio León, profesor de El Palmar y testigo de cómo el testimonio de cuatro niñas acabó en una escisión eclesiástica con cuatro antipapas. Clemente y Manuel tomaban notas de lo que decían los videntes en plena inconsciencia mística, hasta que Clemente empezó a experimentarlo él mismo. "Y de aquí al trono papal, ¡qué cojones!", debió de pensar.

Ni Sorrentino hubiese escrito una trama de corrupción, fe y delirios de grandeza más disparatada que la que la realidad tenía preparada para El Palmar. Porque la serie ahonda en los tejemanejes financieros que permitieron, a partir de la donación de una anciana baronesa muy devota, que un solar con un abrevadero se convirtiese en una catedral imponente y a todo lujo.

Un Concilio Vaticano II demasiado pobre, un obispo vietnamita ultraconservador —Ngo Dinh Thuc— que se lió a ordenar sacerdotes a espaldas de la Iglesia Católica antes de ser excomulgado, la muerte del Papa Pablo VI y muchos millones en donativos —procedentes mucho de países como Alemania y Suiza, sorprendentemente— allanaron el camino para que Clemente se autoproclamase Papa Gregorio XVII, líder de la Orden de los Carmelitas de la Santa Faz. Gregorio XVII, el antipapa ciego, porque cuando Gregorio XVII subió al trono —las imágenes de la ceremonia parecen una dislocación de la realidad— lo hizo con los párpados cosidos, después de que un accidente de tráfico obligase a los médicos a vaciarle las cuencas de los ojos.

Gregorio XVII prometió a sus fieles que recuperaría la vista. Lo que no debió de prometerles es comportarse de acuerdo a la moral cristiana, porque el obispo anteriormente conocido como Clemente se entrega desbocado a los placeres de la carne y del bolsillo. Fiestas en las que el alcohol no corre, sino vuela, sexo entre obispos, desfalcos y conspiraciones para hacerse con el poder.

Mucho se ha escrito en la prensa y poco a poco se ha ido filtrando el funcionamiento de la orden gracias a feligreses excomulgados y monjas y sacerdotes arrepentidos. Se echa de menos el haber buscado los testimonios de las cuatro niñas, también. Quizá la serie no desvele nada nuevo, pero la labor de documentación y rescate de metraje casero permite adentrarse en una sociedad que siempre se ha movido en el secretismo y la opacidad. Y es que no siempre se vive un cisma de la Iglesia Católica en la puerta de casa. Y menos el de una nueva orden de curas estafadores, violentos, libertinos y muy, muy fachas.

"En atención a las circunstancias excepcionales por las que atraviesa el país, momentos que aconsejan un retraimiento en la exteriorización de las alegrías internas (...) este Gobierno General ha resuelto suspender en absoluto las fiestas de Carnaval". Corría el año 1937, España en plena guerra civil y el franquismo ya comenzaba a imponer alguna de sus directrices: estas palabras quedaba selladas en el BOE un 5 de febrero, sobre el nombre del gobernador de los sublevados Luis Valdés Cavanilles como firmante de la orden. Hasta la muerte del dictador Franco no hubo más Carnaval... a la vista, pero sí sobrevivió en algunas zonas rurales de Galicia (también en algunas áreas de Andalucía), donde se mantuvieron incluso en la dictadura figuras destacadas de estos días como los peliqueiros de Laza o las madamas de Vilaboa.

En 1977, España volvía a vestirse de color y sátira de lo que se había tratado de mantener en la clandestinidad bajo el nombre de 'fiestas invierno' y los Carnavales recuperaban la legalidad, aunque "no como los de antes". La democracia trajo consigo la normalización de nuevo de estas fiestas, aunque en Galicia los 40 años de represión franquista valieron para que algunos ritos y ciertas peculiaridades del Entroido desaparecieran. Ahora bien, como ya se ha intentado hacer durante los últimos años con el tradicional Samaín celta —en detrimento del Halloween yanqui—, los gallegos han trabajado mucho recientemente para recuperar algunas de esas tradiciones perdidas en el camino. En lugares como Meaño (Pontevedra) se han centrado en recuperar las tradiciones de hace siglo y medio, como ha ocurrido en otros tantos lugares de la comunidad autónoma, desde municipios ourensanos como A Veiga o Esgos, hasta otros coruñeses, como Melide o Samede. ¿Pero en qué se diferencia este de otros Carnavales, como los de Cádiz o Tenerife?

