Una buena carcajada fue lo que me paso al leer este cartel. Tanto el “eso es imposible”  como el Fdo.: Bolzano

Gracias microsiervos

NOTA:

Que sería de mi humor sin los WTF!?

Que sería de nosotros sin los chistes matemáticos

En el ascensor de la ETSI de Valencia, simpáticos contracarteles informativos:

Realmente es imposible que no pase, aunque puede que no pare.

Cártel de fijación de precios

El Consejo de la Comisión Nacional de Competencia (CNC) ha sancionado con la multa más elevada impuesta en España en materia de competencia a las compañías de seguros Mapfre Empresas y Mapfre Re,  ASEFA,  Caser, Swiss Re, Scor, y Münchener, por un total de 120.72 millones de euros, por formar un cártel de fijación de precios mínimos durante los años 2002-2007en el seguro decenal de daños a la edificación en España.

Multas:
ASEFA, Compañía Española de Seguros y Reaseguros multa de 27.759.000 euros

Mapfre 21.632.000 euros.

Caja de Seguros Reunidos, Compañía de Seguros y Reaseguros 14.241.000 euros .

SCOR Global 18.599.000 euros.

Munchener Ruck 15.856.000 euros.

Swiss Re 22.641.000 euros.

Impresionante esta serie de carteles de series de TV del director de arte Albert Exergian.  Utilizando un diseño vectorial minimalista ha conseguido captar la esencia de cada una de las series.

Vía Creativos sin Ideas

1. All Time Low – Therapy
2. Cobra Starship – Hot Mess
3. You Me At Six – The Consequence
4. Paramore – Brick By Boring Brick
5. Mayday Parade – Anywhere But Here
6. Automatic Loveletter – The Answer
7. Say Anything – Do Better
8. Cute Is What We Aim For – Doctor
9. Cartel – If I Fail
10. The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus – Face Down

El 25 de Noviembre es el Día Internacional de Lucha contra la violencia de género y este año estaremos en plena época de exámenes para la 1ª evaluación (24 y 25 de Noviembre). No obstante, creo que es interesante trabajar en el tema con prudencia y he encontrado un material interesante en Transversalia sobre violencia de género. Me gustaría trabajarlo en tutoría y plantear una actividad vista en el ya archicitado blog de Lucía Ordoñez. Sé que lo ideal sería poder sacar el 25 de Noviembre vuestras fantásticas creaciones, pero aunque sea más tarde merece la pena trabajarlo.

Violencia doméstica

La actividad planteada será realizar un cartel sobre la violencia de género con pictogramas y símbolos. Podéis ver los ejemplos de la clase de Lucía Ordoñez en el ejercicio El género.

Fue en el 2007 cuando Lucía Álvarez en Las TIC en Plástica publicaba un post relacionado con este día y presentaba la Exposición Urbana de carteles (expuesta en los Mupis de Gijón) del 2004 de las Jornadas de Diseño Motiva.

El tema planteado: Contra la Violencia de Género. A mí los carteles me parecen soberbios (en el sentido positivo de grandiosos, magníficos) y querría compartirlos para realizar una reflexión silenciosa y la actividad planteada.

Para ver todos clic aquí.

EXPOSICION CONCURSO CARTEL SEMANA SANTA 2.010

La Agrupación de Cofradías , Hermandades y Corporaciónes Bíblicas de la Semana Santa de Puente Genil, Expone durante los días del jueves 3 de Diciembre al 8 del mencionado mes, Festividad de la Inmaculada ( Patrona de la Villa), las obras PICTORICAS que se han presentado a optar a ser seleccionada como cartel oficial de la Semana Santa de Puente Genil del año 2010.
La exposición tendrá lugar, gracias a la colaboración, generosidad, hermandad y mananterismo que les caracteriza, en el cuartel de la Corporación Bíblica El Juicio de Salomón y Las Tres Marías, sito en calle Horno nº 4, y siendo el horario de visita el siguiente : 12:00 a 14:00 horas. y tardes de 18:00 a 21:00 horas.
Hacer constar, que se podrá presentar las obras para el concurso, hasta el miércoles 2 de diciembre de 2009.

PONTANEANDO

La parte de mi vida que tiene que ver con la música es muy, peo muy larga de contar, algún día con tiempo hablaremos de eso. Por lo pronto he de decirles que de lo poco que aún me queda de esa escencia pues es el trabajo gráfico. Tengo algunos amigos que siguen tocando y pues me han encargado cosas como el logo de su banda y un poster. He aquí la propuesta que les hice.

