En secreto y, al andar

F.: Rafael Suárez

All Things Are Current Found

All things are current found,
On earthly ground,
Spirits and elements
Have their descents.

Night and day, year on year,
High and low, far and near,
These are our own aspects,
These are our own regrets.

Ye gods of the shore,
Who abide evermore,
I see you far headland,
Stretching on either hand;

I hear the sweet evening sounds
From your undecaying grounds;
Cheat me no more with time,
Take me to your clime

Henry D. Thoreau

Una foto de Weber

 The Military Now Runs US Foreign Policy

You would expect, amid all the tiresome comment written and broadcast on Donald Trump’s “first 100 days,” something worth thinking about might have appeared somewhere. I have had no luck looking. Instead of detached, thought-through analysis, it has been either pabulum, echo, or more of the usual and not-very-useful denigration—the unpolished style, the dismissal of Washington decorum, the doings at Mar-a-Lago, and other urgent matters of global import.

 

As bad or worse on the foreign-policy side. Apart from people who once fretted about Trump and nuclear codes now applauding as he signs off on missiles and bombs, no one has much to say. The event that tipped me into writing this column was H.R. McMaster’s appearance on Fox News Sunday this past weekend. Trump, his national security adviser wants you to know, “has been masterful in his development of a relationship with President Xi,” the “masterful” being a masterful touch. Iran is “committing mass murder of its own people.” Do tell. No, we did not just watch as the Pentagon wrested foreign policy from civilian control. “He has devolved responsibility down to where it belongs…. So he’s doing things that have made our policy execution much more sensible.”2

Read the transcript. It is vacuous euphemism, start to finish. I tip my cap to Chris Wallace: His questions were dead on the money, excellent. He got nothing back in response—or nothing he intended—but Wallace did get McMaster to make one thing perfectly plain. Even at the very core of power, this country’s leadership is not capable of a serious conversation about our conduct abroad. Their topic is meta-policy. It consists of sets and subsets of pretense, delusion, and disinformation.

 

 There is a steep price to be paid for this drift further and further from reality. It is far too soon to guess the size of the final bill, but so far the cost of keeping ourselves calm by pretending to talk about things we decline to talk about is an ever more evident alienation from the world we purport to lead. “Americans are alone in the world” is the title Luigi Barzini put on a book he published in 1953. He meant that the unmatched power we assumed in the post-1945 order, along with our illusions, was bound to leave us an isolated people. Now that is what I call one prescient hack.4

This is an anti–100 days column. There was a lot more in Trump’s opening act on the foreign side than anyone in our corporate media is going to acknowledge. There have been three key events, and they need to be considered together: (1) Trump inherited Barack Obama’s foreign-policy framework, (2) he arrived in office with certain ideas to rethink it, and (3) control of policy was taken out of his hands. If we think about these things as a sequence we stand a chance of living in the same world as the rest of humanity, and we might feel a little less lonely.5

Do you remember how often Trump used the word “mess” during the 2015–16 campaign? That is because his predecessor handed him so many of them. Obama made the Middle East crises worse, oversaw two coups (Ukraine and Libya), blessed a third and fourth (Honduras and Brazil), and had us neck-deep in a fifth (Syria) while a sixth (Venezuela) teeters. He deployed drone technology to establish illegal assassination as official policy, and all the while he befouled relations with China and Russia, the two non-Western nations that will have more to say than any other about peace and a remade order in the 21st century.6

Let us go to fundamental errors. I count two.7

One, Obama assumed it would suffice to tinker with the means of US foreign policy while leaving its intent—the preservation of global dominance—unexamined and untouched. I have argued this point previously in this space. Until the goals of policy are altered in a manner befitting the 21st century, the United States will remain dependent on one or another kind of coercion for the simple reason that primacy is yesterday’s story, not tomorrow’s, and the world beyond our shores has tired of it.8

Two, Obama failed to demolish a false binary within which we are trapped. There is either military engagement or there is “isolation,” as those advancing this thesis have it. In consequence of his first error, Obama left mostly unexplored all alternative modes of engagement, and these are more or less infinite in number. This was a signal opportunity for Obama, for it is in alternative policies that the future lies, but he did not seize it. The Iran nuclear agreement and the opening to Cuba stand as only partial exceptions: Washington has been busily sabotaging the Iran accord since it was signed—never mind the new administration’s plans—and the new relationship with Cuba is predicated, as Obama made clear when he spoke in Havana, on getting done above board what the CIA failed to get done covertly.