¿Por qué Entroido y no Carnaval?

Si bien se trata de dos términos que aluden a fiestas similares, aunque en diferentes áreas geográficas, y proceden del latín tienen orígenes etimológicos diferentes. La más extendida, Carnaval, procede del italiano 'carnevale' que, a su vez, es una suma de los elementos procedentes del latín 'carni' y 'levare', una manera corta de aludir a la eliminación de la carne de cara a la Cuaresma, es decir, los 40 días previos al Jueves Santo donde, según la religión católica, son días de guardar ayuno y de abstinencia. Por otro lado, el término Entroido (o Antroido, Introido, también en Galicia, o Antroxu, en Asturias) tienen un origen menos claro. Según el catedrático de Filosofía Marcelino Agís, la tesis más aceptada es que procede del latín 'introitus' que, una vez más, apunta a lo mismo que la anterior: la entrada en la Cuaresma, aunque en esta ocasión sin alusión directa a la carne.

¿Hay más de un Entroido?

Al igual que es recurrente escuchar que hay tantos idiomas gallegos como gallegos que lo hablan, cada entroido es diferente en función del lugar en el que se celebre. En total hay más de 175 municipios en toda la comunidad que han declarado como festivos en sus calendarios laborales o el lunes o el martes de Carnaval, o el miércoles de Ceniza (aquí puedes consultar el calendario laboral para 2020 de Galicia), lo que denota la importancia de esta fiesta en Galicia. Además, nueve de los Carnavales gallegos están declarados como Fiesta de Interés Turístico, todas ellas con sus personajes clave.

De felos y peliqueiros: personajes del Entroido

Cada maestrillo con su librillo y cada entroido con su personaje: aunque muchos de ellos puedan parecer iguales, no lo son; cada zona que tiene su propio carnaval también tiene una figura característica, todos ellos con un papel concreto. Estos son los más reconocidos:

Pantallas, de Xinzo de Limia

: llevan la cara cubierta con la 'pantalla', de donde reciben su nombre; se trata de una máscara hecha de pasta de papel y con un diseño que parece un personaje algo diabólico. Suelen llevar camisa y calzones blancos, polainas y zapatos negros, una faja de color rojo con pequeños cencerros colgando y una capa. En las manos llevan unos globos fabricados con vejigas de animales, que golpean entre sí y hacen el ruido característico del entroido de Xinzo. Las pantallas no desfilan: tal y como señalan desde la Xunta de Galicia, las pantallas "toman las calles y mantienen el orden" durante estas fiestas para que todo el mundo haga lo que hay que hacer en carnaval, disfrazarse. Si pillan a una mujer sin disfrazar, las pantallas bailan a su alrededor; si es un hombre al que encuentran, lo persiguen y lo llevan en brazos hasta el bar más cercano para que invite a una ronda de vinos.Cigarróns, de Verín: con un origen también incierto —se dice que fue un impopular recaudador de impuestos, y también un vigilante de la ortodoxia eclesiástica—, se trata del personaje que manda en las calles de Verín durante estos días. A su máscara característica le acompaña un traje de camisa blanca, corbata roja y una chaqueta corta de seda con galones y ornamentos dorados. Sobre los hombros, un paño de colores, y a la cintura, una faja bajo el cinturón de cuero sobre el que cuelgan las 'chocas' (cencerros), de más peso que los de las pantallas. Bajo el calzón, blanco, unas medias del mismo color y en la mano, una zamarra del que pende un pellejo de piel. No es fácil se cigarrón: el traje pesa unos 25 kilos.

Pantallas, felos, cigarróns... todos los protagonistas del Entroido de Galicia

T.F.

El protagonista indiscutible de los Carnavales de Cádiz es, sin lugar a dudas, la chirigota; y el de Santa Cruz de Tenerife, la reina del Carnaval.