Que un cartel cinematográfico peque de poco original no es algo nuevo. Lo cierto es que cualquier poster te puede recordar a otro debido a su diseño. No hace mucho IP se hizo eco de algunos protagonizados por Steven Seagal. Pero si coges cualquiera de Harrison Ford, Tom Cruise o Will Smith, verás no pocas similitudes. Y sólo he puesto tres actores al azar. Ahí se suele decir que el actor o la actriz vende por sí solos. Con lo que su rostro en el cartel es de obligada inclusión. Es más, si es posible que ocupe el 75 u 80 por ciento del cartel. El resto poco importa. De ahí que no sepas de que carajo puede ir la trama, excepto porque ponen el título de la película y eso puede dar alguna que otra pista al respecto.

El de “Avatar” no es que sea precisamente una copia de “Terminator Salvation”. Y la cuarta entrega de Terminator seguro que tambien recordaría en su momento a otro cartel. La gracia, y lo que me ha llamado la atención es que en las dos sale Sam Worthington con medio rostro. Si bien en Salvation jugaban con el efecto de las sombras y el villano separándolo a él y a Christian Bale. En Avatar juegan con él y con su “avatar”. No es por ser exigente, pero me habría gustado algo más novedoso. Eso de acabar en lo fácil siempre es aburrido.