Trump did not have a great many things of interest to say on foreign policy, but he had a few. Many people, probably most, were too taken up with contempt for his very numerous faults to understand these few things as serious renovations. This was a mistake. Here is my list: (1) improving relations with Russia; (2) negotiating conflict in Syria, Ukraine, North Korea, and elsewhere; (3) doing better by the Palestinians—a very short-lived thought; (4) a stated commitment to self-determination—“the right of all nations to put their own interests first,” as Trump put it; and (5) a disavowal of liberal interventionism—“we do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone,” as he also said.10

I will go to my final rest amazed as to why so many people failed to see opportunity in these positions. Trump proposed to shake loose some very big stones in the edifice. But a few people understood perfectly well the opportunity in Trump’s views. It was plain-as-day to destroy them that the Pentagon and the national security apparatus, with assists from AIPAC and various others, tipped Trump out of bed this spring and took policy from his control as he fell to the floor.11

What have we had since the center of gravity in the foreign-policy sphere shifted to the Pentagon? There was a one-off cruise-missile strike against Syria, the purpose of which is anyone’s guess. Then the “MOAB” bomb in Afghanistan, ditto. There was chest-out tough talk on the North Korea question, from which—the best way to put it—we have just watched a dramatic climb-down. And there was a failed attempt to tell the Chinese what to do, which, as we just saw on Fox News Sunday, the Mattis-McMaster policy axis is not quite finished denying.12

 

Where does Trump land? I was interested to note his silence in the days after the Pentagon usurped him: Everyone was talking except the president. This suggested Trump took his policy positions seriously, even if he lacked depth, and understood that all prospect of them had just been destroyed. He has now assumed the role that all Republican presidents since Nixon have played: He is “the Communicator,” if he is not “the Great,” saying in reassuring mufti what men in uniform have determined the United States will do. (The one possible exception here is George H.W. Bush, the old director of spookery, and we can leave that for another time.)13

We come to the final question—for now, anyway. What have we been watching? I do not mean for the past 100 days; I mean for the past eight years plus 100 days.14

In my read we are staring at limits. These are to be welcomed.15

Obama sought to prolong American hegemony but make it look nicer, at least to those not on the receiving end of the effort. The United States has lost ground with Russia and China that it will eventually have to make up. As to the Islamic State and the inflamed sentiments of radical Islamists, Obama may as well have taken a hammer to a saucer of mercury: The problem is everywhere now. All in, Obama succeeded only in showing us that maintaining US primacy, once so simple, is now complicated on the way to unsustainable.16

For a brief interim we had Trump and his ideas. We are counting in weeks, but there is one thing to take home from this period: If nothing else, we now know how hard any new attempt to reinvent some of the basic tenets of American foreign policy will prove.17

Now policy flows through the Mattis-McMaster axis. I am told by people worth trusting that there is no one left in Trump’s inner circle to counter their thoroughly military perspectives. Like all people trained in operations, those now running policy have proven better at the do-or-die part than the reasoning why. Especially but not only across the Pacific, behind the bluster turns out to be an improvised vaudeville routine: We will we won’t, you’ll pay we’ll pay, the ship’s here the ship’s there, you’ll do it our way but it’s OK if you don’t. I wonder why they left out “Who’s on first?”18

 

 Can you imagine what they think of this spectacle in Beijing, with several millennia of diplomacy behind it? First they give us John Wayne and now it’s Abbott and Costello.19

Washington is running out of alternatives, in my read. Power without strength always peters out, and we will see this in years to come. This is what lends Trump’s opening months significance. America in its late-imperial phase grows sclerotic. Our policy cliques have not had to make any decisions for seven decades, and now they are incapable of them. Their view of the world is petrified—in both meanings—such that they cannot adjust it. There is no obvious way to preserve US primacy without an almost pornographic exposure of the bankruptcy of the professed ideals. In short, a state of paralysis approaches. Allies grow quietly irritated and adversaries do nothing differently. Even Chris Wallace suggested the United States is marginalizing itself as it goes around the world marginalizing so many others.20
            

I have used the word “opportunity” on a couple of occasions. Our moment as just described presents one, at least in the ideal. But it also presents a problem, and this is of our own making. Rarely in the decades since April 1975, and never effectively, have Americans insisted on exploring alternatives to the foreign-policy orthodoxy—the orthodoxy of exceptionalism, of imperial adventure. More prevalent are apathy on such questions, or acquiescence. At this point there is barely even a conversation. In consequence, there is no one in power, and too few in positions of influence, to exploit moments of opportunity. The first step for all of us, I would think, is to discern such moments.21

 

S.: https://www.thenation.com/article/the-military-now-runs-us-foreign-policy/

The Problem is Washington, Not North Korea

Washington has never made any effort to conceal its contempt for North Korea. In the 64 years since the war ended, the US has done everything in its power to punish, humiliate and inflict pain on the Communist country. Washington has subjected the DPRK to starvation,  prevented its government from accessing foreign capital and markets, strangled its economy with crippling economic sanctions, and installed lethal missile systems and military bases on their doorstep.