Peliqueiros, de Laza

: junto con los dos anteriores forman el 'triángulo del carnaval' ourensano. Similar al cigarrón de Verín, el peliqueiro es un personaje al que no se le puede tocar, ni manchar, pero sí se le puede insultar. Su traje está compuesto, además de por la característica máscara, por una camisa blanca, corbata y chaquetilla cortacon flecos dorados. Igual que el cigarrón también lleva su propio pañuelo sobre los hombros y una faja de color rojo sobre el pantalón. Las medias, de color blanco, cierran el traje al que siempre acompaña el látigo, conocido como zamarra.Felos, de Maceda: otros muy similares a los anteriores, suelen llevar en la máscara el dibujo de un ave rapaz o de algún animal de la zona de la sierra de San Mamede. Camisa blanca, corbata, chaquetilla, faja y cinturón, sin olvidar sus propias 'chocas', las medias del felo son de color negro, y bajo las botas se le suman unos calcetines blancos de lana. Al contrario que los peliqueiros, los felos no llevan látigo, pero sí bastón.¿Tienen todos la misma fecha?

Aunque los días de Carnaval o Entroido los dicta el calendario laboral en función de la Semana Santa, no en todos los municipios se celebra durante el mismo tiempo, ni tampoco durante todos el día grande coincide. En algunas localidades el día grande es el domingo de Carnaval, pero en muchas otras prefieren celebrar por todo lo alto el martes. Laza, por ejemplo, municipio que celebra uno de los carnavales más antiguos (y el más 'enxebre' —es decir, el más típico y tradicional—), tiene su día grande en el lunes, conocido como Luns Borralleiro, cuando la plaza central del municipio, la de la Picota, se llena de gente que juega lanzándose barro, harina y hasta hormigas.

Xa podes escoitar e ver o vídeo de 'No salón das cereixas', primeiro sinxelo d'As catedrais silenciadas, "un pasodobre que homenaxea as nais e as avoas que conservaron a lírica e a música popular"

As McKinsey's John Neuman admitted in an essay introducing the method, the "process, though swift, is not painless. Since overhead expenses are typically 70% to 85% people-related and most savings come from work-force reductions, cutting overhead does demand some wrenching decisions."

Manuel Pérez Moreno -farmacéutico- hizo su tesis doctoral el año pasado. Se gastó 2.000€ en comprar hachís en las calles de Madrid, dice que no se fumó ni un solo porro, pero si comprobó que más del 88% de las muestras que adquirió no eran aptas para el consumo ya que contenían restos de excrementos humanos. Por si no lo sabes el hachís que se vende en la calle como «bellotas» generalmente se ingiere por vía oral y cuando el portador -culero- llega a destino las caga y, en el mejor de los casos, les pasa un paño o les da «un agua» antes de ponerlas a la venta.

«El 40% de las bellotas que compré olían a mierda, y además el 93% de las muestras de bellotas que analicé contenían la bacteria E. Coli (Escherichia coli), presente en el aparato digestivo de los mamíferos y que sí es un indicativo de contaminación fecal». Por si esto no fuese suficiente también detectó en las analíticas el hongo Aspergillus, presente en el 10% de las muestras. Alguna de las 90 muestras analizadas superaban hasta 500 veces el límite de sustancias no aptas para su consumo.

El doctor Pérez asegura que la bacteria no venía en la droga del país de origen, (se supone que de Marruecos). Analizadas las muestras interior y exteriormente y ninguna de ellas estaba contaminada en su interior. Es por eso que la bacteria viene del proceso de transporte, almacenamiento y venta. Su investigación concluye que el hachís culero de más calidad de la Comunidad de Madrid, y también el más contaminado, se vende en Móstoles, Parla, Alcorcón o Fuenlabrada.

Tras su estudio, Pérez Moreno considera el tema un grave problema de salud pública. Pero ni el Ayuntamiento ni la  Comunidad de Madrid ni el Plan Nacional sobre Drogas quieren saber nada del tema.

La entrada En Madrid fuman mierda aparece primero en Beatburguer.