Fdo: Snake  

[...] En 1993 IG Farben devint le principal pourvoyeur de fonds en vue de la montée en puissance des Nazis. Au cours des années qui ont suivi, ce cartel chimico-pharmaceutique allemand devint complice et prêta main forte aux préparatifs de la conquête militaire de l’Europe.
Les rapports du Tribunal de Nuremberg sur les crimes de guerre parlent d’un don de plus de 80 millions de Reichmark offert aux Nazis et aux organisations affiliées à Bayer, BASF et Hoechst. En retour de cet «investissement» IG Farben obtint le contrôle et la gestion de toutes les industries chimiques, pétrochimiques et pharmaceutiques des pays occupés pendant la 2nde Guerre mondiale avec comme objectif final la création d’un vaste marché allant de Lisbonne à Sofia.
Selon les rapports du Tribunal de Nuremberg sur les crimes de guerre, Knieriem, directeur de l’IG Farben adressait le 20 Juillet 1940 une lettre au gouvernement Nazi – quelques temps après la victoire sur la France – dans laquelle il soulignait les instruments qu’IG Farben entendait utiliser afin d’asseoir son emprise en Europe. La lettre d’IG Farben évoquait l’existence d’une monnaie commune européenne, des lois communes et même un système juridique commun et tout cela sous le contrôle et la supervision de la coalition Nazi/IG Farben.
A Auschwitz, IG Farben y érigea le plus grand complexe industriel européen destiné à la production des produits chimiques et explosifs destines à être utilisés sur le front Est au cours de la 2nde Guerre Mondiale. Ce complexe industriel de 24 km² de superficie – y compris son énorme camp de concentration, réservoir d’esclaves travailleurs – fut financé par les crédits d’environ 1 milliard de Reichsmark fourni par la Deutsche Bank.
Les milliers de prisonniers de ce camp furent utilisés par la section pharmaceutique de Bayer à de pseudo expériences médicales en testant les produits brevetés comme la «chimiothérapie».
Au cours des procès du Tribunal de Nuremberg sur les crimes de guerre 24 dirigeants de IG Farben ont été traduits en justice et beaucoup furent condamnés.
Voici comment le procureur américain Telford Taylor résuma le rôle joué par le cartel chimique au cours du procès du Nuremberg: «la seconde guerre mondiale n’aurait jamais été possible sans IG Farben».
Pendant plus de 6 décennies les rapports des procès du Tribunal de Nuremberg contre les dirigeants du cartel de IG Farben ont été tenu secrets au sein des archives de Nuremberg. En juillet de cette année (2007) notre fondation eut accès à ces archives et publia plus de 40.000 rapports sur Internet. Aujourd’hui tout le monde, les enfants aussi bien que les adultes peuvent avoir accès à ces archives quelque soit l’endroit où ils se trouvent au monde.
Avec le début de la Guerre Froide, quelques uns des dirigeants de IG Farben ayant été traduits en justice furent reconduits dans des postes de responsabilité dans l’industrie allemande.
Karl Wurster, président de Degesch – le fabricant du produit Cyclone B ayant servi dans les chambres à gaz d’Auschwitz – redevint le Directeur général de BASF.
Fritz ter Meer, le directeur de IG Farben et de Bayer coupable de génocide et de crimes d’esclavage commis ici à Auschwitz fut libéré de prison après seulement 4 mois. Dix ans après avoir été jugé coupable comme criminel de guerre à Nuremberg il devint à nouveau président du conseil de surveillance de Bayer.
Hans Globke fut coauteur de lois racistes de Nuremberg et fut également auteur des nouvelles lois sur la Grande Europe, le «Reich» dans les pays occupés par les Nazis pendant la seconde guerre mondiale.
Après la 2nde Guerre Mondiale Globke devint ministre chancelier au sein du cabinet du Chancelier allemand Adenauer. En tant «qu’éminence grise» et en dehors de tout contrôle parlementaire, il eut la haute main essentiellement sur tous les aspects politiques de la période d’après guerre en Allemagne de l’Ouest, allant des services secrets jusqu à la poursuite des plans du cartel pharmaceutique et pétrolier en vue de la conquête de l’Europe et de la toute nouvelle Union Européenne fraîchement construite.
Walter Hallstein, un éminent professeur de droit à l’époque des Nazis disait en 1939: «l’une des principales lois dans (dans les pays conquis et occupés) sera la ‘loi de protection de l’honneur et du sang allemands’…».
En 1957 l’avocat de «l’honneur et du sang allemands» devint le personnage clé et l’architecte de la mouture de la future Union Européenne et le premier responsable de «la commission européenne», ce fut le premier responsable exécutif de l’Union Européenne désigné dès le début en dehors de tout contrôle démocratique.
En résumé, les Nazi et IG Farben nommèrent la commission Européenne comme «Politburo» du cartel pharmaceutique de l’après guerre pour diriger l’Europe.
Résultat de l’influence de ces intérêts, les décisions du parlement européen n’ont que peu de cas si aucune influence n’est exercée sur les lois, sur ce que l’on nomme «directives de l’union européenne» imposées par la «commission européenne» sur la vie de plus de 400 millions d’individus en Europe.
Au même moment les élections en vue de mettre en place le Parlement européen ne sont qu’une vaste mascarade, décevante et destinée à montrer l’Union Européenne comme une structure démocratique.
La base de toute démocratie est le pouvoir appartenant au peuple. Dès le moment ou le pouvoir exécutif n’est plus contrôlé par la volonté du peuple la démocratie n’est plus rien de plus qu’une dictature.
Aujourd’hui des silhouettes d’IG Farben subsistent toujours en Europe. Les objectifs des successeurs d’IG Farben sont rejoints par les multinationales pharmaceutiques et pétrolières européennes. Leurs objectifs ressemblent étrangement à ceux d’IG Farben pendant la seconde guerre mondiale :créer et mettre sous son contrôle un marché de produits pharmaceutiques brevetés et autres produits brevetés de haute technologie, un marché allant de «Lisbonne à Sofia».
L’énorme espace géographique que ces intérêts corporatistes veulent contrôler concerne tout le monde et tout habitant de ce continent. Ces intérêts concernent également les brevets sur les gênes – visant à exercer tout contrôle sur la vie et le système génétique des individus – les brevets sur les organismes génétiquement modifiés avec comme objectif de mettre sous contrôle quotidien notre système nutritionnel.
Le plus connu des ces industries cherchant à exercer un contrôle sur notre vie est «le commerce des maladies fait par le secteur pharmaceutique». Comme je l’ai précédemment mentionné, l’industrie pharmaceutique promet la santé mais toute son existence n’est basée que sur la promotion des maladies constituant ainsi une source de revenus. Nous savons aujourd’hui que les maladies cardiovasculaires, le cancer, les maladies immunodéficientes et d’autres maladies peuvent être évitées. La perpétuation délibérée des maladies par les intérêts corporatistes de l’industrie pharmaceutique est un crime.
Résultat de cette pratique industrielle pour le moins éthique :le nombre de victimes de ce commerce frauduleux a dépassé un milliard de personnes et déjà dépasse le nombre de victimes des guerres que l’humanité ait connu jusques là.
Sous le prétexte de lutte contre le terrorisme, la même Commission Européenne au sein de l’Union Européenne a émis une directive qui risque de transformer l’Europe en un «continent Orwelien»¹.Selon cette directive de l’UE désormais tous les appels téléphoniques que vous ferez, toutes les adresses emails que vous cherchez à contacter sont susceptibles d’être brouillés. Pas seulement pour vous mais également pour les 400 millions d’européens. Ce n’est pas difficile de comprendre ce que ces instruments veulent signifier une fois aux mains de ces intérêts corporatistes qui ont si souvent abusés de leur pouvoir par le passé. Notre rencontre a lieu à un moment historique, le monde est à croisée des chemins. Les responsables politiques des principaux pays leaders en matière de production et d’exportation des produits pharmaceutiques et pétrochimiques comme les Etats-Unis, le Royaume Uni, l’Allemagne ainsi que la France ont déjà publiquement parlé de la Troisième Guerre Mondiale et de leur volonté de faire usage de l’arme nucléaire.
A la suite d’un holocauste nucléaire et la proclamation d’une loi martiale à large échelle ces intérêts corporatistes qui soutenaient la seconde guerre mondiale pourraient abuser de leur puissance encore une fois.
Ces plans innommables ne peuvent être mis en pratique que s’ils restent secrets ou si nous n’en parlons pas et restons indifférents.”[...]