 

Negotiations aren’t possible because Washington refuses to sit down with a country which it sees as its inferior.  Instead, the US has strong-armed China to do its bidding by using their diplomats as interlocutors who are expected to convey Washington’s ultimatums as threateningly as possible.  The hope, of course, is that Pyongyang will cave in to Uncle Sam’s bullying and do what they are told.

But the North has never succumbed to US intimidation and there’s no sign that it will. Instead, they have developed a small arsenal of nuclear weapons to defend themselves in the event that the US tries to assert its dominance by launching another war.

There’s no country in the world that needs nuclear weapons more than North Korea. Brainwashed Americans, who get their news from FOX or CNN, may differ on this point, but if a hostile nation deployed carrier strike-groups off the coast of California while conducting massive war games on the Mexican border (with the express intention of scaring the shit of people) then they might see things differently. They might see the value of having a few nuclear weapons to deter that hostile nation from doing something really stupid.

 

And let’s be honest, the only reason Kim Jong Un hasn’t joined Saddam and Gadhafi in the great hereafter, is because (a)– The North does not sit on an ocean of oil, and (b)– The North has the capacity to reduce Seoul, Okinawa and Tokyo into smoldering debris-fields.  Absent Kim’s WMDs,  Pyongyang would have faced a preemptive attack long ago and Kim would have faced a fate similar to Gadhafi’s.  Nuclear weapons are the only known antidote to US adventurism.

The American people –whose grasp of history does not extend beyond the events of 9-11 — have no idea of the way the US fights its wars or the horrific carnage and destruction it unleashed on the North.  Here’s a short  refresher that helps clarify why the North is still wary of the US more than 60 years after the armistice was signed.  The excerpt is from an article titled “Americans have forgotten what we did to North Korea”, at Vox World:

“In the early 1950s, during the Korean War, the US dropped more bombs on North Korea than it had dropped in the entire Pacific theater during World War II. This carpet bombing, which included 32,000 tons of napalm, often deliberately targeted civilian as well as military targets, devastating the country far beyond what was necessary to fight the war. Whole cities were destroyed, with many thousands of innocent civilians killed and many more left homeless and hungry….

According to US journalist Blaine Harden:  “Over a period of three years or so, we killed off — what — 20 percent of the population,” Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, told the Office of Air Force History in 1984. Dean Rusk, a supporter of the war and later secretary of state, said the United States bombed “everything that moved in North Korea, every brick standing on top of another.” After running low on urban targets, U.S. bombers destroyed hydroelectric and irrigation dams in the later stages of the war, flooding farmland and destroying crops……

“On January 3 at 10:30 AM an armada of 82 flying fortresses loosed their death-dealing load on the city of Pyongyang …Hundreds of tons of bombs and incendiary compound were simultaneously dropped throughout the city, causing annihilating fires, the transatlantic barbarians bombed the city with delayed-action high-explosive bombs which exploded at intervals for a whole day making it impossible for the people to come out onto the streets. The entire city has now been burning, enveloped in flames, for two days. By the second day, 7,812 civilians houses had been burnt down. The Americans were well aware that there were no military targets left in Pyongyang…

The number of inhabitants of Pyongyang killed by bomb splinters, burnt alive and suffocated by smoke is incalculable…Some 50,000 inhabitants remain in the city which before the war had a population of 500,000.” (“Americans have forgotten what we did to North Korea“,  Vox World)

The United States killed over 2 million people in a country that posed no threat to US national security. Like Vietnam, the Korean War was just another  muscle-flexing exercise the US periodically engages in whenever it gets bored or needs some far-flung location to try out its new weapons systems. The US had nothing to gain in its aggression on the Korean peninsula, it was mix of imperial overreach and pure unalloyed viciousness the likes of which we’ve seen many times in the past. According to the Asia-Pacific Journal:

