The Dumbest Idea In The World: Maximizing Shareholder Value
Steve Denning, Forbes Magazine, 28-Nov-2011
"There is only one valid definition of a business purpose: to create a customer."
Peter Drucker, The Practice of Management
“Imagine an NFL coach,” writes Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, in his important new book, Fixing the Game, “holding a press conference on Wednesday to announce that he predicts a win by 9 points on Sunday, and that bettors should recognize that the current spread of 6 points is too low. Or picture the team’s quarterback standing up in the postgame press conference and apologizing for having only won by 3 points when the final betting spread was 9 points in his team’s favor. While it’s laughable to imagine coaches or quarterbacks doing so, CEOs are expected to do both of these things.” Imagine also, to extrapolate Martin’s analogy, that the coach and his top assistants were hugely compensated, not on whether they won games, but rather by whether they covered the point spread. If they beat the point spread, they would receive massive bonuses. But if they missed covering the point spread a couple of times, the salary cap of the team could be cut and key players would have to be released, regardless of whether the team won or lost its games. Suppose also that in order to manage the expectations implicit in the point spread, the coach had to spend most of his time talking with analysts and sports writers about the prospects of the coming games and “managing” the point spread, instead of actually coaching the team. It would hardly be a surprise that the most esteemed coach in this world would be a coach who met or beat the point spread in forty-six of forty-eight games—a 96 percent hit rate. Looking at these forty-eight games, one would be tempted to conclude: “Surely those scores are being ‘managed’?”
Suppose moreover that the whole league was rife with scandals of coaches “managing the score”, for instance, by deliberately losing games (“tanking”), players deliberately sacrificing points in order not to exceed the point spread (“point shaving”), “buying” key players on the opposing team or gaining access to their game plan. If this were the situation in the NFL, then everyone would realize that the “real game” of football had become utterly corrupted by the “expectations game” of gambling. Everyone would be calling on the NFL Commissioner to intervene and ban the coaches and players from ever being involved directly or indirectly in any form of gambling on the outcome of games, and get back to playing the game...
In today’s paradoxical world of maximizing shareholder value, which Jack Welch himself has called “the dumbest idea in the world”, the situation is the reverse. CEOs and their top managers have massive incentives to focus most of their attentions on the expectations market, rather than the real job of running the company producing real products and services. The “real market,” Martin explains, is the world in which factories are built, products are designed and produced, real products and services are bought and sold, revenues are earned, expenses are paid, and real dollars of profit show up on the bottom line. That is the world that executives control—at least to some extent. The expectations market is the world in which shares in companies are traded between investors—in other words, the stock market. In this market, investors assess the real market activities of a company today and, on the basis of that assessment, form expectations as to how the company is likely to perform in the future. The consensus view of all investors and potential investors as to expectations of future performance shapes the stock price of the company...
In this world, the best managers are those who meet expectations... In such a world, it is therefore hardly surprising, says Martin, that the corporate world is plagued by continuing scandals... “It isn’t just about the money for shareholders,” writes Martin, “or even the dubious CEO behavior that our theories encourage. It’s much bigger than that. Our theories of shareholder value maximization and stock-based compensation have the ability to destroy our economy and rot out the core of American capitalism. These theories underpin regulatory fixes instituted after each market bubble and crash. Because the fixes begin from the wrong premise, they will be ineffectual; until we change the theories, future crashes are inevitable.”...
How did capitalism get into this mess?
Martin says that the trouble began in 1976 when finance professor Michael Jensen and Dean William Meckling of the Simon School of Business at the University of Rochester published a seemingly innocuous paper in the Journal of Financial Economics entitled “Theory of the Firm: Managerial Behavior, Agency Costs and Ownership Structure.”... Ignoring Peter Drucker’s foundational insight of 1973 that the only valid purpose of a firm is to create a customer, Jensen and Meckling argued that the singular goal of a company should be to maximize the return to shareholders. To achieve that goal, they academics argued, the company should give executives a compelling reason to place shareholder value maximization ahead of their own nest-feathering. Unfortunately, as often happens with bad ideas that make some people a lot of money, the idea caught on and has even become the conventional wisdom...
The proponents of shareholder value maximization and stock-based executive compensation hoped that their theories would focus executives on improving the real performance of their companies and thus increasing shareholder value over time. Yet, precisely the opposite occurred. In the period of shareholder capitalism since 1976, executive compensation has exploded while corporate performance has declined. “Maximizing shareholder value” turned out to be the disease of which it purported to be the cure... Although Jack Welch was seen during his tenure as CEO of GE as the heroic exemplar of maximizing shareholder value, he came to be one of its strongest critics. On March 12, 2009, he gave an interview with Francesco Guerrera of the Financial Times and said, “On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world. Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy… your main constituencies are your employees, your customers and your products. Managers and investors should not set share price increases as their overarching goal. … Short-term profits should be allied with an increase in the long-term value of a company.”
What to do? Given the numbers of the people and the amount of money involved, rescuing capitalism from these catastrophically bad habits won’t be easy. For most organizations, it will take a phase change. It means rethinking the very basis of a corporation and the way business is conducted, as well as the values of an entire society. “We must shift the focus of companies back to the customer and away from shareholder value,” says Martin. “The shift necessitates a fundamental change in our prevailing theory of the firm… The current theory holds that the singular goal of the corporation should be shareholder value maximization. Instead, companies should place customers at the center of the firm and focus on delighting them, while earning an acceptable return for shareholders.” If you take care of customers, writes Martin, shareholders will be drawn along for a very nice ride. The opposite is simply not true: if you try to take care of shareholders, customers don’t benefit and, ironically, shareholders don’t get very far either.
In the real market, there is opportunity to build for the long run rather than to exploit short-term opportunities, so the real market has a chance to produce sustainability. The real market produces meaning and motivation for organizations. The organization can create bonds with customers, imagine great plans, and bring them to fruition. “The expectations market,” says Martin, “generates little meaning. It is all about gaining advantage over a trading partner or putting two trading partners together, then tolling them for the service. This structure breeds a kind of amorality in which information is withheld or manipulated and trading partners are treated as vehicles from which to extract money in the short run, at whatever the cost to the relationship.” By contrast, the real market contributes to a sense of authenticity for individuals. Because individuals can find meaning in their jobs. They are not playing a zero-sum game. They are doing something real and positive for society.
Martin cites three examples of firms that are, even within the legal limits of today’s world, focused on the real world of customers and products more than gaming the stock market. One is Johnson & Johnson [JNJ]. In 1982, when the Tylenol poisonings occurred, “J&J was in a terrible bind. Tylenol represented almost a fifth of the company’s profits, and any decline in its market share would be difficult to reclaim, especially in the face of rampant fear and rumor. Yet, rather than attempt to downplay the crisis—it was after all, likely the work of an individual madman in one tiny part of the country—J&J did just the opposite. Chairman James Burke immediately ordered a halt to all Tylenol production and advertising, distributed warnings to hospitals across the country, and within a week of the first death, announced a nationwide recall of every single bottle of Tylenol on the market. J&J went on to develop tamper-proof packaging for its products; an innovation that would soon become the industry standard.” Burke’s actions were not the heroic act of a single individual, says Martin. The actions flowed from the company credo which is engraved in granite at the entry to company headquarters, which makes crystal clear that customers are first, then employees, and shareholders absolutely last. A second example is Procter & Gamble [PG] which “declares in its purpose statement: ‘We will provide branded products and services of superior quality and value that improve the lives of the world’s consumers, now and for generations to come. As a result, consumers will reward us with leadership sales, profit and value creation, allowing our people, our shareholders and the communities in which we live and work to prosper.’ For P&G, consumers come first and shareholder value naturally follows. Per the statement of purpose, if P&G gets things right for consumers, shareholders will be rewarded as a result.” A third example is Apple. Steve Jobs seems to delight in signaling to shareholders that they don’t matter much and that they certainly won’t interfere with Apple’s pursuit of its original customer-focused purpose: ‘to make a contribution to the world by making tools for the mind that advance humankind.’ Jobs’s feisty, almost combative demeanor at shareholder meetings is legendary. At the meeting in February 2010, one shareholder asked Jobs, “What keeps you up at night?” Jobs quickly responded, ‘Shareholder meetings.’”
Making needed legal changes
Admonishing CEOs (and investors) to ignore the expectations market and refocus on delighting the customer isn’t going to work, says Martin. It’s as likely to be “as effective as admonishing frat boys to stop chasing girls.” For CEOs, there are massive incentives for staying attuned to it and severe punishments for ignoring it. Investors, analysts, and hedge funds continue to reward firms that meet expectations and punish those that do not...
- Executives and their companies should be legally liable for any attempt to manage expectations...
- Eliminating the use of stock-based compensation as an incentive. This doesn’t mean that executives shouldn’t own shares. If an executive wants to buy stock as some sort of bonding with the shareholders or for whatever other reasons, that’s just fine. However, executives should be prevented from selling any stock, for any reason, while serving in that capacity—and indeed for several years after leaving their posts. Stock based compensation is a very recent phenomenon, one associated with lower shareholder returns, bubbles and crashes, and huge corporate scandals...
- We must restore authenticity to the lives of our executives. The expectations market generates inauthenticity in executives, filling their world with encouragements to suspend moral judgment. They receive incentive compensation to which the rational response is to game the system. And since they spend most of their time trading value around rather than building it, they lose perspective on how to contribute to society through their work. Customers become marks to be exploited, employees become disposable cogs, and relationships become only a means to the end of winning a zero-sum game...
- We need to regulate expectations market players, most notably hedge funds. Net, hedge funds create no value for society. They have huge incentives to promote volatility in the expectations market, which is dangerous for us but lucrative for them. So, we need to rein in the power of hedge funds to damage real markets...
Bottom-line: capitalism is at risk
American capitalism hangs in the balance, writes Martin. His book gives a clear explanation as to why this is so and what should be done to save it. A large number of rent-collectors and financial middlemen making vast amounts of money are keeping the current system in place. The fact that what they are doing is destroying the economy will not sway their thinking. As Upton Sinclair noted, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” Ultimately, the change will happen, not just because it’s right, but because it makes more money. Once investors realize what is going on, the economics will drive the change forward. The recognition that maximizing shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world is an obvious but still a radical idea. Like all obvious, radical ideas, in the first instance it will be rejected. Then it will be ridiculed. Finally it will be self-evident and no one will be able to remember why anyone ever thought otherwise.
Buy Martin’s book. Read it. Implement it. The very future of our society “hangs in the balance”: Roger L. Martin: Fixing the Game: Bubbles, Crashes, and What Capitalism Can Learn from the NFL. Harvard Business Review Press 2011.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/11/28/maximizing-shareholder-value-the-dumbest-idea-in-the-world/
Defying Labels
Christopher Hitchens Legacy of Defying Labels
Scott Simon, NPR, 17-Dec-2011
Writers and thinkers are fixed with labels these days so that people can order up opinions like flavors in an ice cream shop: chocolate or strawberry, liberal or conservative.... But you couldn't fix a label on Christopher Hitchens; that's why he was worth reading and hearing.... By the time he died, no label applied to Christopher Hitchens. I think he worked hard to achieve that.
We often seem to treat consistency of thought as a sign of character. Politicians and pundits are applauded for repeating themselves. Observers and activists say, "Aha!" if they discover a distance between what some public figure believed five years or five months ago, and what they say today. Compromise is difficult when changing your beliefs is taken to be a moral cave-in instead of the sign of a curious, lively mind.
But I wonder if always making consistency into a virtue is wise for anyone. Why strive to enjoy a rich life, filled with the deep, transforming experiences of family, travel, learning, love, daring, triumph and loss if you're determined just to cling to the same ideas that you've always had?
I think Christopher Hitchens enjoyed his rumpled, smoking, tippling, blue-eyed lizard caricature. But he was also a prolific and inspired writer, and a restless thinker who challenged his own certitudes. He thought and drank deeply and gabbed with people for hours on end wherever he went and let his thoughts be shaken by life. He was aggressively inconsistent.
"There are days when I miss my old convictions as if they were an amputated limb," Christopher Hitchens wrote recently. "But in general I feel better, and no less radical, and you will feel better too, I guarantee, once you leave hold of the doctrinaire and allow your chainless mind to do its own thinking."
Scott Simon, NPR, 17-Dec-2011
Writers and thinkers are fixed with labels these days so that people can order up opinions like flavors in an ice cream shop: chocolate or strawberry, liberal or conservative.... But you couldn't fix a label on Christopher Hitchens; that's why he was worth reading and hearing.... By the time he died, no label applied to Christopher Hitchens. I think he worked hard to achieve that.
We often seem to treat consistency of thought as a sign of character. Politicians and pundits are applauded for repeating themselves. Observers and activists say, "Aha!" if they discover a distance between what some public figure believed five years or five months ago, and what they say today. Compromise is difficult when changing your beliefs is taken to be a moral cave-in instead of the sign of a curious, lively mind.
But I wonder if always making consistency into a virtue is wise for anyone. Why strive to enjoy a rich life, filled with the deep, transforming experiences of family, travel, learning, love, daring, triumph and loss if you're determined just to cling to the same ideas that you've always had?
I think Christopher Hitchens enjoyed his rumpled, smoking, tippling, blue-eyed lizard caricature. But he was also a prolific and inspired writer, and a restless thinker who challenged his own certitudes. He thought and drank deeply and gabbed with people for hours on end wherever he went and let his thoughts be shaken by life. He was aggressively inconsistent.
"There are days when I miss my old convictions as if they were an amputated limb," Christopher Hitchens wrote recently. "But in general I feel better, and no less radical, and you will feel better too, I guarantee, once you leave hold of the doctrinaire and allow your chainless mind to do its own thinking."
Serenity Prayer
Lord, grant me the Serenity
to Accept the things I cannot change;
the Courage to change the things I can;
and the Wisdom to know the difference.
to Accept the things I cannot change;
the Courage to change the things I can;
and the Wisdom to know the difference.
Queda Prohibido
Queda Prohibido
Pablo Neruda
Queda prohibido llorar sin aprender,
levantarte un día sin saber qué hacer,
tener miedo a tus recuerdos
Queda prohibido no sonreír a los problemas,
no luchar por lo que quieres,
abandonarlo todo por miedo,
no convertir en realidad tus sueños.
Queda prohibido no demostrar tu amor,
hacer que alguien pague tus dudas y mal humor.
Queda prohibido dejar a tus amigos,
no intentar comprender lo que vivieron juntos,
llamarles sólo cuando los necesitas.
Queda prohibido no ser tú ante la gente,
fingir ante las personas que no te importan,
hacerte el gracioso con tal de que te recuerden,
olvidar a toda la gente que te quiere.
Queda prohibido no hacer las cosas por ti mismo,
no creer en Dios y hacer tu destino,
tener miedo a la vida y a sus compromisos,
no vivir cada día como si fuera un último suspiro.
Queda prohibido echar a alguien de menos sin alegrarte,
olvidar sus ojos, su risa, todo,
porque sus caminos han dejado de abrazarse,
olvidar su pasado y pagarlo con su presente.
Queda prohibido no intentar comprender a las personas,
pensar que sus vidas valen más que la tuya,
no saber que cada uno tiene su camino y su dicha.
Queda prohibido no crear tu historia,
dejar de dar las gracias a Dios por tu vida,
no tener un momento para la gente que te necesita,
no comprender que lo que la vida te da,
también te lo quita.
Queda prohibido no buscar tu felicidad,
no vivir tu vida con una actitud positiva,
no pensar en que podemos ser mejores,
no sentir que sin ti este mundo no sería igual.
Pablo Neruda
Queda prohibido llorar sin aprender,
levantarte un día sin saber qué hacer,
tener miedo a tus recuerdos
Queda prohibido no sonreír a los problemas,
no luchar por lo que quieres,
abandonarlo todo por miedo,
no convertir en realidad tus sueños.
Queda prohibido no demostrar tu amor,
hacer que alguien pague tus dudas y mal humor.
Queda prohibido dejar a tus amigos,
no intentar comprender lo que vivieron juntos,
llamarles sólo cuando los necesitas.
Queda prohibido no ser tú ante la gente,
fingir ante las personas que no te importan,
hacerte el gracioso con tal de que te recuerden,
olvidar a toda la gente que te quiere.