lisez cet article en intégralité, c’est énorme !!

J’hallucine complètement quand je lise cela : ” en résumé, les Nazi et IG Farben nommèrent la commission Européenne comme «Politburo» du cartel pharmaceutique de l’après guerre pour diriger l’Europe.”
En effet le dailymail a dit exactement la même chose il y a de cela 5 mois : ” The document, also known as the Red House Report, is a detailed account of a secret meeting at the Maison Rouge Hotel in Strasbourg on August 10, 1944. There, Nazi officials ordered an elite group of German industrialists to plan for Germany’s post-war recovery, prepare for the Nazis’ return to power and work for a ’strong German empire’. In other words: the Fourth Reich. ”

Ce texte confirme des tas de choses que j’ai lu ces derniers mois, c’est vraiment excellent !!

Voila comment elle définit l’industrie pharmaceutique : ” le résultat de cette pratique industrielle pour le moins éthique :le nombre de victimes de ce commerce frauduleux a dépassé un milliard de personnes et déjà dépasse le nombre de victimes des guerres que l’humanité ait connu jusques là. ” Comme ça c’est claire !!!!

Elle n’oublie rien, la preuve : ” Sous le prétexte de lutte contre le terrorisme, la même Commission Européenne au sein de l’Union Européenne a émis une directive qui risque de transformer l’Europe en un «continent Orwelien»¹.Selon cette directive de l’UE désormais tous les appels téléphoniques que vous ferez, toutes les adresses emails que vous cherchez à contacter sont susceptibles d’être brouillés. Pas seulement pour vous mais également pour les 400 millions d’européens.”

Lisez l’article en entier, il est vraiment bien, elle n’invente rien, les élites dégénérées nous ont pris en grippe (lol), après nous avoir exploité et manipulé, ils vont nous exterminer.

La final de la Champions League en el Santiago Bernabéu ya tiene cartel promocional. Ya podemos empezar a soñar. En mayo comprobaremos si se cumplen o no nuestros sueños…

by Philip Caputo

In the almost three years since President Felipe Calderón launched a war on drug cartels, border towns in Mexico have turned into halls of mirrors where no one knows who is on which side or what chance remark could get you murdered. Some 14,000 people have been killed in that time—the worst carnage since the Mexican Revolution—and part of the country is effectively under martial law. Is this evidence of a creeping coup by the military? A war between drug cartels? Between the president and his opposition? Or just collateral damage from the (U.S.-supported) war on drugs? Nobody knows: Mexico is where facts, like people, simply disappear. The stakes for the U.S. are high, especially as the prospect of a failed state on our southern border begins to seem all too real.

Poor Mexico. So far from God and so close to the United States.
—Porfirio Díaz, dictator of Mexico from 1876 to 1880 and 1884 to 1911

Those famous words came to mind when another man named Díaz offered me an equally concise observation about the realities of life in the country today: “In Mexico it is dangerous to speak the truth. It is even dangerous to know the truth.”

