Books: Juicio a los humanos

One day you wake up naked in the middle of the jungle and you are taken by a tiger before a court presided by an owl, with a snake acting as prosecutor and a loyal Labrador dog as your attorney.

You may think it's not worth the fuss, that the charges against you (or the humankind you represent) are not that important, or that going back and repair the damage done is easy, but after you listen to the statements of the witnesses you are not sure which side will the scales be tipped.

With a delicious sensibility, José Antonio Jáuregui makes us think in this fable about our relationship with animals from the other's point of view, both for good and for bad. His son Eduardo Jáuregui makes a good editorial job showing the world his father's posthumous work.

Juicio a los humanos: Los animales tienen la palabra
José Antonio Jáuregui
RBA Integral
ISBN 84-7871-598-3

Juicio a los humanos: Los animales tienen la palabra

Other books by José Antonio Jáuregui

Books: The Clash of Civilizations And the Remaking of World Order

We are in 1996. The world has not yet changed due to the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York. The Bush and Bin Laden families are hand in glove and their businesses are thriving. The population of the Western countries does not reckon international terrorism as their first issue and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has not yet drafted his Alliance of Civilizations.

In this "happy world" there are nonetheless some thinking brains that do not see the planet like a big country where Coca Cola, McDonald's and blue jeans will unite minds and will turn us into a large market in which everybody will be interested in preserving peace.

This is the case of Samuel P. Huntington. Five years before the world awoke to the horror of islamist terrorism, his book "The Clash of Civilizations And the Remaking of World Order" makes a lucid analysis of the cultural features that part the different civilizations: western, latinoamerican, african, islamic, sinic, hindu, orthodox, budist and japanese.

After reading such an informed and deep essay (essential for anyone interested in international politics), it becomes clear in the reader's mind that an alliance of civilizations is all but impossible, due to the cultural, ideological and fundamental differences existing among some human groups. It is clear that western civilization has good perspectives of relating from a trading, economic or even cultural point of view to other civilizations like the japanese, the latinoamerican or the orthodox ones. The budist, sinic and hindu civilizations, even the african one without the religious component, promise to offer a good understanding, as long as a deep knowledge exists by each of the sides about the other and its otherness. However, there are civilizations whose relationship with the western one is limited from the beginning and by principle.

This is the case of the islamic civilization. No matter how much good will from the western civilization, there are three most important and insurmountable features that the islam, as a civilization (not individually by each person), always uses in its relationships with the rest of civilizations, which are:

1. The infidel (i.e., the one who does not follow Mohammed's religion) is inferior and does not qualify as a human being, so he can be robbed, raped and killed without commiting a sin.

2. Any good-will signal offered by the other is seen as a sign of weakness, and not as a fraternal or generous gesture, and as such weakness it must be exploited on own benefit.

3. The territories dominated by muslims are dar-al-islam, the "home of islam"; the dominated by infidels are dar-el-jarb, the "home of war", and so Holy War must be done to convert it to part of the home of islam.

Any of these features by themself may be an objection to the creation of a profitable commercial or friendly relationship. The three of them together in the same civilization and not only culturally but as a divine commandment form a barrier which is too difficult to overcome.

Unfortunatelly the course of history is not taking us to soften what parts us, but fundamentalisms (not only islamic, but in general, both religious and nationalist) are living an splendor age. Far from making Nietzsche's statement "God is dead" come true, the different gods are more alive and are more extremists every day.

Western civilization is nevertheless still living a golden age. May we keep it or loose the course depends among other things on the firmness with which we fight the fundamentalist enemy, not only from the outside but also from the inside (in the form of intelligent design theory, for instance). Now we as a civilization have the largest richness that ever existed in the history of Mankind, both cultural and economic, and best distributed than ever. In our and our rulers' (elected and directed by us) hands is the responsibility of avoiding that a dramatic remaking of world order makes us loose what so much effort has taken to conquer.


The Clash of Civilizations And the Remaking of World Order
Samuel P. Huntington
Free Press; New Ed edition (5 Jun 2002)
ISBN-10: 074323149X
ISBN-13: 978-0743231497

The Clash of Civilizations: And the Remaking of World Order

Other editions: The Clash of Civilizations: And the Remaking of World Order

Bloggers for justice in Venezuela

Via ALT1040 I see the story about the Venezuelan police making an important mistake. The story is in Menéame (the Spanish Digg) if you want to push it up. Citing the source:

Pericles José Ortiz Calles, 35, system engineer looking for a job in Caracas was murdered yesterday by the police, [...] in Venezuela, professedly mistaken for a dangerous murderer.

Justice for everyone.

Chado or the Way of Tea

TeBebo.com, the reference website about tea in Spanish, has updated its contents with a new article: "Chado or the Way of Tea".

In this article an interesting introduction is offered to the terms WA, KEI, SEI, and JAKU which preside the Japanese tea ceremony and which summarize an attitude, a whole philosophy of life, behind the simple act of sharing a cup of tea.

A butterfly, guest star in Fauna Iberica

Insects tend to go unnoticed, but they still are part of our native fauna. The guys at Fauna Iberica try to remember this and from time to time they offer a button of the everlasting reserve of insects and arachnoids from our land.

The last acquisition has been the pandoriana, a beautiful butterfly not so easy to spot.

The winter the nightingale sang

This morning the nightingale is singing. Its chirps compete with the robin's shy whistle, winter inhabitant of my garden.

This winter, the nightingale sings. And its song feels sad to me.

Disappointing DTT

DTT disappoints me. Once again the resources are there, the technology is there, but we do not use them or we even despise them.

I have always said that TVE, as the Spanish public television that it is and therefore paid by all of us (and very well paid; maybe some other day I will write about that too), should offer more public service and less guts (no matter how they pose it in their annual reports).

There may not be anything cheaper than broadcasting foreign TV programmes (most of all series, films and documentaries in English) in their original language with subtitles. The ratio between cost and benefit would be out of the scales, being it so advantageous. Can you imagine that in the second most touristic country in the world everyone, from the waiter at the bar to the immigration public servant, could speak English?

Utopic? Not at all. It has happened for decades in other European countries. For instance, in The Netherlands everybody speaks English thanks among other things to their public television. "Well, they are so few and their language is so little spread that they have to speak English, but that is not the case with Spain because we are 500 million Spanish speakers", I was told by a friend. But I do not buy that excuse. What I buy is that we are a country of competent people towards abroad. What I buy is that our youths are able to compete in an ever more global, international, open job market.

Well, it happens the same with the DTT. We are loosing too many opportunities. Which is the percentage of digital TV channels broadcasted in Spain that offer the original audio band or the subtitles (not to say both)? Of those I can watch at home, only SETenVeo offers the original audio channel. Sometimes Tele 5, for some new series.

I understand that this is something very complex and expensive, and most of all that from November 2005, when open DTT channels started to broadcast in Spain, they did not have enough time because in technology matters everything moves slowly.

In case you did not notice, the previous paragraph was pure irony.

To worsen things, nearly all TV broadcasters with a digital emission are bombing us with adverts: "original version, subtitles, digital quality...". Sometimes even the low intensity of the signal turns this last statement into false, but let's not be argumentative.

Is it the same in other countries?

Seriously: am I the only one who is disappointed? Does nobody else have the distinct feeling that they have been shown the money but given only a nickle?