Queda prohibido no hacer las cosas por ti mismo,
no creer en Dios y hacer tu destino,
tener miedo a la vida y a sus compromisos,
no vivir cada día como si fuera un último suspiro.
Queda prohibido echar a alguien de menos sin alegrarte,
olvidar sus ojos, su risa, todo,
porque sus caminos han dejado de abrazarse,
olvidar su pasado y pagarlo con su presente.
Queda prohibido no intentar comprender a las personas,
pensar que sus vidas valen más que la tuya,
no saber que cada uno tiene su camino y su dicha.
Queda prohibido no crear tu historia,
dejar de dar las gracias a Dios por tu vida,
no tener un momento para la gente que te necesita,
no comprender que lo que la vida te da,
también te lo quita.
Queda prohibido no buscar tu felicidad,
no vivir tu vida con una actitud positiva,
no pensar en que podemos ser mejores,
no sentir que sin ti este mundo no sería igual.
Un Párrafo sin Errores
Un párrafo sin errores
Camilo Jiménez
El Tiempo, Diciembre 9 de 2011
Un párrafo sin errores. No se trataba de resolver un acertijo, de componer una pieza que pudiera pasar por literaria o de encontrar razones para defender un argumento resbaloso. No. Se trataba de condensar un texto de mayor extensión, es decir, un resumen, un resumen de un párrafo, en el que cada frase dijera algo significativo sobre el texto original, en el que se atendieran los más básicos mandatos del lenguaje escrito -ortografía, sintaxis- y se cuidaran las mínimas normas: claridad, economía, pertinencia. Si tenía ritmo y originalidad, mejor, pero no era una condición. Era solo componer un resumen de un párrafo sin errores vistosos. Y no pudieron.
No voy a generalizar. De 30, tres se acercaron y dos más hicieron su mejor esfuerzo. Veinticinco muchachos en sus 20 años no pudieron, en cuatro meses, escribir el resumen de una obra en un párrafo atildado, entregarlo en el plazo pactado y usar un número de palabras limitado, que varió de un ejercicio a otro. Estudiantes de Comunicación Social entre su tercer y su octavo semestre, que estudiaron doce años en colegios privados. Es probable que entre cinco y diez de ellos hubieran ido de intercambio a otro país, y que otros más conocieran una cultura distinta a la suya en algún viaje de vacaciones con la familia. Son hijos de ejecutivos que están por los 40 y los 50, que tienen buenos trabajos, educación universitaria. Muchos, posgraduados. En casa siempre hubo un computador; puedo apostar a que al menos 20 de esos estudiantes tiene banda ancha, y que la tele de casa pasa encendida más tiempo en canales por cable que en señal abierta. Tomaron más Milo que aguadepanela, comieron más lomo y ensalada que arroz con huevo. Ustedes saben a qué me refiero.
Por supuesto que he considerado mis dubitaciones, mis debilidades. No me he sintonizado con los tiempos que corren. Mis clases no tienen presentaciones de Power Point ni películas; a lo más, vemos una o dos en todo el semestre. Quizá, ya no es una manera válida saber qué es una crónica leyendo crónicas, y debo más bien proyectarles una presentación con frases en mayúsculas que indiquen qué es una crónica y en cuántas partes se divide. Mostrarles la película Capote en lugar de hacer que lean A sangre fría. Quizá, no debí insistir tanto en la brevedad, en la economía, en la puntualidad. No pedirles un escrito de cien palabras, sino de tres cuartillas, mínimo. Que lo entregaran el lunes, o el miércoles.
De esas limitaciones y dubitaciones, quizá, vengan las pocas y tibias preguntas de mis estudiantes este último semestre, sus silencios, su absoluta ausencia de curiosidad y de crítica. De ahí, quizá, vengan sus párrafos aguados, con errores e imprecisiones, inútilmente enrevesados, con frases cojas, desgreñadas. Esos párrafos vacilantes, grises, que me entregaron durante todo el semestre. Pareciera que estoy describiendo a un grupo de zombis. Quizá, eso es lo que son. Los párrafos, quiero decir.
El curso se llama Evaluación de Textos de No Ficción y pertenece a la línea de Producción Editorial y Multimedial de la carrera de Comunicación Social de la Universidad Javeriana. En cuanto a lecturas, siempre propuse piezas ejemplares en los géneros más notorios de la no ficción: crónica, perfil, ensayo, memorias y testimonios. A partir de clásicos nacionales y extranjeros, los estudiantes componían escritos como los que debe elaborar un editor durante su ejercicio profesional. Primero, un resumen: todos los textos de los editores son breves, o deberían serlo -contracubiertas, textos de catálogo, solapas, etcétera-. Una vez que la mayoría hubiera conseguido un resumen pertinente y económico, pasábamos a escritos más complejos: notas de prensa y contracubiertas, para terminar con un informe editorial o una reseña.
En el centro de todo el programa estaban la participación y la escritura de textos breves a partir de otro texto mayor. Insistí siempre en la participación en clase para fomentar actividades que noto algo empañadas en la actualidad: la escucha atenta, la elaboración de razones y argumentos, oír lo que uno mismo dice y lo que dice el otro en una conversación. El otro concepto transversal, la economía lingüística, buscaba mostrarles la importancia de honrar la prosa. Si uno en 100 palabras debe sintetizar un libro de 200 páginas, debe cuidar cada palabra, cada frase, cada giro. En últimas, la palabra escrita les dará de comer a estos estudiantes cuando sean profesionales, no importa si se desempeñan como editores de libros, revistas o páginas web, como periodistas o como profesores e investigadores.
Los estudiantes de este último semestre, y los de dos o tres anteriores, nunca pudieron pasar del resumen. No siempre fue así. Desde que empecé mi cátedra, en el 2002, los estudiantes tenían problemas para lograr una síntesis bien hecha, y en su elaboración nos tomábamos un buen tiempo. Pero se lograba avanzar. Lo que siento de tres o cuatro semestres para acá es más apatía y menos curiosidad. Menos proyectos personales de los estudiantes. Menos autonomía. Menos desconfianza. Menos ironía y espíritu crítico.
Debe ser que no advertí cuándo la atención de mis estudiantes pasó de lo trascendente a lo insignificante. El estado de Facebook. "Esos gorditos de más". El mensaje en el Blackberry. Nunca he sido mamerto ni amargado ni ñoño: a los 20 años, fumaba marihuana como un rastafari y me descerebraba con alcohol cada que podía al lado de mis cuates. Quería ver tetas, e hice cosas de las que ahora no me enorgullezco por tocarlas. Empeñé mucho, mucho tiempo en eso. Pero leía. No sé. En esos tiempos lo importante, creo, era discutir, especular, quedar picados para buscar después el dato inútil. Interesaba eso: buscar. Estoy por pensar que la curiosidad se esfumó de estos veinteañeros alumnos míos desde el momento en que todo lo comenzó a contestar ya, ahora mismo, el doctor Google. Es cándido echarle la culpa a la televisión, a Internet, al Nintendo, a los teléfonos inteligentes. A los colegios, que se afanan en el bilingüismo, sin alcanzar un conocimiento básico de la propia lengua. A los padres que querían que sus hijos estuvieran seguros, bien entretenidos en sus casas. Es cándido culpar al "sistema". Pero algo está pasando en la educación básica, algo está pasando en las casas de quienes ahora están por los 20 años o menos.
Mi sobrino le dice a su madre, mi hermana, que él sí lee mucho, en Internet. Lo que debe preguntarse es cómo se lee en Internet. Lo que he visto es que se lee en medio del parloteo de las ventanas abiertas del chat, mientras se va cargando un video en Youtube, siguiendo vínculos. Lo que han perdido los nativos digitales es la capacidad de concentración, de introspección, de silencio. La capacidad de estar solos. Solo en soledad, en silencio, nacen las preguntas, las ideas. Los nativos digitales no conocen la soledad ni la introspección. Tienen 302 seguidores en Twitter. Tienen 643 amigos en Facebook.
Dejo la cátedra porque no me pude comunicar con los nativos digitales. No entiendo sus nuevos intereses, no encontré la manera de mostrarles lo que considero esencial en este hermoso oficio de la edición. Quizá la lectura sea ahora salir al mar de Internet a pescar fragmentos, citas y vínculos. Y en consecuencia, la escritura esté mudando a esas frases sueltas, grises, sin vida, siempre con errores. Por eso, los nuevos párrafos que se están escribiendo parecen zombis. Ya veremos qué pasa dentro de unos pocos años, cuando estos veinteañeros de ahora tengan 30 y estén trabajando en editoriales, en portales y revistas. Por ahora, para mí, ha llegado el momento de retirarme. Al tiempo que sigo con mis cosas, voy a pensar en este asunto, a mirarlo con detenimiento. Pongo el punto final a esta carta de renuncia con un nudo en la garganta.
Camilo Jiménez
El Tiempo, Diciembre 9 de 2011
Un párrafo sin errores. No se trataba de resolver un acertijo, de componer una pieza que pudiera pasar por literaria o de encontrar razones para defender un argumento resbaloso. No. Se trataba de condensar un texto de mayor extensión, es decir, un resumen, un resumen de un párrafo, en el que cada frase dijera algo significativo sobre el texto original, en el que se atendieran los más básicos mandatos del lenguaje escrito -ortografía, sintaxis- y se cuidaran las mínimas normas: claridad, economía, pertinencia. Si tenía ritmo y originalidad, mejor, pero no era una condición. Era solo componer un resumen de un párrafo sin errores vistosos. Y no pudieron.
No voy a generalizar. De 30, tres se acercaron y dos más hicieron su mejor esfuerzo. Veinticinco muchachos en sus 20 años no pudieron, en cuatro meses, escribir el resumen de una obra en un párrafo atildado, entregarlo en el plazo pactado y usar un número de palabras limitado, que varió de un ejercicio a otro. Estudiantes de Comunicación Social entre su tercer y su octavo semestre, que estudiaron doce años en colegios privados. Es probable que entre cinco y diez de ellos hubieran ido de intercambio a otro país, y que otros más conocieran una cultura distinta a la suya en algún viaje de vacaciones con la familia. Son hijos de ejecutivos que están por los 40 y los 50, que tienen buenos trabajos, educación universitaria. Muchos, posgraduados. En casa siempre hubo un computador; puedo apostar a que al menos 20 de esos estudiantes tiene banda ancha, y que la tele de casa pasa encendida más tiempo en canales por cable que en señal abierta. Tomaron más Milo que aguadepanela, comieron más lomo y ensalada que arroz con huevo. Ustedes saben a qué me refiero.
Por supuesto que he considerado mis dubitaciones, mis debilidades. No me he sintonizado con los tiempos que corren. Mis clases no tienen presentaciones de Power Point ni películas; a lo más, vemos una o dos en todo el semestre. Quizá, ya no es una manera válida saber qué es una crónica leyendo crónicas, y debo más bien proyectarles una presentación con frases en mayúsculas que indiquen qué es una crónica y en cuántas partes se divide. Mostrarles la película Capote en lugar de hacer que lean A sangre fría. Quizá, no debí insistir tanto en la brevedad, en la economía, en la puntualidad. No pedirles un escrito de cien palabras, sino de tres cuartillas, mínimo. Que lo entregaran el lunes, o el miércoles.
De esas limitaciones y dubitaciones, quizá, vengan las pocas y tibias preguntas de mis estudiantes este último semestre, sus silencios, su absoluta ausencia de curiosidad y de crítica. De ahí, quizá, vengan sus párrafos aguados, con errores e imprecisiones, inútilmente enrevesados, con frases cojas, desgreñadas. Esos párrafos vacilantes, grises, que me entregaron durante todo el semestre. Pareciera que estoy describiendo a un grupo de zombis. Quizá, eso es lo que son. Los párrafos, quiero decir.
El curso se llama Evaluación de Textos de No Ficción y pertenece a la línea de Producción Editorial y Multimedial de la carrera de Comunicación Social de la Universidad Javeriana. En cuanto a lecturas, siempre propuse piezas ejemplares en los géneros más notorios de la no ficción: crónica, perfil, ensayo, memorias y testimonios. A partir de clásicos nacionales y extranjeros, los estudiantes componían escritos como los que debe elaborar un editor durante su ejercicio profesional. Primero, un resumen: todos los textos de los editores son breves, o deberían serlo -contracubiertas, textos de catálogo, solapas, etcétera-. Una vez que la mayoría hubiera conseguido un resumen pertinente y económico, pasábamos a escritos más complejos: notas de prensa y contracubiertas, para terminar con un informe editorial o una reseña.
En el centro de todo el programa estaban la participación y la escritura de textos breves a partir de otro texto mayor. Insistí siempre en la participación en clase para fomentar actividades que noto algo empañadas en la actualidad: la escucha atenta, la elaboración de razones y argumentos, oír lo que uno mismo dice y lo que dice el otro en una conversación. El otro concepto transversal, la economía lingüística, buscaba mostrarles la importancia de honrar la prosa. Si uno en 100 palabras debe sintetizar un libro de 200 páginas, debe cuidar cada palabra, cada frase, cada giro. En últimas, la palabra escrita les dará de comer a estos estudiantes cuando sean profesionales, no importa si se desempeñan como editores de libros, revistas o páginas web, como periodistas o como profesores e investigadores.
Los estudiantes de este último semestre, y los de dos o tres anteriores, nunca pudieron pasar del resumen. No siempre fue así. Desde que empecé mi cátedra, en el 2002, los estudiantes tenían problemas para lograr una síntesis bien hecha, y en su elaboración nos tomábamos un buen tiempo. Pero se lograba avanzar. Lo que siento de tres o cuatro semestres para acá es más apatía y menos curiosidad. Menos proyectos personales de los estudiantes. Menos autonomía. Menos desconfianza. Menos ironía y espíritu crítico.
Debe ser que no advertí cuándo la atención de mis estudiantes pasó de lo trascendente a lo insignificante. El estado de Facebook. "Esos gorditos de más". El mensaje en el Blackberry. Nunca he sido mamerto ni amargado ni ñoño: a los 20 años, fumaba marihuana como un rastafari y me descerebraba con alcohol cada que podía al lado de mis cuates. Quería ver tetas, e hice cosas de las que ahora no me enorgullezco por tocarlas. Empeñé mucho, mucho tiempo en eso. Pero leía. No sé. En esos tiempos lo importante, creo, era discutir, especular, quedar picados para buscar después el dato inútil. Interesaba eso: buscar. Estoy por pensar que la curiosidad se esfumó de estos veinteañeros alumnos míos desde el momento en que todo lo comenzó a contestar ya, ahora mismo, el doctor Google. Es cándido echarle la culpa a la televisión, a Internet, al Nintendo, a los teléfonos inteligentes. A los colegios, que se afanan en el bilingüismo, sin alcanzar un conocimiento básico de la propia lengua. A los padres que querían que sus hijos estuvieran seguros, bien entretenidos en sus casas. Es cándido culpar al "sistema". Pero algo está pasando en la educación básica, algo está pasando en las casas de quienes ahora están por los 20 años o menos.
Mi sobrino le dice a su madre, mi hermana, que él sí lee mucho, en Internet. Lo que debe preguntarse es cómo se lee en Internet. Lo que he visto es que se lee en medio del parloteo de las ventanas abiertas del chat, mientras se va cargando un video en Youtube, siguiendo vínculos. Lo que han perdido los nativos digitales es la capacidad de concentración, de introspección, de silencio. La capacidad de estar solos. Solo en soledad, en silencio, nacen las preguntas, las ideas. Los nativos digitales no conocen la soledad ni la introspección. Tienen 302 seguidores en Twitter. Tienen 643 amigos en Facebook.
Dejo la cátedra porque no me pude comunicar con los nativos digitales. No entiendo sus nuevos intereses, no encontré la manera de mostrarles lo que considero esencial en este hermoso oficio de la edición. Quizá la lectura sea ahora salir al mar de Internet a pescar fragmentos, citas y vínculos. Y en consecuencia, la escritura esté mudando a esas frases sueltas, grises, sin vida, siempre con errores. Por eso, los nuevos párrafos que se están escribiendo parecen zombis. Ya veremos qué pasa dentro de unos pocos años, cuando estos veinteañeros de ahora tengan 30 y estén trabajando en editoriales, en portales y revistas. Por ahora, para mí, ha llegado el momento de retirarme. Al tiempo que sigo con mis cosas, voy a pensar en este asunto, a mirarlo con detenimiento. Pongo el punto final a esta carta de renuncia con un nudo en la garganta.
