SOCIALISMO
Sr. La Mont, sigue siendo interesante ver cómo la gente critica el socialismo sin entender claramente lo que es, un sistema de ayuda y apoyo a todo el pueblo, no sólo a los menos pudientes. ¿Qué vamos a elegir el próximo año?
R. Don Raúl, le comparto, para aclarar el significado del socialismo. Es la propiedad gubernamental de la producción, a diferencia de la provisión de beneficios por parte del gobierno que la gente no puede proporcionar individualmente.
En cuanto a las opciones para las próximas elecciones le comparto que consideremos, en resumen, mientras que el socialismo aboga por la propiedad y el control colectivos de los medios de producción y una transformación más radical de la sociedad, la socialdemocracia abarca una economía mixta con la intervención del gobierno para lograr la justicia social y proporcionar una red de seguridad para sus ciudadanos. La socialdemocracia se ve a menudo como un enfoque moderado o reformista en comparación con la naturaleza más transformadora del socialismo.
El problema que tenemos es cuando se confunde la gimnasia por la magnesia.
LIBROS
Actualmente, ¿cuál es el libro más popular en España y, si puede, me dice de qué se trata?
R. Con gusto. El libro que actualmente es más popular en España es El guerrero a la sombra del cerezo, y es una novela histórica del escritor español David B. Gil. Fue publicada en 2017 por la editorial Suma de Letras.
La novela está ambientada en el Japón del siglo XVI y cuenta la historia de Seizo Ikeda, un joven samurái que busca vengar la muerte de su familia a manos de los clanes Tokugawa y Hojo. Seizo se entrena con el maestro espadachín Kenzaburo Arima y se convierte en un guerrero temible. Sin embargo, pronto descubre que la venganza no es lo que esperaba y que hay cosas más importantes en la vida, como el amor, la amistad y la paz.
La novela está escrita en un estilo elegante y evocador, y cuenta con una trama bien desarrollada y personajes carismáticos. El guerrero a la sombra del cerezo es una novela que permanecerá con el lector mucho después de haberla terminado.
El autor, David B. Gil, nació en Madrid en 1976. Es licenciado en Derecho y en Filología Hispánica, ha trabajado como periodista y guionista y ésta es su primera novela.
MOR O REM
¿Qué le pasa a nuestro cuerpo cuando estamos dormidos en ese lapso de movimiento ocular rápido?
R. Muy interesante este cuerpo nuestro, de maravilla. Durante el sueño REM (movimientos oculares rápidos), nuestros cuerpos sufren varios cambios. El cerebro se vuelve muy activo, similar a cuando estamos despiertos, y procesa la información, consolida los recuerdos y regula las emociones. Nuestros ojos se mueven rápidamente y experimentamos sueños vívidos. Al mismo tiempo, nuestros músculos entran en un estado temporal de parálisis para evitar que hagamos realidad físicamente nuestros sueños.
La frecuencia cardíaca y la presión arterial aumentan, la respiración se vuelve irregular y, en los hombres (y en las mujeres también), puede ocurrir excitación sexual. El sueño REM es una etapa importante para la memoria y el procesamiento emocional, y es parte del ciclo del sueño que promueve el bienestar general
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*What We Know About the Wildfires in Hawaii*
The fire has been contained, but access to the islands is limited, and as the focus turns to search efforts, the death toll could rise.
A summer of ferocious weather across much of the United States reached the country’s most remote state on Wednesday, 2,500 miles off the West Coast, in Hawaii.
What began at the start of the week as scattered brush fires on the state’s biggest islands, Hawaii and Maui, turned deadly by midweek. By Thursday, at least 55 people had been confirmed dead in the nation’s most lethal wildfire since the Camp fire in California killed 85 people in 2018.
The rapid spread of the flames caught state officials and residents by surprise.
The death toll is likely to rise.
Firefighters continued to battle flare-ups on Thursday, but the fires have been largely contained, officials said. The fires were still generating smoke and ash.
Thousands of residents and tourists have been evacuated, and U.S. Army personnel were conducting search-and-recovery efforts on Thursday, Maui County officials said. There are still many road closures on Maui and the island of Hawaii.
The death toll could rise as rescuers travel to parts of the state that have been blocked by fires or road closures. Dozens of people have also been injured, some of them critically.
“In 1960, we had 61 fatalities when a large wave came through the Big Island,” Gov. Josh Green said on Thursday in an interview with CNN, referring to the island of Hawaii. “This time, it’s very likely that our death totals will significantly exceed that.”
About 1,500 tourists were expected to leave Maui on Thursday, joining the 11,000 people who had already been evacuated. Officials strongly discouraged new arrivals.
What caused the fire?