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En 1988, el famoso demócrata y socialista que está dispuesto a parar a Trump entrevistó a una pareja de punks que se definían como «anarquistas». Sanders, que abrió un histórico local donde actuaron Fugazi o Hüsker Dü, era adorado por muchos punk rockers

«Somos la peor pesadilla de Trump», es uno de los lemas del sanderismo, la gran esperanza de la izquierda en Estados Unidos para parar las políticas Trump.  Al demócrata y socialista Bernie Sanders, tras perder las primarias de 2016 contra Hillary Clinton, las políticas antisociales de Trump le han dado alas. Lo que hace unos años parecía un programa político «radical» ahora parece urgente y necesario. Es ya un anciano, aunque provisto de una inagotable fuerza y capacidad de movilización: hace unos días logró recaudar más de un millón de euros en un solo día para la causa antiTrump. Su oratoria no es la habitual en estos tiempos donde los candidatos se convierten en casi estrellas pop, en tipos que buscan empatía a base de bromas, comentarios jocosos y golpes de efecto. Sanders, en cambio, apela a las convicciones, es drástico, se levanta a partir de una verdad: la encrucijada en que se encuentra un país gobernado por un idiota muy listo. Presentado como la bestia parda del establishment, los ricos, el sector más conservador de los demócratas, su figura ha ganado mucha fuerza en las últimas semanas.  

Fachada del 242 Main Street

Cuando Bernie Sanders era alcalde de Burlington, Vermont (donde vivió y murió Murray Bookchin, una de las mayores figuras del anarquismo estadounidense) entre 1986 y 1988 dirigió un programa de televisión por cable llamado Bernie Speaks. El alcalde, micrófono en mano, salía a la calle a charlar con sus vecinos. En este episodio de 1988, Sanders entrevistó espontáneamente a una pareja de punks anarquistas a los que, sumamente amable, preguntó sobre capitalismo, subcultura, política o anarquía. Muchos punks adoraban al alcalde, que no dudó en poner a disposición de las bandas de hardcore y punk un local que pronto se convirtió en legendario, el 242 Main Street, por el que pasaron Fugazi, Operation Ivy o Hüsker Dü, entre muchos otros, y similar a otro histórico local para los punks, el 924 Gilman Street en Berkeley.

El episodio se emitió originalmente en marzo de 1988 y consiste principalmente en que Sanders interpreta a un periodista itinerante en el centro comercial Burlington Square. Aproximadamente a la mitad del programa, comienza a hablar con esta pareja de punks con una imagen muy Misfits, la generación de punks estadounidenses que a mediados de los ochenta escuchaba a TSOL, Bad Religion o Adolescents, entre tantos otros. Les pregunta qué no les gusta de la sociedad. Responden con una serie de quejas, algunas vagas y otras muy específicas. Ambos son adolescentes y se definen como anarquistas: «La gente no es lo suficientemente abierta […] Piensan que para establecerte en la sociedad hay que tener dinero, vivir en un suburbio, hay que hacer las cosas “establecidas”, como invitar a cenar a mucha gente... si no lo haces entonces no eres socialmente aceptable. Tienes que vestirte de cierta manera para ser socialmente aceptable. Y no creo que haya que pertenecer a nada para ser una persona. Puedo hacer básicamente lo que quiero con mi apariencia, con mi actitud. Nada de eso me importa». Algunas respuestas son un tanto extrañas. Uno de ellos afirma que sería feliz en una sociedad comunista sin «libertad de empresa», siempre y cuando hubiera libertad de expresión. La otra se define como «una especie de anarquista» que no cree «en la anarquía total, porque entonces nos suicidaríamos».

Brendan Canty, batería de Fugazi, durante un show de la banda en 242 Main Street

Público del 242 Main Street

Interior del local

"Temos o obxectivo de loitar contra o silencio e o medo que provoca unha palabra ata agora tabú", subliña a AECC, cuxo último estudo advirte de que "as familias dos pacientes de cancro asumen o 45% do custo da enfermidade"

O sindicato O'Mega denuncia o falecemento dun home que esperaba a ser atendido, di que é o sexto caso nestas circunstancias nos últimos anos e advirte da falta "recursos loxísticos e humanos" no servizo.