Here's to the Crazy Ones
Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes... the ones who see things differently -- they're not fond of rules... You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things... they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.
Steve Jobs
Namorem um Barrigudinho!
Namorem um Barrigudinho!
Carla Moura
Tenho um conselho valioso para dar aqui: se você acabou de conhecer um rapaz, ficou com ele algumas vezes e já está começando a imaginar o dia do seu casamento e o nome dos seus filhos, pare agora e me escute! Na próxima vez que encontrá-lo, tente disfarçadamente descobrir como é sua barriga. Se for musculosa, torneada, estilo `tanquinho´, fuja! Comece a correr agora e só pare quando estiver a uma distância segura. É fria, vai por mim.
Homem bom de verdade precisa, obrigatoriamente, ostentar uma barriguinha de chopp. Se não, não presta. Estou me referindo àqueles que, por não colocarem a beleza física acima de tudo (como fazem os malditos metrossexuais), acabaram cultivando uma pancinha adorável. Esses, sim, são pra manter por perto. E eu digo por quê. Você nunca verá um homem barrigudinho tirando a camisa dentro de uma boate e dançando como um idiota, em cima do balcão. Se fizer isso, é pra fazer graça pra turma e provavelmente será engraçado, mesmo. Já os `tanquinhos´ farão isso esperando que todas as mulheres do recinto caiam de amores - e eu tenho dó das que caem. Quando sentam em um boteco, numa tarde de calor, adivinha o que os pançudos pedem pra beber? Cerveja! Ou coca-cola, tudo bem também. Mas você nunca os verá pedindo suco. Ou, pior ainda, um copo com gelo, pra beber a mistura patética de vodka com `clight´ que trouxe de casa. E você não será informada sobre quantas calorias tem no seu copo de cerveja, porque eles não sabem e nem se importam com essa informação. E no quesito comida, os homens com barriguinha também não deixam a desejar. Você nunca irá ouvir um ah, amor, `Quarteirão´ é gostoso, mas você podia provar uma `McSalad´ com água de coco. Nunca! Esses homens entendem que, se eles não estão em forma perfeita o tempo todo, você também não precisa estar. Mais uma vez, repito: não é pra chegar ao exagero total e mamar leite condensado na lata todo dia! Mas uma gordurinha aqui e ali não matará um relacionamento. Se ele souber cozinhar, então, bingo! Encontrou a sorte grande, amiga. Ele vai fazer pra você todas as delícias que sabe, e nunca torcerá o nariz quando você repetir o prato. Pelo contrário, ficará feliz.
Outra coisa fundamental: Homens barrigudinhos são confortáveis! Experimente pegar a tábua de passar roupas e deitar em cima dela. Pois essa é a sensação de se deitar no peito de um musculoso besta. Terrível! Gostoso mesmo é se encaixar no ombro de um fofinho, isso que é conforto. E na hora de dormir de conchinha, então? Parece que a barriga se encaixa perfeitamente na nossa lombar, e fica sensacional. Homens com barriga não são metidos, nem prepotentes, nem donos do mundo. Eles sabem conquistar as mulheres por maneiras que excedem a barreira do físico. E eles aprenderam a conversar, a ser bem humorados, a usar o olhar e o sorriso pra conquistar. É por isso que eu digo que homens com barriguinha sabem fazer uma mulher feliz.
Carla Moura
Tenho um conselho valioso para dar aqui: se você acabou de conhecer um rapaz, ficou com ele algumas vezes e já está começando a imaginar o dia do seu casamento e o nome dos seus filhos, pare agora e me escute! Na próxima vez que encontrá-lo, tente disfarçadamente descobrir como é sua barriga. Se for musculosa, torneada, estilo `tanquinho´, fuja! Comece a correr agora e só pare quando estiver a uma distância segura. É fria, vai por mim.
Homem bom de verdade precisa, obrigatoriamente, ostentar uma barriguinha de chopp. Se não, não presta. Estou me referindo àqueles que, por não colocarem a beleza física acima de tudo (como fazem os malditos metrossexuais), acabaram cultivando uma pancinha adorável. Esses, sim, são pra manter por perto. E eu digo por quê. Você nunca verá um homem barrigudinho tirando a camisa dentro de uma boate e dançando como um idiota, em cima do balcão. Se fizer isso, é pra fazer graça pra turma e provavelmente será engraçado, mesmo. Já os `tanquinhos´ farão isso esperando que todas as mulheres do recinto caiam de amores - e eu tenho dó das que caem. Quando sentam em um boteco, numa tarde de calor, adivinha o que os pançudos pedem pra beber? Cerveja! Ou coca-cola, tudo bem também. Mas você nunca os verá pedindo suco. Ou, pior ainda, um copo com gelo, pra beber a mistura patética de vodka com `clight´ que trouxe de casa. E você não será informada sobre quantas calorias tem no seu copo de cerveja, porque eles não sabem e nem se importam com essa informação. E no quesito comida, os homens com barriguinha também não deixam a desejar. Você nunca irá ouvir um ah, amor, `Quarteirão´ é gostoso, mas você podia provar uma `McSalad´ com água de coco. Nunca! Esses homens entendem que, se eles não estão em forma perfeita o tempo todo, você também não precisa estar. Mais uma vez, repito: não é pra chegar ao exagero total e mamar leite condensado na lata todo dia! Mas uma gordurinha aqui e ali não matará um relacionamento. Se ele souber cozinhar, então, bingo! Encontrou a sorte grande, amiga. Ele vai fazer pra você todas as delícias que sabe, e nunca torcerá o nariz quando você repetir o prato. Pelo contrário, ficará feliz.
Outra coisa fundamental: Homens barrigudinhos são confortáveis! Experimente pegar a tábua de passar roupas e deitar em cima dela. Pois essa é a sensação de se deitar no peito de um musculoso besta. Terrível! Gostoso mesmo é se encaixar no ombro de um fofinho, isso que é conforto. E na hora de dormir de conchinha, então? Parece que a barriga se encaixa perfeitamente na nossa lombar, e fica sensacional. Homens com barriga não são metidos, nem prepotentes, nem donos do mundo. Eles sabem conquistar as mulheres por maneiras que excedem a barreira do físico. E eles aprenderam a conversar, a ser bem humorados, a usar o olhar e o sorriso pra conquistar. É por isso que eu digo que homens com barriguinha sabem fazer uma mulher feliz.
Waka Waka
Waka Waka
Shakira
You're a good soldier
Choosing your battles
Pick yourself up
And dust yourself off
And back in the saddle
You're on the frontline
Everyone's watching
You know it's serious
We're getting closer
This isnt over
The pressure’s on You feel it
Bur you’ve got it all Believe it
When you fall get up oh oh
And if you fall get up eh eh
Tsamina mina zangalewa
Cause this is Africa
Tsamina mina eh eh
Waka Waka eh eh
Tsamina mina zangalewa
This time for Africa
Listen to your god
This is our motto
Your time to shine
Don't wait in line
Y vamos por Todo
People are raising
Their expectations
Go on and feed them
This is your moment
No hesitations
Today's your day I feel it
You paved the way Believe it
If you get down Get up, Oh oh
When you get down Get up eh eh
Tsamina mina zangalewa
anawa a a
This time for Africa
We’re all Africa
Shakira
You're a good soldier
Choosing your battles
Pick yourself up
And dust yourself off
And back in the saddle
You're on the frontline
Everyone's watching
You know it's serious
We're getting closer
This isnt over
The pressure’s on You feel it
Bur you’ve got it all Believe it
When you fall get up oh oh
And if you fall get up eh eh
Tsamina mina zangalewa
Cause this is Africa
Tsamina mina eh eh
Waka Waka eh eh
Tsamina mina zangalewa
This time for Africa
Listen to your god
This is our motto
Your time to shine
Don't wait in line
Y vamos por Todo
People are raising
Their expectations
Go on and feed them
This is your moment
No hesitations
Today's your day I feel it
You paved the way Believe it
If you get down Get up, Oh oh
When you get down Get up eh eh
Tsamina mina zangalewa
anawa a a
This time for Africa
We’re all Africa
Elegância
A elegância do comportamento
Henri Tolouse-Lautrec
Existe uma coisa difícil de ser ensinada e que, talvez por isso, esteja cada vez mais rara: a elegância do comportamento. É um dom que vai muito além do uso correto dos talheres e que abrange bem mais do que dizer um simples obrigado diante de uma gentileza. É a elegância que nos acompanha da primeira hora da manhã até a hora de dormir e que se manifesta nas situações mais prosaicas, quando não há festa alguma nem fotógrafos por perto.
É uma elegância desobrigada. É possível detectá-la nas pessoas que elogiam mais do que criticam. Nas pessoas que escutam mais do que falam. E quando falam, passam longe da fofoca, das pequenas maldades ampliadas no boca a boca. É possível detectá-la nas pessoas que não usam um tom superior de voz ao se dirigir a frentistas. Nas pessoas que evitam assuntos constrangedores porque não sentem prazer em humilhar os outros. É possível detectá-la em pessoas pontuais.
Elegante é quem demonstra interesse por assuntos que desconhece, é quem presenteia fora das datas festivas, é quem cumpre o que promete e, ao receber uma ligação, não recomenda à secretária que pergunte antes quem está falando e só depois manda dizer se está ou não está.
Oferecer flores é sempre elegante. É elegante não ficar espaçoso demais. É elegante, você fazer algo por alguém , e este alguém jamais saber o que você teve que se arrebentar para o fazer... É elegante não mudar seu estilo apenas para se adaptar ao outro. É muito elegante não falar de dinheiro em bate-papos informais. É elegante retribuir carinho e solidariedade. É elegante o silêncio, diante de uma rejeição.
Sobrenome, jóias e nariz empinado não substituem a elegância do Gesto. Não há livro que ensine alguém a ter uma visão generosa do mundo, a estar nele de uma forma não arrogante. É elegante a gentileza, atitudes gentis falam mais que mil imagens. Abrir a porta para alguém é muito elegante. Dar o lugar para alguém sentar é muito elegante. Sorrir, sempre é muito elegante e faz um bem danado para a alma. Oferecer ajuda é muito elegante. Olhar nos olhos, ao conversar é essencialmente elegante.
Pode-se tentar capturar esta delicadeza natural pela observação, mas tentar imitá-la é improdutivo. A saída é desenvolver em si mesmo a arte de conviver, que independe de status social: é só pedir licencinha para o nosso lado brucutu, que acha que "com amigo não tem que ter estas frescuras". Se os amigos não merecem uma certa cordialidade, os desafetos é que não irão desfrutá-la. Educação enferruja por falta de uso.
E, detalhe: não é frescura.
Henri Tolouse-Lautrec
Existe uma coisa difícil de ser ensinada e que, talvez por isso, esteja cada vez mais rara: a elegância do comportamento. É um dom que vai muito além do uso correto dos talheres e que abrange bem mais do que dizer um simples obrigado diante de uma gentileza. É a elegância que nos acompanha da primeira hora da manhã até a hora de dormir e que se manifesta nas situações mais prosaicas, quando não há festa alguma nem fotógrafos por perto.
É uma elegância desobrigada. É possível detectá-la nas pessoas que elogiam mais do que criticam. Nas pessoas que escutam mais do que falam. E quando falam, passam longe da fofoca, das pequenas maldades ampliadas no boca a boca. É possível detectá-la nas pessoas que não usam um tom superior de voz ao se dirigir a frentistas. Nas pessoas que evitam assuntos constrangedores porque não sentem prazer em humilhar os outros. É possível detectá-la em pessoas pontuais.
Elegante é quem demonstra interesse por assuntos que desconhece, é quem presenteia fora das datas festivas, é quem cumpre o que promete e, ao receber uma ligação, não recomenda à secretária que pergunte antes quem está falando e só depois manda dizer se está ou não está.
Oferecer flores é sempre elegante. É elegante não ficar espaçoso demais. É elegante, você fazer algo por alguém , e este alguém jamais saber o que você teve que se arrebentar para o fazer... É elegante não mudar seu estilo apenas para se adaptar ao outro. É muito elegante não falar de dinheiro em bate-papos informais. É elegante retribuir carinho e solidariedade. É elegante o silêncio, diante de uma rejeição.
Sobrenome, jóias e nariz empinado não substituem a elegância do Gesto. Não há livro que ensine alguém a ter uma visão generosa do mundo, a estar nele de uma forma não arrogante. É elegante a gentileza, atitudes gentis falam mais que mil imagens. Abrir a porta para alguém é muito elegante. Dar o lugar para alguém sentar é muito elegante. Sorrir, sempre é muito elegante e faz um bem danado para a alma. Oferecer ajuda é muito elegante. Olhar nos olhos, ao conversar é essencialmente elegante.
Pode-se tentar capturar esta delicadeza natural pela observação, mas tentar imitá-la é improdutivo. A saída é desenvolver em si mesmo a arte de conviver, que independe de status social: é só pedir licencinha para o nosso lado brucutu, que acha que "com amigo não tem que ter estas frescuras". Se os amigos não merecem uma certa cordialidade, os desafetos é que não irão desfrutá-la. Educação enferruja por falta de uso.
E, detalhe: não é frescura.
Le Temps Qui Reste
Le temps qui reste
by Serge Reggiani
Combien de temps...
Combien de temps encore
Des années, des jours, des heures, combien?
Quand j'y pense, mon coeur bat si fort...
Mon pays c'est la vie.
Combien de temps...Combien?
Je l'aime tant, le temps qui reste...
Je veux rire, courir, pleurer, parler,
Et voir, et croire
Et boire, danser,
Crier, manger, nager, bondir, désobéir
J'ai pas fini, j'ai pas fini
Voler, chanter, parti, repartir
Souffrir, aimer
Je l'aime tant le temps qui reste
Je ne sais plus où je suis né, ni quand
Je sais qu'il n'y a pas longtemps...
Et que mon pays c'est la vie
Je sais aussi que mon père disait:
Le temps c'est comme ton pain...
Gardes-en pour demain...
J'ai encore du pain
Encore du temps, mais combien?
Je veux jouer encore...
Je veux rire des montagnes de rires,
Je veux pleurer des torrents de larmes,
Je veux boire des bateaux entiers
De vin de Bordeaux et d'Italie
Et danser, crier, voler, nager dans tous les océans
J'ai pas fini, j'ai pas fini
Je veux chanter
Je veux parler jusqu'à la fin de ma voix...
Je l'aime tant le temps qui reste...
Combien de temps...
Combien de temps encore?
Des années, des jours, des heures, combien?
Je veux des histoires, des voyages...
J'ai tant de gens à voir, tant d'images..
Des enfants, des femmes, des grands hommes,
Des petits hommes, des marrants, des tristes,
Des très intelligents et des cons,
C'est drôle, les cons ça repose,
C'est comme le feuillage au milieu des roses...
Combien de temps...Combien de temps encore?
Des années, des jours, des heures, combien?
Je m'en fous mon amour...
Quand l'orchestre s'arrêtera, je danserai encore...
Quand les avions ne voleront plus, je volerai tout seul...
Quand le temps s'arrêtera..
Je t'aimerai encore
Je ne sais pas où, je ne sais pas comment...
Mais je t'aimerai encore...
D'accord ?
by Serge Reggiani
Combien de temps...
Combien de temps encore
Des années, des jours, des heures, combien?
Quand j'y pense, mon coeur bat si fort...
Mon pays c'est la vie.
Combien de temps...Combien?
Je l'aime tant, le temps qui reste...
Je veux rire, courir, pleurer, parler,
Et voir, et croire
Et boire, danser,
Crier, manger, nager, bondir, désobéir
J'ai pas fini, j'ai pas fini
Voler, chanter, parti, repartir
Souffrir, aimer
Je l'aime tant le temps qui reste
Je ne sais plus où je suis né, ni quand
Je sais qu'il n'y a pas longtemps...
Et que mon pays c'est la vie
Je sais aussi que mon père disait:
Le temps c'est comme ton pain...
Gardes-en pour demain...
J'ai encore du pain
Encore du temps, mais combien?
Je veux jouer encore...
Je veux rire des montagnes de rires,
Je veux pleurer des torrents de larmes,
Je veux boire des bateaux entiers
De vin de Bordeaux et d'Italie
Et danser, crier, voler, nager dans tous les océans
J'ai pas fini, j'ai pas fini
Je veux chanter
Je veux parler jusqu'à la fin de ma voix...