Brush fires had already ignited on Maui and the island of Hawaii by Tuesday. Those fires were stoked on Wednesday by a combination of low humidity and strong mountain winds, brought by Hurricane Dora, a Category 4 storm that was moving hundreds of miles to the south across the Pacific Ocean. What initially ignited the brush fires is unknown.
*Special Counsel Proposes January Date for Trump’s Election Interference Trial*
The former president’s legal team will get to suggest its own timetable for the case next week and will surely object to the government’s proposal.
The prosecutors overseeing the indictment of former President Donald J. Trump on charges of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election asked a judge on Thursday to set a trial date in the case for early January, laying out an aggressive schedule for the proceeding.
In a motion filed to Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who is presiding over the case in Federal District Court in Washington, the prosecutors said they were ready not only to go to trial on Jan. 2, but were also poised to give Mr. Trump’s lawyers the bulk of their discovery evidence in the next two weeks or so. The prosecutors further proposed that Mr. Trump’s lawyers submit their first pretrial motions in not much more than a month.
Mr. Trump’s legal team will get to suggest its own timetable for the case next week and will surely object to the government’s proposal. If accepted, the accelerated schedule would make the election interference case the first of the three criminal cases that Mr. Trump now faces to be put in front of a jury.
In their filing to Judge Chutkan, the prosecutors working for the special counsel, Jack Smith, said the rapid pace was needed given the gravity and historic nature of the charges. Speedy trials, they said, are not just enshrined in law to protect the rights of defendants, but also to safeguard the public’s interest in the swift administration of justice.
“It is difficult to imagine a public interest stronger than the one in this case, in which the defendant — the former president of the United States — is charged with three criminal conspiracies intended to undermine the federal government, obstruct the certification of the 2020 presidential election and disenfranchise voters,” Molly Gaston, one of the prosecutors, wrote. “Trial in this case is clearly a matter of public importance, which merits in favor of a prompt resolution.”
*They Endured One Russian Occupation. Now, They Fear a Second.*
The torture rooms in the battered Ukrainian city of Kupiansk have been empty for months. But Moscow’s advancing forces are just five miles away.
A billboard at the main entrance to the city of Kupiansk illustrates the tenuous nature of Ukrainian control in a region that has become one of the most active parts of the 750-mile front line in the war.
“Kupiansk is Ukraine!!!” it proclaims to anyone entering the city. The other side of the sign, visible to those in the city center, hints at why the first proclamation is so urgent. It shows an armed soldier standing in front of a helicopter, along with a phone number and a question: “Do you have information about traitors to Ukraine?”
At the outset of the war, Kupiansk, only 25 miles from the Russian border, fell to Moscow’s forces without a fight and remained under occupation for six months before being retaken in a lightning Ukrainian thrust in the Kharkiv region in the country’s northeast in September.
Now, however, while most attention is focused on the Ukrainian counteroffensive hundreds of miles to the south, Russian forces are mounting an offensive in the north, seeking to regain those lands. Kupiansk, a strategically important city that served as a logistical center for the Russian military, is right in the cross hairs, and many residents say they dread the return of the forces who terrorized them for six months.
*China’s Military, ‘Chasing the Dream,’ Probes Taiwan’s Defenses*
Day by day, the People’s Liberation Army is turning up the pressure, deploying an ever-wider array of planes and ships.
China has been steadily intensifying military pressure on Taiwan over the past year, sending jets, drones, bombers and other planes farther and in greater numbers to extend an intimidating presence all around the island.
Chinese naval ships and air force planes have been edging closer to Taiwan’s territorial seas and skies, probing the island’s vigilance and trying to wear down its military planes and ships. Chinese forces have also been operating more frequently in skies and waters off the island’s eastern coast, facing the West Pacific. China’s increasing presence there signals its intent to dominate an expanse of sea that could be vital for the island’s defenses, including for securing potential aid from the United States in a conflict, experts say.
Beijing claims Taiwan is its lost territory that must accept unification, preferably peacefully, but by force if Chinese leaders deem that necessary. It has seized on moments of high tension with Taiwan to intensify military activities around the island, and it may put on another show of force in the coming days, when Taiwan’s vice president, Lai Ching-te, passes through the United States.
Mr. Lai leaves on Saturday for Paraguay, and is scheduled to stop in the United States on his way there and back. Beijing regards such transits in the United States as an affront to its stance that Taiwan is not an independent state. Mr. Lai is also the presidential candidate for the Democratic Progressive Party, which supports asserting Taiwan’s separate status, a position that Beijing condemns as “separatism.”
Nearly every day, the Chinese send sorties toward Taiwan that involve increasingly diverse and sophisticated arrays of planes. They now often cross the median line in the Taiwan Strait, effectively erasing what was until several years ago an informal boundary between the two sides. Such moves could narrow the time that Taiwan would have to react to a surprise escalation, said Chang Yan-ting, a retired deputy commander of Taiwan’s Air Force.