His full name is Fernando Díaz Santana. He hosts two AM-radio news-and-commentary shows in the small Chihuahuan city of Nuevo Casas Grandes. A stocky, broad-faced man in late middle age, he projects an air of warmth, openness, and intelligence. As he tells me that it’s dangerous to speak or know the truth, the half-rueful, half-apologetic expression in his eyes makes it plain that he’d rather not keep his mouth shut and his mind closed.

He’s received text messages from listeners cautioning him to be careful of what he says on the air. He takes these friendly warnings seriously; failure to heed them could bring a death sentence like the one meted out to Armando Rodríguez, a crime reporter murdered by an unidentified gunman in November 2008 in Juárez, the violent border city across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. The fear of suffering a similar fate is a powerful incentive for self-censorship, for training a naturally inquisitive mind to acquire ignorance.

“So now we give just the objective facts,” Díaz says as he sits facing me in a stuffy, windowless rear room of the radio station, in Nuevo Casas Grandes’s central business district. He and the co-host of his afternoon show, David Andrew (pronounced Da-veed An-dray-oo), explain that the “objective facts” are those reported by the police or city hall or some other official source. Though the accuracy of such facts is often questionable, no questions dare be asked. “We say nothing more,” Díaz adds. “As long as we don’t get too deeply into a story, we are safe.”

I am reminded of Winnie Verloc, the character in Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent who “felt profoundly that things do not stand much looking into.”

More than 14,000 people have been killed in the almost three years since President Felipe Calderón mobilized the army to fight Mexico’s half-dozen major drug cartels. Virtually none of those homicides has been solved, partly because witnesses suffer short-term memory loss when questioned, and partly because the police, for various reasons, also feel profoundly that things do not stand much looking into.

Rodríguez’s death is illustrative. His colleagues believe he was killed for an article he wrote linking relatives of Patricia González, the Chihuahuan state attorney general, to narcotics trafficking.

That is not idle theorizing. Jorge Luis Aguirre, a writer for LaPolaka.com, an online Juárez news service, had written extensively about corruption in the Chihuahuan state government, and did not spare González either. On the night of November 13, 2008, as he was driving to Rodríguez’s wake, he got a call on his cell phone. The male caller said, “You’re next, son of a bitch!” and hung up.

Aguirre immediately packed up his wife and sons and fled to El Paso, where he sought asylum. In March, testifying at a hearing of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs, he stated that he’d identified the source of the threats:

“Victor Valencia, a representative of the governor of the state of Chihuahua, had sent people to warn me to ‘tone down’ my criticisms of the prosecutor, Patricia González, because if I didn’t, he was going to kill me, using the Juárez cartel’s preferred method of kidnapping followed by execution.”

The aftermath reveals a lot about today’s Mexico. Patricia González remains in her post. Victor Valencia has been promoted to chief of public security in Juárez. The federal deputy attorney general handling the Rodríguez murder case, Jesús Martín Huerta Yedra, was shot to death in his car, along with his secretary. The investigation has since gone nowhere, to no one’s surprise. As the newspaper El Diario editorialized,

Friends of the journalist, who preferred not to give their names for security reasons, mentioned that they do not feel frustrated by the lack of advances in the case since from the beginning, they felt that the authorities had no intention of doing anything to clarify the crime.

To clarify the crime. Of the many things Mexico lacks these days, clarity is near the top of the list. It is dangerous to know the truth. Finding it is frustrating. Statements by U.S. and Mexican government officials, repeated by a news media that prefers simple story lines, have fostered the impression in the United States that the conflict in Mexico is between Calderón’s white hats and the crime syndicates’ black hats. The reality is far more complicated, as suggested by this statistic: out of those 14,000 dead, fewer than 100 have been soldiers. Presumably, army casualties would be far higher if the war were as straightforward as it’s often made out to be.