Na difícil batalha pola sobrevivência, certos animais exibem força; outros, rotinas mui medidas e eficientes; ainda há quem estabeleça cooperaçons produtivas entre espécies. Mas também topamos seres que desdobram recursos múltiplos e umha certa inteligência mui flexível. Nesta categoria sobranceia o golpe ou raposo, que em distintas culturas do planeta foi condenado ou enxalçado a partes iguais, como pícaro interesseiro, ou como emblema da astúcia. Hoje que padece massacres injustificados em nome do desporto, queremos dar a conhecer e homenagear o golpe.

Em toda a Europa, e atrevemo-nos a dizer em todo o mundo habitado (agás na Austrália, onde é espécie invasora) conhece-se o porte deste formoso animal: corpo pequeno e esbelto, longa cauda, orelhas de grande tamanho, triangulares, e um focinho afiado e prominente. Se repararmos nos seus olhos, veremos umha pupila vertical que sugere observaçom e picardia. No mundo existem doze espécies de Vulpes. O que habita entre nós, e em geral no oeste da Europa, é o ‘Vulpes vulpes’, do que existem 45 subvariedades locais. O raposo europeu ainda apresenta outra nota de beleza, a sua cor vermelha e prateada.

Em galego recebe os nome de raposo ou raposa, zorro, e também golpe, termo que se fai comum ao norte do Tambre. A palabra raposo procede etimologicamente de ‘rabo’, pois os nossos devanceiros devêrom ficar assombrados da sua longa cauda, mesta e sedosa. Outros idiomas aludem ao mesmo: em galês é ‘llwyrog’, isto é, ‘mesto’, em referência ao pelo da cauda. Em inglês, a palavra ‘foxy’, que deriva de ‘fox’, utiliza-se para salientar a beleza física em humanos. Umha certa sensaçom de harmonia desprende-se aliás dos movimentos do raposo: o conhecido naturalista espanhol Rodríguez de la Fuente foi dos primeiros em reparar nos movimentos do animal filmando-o em cámara lenta, e concluiu que eram os jogos de equilíbrio da cauda os que permitiam manter o ponto de equilíbrio. O raposo nom é um fondista extraordinário, como o lobo, e numha jornada nom soi percorrer mais de 7 kilómetros. Ainda, um galope ágil e veloz permite-lhe sortear as situaçons mais apuradas.

Oportunismo e sobrevivência

O raposo tem múltiplos inimigos, a começar polos depredadores como o lobo, e a seguir polo súper-depredador que é o homem (neste caso podemos utilizar a palavra sem acepçom genérica, pois som homens mais do 99% dos caçadores). Num contexto de relativa paz, o golpe pode chegar aos 15 anos de vida, mas nas difíceis condiçons do assédio, nom adoitam passar dum lustro. Contodo, som estas condiçons adversas as que permitem desdobrar à raposa todas as grandes dotes de sobrevivência. O oportunismo começa pola versatilidade territorial, pois tanto podem estabelecer-se como sedentários, como praticar umha mobilidade medida. Em parelha ou em pequenas famílias, habilitam tobos para as etapas de mau tempo ou para a jeira da criança.

Naturalistas descobrírom que as tobeiras adoitam ter um corredor de cinco ou seis metros, e nalguns casos topárom-se acobilhos de até 17 metros de longitude. Constrói-nos nos lugares mais inacessíveis: cantis, beiras mui costentas, fendas de rochas escarpadas, e cuida-se de que a orientaçom seja cara o sul e garanta melhor temperatura. Na semana passada víamos como por vezes o golpe desputa a vivenda ao teixugo: rouba-lha com excrementos ou restos animais, pois o nosso animal de hoje nom tem a higiene do porco teixo. Porém, certos estudiosos dim que por vezes partilha hábitat com este animal, compartimentando-o por mútuo interesse.