Je l'aime tant le temps qui reste...
Combien de temps...
Combien de temps encore?
Des années, des jours, des heures, combien?
Je veux des histoires, des voyages...
J'ai tant de gens à voir, tant d'images..
Des enfants, des femmes, des grands hommes,
Des petits hommes, des marrants, des tristes,
Des très intelligents et des cons,
C'est drôle, les cons ça repose,
C'est comme le feuillage au milieu des roses...
Combien de temps...Combien de temps encore?
Des années, des jours, des heures, combien?
Je m'en fous mon amour...
Quand l'orchestre s'arrêtera, je danserai encore...
Quand les avions ne voleront plus, je volerai tout seul...
Quand le temps s'arrêtera..
Je t'aimerai encore
Je ne sais pas où, je ne sais pas comment...
Mais je t'aimerai encore...
D'accord ?
Income Concentration
Income Concentration
The Economist
Ocotber 7, 2009
AMERICA is the wealthiest country in the world and its rich keep earning more. In 2007, the latest year for which data are available, the top 1% increased their share of the country's income to 23.5%, according to analysis of tax returns by a pair of economists, Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty. The concentration of income earned by this top percentile now stands at its highest since 1928. Two-thirds of the country's total gains in the five years to 2007 accrued to the top 1%, whereas the bottom 90th percentile saw only 12% of the extra income.
Buses May Aid in Climate Battle
Buses May Aid Climate Battle in Poor Cites
Scott Dalton
The New York Times, July 9, 2009
Bogotá, Colombia — Like most thoroughfares in booming cities of the developing world, Bogotá’s Seventh Avenue resembles a noisy, exhaust-coated parking lot — a gluey tangle of cars and the rickety, smoke-puffing private minibuses that have long provided transportation for the masses. But a few blocks away, sleek red vehicles full of commuters speed down the four center lanes of Avenida de las Américas. The long, segmented, low-emission buses are part of a novel public transportation system called bus rapid transit, or B.R.T. It is more like an above-ground subway than a collection of bus routes, with seven intersecting lines, enclosed stations that are entered through turnstiles with the swipe of a fare card and coaches that feel like trams inside. Versions of these systems are being planned or built in dozens of developing cities around the world — Mexico City, Cape Town, Jakarta, Indonesia, and Ahmedabad, India, to name a few — providing public transportation that improves traffic flow and reduces smog at a fraction of the cost of building a subway.
But the rapid transit systems have another benefit: they may hold a key to combating climate change. Emissions from cars, trucks, buses and other vehicles in the booming cities of Asia, Africa and Latin America account for a rapidly growing component of heat-trapping gases linked to global warming. While emissions from industry are decreasing, those related to transportation are expected to rise more than 50 percent by 2030 in industrialized and poorer nations. And 80 percent of that growth will be in the developing world, according to data presented in May at an international conference in Bellagio, Italy, sponsored by the Asian Development Bank and the Clean Air Institute. To be effective, a new international climate treaty that will be negotiated in Copenhagen in December must include “a policy response to the CO2 emissions from transport in the developing world,” the Bellagio conference statement concluded.
Bus rapid transit systems like Bogotá’s, called TransMilenio, might hold an answer. Now used for an average of 1.6 million trips each day, TransMilenio has allowed the city to remove 7,000 small private buses from its roads, reducing the use of bus fuel — and associated emissions — by more than 59 percent since it opened its first line in 2001, according to city officials. In recognition of this feat, TransMilenio last year became the only large transportation project approved by the United Nations to generate and sell carbon credits. Developed countries that exceed their emissions limits under the Kyoto Protocol, or that simply want to burnish a “green” image, can buy credits from TransMilenio to balance their emissions budgets, bringing Bogotá an estimated $100 million to $300 million so far, analysts say. Indeed, the city has provided a model of how international programs to combat climate change can help expanding cities — the number of cars in China alone could increase sevenfold by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency — pay for transit systems that would otherwise be unaffordable.
“Bogotá was huge and messy and poor, so people said, ‘If Bogotá can do it, why can’t we?’ ” said Enrique Peñalosa, an economist and a former mayor of the city who took TransMilenio from a concept to its initial opening in 2001 and is now advising other cities. In 2008, Mexico City opened a second successful bus rapid transit line that has already reduced carbon dioxide emissions there, according to Lee Schipper, a transportation expert at Stanford University, and the city has applied to sell carbon credits as well.
But bus rapid transit systems are not the answer for every city. In the United States, where cost is less constraining, some cities, like Los Angeles, have built B.R.T.’s, but they tend to lack many of the components of comprehensive systems like TransMilenio, like fully enclosed stations, and they serve as an addition to existing rail networks. In some sprawling cities in India, where a tradition of scooter use may make bus rapid transit more difficult to create, researchers are working to develop a new model of tuk-tuk, or motorized cab, that is cheap and will run on alternative fuels or with a highly efficient engine. “There are three million auto rickshaws in India alone, and the smoke is astonishing, so this could have a huge impact,” said Stef van Dongen, director of Enviu, an environmental network group in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, that is sponsoring the research. Bus rapid transit systems have not always worked well in cities that have tried them, either. In New Delhi, for example, the experiment foundered in part because it proved difficult to protect bus lanes from traffic. And a system that does not succeed in drawing passengers out of their cars just adds buses to existing vehicles on the roads, making traffic and emissions worse.
But with its wide streets, dense population and a tradition of bus travel, Bogotá had the ingredients for success. To create TransMilenio, the city commandeered two to four traffic lanes in the middle of major boulevards, isolating them with low walls to create the system’s so-called tracks. On the center islands that divide many of Bogotá’s two-way streets, the city built dozens of distinctive metal-and-glass stations. Just as in a subway, the multiple doors on the buses slide open level with the platform, providing easy access for strollers and older riders. Hundreds of passengers can wait on the platforms, avoiding the delays that occur when passengers each pay as they board. Mr. Peñalosa noted that the negative stereotypes about bus travel required some clever rebranding. Now, he said, upscale condominiums advertise that they are near TransMilenio lines. “People don’t say, ‘I’m taking the bus,’ they say, ‘I’m taking TransMilenio,’ ” he added, as he rode at rush hour recently, chatting with other passengers. Jorge Engarrita, 45, a leather worker who was riding TransMilenio to work, said the system had “changed his life,” reducing his commuting time to 40 minutes with one transfer from two or three hours on several buses. Free shuttle buses carry residents from outlying districts to TransMilenio terminals.
To the dismay of car owners, Bogotá removed one-third of its street parking to make room for TransMilenio and imposed alternate-day driving restrictions determined by license plate numbers, forcing car owners onto the system. With an extensive route system, TransMilenio moves more passengers per mile every hour than almost any of the world’s subways. Most poorer cities that have built subways, like Manila and Lagos, Nigeria, can afford to build only a few limited lines because of the expense. Subways cost more than 30 times as much per mile to build than a B.R.T. system, and three times as much to maintain. And bus rapid transit systems can be built more quickly. “Almost all rapidly developing cities understand that they need a metro or something like it, and you can get a B.R.T. by 2010 or a metro by 2060,” said Walter Hook, executive director of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, in New York.
Although TransMilenio buses run on diesel, their efficient engines mean they emit less than half the nitrous oxide, particulate matter and carbon dioxide of the older minibuses. Cleaner fuels were either too expensive or did not work at Bogotá’s altitude, 9,000 feet above sea level. TransMilenio is building more lines and underpasses to allow the buses to bypass clogged intersections, but for the moment the real challenge is overcrowding. Juan Gómez, 21, a businessman, takes TransMilenio only on days when he cannot drive, and he griped that it was often hard to find a seat. “It’s O.K., but I prefer the car,” he said.
Scott Dalton
The New York Times, July 9, 2009
Bogotá, Colombia — Like most thoroughfares in booming cities of the developing world, Bogotá’s Seventh Avenue resembles a noisy, exhaust-coated parking lot — a gluey tangle of cars and the rickety, smoke-puffing private minibuses that have long provided transportation for the masses. But a few blocks away, sleek red vehicles full of commuters speed down the four center lanes of Avenida de las Américas. The long, segmented, low-emission buses are part of a novel public transportation system called bus rapid transit, or B.R.T. It is more like an above-ground subway than a collection of bus routes, with seven intersecting lines, enclosed stations that are entered through turnstiles with the swipe of a fare card and coaches that feel like trams inside. Versions of these systems are being planned or built in dozens of developing cities around the world — Mexico City, Cape Town, Jakarta, Indonesia, and Ahmedabad, India, to name a few — providing public transportation that improves traffic flow and reduces smog at a fraction of the cost of building a subway.
But the rapid transit systems have another benefit: they may hold a key to combating climate change. Emissions from cars, trucks, buses and other vehicles in the booming cities of Asia, Africa and Latin America account for a rapidly growing component of heat-trapping gases linked to global warming. While emissions from industry are decreasing, those related to transportation are expected to rise more than 50 percent by 2030 in industrialized and poorer nations. And 80 percent of that growth will be in the developing world, according to data presented in May at an international conference in Bellagio, Italy, sponsored by the Asian Development Bank and the Clean Air Institute. To be effective, a new international climate treaty that will be negotiated in Copenhagen in December must include “a policy response to the CO2 emissions from transport in the developing world,” the Bellagio conference statement concluded.
Bus rapid transit systems like Bogotá’s, called TransMilenio, might hold an answer. Now used for an average of 1.6 million trips each day, TransMilenio has allowed the city to remove 7,000 small private buses from its roads, reducing the use of bus fuel — and associated emissions — by more than 59 percent since it opened its first line in 2001, according to city officials. In recognition of this feat, TransMilenio last year became the only large transportation project approved by the United Nations to generate and sell carbon credits. Developed countries that exceed their emissions limits under the Kyoto Protocol, or that simply want to burnish a “green” image, can buy credits from TransMilenio to balance their emissions budgets, bringing Bogotá an estimated $100 million to $300 million so far, analysts say. Indeed, the city has provided a model of how international programs to combat climate change can help expanding cities — the number of cars in China alone could increase sevenfold by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency — pay for transit systems that would otherwise be unaffordable.
“Bogotá was huge and messy and poor, so people said, ‘If Bogotá can do it, why can’t we?’ ” said Enrique Peñalosa, an economist and a former mayor of the city who took TransMilenio from a concept to its initial opening in 2001 and is now advising other cities. In 2008, Mexico City opened a second successful bus rapid transit line that has already reduced carbon dioxide emissions there, according to Lee Schipper, a transportation expert at Stanford University, and the city has applied to sell carbon credits as well.
But bus rapid transit systems are not the answer for every city. In the United States, where cost is less constraining, some cities, like Los Angeles, have built B.R.T.’s, but they tend to lack many of the components of comprehensive systems like TransMilenio, like fully enclosed stations, and they serve as an addition to existing rail networks. In some sprawling cities in India, where a tradition of scooter use may make bus rapid transit more difficult to create, researchers are working to develop a new model of tuk-tuk, or motorized cab, that is cheap and will run on alternative fuels or with a highly efficient engine. “There are three million auto rickshaws in India alone, and the smoke is astonishing, so this could have a huge impact,” said Stef van Dongen, director of Enviu, an environmental network group in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, that is sponsoring the research. Bus rapid transit systems have not always worked well in cities that have tried them, either. In New Delhi, for example, the experiment foundered in part because it proved difficult to protect bus lanes from traffic. And a system that does not succeed in drawing passengers out of their cars just adds buses to existing vehicles on the roads, making traffic and emissions worse.
But with its wide streets, dense population and a tradition of bus travel, Bogotá had the ingredients for success. To create TransMilenio, the city commandeered two to four traffic lanes in the middle of major boulevards, isolating them with low walls to create the system’s so-called tracks. On the center islands that divide many of Bogotá’s two-way streets, the city built dozens of distinctive metal-and-glass stations. Just as in a subway, the multiple doors on the buses slide open level with the platform, providing easy access for strollers and older riders. Hundreds of passengers can wait on the platforms, avoiding the delays that occur when passengers each pay as they board. Mr. Peñalosa noted that the negative stereotypes about bus travel required some clever rebranding. Now, he said, upscale condominiums advertise that they are near TransMilenio lines. “People don’t say, ‘I’m taking the bus,’ they say, ‘I’m taking TransMilenio,’ ” he added, as he rode at rush hour recently, chatting with other passengers. Jorge Engarrita, 45, a leather worker who was riding TransMilenio to work, said the system had “changed his life,” reducing his commuting time to 40 minutes with one transfer from two or three hours on several buses. Free shuttle buses carry residents from outlying districts to TransMilenio terminals.
To the dismay of car owners, Bogotá removed one-third of its street parking to make room for TransMilenio and imposed alternate-day driving restrictions determined by license plate numbers, forcing car owners onto the system. With an extensive route system, TransMilenio moves more passengers per mile every hour than almost any of the world’s subways. Most poorer cities that have built subways, like Manila and Lagos, Nigeria, can afford to build only a few limited lines because of the expense. Subways cost more than 30 times as much per mile to build than a B.R.T. system, and three times as much to maintain. And bus rapid transit systems can be built more quickly. “Almost all rapidly developing cities understand that they need a metro or something like it, and you can get a B.R.T. by 2010 or a metro by 2060,” said Walter Hook, executive director of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, in New York.
Although TransMilenio buses run on diesel, their efficient engines mean they emit less than half the nitrous oxide, particulate matter and carbon dioxide of the older minibuses. Cleaner fuels were either too expensive or did not work at Bogotá’s altitude, 9,000 feet above sea level. TransMilenio is building more lines and underpasses to allow the buses to bypass clogged intersections, but for the moment the real challenge is overcrowding. Juan Gómez, 21, a businessman, takes TransMilenio only on days when he cannot drive, and he griped that it was often hard to find a seat. “It’s O.K., but I prefer the car,” he said.
Desde que o Samba é o Samba
A tristeza é senhora
Desde que o samba é samba é assim
A lágrima clara sobre a pele escura
A noite a chuva que cai lá fora
Solidão apavora
Tudo demorando em ser tão ruim
Mas alguma coisa acontece no sempre agora em mim
Cantando eu mando a tristeza embora
O samba ainda vai nascer
O samba ainda não chegou
O samba não vai morrer
Veja, o dia ainda não raiou
O samba é pai do prazer
O samba é filho da dor
O grande poder transformador
Desde que o samba é samba é assim
A lágrima clara sobre a pele escura
A noite a chuva que cai lá fora
Solidão apavora
Tudo demorando em ser tão ruim
Mas alguma coisa acontece no sempre agora em mim
Cantando eu mando a tristeza embora
O samba ainda vai nascer
O samba ainda não chegou
O samba não vai morrer
Veja, o dia ainda não raiou
O samba é pai do prazer
O samba é filho da dor
O grande poder transformador
A Salute to Captains of Integrity
A Salute to Captains of Integrity
Scott Simon
NPR, 18-Apr-09
Over the past few weeks, there have been captains in the news to remind us of responsibility, which is a form of conscience. Capt. Richard Phillips has been acclaimed for risking his own safety for that of his crewmates aboard the cargo ship Maersk Alabama. But another ship's captain, Cmdr. Frank Castellano of the U.S.S. Bainbridge, took the responsibility to order Navy Seals to open fire on the pirates when he thought, after four days, there might be a moment of opportunity to free Capt. Phillips. If something had gone only slightly wrong — if a single bullet, fired by a man on the deck of a boat in a bobbing sea, had missed by a fraction — Phillips might have been killed, and Castellano would have been second-guessed by every talking head from Fox News to Pacifica Radio.
Capt. Chesley Sullenberger has reminded admirers how many things had to go utterly right for him to make his famous, almost splashless landing of his disabled US Airways jet onto the Hudson River in January. His decision to put down in the water, rather than risk crashing into midtown Manhattan, seems so wise now. But had wind whipped up the water or tipped a wing, people who don't know how to make a paper airplane would have second-guessed the decision Capt. Sullenberger made in a split second.