——————————————————————————–

Slideshow: Photographer Juliàan Cardona narrates a slideshow of images from the Juárez drug wars

——————————————————————————–

What, then, accounts for the carnage, the worst Mexico has suffered since the revolution, a century ago? To be sure, many of the dead have been cartel criminals. Some were killed in firefights with the army, others in battles between the cartels for control of smuggling routes, and still others in power struggles within the cartels. The toll includes more than 1,000 police officers, some of whom, according to Mexican press reports, were executed by soldiers for suspected links to drug traffickers. Conversely, a number of the fallen soldiers may have been killed by policemen moonlighting as cartel hit men, though that cannot be proved. Meanwhile, human-rights groups have accused the military of unleashing a reign of terror—carrying out forced disappearances, illegal detentions, acts of torture, and assassinations—not only to fight organized crime but also to suppress dissidents and other political troublemakers. What began as a war on drug trafficking has evolved into a low-intensity civil war with more than two sides and no white hats, only shades of black. The ordinary Mexican citizen—never sure who is on what side, or who is fighting whom and for what reason—retreats into a private world where he becomes willfully blind, deaf, and above all, dumb.

Which brings us back to Fernando Díaz and his avoidance of truth.

I have come to see him at the suggestion of Emilio Gutiérrez, who fled to the U.S. because army officers threatened him with death. During an interview at his hiding place north of the border, Gutiérrez told me about a mysterious event that occurred on February 12, 2008. Teams of gunmen, riding in SUVs and pickup trucks and described by witnesses as “dressed like soldiers,” swept through Nuevo Casas Grandes and six neighboring communities between midnight and dawn, kidnapping and executing people.

The convoys covered 170 miles altogether, rolling through military checkpoints unimpeded. In Nuevo Casas Grandes, the “armed commandos,” as they were called by the Mexican media, set fire to the house of a police subcommander and shot him to death as he ran outside. Two other people, one of them the uncle of a midlevel narcotics trafficker, were also executed. The press reported that 14 more were abducted, but the actual number was believed to be much higher. All the victims, except two who were apparently snatched by mistake and later released, vanished without a trace.

Gutiérrez, a reporter in El Diario’s Ascensión bureau, covered the operation. From what he’d seen with his own eyes and from interviews with eyewitnesses, he concluded that the perpetrators were dressed like soldiers for the simple reason that they were soldiers. An operation on that scale, he reasoned, could not have been conducted by gangs of pistoleros hastily thrown together: it required thorough planning, accurate intelligence, discipline, and coordination. Nor could pistoleros have driven through army roadblocks without being stopped. If the raid wasn’t military, it must have been conducted with the army’s cooperation.

That wasn’t what Gutiérrez reported, however. He told me that his boss, José Martínez Valdéz, the editor of El Diario’s editions in northwest Chihuahua, instructed him to “not cause problems by writing that this was military.” Gutiérrez’s silence did not win him any points with the army. Five months later, he was warned that the military was going to kill him, and he was forced to leave the country.

But why, I asked, would soldiers maraud the countryside on a murder-and-kidnapping spree? He replied that the raid was not part of the Mexican government’s war on the drug cartels but a struggle between two powerful cartels: the Juárez organization, headed by Vicente Carillo, and the Sinaloa federation, whose boss, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, is the most-wanted man in Mexico. Gutiérrez said that in this instance the gunmen, whoever they were, had been after people they thought were working for the Juárez cartel.

“It’s an open secret in Mexico,” he said, “that the army is fighting the [Juárez] cartel to weaken them and pave the way for Guzmán.”

Open secret or no, an allegation that soldiers may have acted on behalf of a drug lord needs to be substantiated. After all, Calderón’s counter-narcotics strategy relies, with U.S. support, almost exclusively on the military.

With a short list of contacts provided by Gutiérrez, my interpreter, Molly Molloy, and I enter Mexico through the Palomas border crossing and head south into the Chihuahuan Desert. I have just been in Juárez and am relieved to not be going back to that industrialized border city—utterly charmless in the best of times, and these are far from the best of times. Juárez’s main product now is the corpse. Last year, drug-related violence there claimed more than 1,600 lives, and the toll for the first nine months of this year soared beyond 1,800, and mounts daily. That makes Juárez, population 1.5 million, the most violent city in the world. Two lines of graffiti summed up a place where not only law and order but civilization itself has broken down: Mi ciudad pide clemencia en su dementia (“My city asks for mercy in its madness”), and Mi ciudad es un negro lamento un aullido infinito (“My city is a black lament, an eternal howl”).

