The Guardian sobre Murdoch

En reportaje publicado por El País, Cómo destapamos el escándalo de Murdoch, Alan Rusbridger, Director de The Guardian, describe, con una trama propia de una historia de detectives, los avatares por lo que que tuvieron que transitar para poder dar a conocer a la opinión pública la historia de abusos y probable corrupción, aparente modus operandi, del conglomerado de medios News Corp. en Inglaterra. Un fragmento:

Empezábamos a sentirnos muy solos en The Guardian. Nick Davies se había enterado de que Brooks había dicho a varios colegas que la historia iba a acabar con "Alan Rusbridger de rodillas, pidiendo clemencia". "Nos habrían destruido", aseguró Davies en un podcast de The Guardian la semana pasada. "Si hubieran podido, habrían cerrado The Guardian".

Sobre el hecho de trabajar con un reportero-redactor como Nick Davies, Rusbridger deja lo siguiente:

De vez en cuando -más o menos cada 18 meses-, el veterano redactor de The Guardian Nick Davies entra en mi despacho, cierra la puerta con una mirada de complicidad hacia la redacción y empieza a contarme alguna cosa que pone los pelos de punta.

Abajo videos de Nick Davies y del propio Rusbridger sobre el mismo tema, cuando el caso se encaminaba al estado actual.

   

El discurso político y los fanáticos

En artículo titulado A right wing monster, que pretende ser un llamado de conciencia al discurso radical que contribuye a la conformación de "ambientes" propicios para las acciones irracionales de fanáticos, Ross Douthat escribe:

How should European conservatives react? Not with the pretense that there’s somehow no connection whatsoever between Breivik’s extremism and the broader continental right. While his crimes should be denounced and disowned, their ideological pedigree has to be admitted. But this doesn’t mean that conservatives need to surrender their convictions.

Douthat, no obstante, al hacer esta introspección pretende asimilar el discurso ecologista de Al Gore al de los predicadores conservadores cercanos a la xenofobia y al racismo, lo que me parece un exceso y alienta dudas respecto a las intenciones auténticas del texto. Lo que salva al artículo son varios de los comentarios que se han vertido como reacción al mismo, que derrochan la inteligencia que en esta ocasión faltó al colaborador del New York Times:

• I for one am not surprised that yet again, some self-righteous person believes it is their God-given patriotic mission to go out and act violently against other people who are threats -- to rid their world of muslims, or americans, or communists or jews or immigrants or whatever. And these people do not act alone, and do not think alone: they are acting out on what others advocate in public rhetoric, and tone, and ideology. Violence is simply the physical acting out of the ideas of hatred. cofresi.
• What's important is not whether an extremist's views are to the right or to the left, but the degree of extremity, or in other words, to what extent the views are allowed to eclipse common standards of decency and reason. The problem with Breivik and Kaczynski is the same: such radical dedication to concepts that they no longer value the humanness of their perceived opponents. If we are to live together in a society, we must put priority on these basic, common values, and compromise on the merely ''political'' issues.  Agia Sophia
• The vision for political priority of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness over traditional political privilege based on birth, class, or ethnicity is not folly, but the most ennobeling form of civic life that has yet been invented. The atrocities perpetrated by Breivik stand as a sobering invitation to both Americans and Europeans to remember that we cannot work for a better life together while we are busy defending our justifications for why people of foreign languages, religions, and customs who move to our communities to live under our laws should be excluded from rational, open, political dialogue and participation according to our ideals for a just society. Sarah Wiler
• But multiculturalism is the way the human race might grow up and mature and learn to love, to share, and appreciate the beauty of other cultures. Multiculturalism enables people to exit from their self protective cocoons of fear, judgement, hostility, and attachment to misguided beliefs in their own culture's superiority. Multiculturalism may not be easy, but it is a path to a more mature human race, and it would be worth the risks and growing pains. Growing pains are the process every human life goes through individually, and the same principal should not be denied for the larger societal growing process. Hank
• I agree that conservatives need not abandon their ideals, but every time any of us calls, or thinks, our neighbors evil (rather than mistaken), because they disagree with us, or because we are not getting our way, we are contributing to the next Norway, the next 9/11, the next Bosnia, the next Rwanda. Bejay

¡Y se siguen acumulando!

El poder de las calificadoras

Andrew Ross Sorkin inicia su reporte en el New York Times del día de hoy con la siguiente frase, que traduce el grado de influencia que, a pesar de las "fallas" cometidas, tienen las agencias calificadoras de riesgos sobre los mercados, comparada con la de las actividades propias de las instituciones políticas:

How rating agencies will view the country’s creditworthiness will end up being a bigger deal to the stock market than the current back and forth in Washington over the debt ceiling.