“By the fall of 1952, there were no effective targets left for US planes to hit. Every significant town, city and industrial area in North Korea had already been bombed. In the spring of 1953, the Air Force targeted irrigation dams on the Yalu River, both to destroy the North Korean rice crop and to pressure the Chinese, who would have to supply more food aid to the North. Five reservoirs were hit, flooding thousands of acres of farmland, inundating whole towns and laying waste to the essential food source for millions of North Koreans.10 Only emergency assistance from China, the USSR, and other socialist countries prevented widespread famine.” (“The Destruction and Reconstruction of North Korea, 1950 – 1960”, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Japan Focus)

Repeat: “Reservoirs, irrigation dams, rice crops,  hydroelectric dams, population centers” all napalmed, all carpet bombed,  all razed to the ground. Nothing was spared. If it moved it was shot, if it didn’t move, it was bombed. The US couldn’t win, so they turned the country into an uninhabitable wastelands.   “Let them starve. Let them freeze.. Let them eat weeds and roots and rodents to survive. Let them sleep in the ditches and find shelter in the rubble. What do we care? We’re the greatest country on earth. God bless America.”

This is how Washington does business, and it hasn’t changed since the Seventh Cavalry wiped out 150 men, women and children at Wounded Knee more than century ago. The Lakota Sioux at Pine Ridge got the same basic treatment as the North Koreans, or the Vietnamese, or the Nicaraguans, or the Iraqis and on and on and on and on. Anyone else who gets in Uncle Sam’s way, winds up in a world of hurt. End of story.

The savagery of America’s war against the North left an indelible mark on the psyche of the people.  Whatever the cost, the North cannot allow a similar scenario to take place in the future. Whatever the cost, they must be prepared to defend themselves. If that means nukes, then so be it. Self preservation is the top priority.

Is there a way to end this pointless standoff between Pyongyang and Washington, a way to mend fences and build trust?

Of course there is. The US just needs to start treating the DPRK with respect and follow through on their promises. What promises?

The promise to built the North two light-water reactors to provide heat and light to their people in exchange for an end to its nuclear weapons program. You won’t read about this deal in the media because the media is just the propaganda wing of the Pentagon. They have no interest in promoting peaceful solutions. Their stock-in-trade is war, war and more war.

The North wants the US to honor its obligations under the 1994 Agreed Framework. That’s it. Just keep up your end of the goddamn deal. How hard can that be?   Here’s how Jimmy Carter summed it up in a Washington Post op-ed (November 24, 2010):

“…in September 2005, an agreement … reaffirmed the basic premises of the 1994 accord. (The Agreed Framework) Its text included denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, a pledge of non-aggression by the United States and steps to evolve a permanent peace agreement to replace the U.S.-North Korean-Chinese cease-fire that has been in effect since July 1953. Unfortunately, no substantive progress has been made since 2005…

“This past July I was invited to return to Pyongyang to secure the release of an American, Aijalon Gomes, with the proviso that my visit would last long enough for substantive talks with top North Korean officials. They spelled out in detail their desire to develop a denuclearized Korean Peninsula and a permanent cease-fire, based on the 1994 agreements and the terms adopted by the six powers in September 2005….

“North Korean officials have given the same message to other recent American visitors and have permitted access by nuclear experts to an advanced facility for purifying uranium. The same officials had made it clear to me that this array of centrifuges would be ‘on the table’ for discussions with the United States, although uranium purification – a very slow process – was not covered in the 1994 agreements.

“Pyongyang has sent a consistent message that during direct talks with the United States, it is ready to conclude an agreement to end its nuclear programs, put them all under IAEA inspection and conclude a permanent peace treaty to replace the ‘temporary’ cease-fire of 1953. We should consider responding to this offer. The unfortunate alternative is for North Koreans to take whatever actions they consider necessary to defend themselves from what they claim to fear most: a military attack supported by the United States, along with efforts to change the political regime.”

(“North Korea’s consistent message to the U.S.”, President Jimmy Carter, Washington Post)

Most people think the problem lies with North Korea, but it doesn’t. The problem lies with the United States; it’s unwillingness to negotiate an end to the war, its unwillingness to provide basic security guarantees to the North, its unwillingness to even sit down with the people who –through Washington’s own stubborn ignorance– are now developing long-range ballistic missiles that will be capable of hitting American cities.

 

How dumb is that?

The Trump team is sticking with a policy that has failed for 63 years and which clearly undermines US national security by putting American citizens directly at risk. AND FOR WHAT?

To preserve the image of “tough guy”,  to convince people that the US doesn’t negotiate with weaker countries,  to prove to the world that “whatever the US says, goes”?   Is that it?  Is image more important than a potential nuclear disaster?