Nuevo Casas Grandes lies on a plateau near a fertile valley—cowboy-and-farmer country where cattle graze on the high desert ranges and apple and pecan orchards form tidy ranks on the city’s outskirts. The city itself, with some 51,000 people, is known to archaeologically minded tourists for its proximity to Paquimé, the site of ancient pueblo ruins. It looks prosperous by the standards of interior Mexico, with wide streets, a few decent hotels and restaurants, an airport, and several auto dealerships selling Fords and Jeeps and other familiar makes. If it weren’t for all the Mexican license plates, I could believe we were in a town in the southwestern United States.

Our first call is at the offices of El Diario, housed in a whitewashed villa on the main drag. Molloy and I are hoping to meet with José Martínez Valdéz, who is Gutiérrez’s former editor, and the news director, Victor Valdovinos. They can answer some of our questions and provide introductions to city officials. But repeated attempts to see Martínez are unsuccessful—he manages to dodge us all afternoon. We do get a very brief audience with Valdovinos. When we tell him what we are there for, he flinches and says, “You don’t want to talk to me,” then vanishes.

That leaves Fernando Díaz, whom we find at the radio station as he and David Andrew wrap up their afternoon show. They are willing to talk to us, and we go into the back room. Andrew, a heavyset, 30-ish man with dense carbon-black hair, shuts the door, either to muffle the noise from outside or to make sure no one overhears our conversation.

In the Mexico Mexicans have to live in, Díaz begins, life is “very hard, very bad,” a statement he underscores with a statistic: last year, 115 homicides were committed in Nuevo Casas Grandes and its surrounding communities. That works out to a murder rate more than 20 times as high as New York City’s.

It’s at this juncture that he makes his comment about the dangers of speaking or knowing the truth. I begin inquiring about the February 2008 incident, but Díaz and his younger colleague aren’t eager to discuss it.

I don’t get anywhere, though Díaz casts doubt on Gutiérrez’s assertion that the raid was a military operation. All of this talk about human-rights abuses by the army is “a myth,” Díaz insists. He is in fact cheered that an army battalion has been making rounds to bolster security in Nuevo Casas Grandes: “We are abandoned and unprotected here in northwest Chihuahua. It is a very big wish that the soldiers will bring peace. The army is the only group we can trust.” He adds by way of illustration that several sicarios, as professional assassins are called in Mexico, were arrested and confessed to killing 19 people in town.

Two of the sicarios, Andrew interjects, were his neighbors: “One guy worked in a car wash, the other guy was an army deserter.” Two others turned out to be auto salesmen—“nice guys in the day, killers by night,” Díaz says, as if he’s voicing over a trailer for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. “You are talking to me, a radio announcer, but you can’t be sure that I’m not a sicario,” Díaz adds. “You say you’re an American reporter, but I don’t know that you’re not a sicario. You cannot trust anybody.” He doesn’t seem to notice that he’s contradicted his earlier remark that only the army can be trusted.

The question is, can the army be trusted, and if so, can it win this latest—and biggest—battle in the seemingly endless “war on drugs”? Calderón has deployed more than 45,000 troops (out of a total force of 230,000) throughout the country. Of that number, about 7,000, reinforced by 2,300 federal policemen, occupy Juárez as part of Operación Conjunta Chihuahua—the Joint Chihuahuan Operation. The army has taken over all the policing functions. The city is under undeclared martial law.

Although many ordinary Mexicans welcome the army’s intervention, certain that things would be far worse without it, approval has been far from universal. Claims of grievous abuses by the armed forces—unlawful detentions, disappearances, thefts, rapes, and murders—have increased sixfold in the past three years, according to Human Rights Watch. One hundred and seventy complaints have been filed in Chihuahua alone, says Gustavo de la Rosa, the former Chihuahua state ombudsman for Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission.

Leaving aside the question of whether militarizing the anti-narcotics campaign is the best way to go about things (a similar strategy in Colombia has been only partially successful), the fact is that, by destroying public trust in the armed forces, military misconduct undermines the entire effort, as I learned from a 50-year-old cleaning woman who now lives in Arizona and who asked to remain anonymous. She was visiting her aunt in Juárez last December when soldiers broke into a neighbor’s house, claiming that they were looking for a suspect.

“They didn’t say who,” the woman told me. “They tore her house apart, took her jewelry and her money, and said that if she complained about what they did they were going to come back and kill her. People are more afraid of the police and soldiers than they are of the narcos, because they’re very mean guys—not all, but many.”