This week, former Chicago firefighter Richard Scheidt died at the age of 81. Scheidt became a photographic icon when he was called to a fire at the Our Lady of Angels school in December 1958. Ninety-two children and three nuns were killed in the smoke and flames. The photograph that raced around the world showed Scheidt, his face grimy and his shoulders slumped, carrying the body of a 10-year-old boy in his arms. He became a captain. And this week, Dep. Commissioner Bob Hoff recalled how, in scores of fires that were never in the news, Capt. Scheidt would hold back his men but go first into a burning building. Hoff told the Chicago Tribune, "He never asked anyone to do something he wouldn't do."
I think many Americans have been uplifted to see real-life captains who, unlike some captains of finance and industry, have the character to make hard decisions, share risks, think of others and live by the consequences. It's been reassuring to see such men and women and know that in these times, in scores of places, "The captain is on the bridge."
Scott Simon
NPR, 18-Apr-09
Over the past few weeks, there have been captains in the news to remind us of responsibility, which is a form of conscience. Capt. Richard Phillips has been acclaimed for risking his own safety for that of his crewmates aboard the cargo ship Maersk Alabama. But another ship's captain, Cmdr. Frank Castellano of the U.S.S. Bainbridge, took the responsibility to order Navy Seals to open fire on the pirates when he thought, after four days, there might be a moment of opportunity to free Capt. Phillips. If something had gone only slightly wrong — if a single bullet, fired by a man on the deck of a boat in a bobbing sea, had missed by a fraction — Phillips might have been killed, and Castellano would have been second-guessed by every talking head from Fox News to Pacifica Radio.
Capt. Chesley Sullenberger has reminded admirers how many things had to go utterly right for him to make his famous, almost splashless landing of his disabled US Airways jet onto the Hudson River in January. His decision to put down in the water, rather than risk crashing into midtown Manhattan, seems so wise now. But had wind whipped up the water or tipped a wing, people who don't know how to make a paper airplane would have second-guessed the decision Capt. Sullenberger made in a split second.
This week, former Chicago firefighter Richard Scheidt died at the age of 81. Scheidt became a photographic icon when he was called to a fire at the Our Lady of Angels school in December 1958. Ninety-two children and three nuns were killed in the smoke and flames. The photograph that raced around the world showed Scheidt, his face grimy and his shoulders slumped, carrying the body of a 10-year-old boy in his arms. He became a captain. And this week, Dep. Commissioner Bob Hoff recalled how, in scores of fires that were never in the news, Capt. Scheidt would hold back his men but go first into a burning building. Hoff told the Chicago Tribune, "He never asked anyone to do something he wouldn't do."
I think many Americans have been uplifted to see real-life captains who, unlike some captains of finance and industry, have the character to make hard decisions, share risks, think of others and live by the consequences. It's been reassuring to see such men and women and know that in these times, in scores of places, "The captain is on the bridge."
Frisson
Frisson
Ivete Sangalo
Meu coração pulou
Você chegou, me deixou assim
Com os pés fora do chão
Pensei: que bom, parece, enfim, acordei
Pra renovar meu ser
Faltava mesmo chegar você
Assim, sem avisar
Pra acelerar
Um coração que já bate pouco
De tanto procurar por outro
Anda cansado
Mas quando você está do lado
Fica louco de satisfação
Solidão nunca mais
Você caiu do céu
Um anjo lindo que apareceu
Com olhos de cristal
Me enfeitiçou
Eu nunca vi nada igual
De repente
Você surgiu na minha frente
Luz tão brilhante
Cometa em forma de gente
Invasor do planeta amor
Você me conquistou
Me olha, me toca
Me faz sentir
Que é hora, agora
Da gente ir
Ivete Sangalo
Meu coração pulou
Você chegou, me deixou assim
Com os pés fora do chão
Pensei: que bom, parece, enfim, acordei
Pra renovar meu ser
Faltava mesmo chegar você
Assim, sem avisar
Pra acelerar
Um coração que já bate pouco
De tanto procurar por outro
Anda cansado
Mas quando você está do lado
Fica louco de satisfação
Solidão nunca mais
Você caiu do céu
Um anjo lindo que apareceu
Com olhos de cristal
Me enfeitiçou
Eu nunca vi nada igual
De repente
Você surgiu na minha frente
Luz tão brilhante
Cometa em forma de gente
Invasor do planeta amor
Você me conquistou
Me olha, me toca
Me faz sentir
Que é hora, agora
Da gente ir
Dealing with Drugs in Mexico
Dealing with Drugs in Mexico
The Economist, March 11, 2009
IN RECENT months Mexicans have become inured to carefully choreographed spectacles of horror. Just before Christmas the severed heads of eight soldiers were found dumped in plastic bags near a shopping centre in Chilpancingo, the capital of the southern state of Guerrero. Last month another three were found in an icebox near the border city of Ciudad Juárez. Farther along the border near Tijuana police detained Santiago Meza, nicknamed El Pozolero (“the soupmaker”) who confessed to having dissolved the bodies of more than 300 people in acid over the past nine years on the orders of a local drug baron. M r Meza, revealing a proper sense of machismo, added primly that he refused to accept the bodies of women or children.
“Organised crime is out of control,” Felipe Calderón declared on taking office as Mexico’s president in December 2006. He launched 45,000 army troops against drug-trafficking gangs. Since then, some 10,000 people have died in drug-related violence, 6,268 of them last year. Troops and police have fought pitched battles against gangsters armed with rocket-launchers, grenades, machineguns and armour-piercing sniper rifles, such as the Barrett 50. But perhaps their most effective weapon is corruption: in November Noe Ramírez, the prosecutor in charge of the organised-crime unit of the federal attorney-general’s office, was charged with taking bribes of $450,000 a month to pass information to the Sinaloa drug mob. Six other officials from the unit face similar charges. Officials insist that the violence and the arrests are signs that they are winning. But many disagree. An assessment by the United States’ Joint Forces Command, published last month, concluded that the two countries most at risk of becoming failed states were Pakistan and Mexico.
Mexico? The world’s twelfth-largest economy, the United States’ second-biggest trading partner and an important oil supplier? It has evolved in the past generation into a seemingly stable democracy. Sure enough, the prognosis was angrily rejected by Mexico’s government. But it came on the heels of a paper circulated by Barry McCaffrey, a retired general who was Bill Clinton’s “drug tsar”. General McCaffrey painted a grim picture in which “the dangerous and worsening problems in Mexico…fundamentally threaten US national security.” The stakes in Mexico were enormous, he concluded: “We cannot afford to have a narco state as a neighbour.” If this was intended to press the panic button, it seemed to succeed. On January 12th Barack Obama lunched for more than two hours with Mr Calderón in his first meeting with a foreign head of government since he was elected president of the United States. According to a Mexican official present, Mr Calderón proposed a “strategic partnership” and urged the setting up of a binational group of experts to explore closer security co-operation. That would go beyond a three-year $1.4 billion programme of security aid for Mexico and Central America, known as the Merida Initiative, which was approved (reluctantly) by the United States Congress last year. Like it or not, in the cause of the war on drugs the Obama administration looks likely to be drawn into a sustained security commitment to a neighbour of the kind Mr Clinton launched in Colombia.
In both Mexico and Colombia, though in different ways, the drug trade has exploited weaknesses in the capacity of the state to impose the rule of law. In Colombia, where an historically fragile state had long failed to impose its authority over a vast territory of difficult geography, drug income breathed new life into left-wing guerrilla movements and begat right-wing paramilitary militias. As the guerrillas threatened to overrun the army and the cities, Mr Clinton launched Plan Colombia, under which the United States trained and helped to equip the security forces at a cost of more than $6 billion since 2000. In one respect—counter-insurgency—Plan Colombia has been a big success. The United States added hardware and training to a big Colombian effort that has strengthened the state and made the country much safer. But as an anti-drug programme, it has been much less successful. Thanks to the adamantine efforts of Álvaro Uribe, Colombia’s president, which included spraying hundreds of thousands of hectares with weedkiller, the recorded area of coca seemed to fall by more than half between 1999 and 2006, according to United Nations estimates. But it has since risen again. And thanks to productivity increases, total cocaine production in the Andes remains stable.
When cocaine consumption first took off in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s, the main smuggling route involved island-hopping across the Caribbean from Colombia in light aircraft. It was the success of America’s drug warriors in shutting down this route that brought big-time organised crime to Mexico, as the Colombians began to send drugs that way. In Mexico, relatively small gangs had long run heroin and marijuana across the border. Their move into cocaine made them far more powerful. Two things helped them grow. The first was proximity to the United States. They gained control of retail distribution in many American cities, allowing them to dictate terms to the Colombians. And they continue to arm themselves with ease in American gunshops and launder their profits in American banks.
The second factor was the flaws of the Mexican state. The revolution of 1910-17 gave birth to a seemingly powerful state, democratic in appearance but authoritarian in nature, in which power was monopolised by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). One of the achievements of this system was eventually to take the army out of politics. The police were required merely to impose political order, not to solve crimes. State governors were happy to tolerate—or profit from—drug-traffickers on their patch provided they kept a low profile. Partly because the Colombians at first paid their partners in product, the Mexican gangs began to push cocaine at home. In some areas, especially in northern Mexico, they acquired de facto control. The politicians did little to stop them—until Mr Calderón decided to make security the priority of his government, and a matter of personal commitment.
Taking back the street
The aim, says Eduardo Medina Mora, Mr Calderón’s attorney-general, is not to end drug-trafficking “because that is unachievable.” Rather, it is “to take back from organised criminal groups the economic power and armament they’ve established in the past 20 years, to take away their capacity to undermine institutions and to contest the state’s monopoly of force.” He points to progress. In the past two years the government has seized huge quantities of drugs (some 70 tonnes of cocaine, including 26 tonnes in a trawler, a world record for a single haul), money (some $260m) and arms (31,000 weapons, including 17,000 of high calibre). It has also made more than 58,000 arrests; and though some 95% of these people are hangers-on or small-time drug-dealers, they include two-dozen kingpins and a thousand sicarios (hired gunmen).
Brushing aside nationalist scruples, Mr Calderón has stepped up the extradition of drug-traffickers to the United States, sending more than 180 north so far. They can’t go on running their businesses from American prisons, as they can from most Mexican ones. Until recently the drug lords lived openly in Mexico’s main cities. Now they can show their faces only in remote parts of the Sierra Madre, says Genaro García Luna, the minister for public security. The violence, officials say, is a sign that the drug gangs are turning on each other in a fight to hang on to a share of a shrinking business. They stress that around 60% of the killings are concentrated in just three of Mexico’s 32 states, and most of these in three cities: Ciudad Juárez in Chihuahua and Tijuana in Baja California, both just across the American border; and Culiacán in Sinaloa. Some four-fifths of the dead are members of criminal gangs murdered by other criminals. But more than 800 police and soldiers have also died since December 2006 (some may have been working for the traffickers). The beheadings (often carried out after the victim is dead) and torture are intended to enforce discipline within gangs and strike fear into rivals, Mr García Luna says. Despite the headlines, Mexico’s murder rate is relatively low, at 11 per 100,000 people.
But the violence provokes “bewilderment and surprise” among Mexicans, says Enrique Krauze, a historian. After the revolution Mexico became “an island of peace, where refugees came from all over the world to escape violence.” Several senior police officers, including last year the commander of the federal police, have been murdered by the traffickers. On September 15th eight people died when grenades were thrown at crowds celebrating independence day in Morelia, in Michoacán. In Tijuana ordinary citizens are scared by the violence going on around them. People are going out less at night, and avoiding the city’s better restaurants after several cases in which gunmen have burst in and shot a rival, says José María Ramos, a political scientist at the Colegio de la Frontera Norte. And few doubt that the violence just across the border is deterring investment and tourists from the United States.
Mr Calderón’s crackdown has inflicted serious disruption on Mexico’s main trafficking syndicates. As many of the historic capos of these gangs are killed, arrested or extradited, what was an oligopoly has splintered into warring factions. This fragmentation is not wholly positive, admits Mr Medina Mora. The biggest worry is that some drug gangs are starting to diversify into other criminal businesses. Extortion and protection rackets are suddenly becoming common. Shops and bars have been burned down in Ciudad Juárez. Over the past six months, big businesses, including multinationals, have become targets, with threats against warehouses and factories if payments are not made, according to a security consultant in Mexico City. This is still local and sporadic, but at least one American company has paid up, he says.
The second growth business is kidnapping. This is not new in Mexico. It tends to go in cycles. Many cases are not officially reported. But the number recorded by Mexico Unido Contra la Delincuencia (“Mexico United Against Crime”), a campaign group, rose sharply over the past two years before falling off in recent months, according to María Elena Morera, its director. And kidnaps are tending to become more violent. They account for only 1% of crimes, yet in one poll 46% of respondents say they are scared of them, says Mrs Morera. The talk among better-off Mexicans is suddenly of whether they should try to leave the country rather than risk their children being kidnapped. The underlying problem in Mexico is not drug-trafficking in itself, but that neither the police nor the courts do their job properly. Not only have the police themselves sometimes been a source of crime, but they are also not accountable to politicians or public. A survey in 2007 found that seven out of ten crimes are not reported. “Society and the police don’t work together,” says Ernesto López Portillo, of the Institute for Security and Democracy. Mr García Luna admits that in some parts of the country the traffickers have established a “social base”. The previous two Mexican presidents tried and failed to reform the police. Mr Calderón’s officials insist that this time they will succeed.
At the headquarters of the public-security ministry on a hill opposite Chapultepec wood in Mexico City, cranes rise above a vacant lot where a new National Intelligence Centre is being built. The government’s more immediate innovation is housed in an annexe next door. A score of police officers dressed in dark suits sit at computer terminals facing a giant, segmented screen that occupies the whole of the wall in front of them. They are keying in data for Platform Mexico, an integrated and searchable national database that will combine criminal records with police operations’ reports and is due to start up in June. The screens can also display images from closed-circuit television across the country. The operators can communicate with every police post and patrol car in Mexico. Across the city in Ixtapalapa, the police’s main operating base in the capital is now equipped with helicopters and rapid-response teams. Eventually each state will have similar centres.
The curse of federalism
Mexico may lack Colombia’s guerrillas, but it also lacks Colombia’s reasonably effective national police force. That is partly because it is a federal country: each of the 32 states has its own police force and justice department, and there are more than 1,600 municipal police forces. Under the PRI federalism was a legal fiction and the presidency was omnipotent. Now no state governor feels obliged to submit to Mr Calderón’s policies. The criminal law is a patchwork: drug-trafficking is a federal crime, but kidnapping is a state matter. To make matters worse, the federal government began to forge its own police force from a disparate bunch of security outfits only as recently as the 1990s. An attempt to turn the judicial police, attached to the attorney-general’s office, into a Mexican FBI (known by its initials as AFI) had mixed results: the organisation was corrupted when purged police used legal action to force their reinstatement. Mr Calderón’s government is making a far more serious effort. Last June a constitutional reform reorganised the courts and police; under its auspices, a law signed by the president on January 1st sets up a new national public-security system. It requires all police forces at national, state and municipal level to adopt uniform procedures for recruitment, vetting, training, promotion and operations. Every policeman in the country is now supposed to be exhaustively vetted. At the same time, the federal police force has expanded from 9,000 officers in 2006 to 26,000. Half of these are soldiers on secondment. But Mr García Luna is now trying to recruit 8,000 graduates to be the core of a civilian investigative division. The government has provided extra funds to some local police forces. And for the first time it can force them to reform. Another constitutional change aims to improve a hidebound judicial system, introducing oral evidence and moving towards adversarial trials. It builds on recent experiments in some Mexican states.
These efforts have inspired American help, especially in the form of passing on intelligence that has helped in drug seizures and in the arrest of leading traffickers. Under the Merida Initiative, the United States will provide extra kit (such as night-vision gear and metal detectors) and training. Mexican officials point out that the funds involved are puny ($400m a year for three years) compared with the $9 billion they are spending each year. More than the money, Mr Medina Mora says he welcomes the change of attitude. “We’ve gone from reciprocal finger-pointing to an attitude of shared responsibility for a problem that by nature is bilateral.” But he adds that better regulation of the sale of arms in the United States would have a bigger impact. He points out that of 107,000 gunshops in the United States, 12,000 are close to the Mexican border and their sales are much higher than the average. Thousands of automatic rifles are bought for export to Mexico, which is illegal. American officials have promised to do more to stop this.