 

Relations with the North can be normalized,  economic ties can be strengthened, trust can be restored, and the nuclear threat can be defused. The situation with the North does not have to be a crisis, it can be fixed. It just takes a change in policy, a bit of give-and-take, and leaders that genuinely want peace more than war.

 

S.:http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/04/17/the-problem-is-washington-not-north-korea/

Courbet

El lector de Hodler

Jeanne Hebuterne con sombrero (Modigliani)

Jeanne Hebuterne con sombrero, retrato pintado en 1917 por Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920).

La música de Bitácora: River Flows in You

Stop swooning over Justin Trudeau. The man is a disaster for the planet

Donald Trump is so spectacularly horrible that it’s hard to look away – especially now that he’s discovered bombs. But precisely because everyone’s staring gape-mouthed in his direction, other world leaders are able to get away with almost anything. Don’t believe me? Look one country north, at Justin Trudeau.

Look all you want, in fact – he sure is cute, the planet’s only sovereign leader who appears to have recently quit a boy band. And he’s mastered so beautifully the politics of inclusion: compassionate to immigrants, insistent on including women at every level of government. Give him great credit where it’s deserved: in lots of ways he’s the anti-Trump, and it’s no wonder Canadians swooned when he took over.

But when it comes to the defining issue of our day, climate change, he’s a brother to the old orange guy in Washington. 

Environmentalists 'expected better' of Trudeau as Canada backs gas project
The Pacific NorthWest LNG project would ship 19m tons a year of frozen, liquefied natural gas to markets in Asia – and create jobs, says the government
  
Not rhetorically: Trudeau says all the right things, over and over. He’s got no Scott Pruitts in his cabinet: everyone who works for him says the right things. Indeed, they specialize in getting others to say them too – it was Canadian diplomats, and the country’s environment minister, Catherine McKenna, who pushed at the Paris climate talks for a tougher-than-expected goal: holding the planet’s rise in temperature to 1.5C (2.7F).

But those words are meaningless if you keep digging up more carbon and selling it to people to burn, and that’s exactly what Trudeau is doing. He’s hard at work pushing for new pipelines through Canada and the US to carry yet more oil out of Alberta’s tar sands, which is one of the greatest climate disasters on the planet.

 

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/17/stop-swooning-justin-trudeau-man-disaster-planet

Portrait

Il dort
Il est éveillé
Tout à coup, il peint
Il prend une église et peint avec une église
Il prend une vache et peint avec une vache
Avec une sardine
Avec des têtes, des mains, des couteaux
Il peint avec un nerf de bœuf
Il peint avec toutes les sales passions d'une petite ville juive
Avec toute la sexualité exacerbée de la province russe
Pour la France
Sans sensualité
Il peint avec ses cuisses
Il a les yeux au cul
Et c'est tout à coup votre portrait
C'est toi lecteur
C'est moi
C'est lui
C'est sa fiancée
C'est l'épicier du coin
La vachère
La sage-femme
Il y a des baquets de sang
On y lave les nouveau-nés
Des ciels de folie
Bouches de modernité
La tour en tire-bouchon
Des mains
Le Christ
Le Christ c'est lui
Il a passé son enfance sur la Croix
Il se suicide tous les jours
Tout à coup il ne peint plus
Il était éveillé
Il dort maintenant
Il s'étrangle avec sa cravate
Chagall est étonné de vivre encore

 

Cendrars 

Retrato de Madeleine Bernard (Gauguin)

El estudio de Nevinson en Montparnasse

Los cuervos siempre son negros

El intuitivo Hempel cuestionaba hasta lo razonable: ¿son todos los cuervos negros?. Hoy, no apreciamos probabilidades ni paradojas. No deseamos saber. Esta fuera de lugar.

Seguramente Ud. haya oído hablar de la madre de todas las bombas (MOAB). Pero no de otras armas de destrucción masiva:

Empezamos con los derivados financieros: Los CDS (Credit Default Swap) son productos para operaciones mínimas de 10 millones de dólares. Suponen un valor en circulación de 700 billones (con B) de dólares: Están restringidos para bancos que no se dedican a gestionar sus recibos de luz o agua. Apenas conocemos los nombres de estos depredadores del sistema: JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs y Barclais Capital. Tampoco se haga ilusiones laborales: entre sus filas no cuentan con nuestros perfiles: Romano Prodi (flamante Presidente de la Comisión Europea) y Mario Dragi (Pte. del Banco Central Europeo) son algunos de sus laboriosos trabajadores. Súmele a estos nombres, una larga lista de responsables de la Reserva Federal estadounidense (FED). Casualmente, hace 10 años, ante la posibilidad de quiebra, les autorizaron a mutar de banca de inversión a comercial: La lógica era aplastante: si sus clientes son una parte de la población, simplemente no pueden hundirse.