Mas quiçá a maior mostra do seu oportunismo é o amplo rango alimentário da espécie. Um estudo da antiga URSS descobriu que o golpe podia alimentar-se de até 300 espécies animais, nas que se incluem pequenos roedores, mustélidos e invertebrados, e obviamente aves. A sua predilecçom polas pitas levou ao ódio do agricultor desde tempo imemorial.

Esta carragem nom tem nada a ver, sem embargo, com o instinto exterminador dos caçadores desportivos do presente, que o acusam de acabar com lebres e perdizes. De facto, o golpe é um grande controlador natural de roedores, o que acaba por beneficiar o labrego. O naturalista ourensano Pablo Rodríguez Fernández ‘Oitabén’ descobriu umha fasquia desconhecida da raposa: dispersa sementes que revitalizam os montes através dos seus excrementos. Muitas figueiras, cerdeiras, érvedos, estripeiros, devem-se aos golpes que transportam sementes no aparelho digestivo.

Muito presente no folclore

Pola sua extensom planetária, o zorro ou raposo (for ou nom for ‘Vulpes vulpes’) ocupou o seu lugar em todas as mitologias. Na Europa tivo tal potência no folclore que chegou a figura protagonista dos livros infantis. Na tradiçom literária europeia aparece em romances do século XII, nos que se origina a personagem de Roman de Renart; num clássico como ‘O conto do sacerdote’ de Geoffrey Chaucer, o golpe ocupa já o seu espaço como pícaro e renarte.

Procurarmos onde procurarmos, o golpe figura com um destes três atributos (ou com os três juntos): inteligência, engano e transformaçom. Na mensagem por volta da raposa há umha grande ambivalência, e assim topamos também visons negativas do animal: para os árabes simboliza a covardia, pois é um animal que, nas luitas desiguais, nom dá batalha, senom que finge estar morto. Na Bíblia, som alcumados de rapososo os ‘falsos profetas’, e nas lendas de certos povos norteamericanos é o companheiro do coiote, ao que remata por enganar. Os marinheiros de muitas costas, incluídos os galegos, tinham como regra nom escrita nunca falar a bordo de curas, cobras ou raposos, pois mentá-los atrazeria a desgraça. Na guerra mundial, o general nazi Erik Rommel foi alcumado polos seus inimigos como ‘o raposo do deserto’ pola sua capacidade de utilizar o engano no campo militar.

Mas nom todo é negativo, nem de longe: para a tradiçom finesa, a inteligência com que se maneja o raposo tem muito de virtuoso, face a figura do mal e a força bruta associada com o lobo. Na língua inglesa, o verbo ‘outfox’ significa ‘superar em inteligência a outra pessoa’ num reto ou desafio. Esta noçom passou à cultura popular contemporánea em muitos ámbitos. Sem irmos mais longe, a inícios da passada década, o arredismo publicou umha revista teórica intitulada ‘O Golpe’. O nome procurava associar estratégias de inteligência e renovaçom sócio-política com a habilidade proverbial do animal para sair adiante em condiçons adversas.

Como todas as sociedades agrárias, o nosso povo conviviu em relaçom conflituosa com o animal, numha espécie de relaçom de vizinhança em tensom: o golpe está presente nas denominaçons de ‘barbas do raposo’, ‘cereixa do raposo’, ‘chícharo do raposo’, ‘uva do raposo’ e ‘ovo de raposo’, nomes que denominam plantas, froitos, flores e cogomelos; também no ‘zorromeco’, umha figura típica para assustar os nenos fedelhos. Os caçadores de antes chamavam-no ‘Perico’, ‘Domingos’, ‘Pedro’, ‘Xan’ ou ‘Bravio’ para despistá-lo. Mas este choque com o golpe, que era tratado com umha mestura de enfado e carinho, nada tem a ver com a morte industrial planificada hoje pola Federaçom Galega de Caça com subvençom da Junta. Segundo o web rios-galegos.com, estas batidas levam eliminado 75000 raposas entre 2011 e 2017.

Há justo dezoito anos, em fevereiro de 2002, o jornal de referência da direita espanhola na Galiza intitulava sobre a caça do raposo: “150 hombres sin piedad”. E recolhia umha declaraçom jubilosa dos caçadores: “imos polos terroristas.” Está todo dito.