*The Wagner Group Is Always Ready for a Coup*
In July, the Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin released a video from his new base in Belarus, welcoming his fighters to their country of exile after the Wagner group’s ill-fated mutiny. He also told them to prepare — for “a new journey to Africa.”
It was the first public signal that Wagner’s expansive Africa operations would carry on after Mr. Prigozhin’s banishment. Days later, after a coup in Niger ousted the democratically elected president, Mohamed Bazoum, Mr. Prigozhin wasted no time in offering his services to the new junta leader, though it is unclear what control he still has over the group after his failed mutiny attempt in Russia in June. One putschist traveled next door to Mali to meet with Wagner personnel in Bamako, where the mercenary group provides security for that junta’s government.
The events fueled immediate speculation that Moscow had engineered the coup, a notion encouraged by videos showing Nigeriens waving Russian flags in the capital, Niamey. The United States insists there’s “no indication” either Mr. Prigozhin or President Vladimir Putin of Russia was involved, while one Russian state media figure portrayed the events as an example of a Russian-led “anti-colonial revolution,” a BBC journalist reported.
Either way, the ouster of Mr. Bazoum by Niger’s military has presented an important opportunity to Mr. Prigozhin and Mr. Putin. It has allowed them to move on from the mutual embarrassment of the failed mutiny in June and to show that the Wagner force is growing stronger in Africa at the same time that the West’s military presence is fading. As terrorist groups gather strength in the neighborhood, that reversal could devolve into a major security threat.
Over the past decade, the Sahel, a vast semiarid region of western and north-central Africa, has become a tangle of transnational terrorist groups, including the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, Boko Haram and Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin. France’s eight-year military campaign intended to stabilize the region, named Operation Barkhane, ended in failure in the fall of 2022, leaving a security vacuum that was quickly filled by jihadists and Wagner mercenaries.
Contrary to the postcoup narrative, Niger — while a democracy — was hardly an oasis of stability: The Global Terrorism Index has documented a steady increase in terrorism-related deaths in the country in recent years. But the nation’s successive elected governments were at least willing to cooperate with Washington, allowing the U.S. military to conduct regional counterterrorism activities. The United States has two military bases in Niger with roughly 1,100 troops between them, cooperated with government officials and operated a security cooperation assistance program for Nigerien troops fighting Al Qaeda and Islamic State militants in the Sahel.
Now military exercises between America and Niger have been suspended. Washington has stopped short of calling the crisis a coup — a move that would require the United States to halt security and economic assistance. American diplomats and West African officials are trying to negotiate a return to power for Mr. Bazoum. If that effort fails, and Washington loses access to the drone base it runs there and other intelligence and surveillance activities in the area, its grasp of what insurgent groups are up to in the Sahel will be severely curtailed.
Wagner will be ready. Its forces are already deployed in Mali and Libya, both of which border Niger, as well as in the Central African Republic and Sudan. Since first sending troops to Africa in 2017, the group has embedded itself in these fragile states and siphoned valuable resources, a quid pro quo that offers military muscle in exchange for mining contracts that allow Wagner subsidiaries to extract gold, diamonds and other commodities that pad Russia’s coffers. Their operations have frequently resulted in the deaths of civilians, with credible accusations of sexual violence, torture and extrajudicial killings. The arrangements boil down to simple supply and demand: African putschists need the security that Wagner can provide, and the Kremlin needs the funding stream to soften the blow from biting Western sanctions.
*We Know What Doesn’t Work at the Border. Here’s a Better Solution.*
U.S. asylum laws were designed to protect people fleeing harm. They were enacted in the decades following the Holocaust to ensure that the United States never again turned away people fleeing persecution. But now, many blame these laws for the chaos and inhumanity at the nation’s southern border.
The biggest blow to America’s commitment to asylum came during the pandemic, when former President Donald Trump invoked Title 42, an emergency measure that allowed border agents to turn away asylum seekers, under the justification of preventing the spread of the virus.
When Title 42 restrictions were lifted in May, President Biden enacted a carrot-and-stick approach aimed at deterring new asylum seekers from traveling by foot to the border. These new measures included a set of legal pathways, including a parole program that allows people from select countries, including Cuba and Haiti, to legally enter the country for at least two years, provided they have a financial sponsor in the United States. Doing so has discouraged would-be migrants from taking a dangerous trek with a smuggler, often through multiple continents.
This approach would have been a great step forward if it hadn’t been paired with a countermeasure that prohibits some asylum seekers at the border from applying for protection in the United States. The vast majority of migrants must secure appointments at an official port of entry, which are difficult to obtain, or else they will be subject to expedited removal if they cannot prove that they sought legal protection in another country along the way.
On July 25, a federal court ruled that the president’s asylum ban was illegal. Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit put the ruling on hold, pending the outcome of the administration’s appeal.