Qué pasaría si Ud. montara un pequeño negocio familiar: digamos, ¿un bareto? Un antro decorado con cariño, digamos maderita, (¡roble envejecido!), colores pastel y sillones de cuero, donde además de café, se vendiesen libros, con música en vivo, poesía y monólogos siete veces por semana, por poner un ejemplo colorido o, ¿una carnicería vegetariana?: ¿Saldría papa Estado en nuestro socorro si vienen mal dadas?

Decía Valery, que “los hechos no penetran en el mundo, moran las creencias”: El actual sistema no es capitalismo: no se premia el talento y el esfuerzo: Se ha olvidado su germen protestante. Estamos en una economía estúpida y cínica.

Cuando apenas era un guaje, en Asturias especulaban con el carbón subvencionado en el puerto de Gijón. La operación, lejos de grandes ingenieras financieras era de lo más sencillo: lo compraban en verano y lo retenían hasta el invierno, multiplicando su valor por cinco. Hoy, también lo hacen con hogares: compran –miles de- Viviendas de Protección Oficial y las convierten en lucrativas operaciones con un riesgo mínimo. Estos usureros controlan el 90% de los CDS. El caso más sonado en Europa fue la manipulación de la deuda griega cuyas consecuencias conoce.

Existen más cuervos. Según Blommberg, las operaciones de “carry trade” con fondos de 1 millón de euros para comprar dólares australianos, reales de Brasil, pesos de México, randas de África del Sur o wons de Corea han tenido retornos por encima del 40% durante la era Trump. Estas operaciones se financian con fondos del BCE. Han llegado a trabajar con tipos de diferencial al 1%.

La mitad del comercio mundial y de los activos bancarios y la tercera parte de las inversiones directas pasan por algún paraíso fiscal, eludiendo leyes fiscales de sus respectivos países de procedencia, con la consiguiente evasión de impuestos. Están encubiertos 18 billones (también con B) de euros, según una estimación del FMI, que el propio Organismo calificó de una cifra infravalorada. Diferentes voces autorizadas hablan de 50 billones.

Estos son algunos fondos especulativos de alto riesgo y fondos inmunizados para los cuales no existe –ni se le espera- ningún tipo de legislación restrictiva. Pero, ¿qué ocurre con las tradicionales?:

El 85% de las grandes empresas americanas y el 99% de las europeas utilizan habitualmente paraísos fiscales. La totalidad de las 35 mayores empresas españolas que cotizan en bolsa son sus clientes.

“Los países intentar actuar ahorrando divisas” son algunos sesudos titulares que se pueden leer en las grandes rotativas y medios de comunicación en sus primeras páginas y minutos estelares: La principal industria de nuestro país, el turismo, aporta el 10% del PIB (115.000 millones de euros). Esta cifra debería sonarle: es la factura anual de las importaciones de petróleo.

Una gota:

147 transnacionales controlan el 40% del valor de todas las Cías. del mundo, en un asombroso nivel de interrelación. 6 Cías. controlan la industria discográfica mundial. 4, el 70% del comercio mundial. 3, el mercado del café tostado molido.

En otros mercados esenciales, 10 grandes empresas controlan: 

-53% del mercado farmacéutico mundial
-54% del sector de la biotecnología
-62% de la farmacéutica mundial
-80% del mercado del comercio mundial de alimentos
-100% del mercado del petróleo.

Solo una gota más: El año pasado, Bruselas, una ciudad de apenas 117.000 habitantes, obtuvo la misma energía solar que España. Nuestro país, situado entre los paralelos 36º y 43º no es vanguardia en este tipo de renovables: hoy la locomotora europea es Alemania -¡Alemania!-: En esta Pascua, la Península alcanzó temperaturas superiores a los 25 grados; En Wurzburg (cerca de Rotemburgo) estaba nevando.

Las preguntas que debemos hacernos entonces, son simples: ¿Qué justifica estos datos? ¿Qué razones teóricas o empíricas, existen para esta libertad de movimientos de capital? ¿Entre Adam Smith y Mao, entre Standford y Chicago, que queda? Nada de Utopías: Solo Justicia.

(...)