Mr García Luna says that in the next few months Mexicans will start to see a difference, as all the work over the past two years is put into practice. But there are several big doubts. The first is whether the government is moving fast enough. The original plan was to use the army only as a temporary shock force. But the troops may have to be deployed for another two years or more, Mr Medina Mora concedes. In late February the government sent an extra 5,000 troops to Ciudad Juárez, where the police chief had resigned after death threats. The militarisation of public security—however inevitable in the short term—carries the risk that Mexico will still not get the civilian, community-based policing it needs to prevent and investigate crime.
Turf wars are another problem. No fewer than six ministries are involved in different ways in public security, not to speak of the state governors and mayors. Mr Medina Mora, a former businessman, and Mr García Luna, a career policeman, often do not see eye to eye, and the army is politically untouchable. What is needed is to turn the army into a small professional force for external defence and centralise responsibility for internal security in the public-security ministry, argues Raúl Benítez, a defence specialist at the National Autonomous University in Mexico City.
The biggest doubt is whether the government can stop its forces being infiltrated and corrupted. One of the most violent of the drug gangs, known as the Zetas, is made up of special-forces troops who changed sides a decade ago. Hitherto, the government has been unable to provide its police forces with sufficient pay and protection to make it worthwhile resisting the threats and blandishments of the traffickers. Has that changed?
In the end, the state in a country as developed as Mexico cannot lose this battle. “Mexico is not a failed state, it’s a mediocre state,” says Hector Aguilar Camín, a sociologist. But already there are signs that the drug business will adapt. The Mexican gangs have set up operations in South America and are starting to export to Europe from there, according to Stratfor, a consultancy based in Texas. And they have moved aggressively into Central America. Just like Colombia, Mexico is finding that drug violence is requiring it to modernise its security forces. That process carries a large human cost. And the drug business, ever supple, will adapt and survive.
The Economist, March 11, 2009
IN RECENT months Mexicans have become inured to carefully choreographed spectacles of horror. Just before Christmas the severed heads of eight soldiers were found dumped in plastic bags near a shopping centre in Chilpancingo, the capital of the southern state of Guerrero. Last month another three were found in an icebox near the border city of Ciudad Juárez. Farther along the border near Tijuana police detained Santiago Meza, nicknamed El Pozolero (“the soupmaker”) who confessed to having dissolved the bodies of more than 300 people in acid over the past nine years on the orders of a local drug baron. M r Meza, revealing a proper sense of machismo, added primly that he refused to accept the bodies of women or children.
“Organised crime is out of control,” Felipe Calderón declared on taking office as Mexico’s president in December 2006. He launched 45,000 army troops against drug-trafficking gangs. Since then, some 10,000 people have died in drug-related violence, 6,268 of them last year. Troops and police have fought pitched battles against gangsters armed with rocket-launchers, grenades, machineguns and armour-piercing sniper rifles, such as the Barrett 50. But perhaps their most effective weapon is corruption: in November Noe Ramírez, the prosecutor in charge of the organised-crime unit of the federal attorney-general’s office, was charged with taking bribes of $450,000 a month to pass information to the Sinaloa drug mob. Six other officials from the unit face similar charges. Officials insist that the violence and the arrests are signs that they are winning. But many disagree. An assessment by the United States’ Joint Forces Command, published last month, concluded that the two countries most at risk of becoming failed states were Pakistan and Mexico.
Mexico? The world’s twelfth-largest economy, the United States’ second-biggest trading partner and an important oil supplier? It has evolved in the past generation into a seemingly stable democracy. Sure enough, the prognosis was angrily rejected by Mexico’s government. But it came on the heels of a paper circulated by Barry McCaffrey, a retired general who was Bill Clinton’s “drug tsar”. General McCaffrey painted a grim picture in which “the dangerous and worsening problems in Mexico…fundamentally threaten US national security.” The stakes in Mexico were enormous, he concluded: “We cannot afford to have a narco state as a neighbour.” If this was intended to press the panic button, it seemed to succeed. On January 12th Barack Obama lunched for more than two hours with Mr Calderón in his first meeting with a foreign head of government since he was elected president of the United States. According to a Mexican official present, Mr Calderón proposed a “strategic partnership” and urged the setting up of a binational group of experts to explore closer security co-operation. That would go beyond a three-year $1.4 billion programme of security aid for Mexico and Central America, known as the Merida Initiative, which was approved (reluctantly) by the United States Congress last year. Like it or not, in the cause of the war on drugs the Obama administration looks likely to be drawn into a sustained security commitment to a neighbour of the kind Mr Clinton launched in Colombia.
In both Mexico and Colombia, though in different ways, the drug trade has exploited weaknesses in the capacity of the state to impose the rule of law. In Colombia, where an historically fragile state had long failed to impose its authority over a vast territory of difficult geography, drug income breathed new life into left-wing guerrilla movements and begat right-wing paramilitary militias. As the guerrillas threatened to overrun the army and the cities, Mr Clinton launched Plan Colombia, under which the United States trained and helped to equip the security forces at a cost of more than $6 billion since 2000. In one respect—counter-insurgency—Plan Colombia has been a big success. The United States added hardware and training to a big Colombian effort that has strengthened the state and made the country much safer. But as an anti-drug programme, it has been much less successful. Thanks to the adamantine efforts of Álvaro Uribe, Colombia’s president, which included spraying hundreds of thousands of hectares with weedkiller, the recorded area of coca seemed to fall by more than half between 1999 and 2006, according to United Nations estimates. But it has since risen again. And thanks to productivity increases, total cocaine production in the Andes remains stable.
When cocaine consumption first took off in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s, the main smuggling route involved island-hopping across the Caribbean from Colombia in light aircraft. It was the success of America’s drug warriors in shutting down this route that brought big-time organised crime to Mexico, as the Colombians began to send drugs that way. In Mexico, relatively small gangs had long run heroin and marijuana across the border. Their move into cocaine made them far more powerful. Two things helped them grow. The first was proximity to the United States. They gained control of retail distribution in many American cities, allowing them to dictate terms to the Colombians. And they continue to arm themselves with ease in American gunshops and launder their profits in American banks.
The second factor was the flaws of the Mexican state. The revolution of 1910-17 gave birth to a seemingly powerful state, democratic in appearance but authoritarian in nature, in which power was monopolised by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). One of the achievements of this system was eventually to take the army out of politics. The police were required merely to impose political order, not to solve crimes. State governors were happy to tolerate—or profit from—drug-traffickers on their patch provided they kept a low profile. Partly because the Colombians at first paid their partners in product, the Mexican gangs began to push cocaine at home. In some areas, especially in northern Mexico, they acquired de facto control. The politicians did little to stop them—until Mr Calderón decided to make security the priority of his government, and a matter of personal commitment.
Taking back the street
The aim, says Eduardo Medina Mora, Mr Calderón’s attorney-general, is not to end drug-trafficking “because that is unachievable.” Rather, it is “to take back from organised criminal groups the economic power and armament they’ve established in the past 20 years, to take away their capacity to undermine institutions and to contest the state’s monopoly of force.” He points to progress. In the past two years the government has seized huge quantities of drugs (some 70 tonnes of cocaine, including 26 tonnes in a trawler, a world record for a single haul), money (some $260m) and arms (31,000 weapons, including 17,000 of high calibre). It has also made more than 58,000 arrests; and though some 95% of these people are hangers-on or small-time drug-dealers, they include two-dozen kingpins and a thousand sicarios (hired gunmen).
Brushing aside nationalist scruples, Mr Calderón has stepped up the extradition of drug-traffickers to the United States, sending more than 180 north so far. They can’t go on running their businesses from American prisons, as they can from most Mexican ones. Until recently the drug lords lived openly in Mexico’s main cities. Now they can show their faces only in remote parts of the Sierra Madre, says Genaro García Luna, the minister for public security. The violence, officials say, is a sign that the drug gangs are turning on each other in a fight to hang on to a share of a shrinking business. They stress that around 60% of the killings are concentrated in just three of Mexico’s 32 states, and most of these in three cities: Ciudad Juárez in Chihuahua and Tijuana in Baja California, both just across the American border; and Culiacán in Sinaloa. Some four-fifths of the dead are members of criminal gangs murdered by other criminals. But more than 800 police and soldiers have also died since December 2006 (some may have been working for the traffickers). The beheadings (often carried out after the victim is dead) and torture are intended to enforce discipline within gangs and strike fear into rivals, Mr García Luna says. Despite the headlines, Mexico’s murder rate is relatively low, at 11 per 100,000 people.
But the violence provokes “bewilderment and surprise” among Mexicans, says Enrique Krauze, a historian. After the revolution Mexico became “an island of peace, where refugees came from all over the world to escape violence.” Several senior police officers, including last year the commander of the federal police, have been murdered by the traffickers. On September 15th eight people died when grenades were thrown at crowds celebrating independence day in Morelia, in Michoacán. In Tijuana ordinary citizens are scared by the violence going on around them. People are going out less at night, and avoiding the city’s better restaurants after several cases in which gunmen have burst in and shot a rival, says José María Ramos, a political scientist at the Colegio de la Frontera Norte. And few doubt that the violence just across the border is deterring investment and tourists from the United States.
Mr Calderón’s crackdown has inflicted serious disruption on Mexico’s main trafficking syndicates. As many of the historic capos of these gangs are killed, arrested or extradited, what was an oligopoly has splintered into warring factions. This fragmentation is not wholly positive, admits Mr Medina Mora. The biggest worry is that some drug gangs are starting to diversify into other criminal businesses. Extortion and protection rackets are suddenly becoming common. Shops and bars have been burned down in Ciudad Juárez. Over the past six months, big businesses, including multinationals, have become targets, with threats against warehouses and factories if payments are not made, according to a security consultant in Mexico City. This is still local and sporadic, but at least one American company has paid up, he says.
The second growth business is kidnapping. This is not new in Mexico. It tends to go in cycles. Many cases are not officially reported. But the number recorded by Mexico Unido Contra la Delincuencia (“Mexico United Against Crime”), a campaign group, rose sharply over the past two years before falling off in recent months, according to María Elena Morera, its director. And kidnaps are tending to become more violent. They account for only 1% of crimes, yet in one poll 46% of respondents say they are scared of them, says Mrs Morera. The talk among better-off Mexicans is suddenly of whether they should try to leave the country rather than risk their children being kidnapped. The underlying problem in Mexico is not drug-trafficking in itself, but that neither the police nor the courts do their job properly. Not only have the police themselves sometimes been a source of crime, but they are also not accountable to politicians or public. A survey in 2007 found that seven out of ten crimes are not reported. “Society and the police don’t work together,” says Ernesto López Portillo, of the Institute for Security and Democracy. Mr García Luna admits that in some parts of the country the traffickers have established a “social base”. The previous two Mexican presidents tried and failed to reform the police. Mr Calderón’s officials insist that this time they will succeed.
At the headquarters of the public-security ministry on a hill opposite Chapultepec wood in Mexico City, cranes rise above a vacant lot where a new National Intelligence Centre is being built. The government’s more immediate innovation is housed in an annexe next door. A score of police officers dressed in dark suits sit at computer terminals facing a giant, segmented screen that occupies the whole of the wall in front of them. They are keying in data for Platform Mexico, an integrated and searchable national database that will combine criminal records with police operations’ reports and is due to start up in June. The screens can also display images from closed-circuit television across the country. The operators can communicate with every police post and patrol car in Mexico. Across the city in Ixtapalapa, the police’s main operating base in the capital is now equipped with helicopters and rapid-response teams. Eventually each state will have similar centres.
The curse of federalism
Mexico may lack Colombia’s guerrillas, but it also lacks Colombia’s reasonably effective national police force. That is partly because it is a federal country: each of the 32 states has its own police force and justice department, and there are more than 1,600 municipal police forces. Under the PRI federalism was a legal fiction and the presidency was omnipotent. Now no state governor feels obliged to submit to Mr Calderón’s policies. The criminal law is a patchwork: drug-trafficking is a federal crime, but kidnapping is a state matter. To make matters worse, the federal government began to forge its own police force from a disparate bunch of security outfits only as recently as the 1990s. An attempt to turn the judicial police, attached to the attorney-general’s office, into a Mexican FBI (known by its initials as AFI) had mixed results: the organisation was corrupted when purged police used legal action to force their reinstatement. Mr Calderón’s government is making a far more serious effort. Last June a constitutional reform reorganised the courts and police; under its auspices, a law signed by the president on January 1st sets up a new national public-security system. It requires all police forces at national, state and municipal level to adopt uniform procedures for recruitment, vetting, training, promotion and operations. Every policeman in the country is now supposed to be exhaustively vetted. At the same time, the federal police force has expanded from 9,000 officers in 2006 to 26,000. Half of these are soldiers on secondment. But Mr García Luna is now trying to recruit 8,000 graduates to be the core of a civilian investigative division. The government has provided extra funds to some local police forces. And for the first time it can force them to reform. Another constitutional change aims to improve a hidebound judicial system, introducing oral evidence and moving towards adversarial trials. It builds on recent experiments in some Mexican states.
These efforts have inspired American help, especially in the form of passing on intelligence that has helped in drug seizures and in the arrest of leading traffickers. Under the Merida Initiative, the United States will provide extra kit (such as night-vision gear and metal detectors) and training. Mexican officials point out that the funds involved are puny ($400m a year for three years) compared with the $9 billion they are spending each year. More than the money, Mr Medina Mora says he welcomes the change of attitude. “We’ve gone from reciprocal finger-pointing to an attitude of shared responsibility for a problem that by nature is bilateral.” But he adds that better regulation of the sale of arms in the United States would have a bigger impact. He points out that of 107,000 gunshops in the United States, 12,000 are close to the Mexican border and their sales are much higher than the average. Thousands of automatic rifles are bought for export to Mexico, which is illegal. American officials have promised to do more to stop this.
Mr García Luna says that in the next few months Mexicans will start to see a difference, as all the work over the past two years is put into practice. But there are several big doubts. The first is whether the government is moving fast enough. The original plan was to use the army only as a temporary shock force. But the troops may have to be deployed for another two years or more, Mr Medina Mora concedes. In late February the government sent an extra 5,000 troops to Ciudad Juárez, where the police chief had resigned after death threats. The militarisation of public security—however inevitable in the short term—carries the risk that Mexico will still not get the civilian, community-based policing it needs to prevent and investigate crime.
Turf wars are another problem. No fewer than six ministries are involved in different ways in public security, not to speak of the state governors and mayors. Mr Medina Mora, a former businessman, and Mr García Luna, a career policeman, often do not see eye to eye, and the army is politically untouchable. What is needed is to turn the army into a small professional force for external defence and centralise responsibility for internal security in the public-security ministry, argues Raúl Benítez, a defence specialist at the National Autonomous University in Mexico City.
The biggest doubt is whether the government can stop its forces being infiltrated and corrupted. One of the most violent of the drug gangs, known as the Zetas, is made up of special-forces troops who changed sides a decade ago. Hitherto, the government has been unable to provide its police forces with sufficient pay and protection to make it worthwhile resisting the threats and blandishments of the traffickers. Has that changed?
In the end, the state in a country as developed as Mexico cannot lose this battle. “Mexico is not a failed state, it’s a mediocre state,” says Hector Aguilar Camín, a sociologist. But already there are signs that the drug business will adapt. The Mexican gangs have set up operations in South America and are starting to export to Europe from there, according to Stratfor, a consultancy based in Texas. And they have moved aggressively into Central America. Just like Colombia, Mexico is finding that drug violence is requiring it to modernise its security forces. That process carries a large human cost. And the drug business, ever supple, will adapt and survive.
How to Stop the Drug Wars
How to Stop the Drug Wars
The Economist, Marchg 11, 2009
A HUNDRED years ago a group of foreign diplomats gathered in Shanghai for the first-ever international effort to ban trade in a narcotic drug. On February 26th 1909 they agreed to set up the International Opium Commission—just a few decades after Britain had fought a war with China to assert its right to peddle the stuff. Many other bans of mood-altering drugs have followed. In 1998 the UN General Assembly committed member countries to achieving a “drug-free world” and to “eliminating or significantly reducing” the production of opium, cocaine and cannabis by 2008. That is the kind of promise politicians love to make. It assuages the sense of moral panic that has been the handmaiden of prohibition for a century. It is intended to reassure the parents of teenagers across the world. Yet it is a hugely irresponsible promise, because it cannot be fulfilled.