Sobre la labor que realizan estos "jueces" al calificar el grado de riesgo soberano sigue siendo interesante esta nota  de The Economist.

Amy Winehouse

Tu voz profunda nunca lo fue tanto

como el pozo de tristeza al que nos arroja tu muerte.

Cuando los optimismos en tu rehabilitación

exhaustos, quedaron rotos,

igual rompiste la ilusión de verte brillar

nuevamente, con luz de verdad,

sobre ilusorios astros que, de manera fútil,

pretender recaudar nuestro caudal y fidelidad.

Te vas Amy, ...pero se queda, por siempre,

tu fantasmagórica imagen y los registros de tu música,

para ser conservados, como talismán,

por quienes saben divisar el talento leal

mientras las lágrimas se nos secan, solas,

sobre el rostro.

El liderazgo ausente

En comunicado publicado en The Guardian, un grupo de intelectuales, entre ellos Jürgen Habermas y David Held, llama la atención a lo que perciben como un vacío de liderzgo, así como una grave omisión ante la responsabilidad política, e histórica, de la élite gobernante europea. Se observa en ellos la preocupación, que compartimos, por el estado que guarda el más serio intento hasta ahora de dejar atrás al estado-nación como alternativa de organización política:

The current eurozone crisis has been an important test for the EU; and it has not done well so far. For too long, Europe's leaders have simply responded to unfolding events rather than directly confronting the root causes of the crisis. This ad hoc politics has undermined European solidarity and has created confusion and distrust among Europe's citizens. We have to change this approach and restore political leadership to prevent further damage.

We call on Europe's leaders to take over the political agenda again and develop a new plan for the future of a prosperous and united eurozone. We need a credible new proposal for economic reform and growth that Europe's peoples in the north and south can buy into; not just repeated doses of austerity, which will not restore confidence and economic and social sustainability.

We also need new and effective economic governance mechanisms to address the institutional deficiencies of the eurozone and the closer co-ordination of fiscal policies. Monetary union requires closer political union. We need to acknowledge this and work to make it happen rather than risking the break-up of the eurozone, which would produce unpredictable political and economic costs.

We are concerned about the current state of EU politics and the long-term damage it could cause. Only a confident new politics can bring back lasting trust in the financial stability of the monetary union and the future of the European unification process. It is time to change direction and live up to the challenge.

Los firmantes son: Giuliano Amato (ex primer ministro italiano); Zygmunt Bauman (Leeds University); Ulrich Beck (Munich University); Peter Bofinger (Würzburg University); Stefan Collignon (Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa); Alfred Gusenbauer (Former Chancellor of Austria); Jürgen Habermas (German philosopher); David Held (London School of Economics); Gustav Horn (Macroeconomic Policy Institute, Düsseldorf); Bernard-Henri Lévy (French philosopher); Roger Liddle (House of Lords and Chair of Policy Network); David Marquand (Oxford University); Henning Meyer (London School of Economics); Kalypso Nicolaidis (Oxford University); Jan Pronk (ISS, The Hague, and former Dutch Development Minister); Poul Nyrup Rasmussen (Former Danish Prime Minister and PES President); Maria Joao Rodrigues (UL Brussels and University Institute Lisbon); Martin Schulz (President S&D Group in the European Parliament); Gesine Schwan (Humboldt-Viadrina School of Governance, Berlin).

Deuda pública y seguridad nacional

En su artículo Republicans, Zealots and Our Security, Nicholas D. Kristof acusa severamente a algunos legisladores del partido republicano ("fanáticos" les llegar a decir), toda vez que en su afán de "proteger" a la economía de Estados Unidos de la carga de la deuda están dispuestos a arrojarla al precipicio al colocarla en riesgo de incurrir en incumplimiento de sus compromisos financieros. Kristof omitió hacer referencia en su argumentación a los efectos del "default" sobre la economía internacional. No obstante, para fortalecer el punto recurre a un tema caro al partido del elefante, la seguridad nacional, a la cual trata de dar una connotación más amplia que la tradicional:

Well, wake up to the national security threat. Only it’s not coming from abroad, but from our own domestic extremists. We tend to think of national security narrowly as the risk of a military or terrorist attack. But national security is about protecting our people and our national strength — and the blunt truth is that the biggest threat to America’s national security this summer doesn’t come from China, Iran or any other foreign power. It comes from budget machinations, and budget maniacs, at home.

Más democracia como respuesta