Rafael Suárez
Prejuicios en Economía y Educación

Hermoso hasta el dolor

Con el alba..

F.: Rafael Suárez

¿Cuándo la memoria te castiga....

Buscas el azul del nuevo viento para relampaguear aquellos ojos misteriosos. El misterio prohibió la fantasía. Ya quedan lejos. Son ruinas de veletas. El incienso arde puro y tus pensamientos le siguen.

Gritos mudos son aquellos que envuelve las huellas encendidas. Son recuerdos gigantes que besan y estremecen.

Son el imperio de la memoria sepultada, mortal catarata de turbulentas borrascas. Martirios desplomados, esperanzas de la experiencia. Fiebres y delirios, esferas de vibrantes despedidas, impulsadas por tristes torres, hambrientas de vuelos declinados.

No engañan las pálidas tumbas de los sentimientos a los gemidos. La nada siempre levanta su vuelo.
Ahora sólo quedan recuerdos. Escaleras llenas de espejos moribundos y ocasos de dolor.

Son manos heladas que cosechan barrancos muertos. Senderos tímidos para quién ha besado la vida.

Resbala tu altura, mudo de enferma mirada.

Te acercas al miedo. Lenta mancha cubre tu silenciosa despedida.

Las cumbres son frías. Cautivas el día y temes la noche. Sientes la noche. Trémulos pasos, los tuyos. Turbios, tediosos, oscuros.

- ¿Cuándo la memoria te castiga, persigues el atisbo y corres en un desierto de torbellinos?
Comprendes, que tu pupila es una alfombra doliente de errantes caravanas. Ardes con suspiros, que chorrean desilusiones y corres en puertas que cesan, como gotas, cada amanecer. Interpreta, de rodillas, el invierno de ilusiones que vírgenes, habitan en tu nave. A bordo, son apóstoles de pálidos vientos sangrantes.

- Persevera, tus ojos, serenos, deben ser sencillos puentes y senderos.
 La harina molida es fuente.
No hay discreto dolor, que enturbie el obligado secreto de la vieja brisa.
Tiñe, avergonzado, tu tierra limpia. El aliento a dolor, dispara el nuevo horizonte. Cada día, altivo, fiel y temeroso.

Tu ventana, mi libro y la importancia de las campanas olvidadas.
Llantos son espadas de destinos sencillos, rebeldes lechos de un tirano camino.

- Desierta y tirana. Así esta tú alma. A medio camino, entre el fuego del adiós y la inerte inocencia.
Desciende. Estremécete con la ira, respiras odio, ¿quieres correr?
Acude sordo, al brillo de una nueva carne. Sonrisas y cirios, inquietarán tus besos.

- ¿Declinas empezar, abriendo plazos?
Cada instante, disfraza cautiverios en un compas de caducas miradas en distintas noches, en distintos lugares... Convierte, cada sol en calles solitarias.

He bajado, he exprimido cada estrofa, he bebido distintos mundos con millares de olas, ¿Cómo olvidar, remansos escondites que desaparecen?
Tus limosnas dan ramas, trotan hacia atrás, escuchando las sonrisas de pólvora que ambicionan oscuros vacíos.

-¿A qué esperas?
Tus alforjas aúllan hambre de alma.
Tu barba nevada es armonía de comienzos de historia. Mueres de sed, en un mar engarzado de lejanías.

Semillas claras y lejanas son azules calaveras.

Duele la puerta cándida que se cierra por cansancio.

Es lenta, la vieja inocencia. Es un querer callado.  Caminas de prisa. El tiempo no es mujer. Es un arcano mar de susurros olvidados. Es una isla asfixiada de ritmos derrotados y de hondas ojeras, sollozos oscuros y discreta voz. Es distancia desnuda entre el velo del deseo, un ausente brote de quedaría y el principio del camino.

Solloza espejo, estandarte de sorpresas en el horizonte.

Rafael Suárez

Dulzura

F.: Rafael Suárez

Por 80 céntimos!

Si las obligaciones labores me lo permiten, suelo ir a diario a un bar a pie de playa a leer la prensa antes de volver al tajo. Como soy un animal de costumbres -será cosa de la edad y la soltería- siempre hago lo mismo, poco más o menos a la misma hora, los mismos días.

