Para quienes somos amantes de la buena música, esto es un verdadero deleite. Les comparto una página que estoy seguro disfrutarán:

Los mejores 50 covers de canciones de The Beatles, según Paste Magazine. Incluye videos de las interpretaciones.

http://www.pastemagazine.com/blogs/lists/2010/11/the-50-best-beatles-covers-of-all-time.html

Lo traemos en la sangre.

Today we observe the 30th anniversary of John Lennon’s untimely demise.

Today more than ever: You may say I’m a dreamer but I am not the only one.  I hope someday you will join us and the world will live as one.

Hillary despotricando como quinceañera enojada con su novio, Obama nombrando un zar antileaks, amenazas de muerte a Assagne, ataques de hackers en contra del wikileaks y Amazon y PayPal cruzando los brazos. Interpol haciendo el ridículo a nivel internacional persiguiendo a alguien supuestamente por “sex crimes” cuando en realidad lo que quieren es callarlo.

Leaks intrascendentes respecto a México, más de lo que ya sabíamos… México en riesgo de perder la guerra contra el narco, Chávez amigo del Peje y conflictos dentro de las fuerzas armadas: ¿cuál es la novedad?

Este par de párrafos son una sinopsis de la semana pero la reciente nota en el Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/04/state-department-to-colum_n_792059.html sí es novedad en lo mediocre que resulta la estrategia de respuesta del Depto. de Estado a una situación que evidentemente se les salió de las manos.

En una nación que presume libertad de expresión NO puede ser que por medio de un comunicado (que luego negaron) adviertan a alumnos de una de las universidades más prestigiosas del país que hablar de Wikileaks podría poner en riesgo sus futuros profesionales.

El punto no sólo es que la táctica es pueril, sino que la respuesta que genera es en detrimento del Departamento de Estado. Me recuerda a “No pienses en un perro azul”… ¿En qué pensaste? ¿En un perro azul?

Si antes ya ocupaba el número 1 en los trends de todos los medios sociales, después de estas declaraciones lo único que lograrán es echarle más gasolina a la discusión, añadiendo a la plática el hecho de que el Depto. de Estado amenaza a la gente respecto a su futuro en el servicio público. La verdad dudo mucho que alguien que esté hablando propositivamente respecto a wikileaks hoy tenga muchas ganas de pedir chamba en el Depto. de Estado.  

AQBlog me ha pedido que escriba sobre wikileaks y México… ya les pasaré la liga pero les anticipo: la verdad el escándalo es mucho más por propagación mediática que por contenido que nos impresione. Somos una nación que bastante conoce las fallas en nuestro sistema y será muy dificil que nos sorprendan.

Under pressure from US government and exercising their rights as a private firm, Amazon caved and stopped hosting Wikileaks.  Even if it is their legal right to do this, a company like Amazon should take a stand for free speech. Also, they should provide all parties the right to access and continued service, provided that they do not publish anything illegally or going against universal values.

Amazon was never going to be liable for hosting Wikileaks. At most, if the US legal system acted as a puppet for the Executive branch, they would order a Cease and Desist. Only then would a move like the one recently pulled by Amazon be justified but not before that.

Echoeing the now famous tweet by Assange: “If Amazon are so uncomfortable with the first amendment, they should get out of the business of selling books.”

  It’s all over the news. The interpol is now actively searching for Julian Assagne, founder of Wikileaks. See article here: http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/727071.html

Since they know there is no hope of prosecuting him for what wikileaks actually does (and does extremely well), they’re pulling an Al Capone on him. Apparently an individual’s sexual deviance is now enough for Interpol to issue a red notification, an international apprehension order.  They couldn’t get Capone for racketeering so they got him on tax evasion. They can’t get Assagne for telling the truth and leaking official documents (because the fact is they know he’s not responsible for stealing this information and they have not been able to find those who would be accountable for actual crimes), but they will now attempt to get him on the “grave crim”e of erotic mischief.

There is a lot more to this story than Assagne’s ability to stay underground (let’s see for how long) or legal proceedings. The real juice behind this is the fact that Web 2.0 and new social media have been able to do something that not even international terrorism had been able to: hit government hard enough to actually get them trembling.

When the twin towers got hit, the end target was to collapse the US financial system. To a certain extent, the terrorists were succesful but the hit was quickly returned in the form of smart bombs and air raids over Afghanistan and Iraq. The US economy was hit but kept afloat, in great part through activating the system with war machine revenues.

When Assagne setup Wikileaks and got his hands on a number of confidential documents (most recently the now famous US diplomatic cables) and shared them with the world, the target was truth. And truth hurt the US government (and others implied in these cables)… it hurt it bad enough for Hillary Clinton to pay attention and react.  The executive branch of US government is in a more fragile state today than they have been as a result of terrorist attacks.

The good news is that no innocent lives will be lost due to wikipedia and a nation which prides itself on the pursuit of truth above all, will get a dose of reality.  The even better news is that a site like wikileaks is not and never will be dependant on its founder’s personal life to remain afloat. Like the rest of Web 2.0 and under concepts such as open sourcing and open innovation, wikileaks may have been founded by Assagne but it (like truth) belongs to the world.

A great article on WaPo. I ‘highly’ (pun intended) recommend it.

”To explore what that legalization might look like from the vantage point of a decade in the future, The Washington Post’s Michael S. Rosenwald pored through reams of government, academic and corporate studies, and talked to experts on marijuana, drug legalization, Prohibition and marketing.

This, then, is a reported fantasy, a look at the State of Pot in America in 2020, based on research conducted in 2010.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/22/AR2010102205573.html

Hello and thanks to anyone who decides to stop by and read this first post (I’m guessing as it is a new blog, it will not have too much of a following but what the hell).

So after much thought and much more procrastination, I decided to open shop with a WordPress Blog. I’ve been blogging for http://www.americasquarterly.org/aqblog for some time now and will continue to do so, but I also wanted to create an alternate space to share my AQ blogs and to blog on other topics that would never make it to AQ (which specializes on regional pol/soc/ec issues).

In the near future and as I get familiar with the way WordPress interface works, you will see design changes and hopefully app integration as well.  I’ll also post some of my pre-released AQBlog articles here.

That’s all for now. More to come in the near future. Thanks!