The nation’s asylum system was not designed to meet the needs of all immigrants forced to flee their homes. But the global challenges we’re facing require a reimagining of the country’s immigration framework. Until Congress finds the political will to act, the president should use his authority to relieve pressure on our asylum system and give migrants the ability to legally work once they reach the United States.
I grew up in Las Cruces, N.M., and have seen firsthand how the southwestern border was weaponized to block immigration reform. It’s what compelled me to pursue a career in immigration policy and work in the Obama and Biden administrations. But I left government when it became clear that partisan fights over border crossing numbers extinguished the prospect of any reform in Congress.
Abandoning our nation’s moral commitment to protect asylum seekers is not the way forward. Instead, we can give people new legal options to work and reunite with family members in the United States. While far from perfect, the Biden administration’s parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans could serve as a model for what is possible. This policy provides safer options to people who are unlikely to meet the legal requirements for asylum, but who still have urgent humanitarian reasons to flee their homes.
*Ecuador, Reeling From a Candidate’s Assassination, Is Forever Changed*
The killing of Fernando Villavicencio marks a grim turning point for a once-tranquil country now awash in violence fueled by drug gangs.
The 12 shots fired on Wednesday evening, killing an Ecuadorean presidential candidate as he exited a campaign event, marked a dramatic turning point for a nation that a few years ago seemed an island of security in a violent region.
A video of the moments just before the killing of the candidate, Fernando Villavicencio, began circulating online even before his death had been confirmed. And for many Ecuadoreans, those shots echoed with a bleak message: Their nation was forever changed.
“I feel that it represents a total loss of control for the government,” said Ingrid Ríos, a political scientist in the city of Guayaquil, “and for the citizens, as well.”
Ecuador, a country of 18 million on South America’s western coast, has survived authoritarian governments, financial crises, mass protests and at least one presidential kidnapping. It has never, however, been shaken by the kind of drug-related warfare that has plagued neighboring Colombia, unleashing violence that has killed thousands, corroded democracy and turned citizens against one another.
Hours after the candidate’s killing, President Guillermo Lasso declared a state of emergency, suspending some civil liberties, he said, to help him deal with growing crime.
And on Thursday afternoon, Ecuador’s interior minister, Juan Zapata, said that six suspects arrested in connection with Mr. Villavicencio’s killing were all Colombian, adding a new dimension to a story line that already seemed to be imported from another place.
In the past five years, the narco-trafficking industry has gained extraordinary power in Ecuador, as foreign drug mafias have joined forces with local prison and street gangs. In just a few years, they have transformed entire swaths of the country, extorting businesses, recruiting young people, infiltrating the government and killing those who investigate them.
The similarities to the problems that plagued Colombia in the 1980s and ’90s, as narco-trafficking groups assumed control of broad parts of the country and infiltrated the government, have become almost impossible for Ecuadoreans to ignore.
On Thursday, some began to compare Mr. Villavicencio’s killing to that of Luis Carlos Galán, a Colombian presidential candidate gunned down on the campaign trail in 1989. Like Mr. Villavicencio, Mr. Galán was a harsh critic of the illegal drug industry.
Mr. Galán’s death still reverberates in Colombia as a symbol of the dangers of speaking out against criminal power and of the inability of the state to protect its citizens.
More broadly, Colombia is still grappling with the effects of the drug-trafficking industry, which continues to hold sway over the electoral process and is responsible for the deaths and displacement of thousands of people each year.
On Thursday, mourners gathered outside a morgue in the Ecuadorean capital, Quito, where Mr. Villavicencio’s body was being held. The air filled with desperate cries. Irina Tejada, 48, a teacher, wept as she spoke.
“They’ve stolen our hero,” she said. Then, addressing corrupt politicians, she went on: “Why don’t they side with our people, not with those criminal narcos? The pain and outrage!”
Soon, the silver hearse carrying Mr. Villavicencio’s body left the morgue, and the crowd began to clap, at first mournfully, then with a rapid anger.
People screamed at the police escort surrounding the body.
“Now you protect him, when it is too late!” a woman shouted.
Mr. Villavicencio, who had worked as a journalist, activist and legislator, was polling near the middle of a group of eight candidates in a presidential election set for Aug. 20. He was among the most outspoken about the link between organized crime and government officials.
On Wednesday evening, he arrived at a school in Quito, the capital, where he stood on a stage in front of a packed crowd and spoke out “against the mafias that have subjugated this homeland.” Then, as he exited the school under an enormous banner that bore his face and the words “presidente,” the shots were fired.
Mr. Lasso, the president, immediately blamed the death on “organized crime.” The national prosecutor’s office quickly said that one suspect had been killed and six others arrested.
The following day, Mr. Lasso said he had requested the help of the F.B.I., which agreed to assist in investigating the case.
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