Lo siguiente, ocurrió a principios de éste diciembre: Apenas me había despertado, cuando allá que cojo el coche y en la recta de San Javier aparece, de la nada, un abuelete cruzando la carretera: el frenazo se saldó con mi corazón bombeando a toda leche y una mención al oficio más viejo del mundo. El anciano, levantó la mano sin mucho ánimo y cerró el traspié con una inclinación de cabeza. Fue un gesto, más que de desidia, de simple cortesía, pero hubiese jurado que los ojos le brillaban singularmente. Describir la expresividad de la mirada, me llevaría la totalidad de la tirada, en el generoso supuesto que mi mediocridad me permitiese tal.

Continué mi marcha y volví a la monotonía de mi mundo para las tardes: el batido, las risas con los amigos y vuelta al curro; Semanas después, ya en vacaciones, paseando por mi pueblo natal, se derramó en mi mente aquel hombre. Entonces lo recordé: Hacía meses de aquello, en verano. Me había quedado sin coche y llevé la bici a arreglar a un pequeño taller cercano a mi casa.

Jamás lo había visto, pero me llamó la atención en el acto. Eran las once pasadas y aún no había abierto su portón. Llevaba alpargatas pardas, unos garzos pantalones cortos e impoluta camiseta de tirantes bajo camisa cobaltosa. Tenía un porte gentil y campechano. Lentamente sacó sus enseres, como si aquello tuviera una ceremonia. Un rito instintivo ajeno al mundanal trabajo. A pesar de que había gente, esperé. Me sorprendieron sus buenas maneras y su corrección: A la dueña de una vieja bici de paseo, una mujer de unos cincuenta años –ecuatoriana para más señas- le resolvió la papeleta en menos de un tris y al preguntarle la inmigrante cuanto era, el hizo un gesto con la cabeza, de negación: Nada, buenos días, fue lo único que salió de sus labios. Balbuceé algo sobre mi problema (similar a que la cadena se había roto): Enseguida se puso a trabajar. Se sentó en un viejo escabel y cogió sus útiles. A saber: una bujía cumplía las funciones de destornillador y lezna a la par, un motor hacía lo propio de mártir y así con el resto del instrumental.

En un soplo, los nuevos eslabones de la cadena estaban realizando su trabajo. Revisó de nuevo el engranaje y con la paciencia que sólo los amantes de su trabajo tienen, volvió a repasar las piezas, casi afirmaría que al milímetro. Esta vez, también se detuvo en los frenos y las ruedas.

Sorprendido por el curioso trato que mostró en todo momento, le pregunte que se debía: ¡80 céntimos! Respondió con media sonrisa; Había estado, al menos, diez minutos: 80 céntimos, exclamé con incredulidad. Hice una mínima regla matemática y deduje que lo justo era, al menos, darle tres monedas y me fui. Que mundo lunático éste; Saben ese bar al que voy por simple inclinación y donde empezó todo: cualquier café mínimamente elaborado… cuesta tres veces más. 

Paseando en -mí, tan humilde como hermoso- Cudillero, avizorando el enérgico Cantábrico mientras sus olas intentaban saltar el muelle en un profundo silencio, descubriendo los silencios de las raíces del Universo, cavilé sobre la forma de trabajar de aquel desconocido: ignoro cuales son sus ideas, como encaró la vida y sus disposiciones y para no faltar a la verdad, les diré que ni lo sé, ni me importa, pero saben, me gustaría ganarme el respeto y la amistad de ese desconocido.

 

Rafael Suárez

Este artículo de opinión fue publicado en 2006.

Hoy, puedo decir que Juan, fue mi amigo.

Descanse en Paz. Que la tierra te sea leve.

Prepárate para odiar a los estibadores

Hacía ya tiempo que no teníamos un colectivo de trabajadores al que odiar con todas nuestras fuerzas y poder gritarles "¡privilegiados!". Hemos odiado a funcionarios (¡parásitos!), mineros (¡subvencionados!), profesores (¡vagos, todo el día de vacaciones!), y por supuesto a los más odiables de entre los odiosos: los controladores aéreos, que tan buenos ratitos de odio nos dieron un verano.

 

Pero estamos de enhorabuena, porque en los próximos días nos van a echar un nuevo hueso: los estibadores de puerto. No sabíamos nada de ellos hasta ahora, solo que son los que cargan y descargan barcos; pero resulta que también son unos privilegiados. Ahora el Gobierno prepara un decreto para liberalizar la actividad, y los trabajadores están dispuestos a ir a la huelga para defender sus derechos. Perdón, quiero decir que "los privilegiados están dispuestos a chantajearnos para defender sus privilegios".

 

Para leer más:

F.:http://www.eldiario.es/zonacritica/estibadores_huelga_puertos_6_610748942.html