Next week ministers from around the world gather in Vienna to set international drug policy for the next decade. Like first-world-war generals, many will claim that all that is needed is more of the same. In fact the war on drugs has been a disaster, creating failed states in the developing world even as addiction has flourished in the rich world. By any sensible measure, this 100-year struggle has been illiberal, murderous and pointless. That is why The Economist continues to believe that the least bad policy is to legalise drugs. “Least bad” does not mean good. Legalisation, though clearly better for producer countries, would bring (different) risks to consumer countries. As we outline below, many vulnerable drug-takers would suffer. But in our view, more would gain.
The evidence of failure
Nowadays the UN Office on Drugs and Crime no longer talks about a drug-free world. Its boast is that the drug market has “stabilised”, meaning that more than 200m people, or almost 5% of the world’s adult population, still take illegal drugs —roughly the same proportion as a decade ago. (Like most purported drug facts, this one is just an educated guess: evidential rigour is another casualty of illegality.) The production of cocaine and opium is probably about the same as it was a decade ago; that of cannabis is higher. Consumption of cocaine has declined gradually in the United States from its peak in the early 1980s, but the path is uneven (it remains higher than in the mid-1990s), and it is rising in many places, including Europe. This is not for want of effort. The United States alone spends some $40 billion each year on trying to eliminate the supply of drugs. It arrests 1.5m of its citizens each year for drug offences, locking up half a million of them; tougher drug laws are the main reason why one in five black American men spend some time behind bars. In the developing world blood is being shed at an astonishing rate. In Mexico more than 800 policemen and soldiers have been killed since December 2006 (and the annual overall death toll is running at over 6,000). This week yet another leader of a troubled drug-ridden country—Guinea Bissau—was assassinated.
Yet prohibition itself vitiates the efforts of the drug warriors. The price of an illegal substance is determined more by the cost of distribution than of production. Take cocaine: the mark-up between coca field and consumer is more than a hundredfold. Even if dumping weedkiller on the crops of peasant farmers quadruples the local price of coca leaves, this tends to have little impact on the street price, which is set mainly by the risk of getting cocaine into Europe or the United States. Nowadays the drug warriors claim to seize close to half of all the cocaine that is produced. The street price in the United States does seem to have risen, and the purity seems to have fallen, over the past year. But it is not clear that drug demand drops when prices rise. On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence that the drug business quickly adapts to market disruption. At best, effective repression merely forces it to shift production sites. Thus opium has moved from Turkey and Thailand to Myanmar and southern Afghanistan, where it undermines the West’s efforts to defeat the Taliban.
Al Capone, but on a global scale
Indeed, far from reducing crime, prohibition has fostered gangsterism on a scale that the world has never seen before. According to the UN’s perhaps inflated estimate, the illegal drug industry is worth some $320 billion a year. In the West it makes criminals of otherwise law-abiding citizens (the current American president could easily have ended up in prison for his youthful experiments with “blow”). It also makes drugs more dangerous: addicts buy heavily adulterated cocaine and heroin; many use dirty needles to inject themselves, spreading HIV; the wretches who succumb to “crack” or “meth” are outside the law, with only their pushers to “treat” them. But it is countries in the emerging world that pay most of the price. Even a relatively developed democracy such as Mexico now finds itself in a life-or-death struggle against gangsters. American officials, including a former drug tsar, have publicly worried about having a “narco state” as their neighbour.
The failure of the drug war has led a few of its braver generals, especially from Europe and Latin America, to suggest shifting the focus from locking up people to public health and “harm reduction” (such as encouraging addicts to use clean needles). This approach would put more emphasis on public education and the treatment of addicts, and less on the harassment of peasants who grow coca and the punishment of consumers of “soft” drugs for personal use. That would be a step in the right direction. But it is unlikely to be adequately funded, and it does nothing to take organised crime out of the picture.
Legalisation would not only drive away the gangsters; it would transform drugs from a law-and-order problem into a public-health problem, which is how they ought to be treated. Governments would tax and regulate the drug trade, and use the funds raised (and the billions saved on law-enforcement) to educate the public about the risks of drug-taking and to treat addiction. The sale of drugs to minors should remain banned. Different drugs would command different levels of taxation and regulation. This system would be fiddly and imperfect, requiring constant monitoring and hard-to-measure trade-offs. Post-tax prices should be set at a level that would strike a balance between damping down use on the one hand, and discouraging a black market and the desperate acts of theft and prostitution to which addicts now resort to feed their habits.
Selling even this flawed system to people in producer countries, where organised crime is the central political issue, is fairly easy. The tough part comes in the consumer countries, where addiction is the main political battle. Plenty of American parents might accept that legalisation would be the right answer for the people of Latin America, Asia and Africa; they might even see its usefulness in the fight against terrorism. But their immediate fear would be for their own children. That fear is based in large part on the presumption that more people would take drugs under a legal regime. That presumption may be wrong. There is no correlation between the harshness of drug laws and the incidence of drug-taking: citizens living under tough regimes (notably America but also Britain) take more drugs, not fewer. Embarrassed drug warriors blame this on alleged cultural differences, but even in fairly similar countries tough rules make little difference to the number of addicts: harsh Sweden and more liberal Norway have precisely the same addiction rates. Legalisation might reduce both supply (pushers by definition push) and demand (part of that dangerous thrill would go). Nobody knows for certain. But it is hard to argue that sales of any product that is made cheaper, safer and more widely available would fall. Any honest proponent of legalisation would be wise to assume that drug-taking as a whole would rise.
There are two main reasons for arguing that prohibition should be scrapped all the same. The first is one of liberal principle. Although some illegal drugs are extremely dangerous to some people, most are not especially harmful. (Tobacco is more addictive than virtually all of them.) Most consumers of illegal drugs, including cocaine and even heroin, take them only occasionally. They do so because they derive enjoyment from them (as they do from whisky or a Marlboro Light). It is not the state’s job to stop them from doing so.
What about addiction? That is partly covered by this first argument, as the harm involved is primarily visited upon the user. But addiction can also inflict misery on the families and especially the children of any addict, and involves wider social costs. That is why discouraging and treating addiction should be the priority for drug policy. Hence the second argument: legalisation offers the opportunity to deal with addiction properly. By providing honest information about the health risks of different drugs, and pricing them accordingly, governments could steer consumers towards the least harmful ones. Prohibition has failed to prevent the proliferation of designer drugs, dreamed up in laboratories. Legalisation might encourage legitimate drug companies to try to improve the stuff that people take. The resources gained from tax and saved on repression would allow governments to guarantee treatment to addicts—a way of making legalisation more politically palatable. The success of developed countries in stopping people smoking tobacco, which is similarly subject to tax and regulation, provides grounds for hope.
A calculated gamble, or another century of failure?
This newspaper first argued for legalisation 20 years ago. Reviewing the evidence again, prohibition seems even more harmful, especially for the poor and weak of the world. Legalisation would not drive gangsters completely out of drugs; as with alcohol and cigarettes, there would be taxes to avoid and rules to subvert. Nor would it automatically cure failed states like Afghanistan. Our solution is a messy one; but a century of manifest failure argues for trying it.
The Economist, Marchg 11, 2009
A HUNDRED years ago a group of foreign diplomats gathered in Shanghai for the first-ever international effort to ban trade in a narcotic drug. On February 26th 1909 they agreed to set up the International Opium Commission—just a few decades after Britain had fought a war with China to assert its right to peddle the stuff. Many other bans of mood-altering drugs have followed. In 1998 the UN General Assembly committed member countries to achieving a “drug-free world” and to “eliminating or significantly reducing” the production of opium, cocaine and cannabis by 2008. That is the kind of promise politicians love to make. It assuages the sense of moral panic that has been the handmaiden of prohibition for a century. It is intended to reassure the parents of teenagers across the world. Yet it is a hugely irresponsible promise, because it cannot be fulfilled.
Next week ministers from around the world gather in Vienna to set international drug policy for the next decade. Like first-world-war generals, many will claim that all that is needed is more of the same. In fact the war on drugs has been a disaster, creating failed states in the developing world even as addiction has flourished in the rich world. By any sensible measure, this 100-year struggle has been illiberal, murderous and pointless. That is why The Economist continues to believe that the least bad policy is to legalise drugs. “Least bad” does not mean good. Legalisation, though clearly better for producer countries, would bring (different) risks to consumer countries. As we outline below, many vulnerable drug-takers would suffer. But in our view, more would gain.
The evidence of failure
Nowadays the UN Office on Drugs and Crime no longer talks about a drug-free world. Its boast is that the drug market has “stabilised”, meaning that more than 200m people, or almost 5% of the world’s adult population, still take illegal drugs —roughly the same proportion as a decade ago. (Like most purported drug facts, this one is just an educated guess: evidential rigour is another casualty of illegality.) The production of cocaine and opium is probably about the same as it was a decade ago; that of cannabis is higher. Consumption of cocaine has declined gradually in the United States from its peak in the early 1980s, but the path is uneven (it remains higher than in the mid-1990s), and it is rising in many places, including Europe. This is not for want of effort. The United States alone spends some $40 billion each year on trying to eliminate the supply of drugs. It arrests 1.5m of its citizens each year for drug offences, locking up half a million of them; tougher drug laws are the main reason why one in five black American men spend some time behind bars. In the developing world blood is being shed at an astonishing rate. In Mexico more than 800 policemen and soldiers have been killed since December 2006 (and the annual overall death toll is running at over 6,000). This week yet another leader of a troubled drug-ridden country—Guinea Bissau—was assassinated.
Yet prohibition itself vitiates the efforts of the drug warriors. The price of an illegal substance is determined more by the cost of distribution than of production. Take cocaine: the mark-up between coca field and consumer is more than a hundredfold. Even if dumping weedkiller on the crops of peasant farmers quadruples the local price of coca leaves, this tends to have little impact on the street price, which is set mainly by the risk of getting cocaine into Europe or the United States. Nowadays the drug warriors claim to seize close to half of all the cocaine that is produced. The street price in the United States does seem to have risen, and the purity seems to have fallen, over the past year. But it is not clear that drug demand drops when prices rise. On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence that the drug business quickly adapts to market disruption. At best, effective repression merely forces it to shift production sites. Thus opium has moved from Turkey and Thailand to Myanmar and southern Afghanistan, where it undermines the West’s efforts to defeat the Taliban.
Al Capone, but on a global scale
Indeed, far from reducing crime, prohibition has fostered gangsterism on a scale that the world has never seen before. According to the UN’s perhaps inflated estimate, the illegal drug industry is worth some $320 billion a year. In the West it makes criminals of otherwise law-abiding citizens (the current American president could easily have ended up in prison for his youthful experiments with “blow”). It also makes drugs more dangerous: addicts buy heavily adulterated cocaine and heroin; many use dirty needles to inject themselves, spreading HIV; the wretches who succumb to “crack” or “meth” are outside the law, with only their pushers to “treat” them. But it is countries in the emerging world that pay most of the price. Even a relatively developed democracy such as Mexico now finds itself in a life-or-death struggle against gangsters. American officials, including a former drug tsar, have publicly worried about having a “narco state” as their neighbour.
The failure of the drug war has led a few of its braver generals, especially from Europe and Latin America, to suggest shifting the focus from locking up people to public health and “harm reduction” (such as encouraging addicts to use clean needles). This approach would put more emphasis on public education and the treatment of addicts, and less on the harassment of peasants who grow coca and the punishment of consumers of “soft” drugs for personal use. That would be a step in the right direction. But it is unlikely to be adequately funded, and it does nothing to take organised crime out of the picture.
Legalisation would not only drive away the gangsters; it would transform drugs from a law-and-order problem into a public-health problem, which is how they ought to be treated. Governments would tax and regulate the drug trade, and use the funds raised (and the billions saved on law-enforcement) to educate the public about the risks of drug-taking and to treat addiction. The sale of drugs to minors should remain banned. Different drugs would command different levels of taxation and regulation. This system would be fiddly and imperfect, requiring constant monitoring and hard-to-measure trade-offs. Post-tax prices should be set at a level that would strike a balance between damping down use on the one hand, and discouraging a black market and the desperate acts of theft and prostitution to which addicts now resort to feed their habits.
Selling even this flawed system to people in producer countries, where organised crime is the central political issue, is fairly easy. The tough part comes in the consumer countries, where addiction is the main political battle. Plenty of American parents might accept that legalisation would be the right answer for the people of Latin America, Asia and Africa; they might even see its usefulness in the fight against terrorism. But their immediate fear would be for their own children. That fear is based in large part on the presumption that more people would take drugs under a legal regime. That presumption may be wrong. There is no correlation between the harshness of drug laws and the incidence of drug-taking: citizens living under tough regimes (notably America but also Britain) take more drugs, not fewer. Embarrassed drug warriors blame this on alleged cultural differences, but even in fairly similar countries tough rules make little difference to the number of addicts: harsh Sweden and more liberal Norway have precisely the same addiction rates. Legalisation might reduce both supply (pushers by definition push) and demand (part of that dangerous thrill would go). Nobody knows for certain. But it is hard to argue that sales of any product that is made cheaper, safer and more widely available would fall. Any honest proponent of legalisation would be wise to assume that drug-taking as a whole would rise.
There are two main reasons for arguing that prohibition should be scrapped all the same. The first is one of liberal principle. Although some illegal drugs are extremely dangerous to some people, most are not especially harmful. (Tobacco is more addictive than virtually all of them.) Most consumers of illegal drugs, including cocaine and even heroin, take them only occasionally. They do so because they derive enjoyment from them (as they do from whisky or a Marlboro Light). It is not the state’s job to stop them from doing so.
What about addiction? That is partly covered by this first argument, as the harm involved is primarily visited upon the user. But addiction can also inflict misery on the families and especially the children of any addict, and involves wider social costs. That is why discouraging and treating addiction should be the priority for drug policy. Hence the second argument: legalisation offers the opportunity to deal with addiction properly. By providing honest information about the health risks of different drugs, and pricing them accordingly, governments could steer consumers towards the least harmful ones. Prohibition has failed to prevent the proliferation of designer drugs, dreamed up in laboratories. Legalisation might encourage legitimate drug companies to try to improve the stuff that people take. The resources gained from tax and saved on repression would allow governments to guarantee treatment to addicts—a way of making legalisation more politically palatable. The success of developed countries in stopping people smoking tobacco, which is similarly subject to tax and regulation, provides grounds for hope.
A calculated gamble, or another century of failure?
This newspaper first argued for legalisation 20 years ago. Reviewing the evidence again, prohibition seems even more harmful, especially for the poor and weak of the world. Legalisation would not drive gangsters completely out of drugs; as with alcohol and cigarettes, there would be taxes to avoid and rules to subvert. Nor would it automatically cure failed states like Afghanistan. Our solution is a messy one; but a century of manifest failure argues for trying it.
Y si Pruebas en Este Dia
Y si Pruebas en Este Dia...
Alfredo Cuervo Barrero
Y si pruebas en éste día
a salir a la calle sin mirarte al espejo,
a salir simplente como te sientes por dentro,
a disfrutar de las maravillas de tu pueblo,
a ir a todos lados con la cabez alta,
a mirar a los ojos a las personas,
a intentar comprenderlas
y que te comprendan.
Y si pruebas en éste día,
a dar todo el cariño que tienes,
a quererte un poco más que ayer,
a definir tu personalidad,
a no hacer caso de lo que digan los demás,
a gustarte como eres, como estas!!
Y si pruebas en éste día,
a reírte de todo...
de los problemas que te amargan,
de los complejos que te inventas,
de las personas que crees que te atacan,
de los momentos que se te escapan...
Y si pruebas en éste día,
a luchar por lo que quieres,
a desear sólo lo que hace ser quien eres,
a dara gracias por la vida que vives,
a ordenar un poco más tu escala de valores,
a escuchar a ese que casi nunca oyes.
Y si pruebas en éste día,
a hablar poco y con sencillez,
a no hablar mal de nadie,
a elogiar, a estimular y servir sin interés,
a tener para los demás un buen deseo,
a hacer parte de la felicidad de otros.
Y si pruebas en éste día,
a vivir cada instante como si fuera único,
a no dejarte llevar por los malos ratos,
a hacer las paces contigo mismo,
a quererte más, a ser por fin tu mejor amigo...
Y si pruebas en éste día,
a vivir con la conciencia permanente
de ser infinito, de ser feliz y dichoso...
a dar gracias por todo lo que te brinda la vida
a vivirla en tiempo presente.