The fear goes beyond undisciplined soldiers running amok. In an interview, de la Rosa told me that the president, elected in 2006 by a margin as thin as an ATM card, called out the army not merely to fight the cartels and eliminate a threat to national sovereignty but to consolidate his power and confer legitimacy on his presidency. “Calderón wants to show the Congress that the military is with him,” de la Rosa said. “And the military promised to support Calderón in exchange for being allowed out of the barracks, because the army wants to govern. Chihuahua is an experiment. What is happening here is in essence a military coup, a regional coup.” To support this contention, he cited a change he has had to make in his own work. Under normal circumstances, he would file complaints of abuse with the state governor, but now, he said, “the governor is ineffective, so I have to go to General Felipe de Jesús Espitia, the comandante of the 5th Military District.”

I was somewhat incredulous that the military was staging a creeping coup. To what end? I asked.

De la Rosa shrugged. “Actually, nobody really knows or understands what the military is up to,” he answered, hedging a bit. Then he asserted that the army intends not to stamp out drug trafficking but to “control” it. “So now if a drug cartel wants to move drugs into the U.S., who would they go to? To the governor? No, to the general.” (El Universal, Mexico’s largest newspaper, reported in September that de la Rosa had received death threats from the army, apparently because of his sharp criticisms; sources have told me he has taken temporary refuge in the U.S.)

Please read the rest at The Atlantic

En 50 Brilliantly Photoshopped Movie Posters nos presentan una colección de los mejores pósters (50) de películas, sobretodo más bien modernillas. La verdad es que si te fijas, hay verdaderas obras maestras de diseño y arte. Os dejo algunos de los que me han impresionado y me han llamado más la atención:

Desde el principio de los tiempos ha habido un enfrentamiento entre ambos sexos, masculino y femenino. Hasta hace relativamente poco, esta guerra la ganaba el sexo masculino. Pero bien es sabido por todos que hoy en día las que mandan son las mujeres.

Dicho esto, he de decir que el otro día fui al cine a ver “2012″ y al ir al lavabo pude observar 2 carteles, uno en la puerta de cada lavabo.

En la puerta del lavabo de hombres había algo tal que así.

En ese preciso instante me di cuenta de que el lavabo nos tiene calados. El hombre es un ser que piensa y ama con la polla. Esa es la cruda realidad. No hay amor incondicional, si no hay sexo, la chispa se apaga. Así de simple. Joder el puto lavabo, que calados nos tiene.

Curioso de mí, fui a ver el letrero del lavabo de mujeres.

Ahí me di cuenta que ese lavabo tiene caladas a las mujeres. Para la mujer el sexo no es tan importante como para el hombre. La mujer piensa y ama con la cabeza. Tampoco existe el amor incondicional. Puede amar sin sexo, pero no puede amar si el ser amado en cuestión no tiene trabajo, casa, coche y a ser posible, un saco con el símbolo del dólar escondido en el armario. es la cruda realidad.

Así pues, el día en que fui al cine, supe que los lavabos nos tienen calados. Los tíos solo pensamos en follar, no importa con quién ni como. Las mujeres, solo piensan en su futuro y su bienestar tanto moral como económico. Es la cruda realidad.

Dicho todo esto voy a hacer dos cosas:

1.- Voy a abrir un paraguas, para soportar el aluvión que se me avecina por parte de las mujeres que lean esto.

2.- Voy a intentar investigar si esa campaña, es una campaña publicitaria de algo y si está hecha por hombres o por mujeres, porque no lo tengo claro… ¿Por ambos quizá?

Edito: Gonzigon en un comentario nos dice que es una campaña de promoción para una película con ese mismo título: La cruda realidad. No hace falta decir que, bajo mi punto de vista, es una campaña efectiva… han logrado que hable de una peli en mi blog sin pagarme un duro.

CARTEL
This Providence
The Summer Set
The Dares

$16 online
$20 at the show
6pm doors
all ages

COMING SOON….

Quero compartir con ustedes la noticia, después de no haber obtenido el premio en el concurso de calaveras de Edumac, me llevo la grata sorpresa una semana despues de que gane la convocatoria de cartel para el evento de Cinema Planeta 2010.

He aquí el cartel con el que gané la convocatoria.

El tema de la convocatoria fué cine y medio ambiente, así que encontré la manera más sencilla de combinar ambos elementos, con un poco de ayuda de la semiótica.

Resultados convocatoria cartel Cinema Planeta