Y si pruebas en éste día,
a crecer más en tu vida
personal y espiritual...
contibuirás para que éste mundo
sea siempre mejor!!
Alfredo Cuervo Barrero
Y si pruebas en éste día
a salir a la calle sin mirarte al espejo,
a salir simplente como te sientes por dentro,
a disfrutar de las maravillas de tu pueblo,
a ir a todos lados con la cabez alta,
a mirar a los ojos a las personas,
a intentar comprenderlas
y que te comprendan.
Y si pruebas en éste día,
a dar todo el cariño que tienes,
a quererte un poco más que ayer,
a definir tu personalidad,
a no hacer caso de lo que digan los demás,
a gustarte como eres, como estas!!
Y si pruebas en éste día,
a reírte de todo...
de los problemas que te amargan,
de los complejos que te inventas,
de las personas que crees que te atacan,
de los momentos que se te escapan...
Y si pruebas en éste día,
a luchar por lo que quieres,
a desear sólo lo que hace ser quien eres,
a dara gracias por la vida que vives,
a ordenar un poco más tu escala de valores,
a escuchar a ese que casi nunca oyes.
Y si pruebas en éste día,
a hablar poco y con sencillez,
a no hablar mal de nadie,
a elogiar, a estimular y servir sin interés,
a tener para los demás un buen deseo,
a hacer parte de la felicidad de otros.
Y si pruebas en éste día,
a vivir cada instante como si fuera único,
a no dejarte llevar por los malos ratos,
a hacer las paces contigo mismo,
a quererte más, a ser por fin tu mejor amigo...
Y si pruebas en éste día,
a vivir con la conciencia permanente
de ser infinito, de ser feliz y dichoso...
a dar gracias por todo lo que te brinda la vida
a vivirla en tiempo presente.
Y si pruebas en éste día,
a crecer más en tu vida
personal y espiritual...
contibuirás para que éste mundo
sea siempre mejor!!
Poema 20
Poema 20
Pablo Neruda
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Escribir, por ejemplo: «La noche está estrellada,
y tiritan, azules, los astros, a lo lejos.»
El viento de la noche gira en el cielo y canta.
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Yo la quise, y a veces ella también me quiso.
En las noches como ésta la tuve entre mis brazos.
La besé tantas veces bajo el cielo infinito.
Ella me quiso, a veces yo también la quería.
Cómo no haber amado sus grandes ojos fijos.
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Pensar que no la tengo. Sentir que la he perdido.
Oír la noche inmensa, más inmensa sin ella.
Y el verso cae al alma como al pasto el rocío.
Qué importa que mi amor no pudiera guardarla.
La noche está estrellada y ella no está conmigo.
Eso es todo. A lo lejos alguien canta. A lo lejos.
Mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.
Como para acercarla mi mirada la busca.
Mi corazón la busca, y ella no está conmigo.
La misma noche que hace blanquear los mismos árboles.
Nosotros, los de entonces, ya no somos los mismos.
Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero cuánto la quise.
Mi voz buscaba el viento para tocar su oído.
De otro. Será de otro. Como antes de mis besos.
Su voz, su cuerpo claro. Sus ojos infinitos.
Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero tal vez la quiero.
Es tan corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido.
Porque en noches como ésta la tuve entre mis brazos,
Mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.
Aunque éste sea el último dolor que ella me causa,
y éstos sean los últimos versos que yo le escribo.
Pablo Neruda
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Escribir, por ejemplo: «La noche está estrellada,
y tiritan, azules, los astros, a lo lejos.»
El viento de la noche gira en el cielo y canta.
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Yo la quise, y a veces ella también me quiso.
En las noches como ésta la tuve entre mis brazos.
La besé tantas veces bajo el cielo infinito.
Ella me quiso, a veces yo también la quería.
Cómo no haber amado sus grandes ojos fijos.
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Pensar que no la tengo. Sentir que la he perdido.
Oír la noche inmensa, más inmensa sin ella.
Y el verso cae al alma como al pasto el rocío.
Qué importa que mi amor no pudiera guardarla.
La noche está estrellada y ella no está conmigo.
Eso es todo. A lo lejos alguien canta. A lo lejos.
Mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.
Como para acercarla mi mirada la busca.
Mi corazón la busca, y ella no está conmigo.
La misma noche que hace blanquear los mismos árboles.
Nosotros, los de entonces, ya no somos los mismos.
Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero cuánto la quise.
Mi voz buscaba el viento para tocar su oído.
De otro. Será de otro. Como antes de mis besos.
Su voz, su cuerpo claro. Sus ojos infinitos.
Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero tal vez la quiero.
Es tan corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido.
Porque en noches como ésta la tuve entre mis brazos,
Mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.
Aunque éste sea el último dolor que ella me causa,
y éstos sean los últimos versos que yo le escribo.
Obama's Inauguration Speech
Barack Obama's Presidential Inaguruation Speech
20-Jan-2009
My fellow citizens:
I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors. I thank President Bush for his service to our nation, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition. Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often, the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents. So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.
That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet. These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land--a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights. Today, I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America--they will be met.
On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord. On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics. We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit, to choose our better history, to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness. In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted--for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things--some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.
For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life. For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth. For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn. Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction. This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions--that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.
For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act--not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. All this we will do.
Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions--who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage. What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them--that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works--whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account--to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day--because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government. Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control--and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on the ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart--not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.
As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience' sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: Know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more. Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with the sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint. We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort--even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan. With old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet.
We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you. For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus--and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.
To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West--know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist. To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.
As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages. We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service; a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves. And yet, at this moment--a moment that will define a generation--it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all. For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.
Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends--honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism--these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility--a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.
This is the price and the promise of citizenship. This is the source of our confidence--the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny. This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed--why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath. So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:
"Let it be told to [the] future world ... that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive ... that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet" it.
America: In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested, we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.
Thank you. God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.
20-Jan-2009
My fellow citizens:
I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors. I thank President Bush for his service to our nation, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition. Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often, the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents. So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.
That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet. These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land--a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights. Today, I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America--they will be met.
On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord. On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics. We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit, to choose our better history, to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness. In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted--for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things--some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.
For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life. For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth. For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn. Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction. This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions--that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.
For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act--not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. All this we will do.
Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions--who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage. What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them--that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works--whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account--to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day--because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government. Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control--and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on the ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart--not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.
As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience' sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: Know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more. Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with the sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint. We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort--even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan. With old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet.
We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you. For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus--and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.
To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West--know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist. To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.
As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages. We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service; a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves. And yet, at this moment--a moment that will define a generation--it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all. For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.
Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends--honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism--these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility--a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.
This is the price and the promise of citizenship. This is the source of our confidence--the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny. This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed--why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath. So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:
"Let it be told to [the] future world ... that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive ... that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet" it.
America: In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested, we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.
Thank you. God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.
Renewing America
Renewing America
The Economist, 15-Jan-2009
SHORTLY after midday on January 20th, Barack Obama will sit for the first time at the desk where the buck stops. The American presidency is always the world’s hardest and most consequential job, but it seems particularly so this month. A global recession of a severity not seen for perhaps 80 years; a new war in the Middle East and old ones in Africa; missions very far from accomplished in Iraq and Afghanistan; a prickly Russia and a rising China. These international challenges must jostle for the president’s attention alongside noisy domestic concerns like rocketing unemployment, the desperate need for a better health-care system, exploding deficits and failing cities. The burdens, surely, are too many for one man to bear.
Yet neither America nor the world seems to see it that way. A crowd of 2m or more is making its way to Washington, DC, to witness the inauguration of Mr Obama. Billions more will watch it on television. All will do so in a spirit that has been missing for a while—one of optimism. This is not just because a presidency knocked sideways by the events of September 11th 2001, is ending. Next week’s inauguration also bears witness to America’s awesome power of self-renewal. Because he is young, handsome and intelligent, and also because as the child of a Kansan and a Kenyan he reconciles in his own person one of the world’s most hateful divisions, Mr Obama carries with him the hopes of the planet.
Too much so, for sure. But what might the world realistically hope for from Mr Obama’s presidency? Many would argue, after the disaster that surrounded George Bush’s Iraq adventure, that to rebuild its foreign relationships America must become a more modest giant, more obviously constrained by international law and more committed to working even-handedly for peace in the Middle East and elsewhere. In some ways, that is surely right. Less of Mr Bush’s Manichaean arrogance would be welcome.
This does not mean that America should become more isolationist. Most of the world’s biggest problems still cry out for its leadership; and an America that withdraws to heal its domestic wounds will not serve the world well. No one seriously imagines that peace can come to the Middle East without America. Neither Russia, nor China, nor the EU has any appetite to lead efforts to confront nuclear proliferation by Iran or North Korea. Sometimes, as with Kosovo in the 1990s, America needs to act even when the UN hesitates. Above all, America must lead efforts to grapple with the global recession, through its dominant position at the IMF, its vital role in resisting the siren call of protectionism and the stimulative effect of the vast government outlays Mr Obama is planning. Yet a president who understands, as Mr Bush did not, that America is not the uncontested hyperpower of the 1990s—one who values “soft power” more than the hard version—will be a change for the better. An America led by such a man will listen more carefully to and work more closely with allies and rivals, will strive harder to respect the laws it has signed up to and might enter into new commitments, for instance to tackle climate change.
A renewal of America’s respect for constitution and law would be welcome at home as well as abroad. George the Second disdained the rules of governance established by his forefathers. He wiretapped citizens without authority, secretly permitted the use of torture and dismissed prosecutors on political grounds. Mr Obama seems determined not to follow his example. He has appointed a liberal outsider to run the CIA and a noted academic to head his office of legal counsel. America’s, said one of its founders, should be “a government of laws and not of men”. Under Mr Bush and Dick Cheney, it often seemed the opposite.
But it is the domestic economy which will consume most of Mr Obama’s time. And here American renewal must take two opposite forms. In some ways, the times cry out for more active government: for stronger regulation of banks and near-banks, for much more short-term government spending to counteract the contraction elsewhere in the economy, and for the establishment of a basic health-care system for everyone. But Mr Obama also needs a plan to shrink other aspects of government over the longer term. Without reform of expensive entitlements, the federal government faces bankruptcy. Cutting entitlements at the same time as buying hundreds of billions of dollars-worth of bad loans from Wall Street is difficult politics, to say the least. But at least Mr Obama has acknowledged that he will have to do it. A more equitable health system coupled with a path towards budget reform would, on their own, make Mr Obama’s presidency a remarkable one. And at least he has the votes in Congress to make it happen.
Mr Bush had a simplistic tendency to see the world through ideological and partisan spectacles. He hung on to bad advisers for longer than he should have; he divided the world too often into good and evil; and he plotted to establish a Republican hegemony although he had sold himself to the electorate as bipartisan. In economic matters, he was too prone to sacrifice the long-term good for short-term gain. He seemed curiously incurious about vital details, such as the conduct of the war in Iraq. Mr Obama seems to be different. By offering the most prized cabinet job to his rival, Hillary Clinton, and by keeping on Robert Gates, the defence secretary, who has done a good job, Mr Obama has shown a determination not to surround himself with cronies. He has put together a team which has impressed almost everyone with its calibre and its centrism. He has been tough already, dispatching blunderers and being prepared to admit to mistakes. He has repeatedly warned Americans that he will have to do unpleasant things.
The next four, or eight, years may be a disappointment, a triumphant renewal or something in between. Mr Obama is inexperienced, and right now the world looks especially forbidding. But he is a respectful and thoughtful man, and that is a good start.
The Economist, 15-Jan-2009
SHORTLY after midday on January 20th, Barack Obama will sit for the first time at the desk where the buck stops. The American presidency is always the world’s hardest and most consequential job, but it seems particularly so this month. A global recession of a severity not seen for perhaps 80 years; a new war in the Middle East and old ones in Africa; missions very far from accomplished in Iraq and Afghanistan; a prickly Russia and a rising China. These international challenges must jostle for the president’s attention alongside noisy domestic concerns like rocketing unemployment, the desperate need for a better health-care system, exploding deficits and failing cities. The burdens, surely, are too many for one man to bear.
Yet neither America nor the world seems to see it that way. A crowd of 2m or more is making its way to Washington, DC, to witness the inauguration of Mr Obama. Billions more will watch it on television. All will do so in a spirit that has been missing for a while—one of optimism. This is not just because a presidency knocked sideways by the events of September 11th 2001, is ending. Next week’s inauguration also bears witness to America’s awesome power of self-renewal. Because he is young, handsome and intelligent, and also because as the child of a Kansan and a Kenyan he reconciles in his own person one of the world’s most hateful divisions, Mr Obama carries with him the hopes of the planet.
Too much so, for sure. But what might the world realistically hope for from Mr Obama’s presidency? Many would argue, after the disaster that surrounded George Bush’s Iraq adventure, that to rebuild its foreign relationships America must become a more modest giant, more obviously constrained by international law and more committed to working even-handedly for peace in the Middle East and elsewhere. In some ways, that is surely right. Less of Mr Bush’s Manichaean arrogance would be welcome.
This does not mean that America should become more isolationist. Most of the world’s biggest problems still cry out for its leadership; and an America that withdraws to heal its domestic wounds will not serve the world well. No one seriously imagines that peace can come to the Middle East without America. Neither Russia, nor China, nor the EU has any appetite to lead efforts to confront nuclear proliferation by Iran or North Korea. Sometimes, as with Kosovo in the 1990s, America needs to act even when the UN hesitates. Above all, America must lead efforts to grapple with the global recession, through its dominant position at the IMF, its vital role in resisting the siren call of protectionism and the stimulative effect of the vast government outlays Mr Obama is planning. Yet a president who understands, as Mr Bush did not, that America is not the uncontested hyperpower of the 1990s—one who values “soft power” more than the hard version—will be a change for the better. An America led by such a man will listen more carefully to and work more closely with allies and rivals, will strive harder to respect the laws it has signed up to and might enter into new commitments, for instance to tackle climate change.
A renewal of America’s respect for constitution and law would be welcome at home as well as abroad. George the Second disdained the rules of governance established by his forefathers. He wiretapped citizens without authority, secretly permitted the use of torture and dismissed prosecutors on political grounds. Mr Obama seems determined not to follow his example. He has appointed a liberal outsider to run the CIA and a noted academic to head his office of legal counsel. America’s, said one of its founders, should be “a government of laws and not of men”. Under Mr Bush and Dick Cheney, it often seemed the opposite.
But it is the domestic economy which will consume most of Mr Obama’s time. And here American renewal must take two opposite forms. In some ways, the times cry out for more active government: for stronger regulation of banks and near-banks, for much more short-term government spending to counteract the contraction elsewhere in the economy, and for the establishment of a basic health-care system for everyone. But Mr Obama also needs a plan to shrink other aspects of government over the longer term. Without reform of expensive entitlements, the federal government faces bankruptcy. Cutting entitlements at the same time as buying hundreds of billions of dollars-worth of bad loans from Wall Street is difficult politics, to say the least. But at least Mr Obama has acknowledged that he will have to do it. A more equitable health system coupled with a path towards budget reform would, on their own, make Mr Obama’s presidency a remarkable one. And at least he has the votes in Congress to make it happen.
Mr Bush had a simplistic tendency to see the world through ideological and partisan spectacles. He hung on to bad advisers for longer than he should have; he divided the world too often into good and evil; and he plotted to establish a Republican hegemony although he had sold himself to the electorate as bipartisan. In economic matters, he was too prone to sacrifice the long-term good for short-term gain. He seemed curiously incurious about vital details, such as the conduct of the war in Iraq. Mr Obama seems to be different. By offering the most prized cabinet job to his rival, Hillary Clinton, and by keeping on Robert Gates, the defence secretary, who has done a good job, Mr Obama has shown a determination not to surround himself with cronies. He has put together a team which has impressed almost everyone with its calibre and its centrism. He has been tough already, dispatching blunderers and being prepared to admit to mistakes. He has repeatedly warned Americans that he will have to do unpleasant things.
The next four, or eight, years may be a disappointment, a triumphant renewal or something in between. Mr Obama is inexperienced, and right now the world looks especially forbidding. But he is a respectful and thoughtful man, and that is a good start.
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