The End of the Angela Merkel Era

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BERLIN — THE next few weeks will most likely determine the future of Germany’s approach to the refugee crisis — and perhaps the future of the country itself.

There are two important dates coming up: a European Union summit meeting on Feb. 18 and 19, which represents Chancellor Angela Merkel’s last chance to win over the rest of Europe to her open-door refugee policy, followed by elections in three federal states in Germany on March 13, which will offer an implicit referendum on Ms. Merkel’s political course.

Future generations might remember the past months as the final days of the age of convergence. On a continental level, “convergence” means the postwar political development toward an “ever closer union” among the European nation-states, in the words of the German historian Andreas Wirsching. Until recently, convergence seemed almost like a law of nature, an inevitability that could be slowed but never reversed.

For the last decade — the Merkel era — “convergence” has been applied to developments within Germany as well. The cultural and economic differences between East and West Germany, though still significant, appeared to be shrinking. Society seemed to become ever more tolerant, for example toward gays and career moms. The children and grandchildren of Turkish immigrants made it to important positions, rooting them in mainstream society. The grand coalition between the Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats seemed to erase what remained of left and right. As a woman, an East German and a moderate in every respect, Ms. Merkel was at once the result of and the leading figure in this development.

Powerful centrifugal forces are now at work. The German party system is being rearranged. Those who feel they were the losers in this age of increased diversity — easterners, older white men — are taking their anger to the Internet and the polls, voting for the far-right Alternative for Germany party that promises to fight “political correctness” and shut the border.

Forecast to get 7 percent to 15 percent of the votes in the coming state elections, Alternative for Germany is winning voters away from the once-grand Social Democrats, which is polling as low as 13.5 percent in the state of Baden-Württemberg, and outpolling the Greens. In Germany, where governments are typically composed of coalitions of the leading parties, having the far right in the mix is unsettling, to say the least.

It’s not just about politics. On the streets, even among families, there is anger and unrest. Violence against homes for asylum seekers is on the rise. The debate online is a heated blur of biased presumptions, where citizens accuse the government and German news outlets of lying to their face and turn to Russian state media for information.

The most evident symptom of disintegration is maybe Angela Merkel herself. For years, her high approval ratings made her unassailable. Now, suddenly, 81 percent of Germans disagree with the government’s management of the migration crisis, and a poll last week found her personal approval rating had dropped by 12 percentage points, to 46 percent. Ms. Merkel, once the center of Germany’s centrism, is marginalized, too.

The narrative of convergence is a teleological one. The “ever closer union” is not just a term in a treaty, or a sober description of what we have witnessed in the past decades. It’s what we thought was naturally meant to be, what Europe was supposed to do.

The same applies to the ever closer union of German society. For sort-of-leftish urbanites like myself, the notion that we might be slipping into a phase of disintegration — not to say regression — is particularly painful, because it shows we had bought into a lie, the lie that history is a one-way street, always moving toward a free, liberal, multicultural society. The anxieties caused by the influx of migrants show that many Germans no longer share this vision, if they ever did.

Perhaps Ms. Merkel herself got caught in the same trap. Her wholehearted embrace of refugees last summer, and her assertion that welcoming them was a communal European effort, seemed predicated on the belief that every development was a step forward.

It’s hard to say what’s going to happen next. Ms. Merkel probably won’t pivot completely, not this time, but in her usual, cautious way, she has already started to shed the image of “Mother Merkel.” At a regional party convention on Jan. 30, she directly addressed the refugees: “When there is peace again in Syria, when ISIS is defeated in Iraq, we expect you to return.”

Meanwhile, one of Ms. Merkel’s closest allies and a leading candidate in the March elections, Julia Klöckner, has offered a proposal on refugees that would essentially place a cap on the number of people admitted to the country — something Ms. Merkel has herself refused to do. Ms. Klöckner’s plan is widely seen as a Merkel trial balloon. But given the severity of the tremors shaking Germany, even quotas are unlikely to settle things.

Professor Wirsching argues that crises have interrupted convergence, but have also ultimately created new lines of cooperation that have eventually brought the Continent closer together. And maybe, in the long run, the same can be said about Germany. I just don’t see that day coming soon.

Justice Antonin Scalia’s Supreme Court Legacy

Justice Antonin Scalia, who died on Saturday at the age of 79, served on the Supreme Court for 30 years and made as big a mark on the court and on American law and politics as some of the chief justices under whom he served. It took about 10 minutes after the announcement of his death for the right wing to start screaming that the Senate should not confirm a replacement while President Obama is in office.

Given how blindly ideological the Republicans in the Senate are, after nearly eight years of doing little besides trying to thwart Mr. Obama, it is disturbingly likely that Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader and architect of the just-say-no approach, will lead his colleagues in keeping Justice Scalia’s seat open, and the highest court in the land essentially paralyzed, in the hope that one of the hard-right Republicans running for the presidency will win.

Mr. McConnell announced on Saturday night that “this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president,” claiming that he wanted to give American voters the chance to decide.

Later, Mr. Obama spoke, recognizing Justice Scalia as a “towering” figure in American law. He “will be remembered as one of the most consequential judges and thinkers” on the Supreme Court, he said. Mr. Obama said he would nominate a successor and called on the Senate “to fulfill its responsibility to give that person a fair hearing and a timely vote.”

Justice Scalia, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986 to fill an associate justice seat when William Rehnquist was elevated to chief justice, was more than any other conservative justice responsible for bringing ideology to the foreground in the court’s deliberations and, sometimes, its decisions. The conservative justices who preceded him, including Justice Rehnquist, and who followed him, like Anthony Kennedy, were not ideological animals in the same sense as Justice Scalia.

The originalist, fundamentalist constitutional ideas that have driven many of the court’s decisions were more the product of Mr. Scalia’s intellect and politics than of the other conservative justices, including Justice Clarence Thomas and Chief Justice John Roberts. Justice Scalia wrote few of the divided court’s 5-to-4 decisions, perhaps because the chief justices were aware that Justice Scalia’s lack of self-control in his judgments made him unreliable in those cases.

One prominent exception was his majority decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, in which the court ruled for the first time that the Second Amendment granted an individual right to bear arms. But Justice Scalia did say that that right was not absolute, and that certain weapons like assault rifles could be banned, but the case still set the court’s fundamentalist approach to gun rights.

From abortion rights to marriage equality and desegregation, Justice Scalia opposed much of the social and political progress of the late 20th century and this one. He wanted to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision on women’s rights to privacy, he dissented on the decision that said anti-sodomy laws were unconstitutional, and he dissented on decisions that it was unconstitutional to execute mentally disabled or teenage prisoners. He disapproved of the Miranda decision that requires police to read prisoners their rights.

Volumes have been written about various courts — the Warren Court, the Rehnquist Court, the Roberts Court. But in many ways the current conservative majority, whose decisions often reflect an originalist view of the Constitution, can be seen as the Scalia Court.

The question now is whether the Senate will honor Justice Scalia’s originalist view of the Constitution by allowing President Obama to appoint a successor, and providing its advice and consent in good faith. Or will the Republicans be willing to create a constitutional crisis and usurp the authority of the president to ensure that the Supreme Court functions as one branch of this government?

El paripé Rajoy/Sánchez y eso de las ondas gravitatorias.

Una imagen no vale más que mil palabras; vale más que mil reuniones de políticos en busca de poder. El Santo  encuentro  Rajoy/Sánchez solo entretuvo a unos cuantos peones del periodismo que más se parecen a titiriteros que a notarios de la actualidad. Ni uno iba a hablar ni otra a escuchar. Todo un paripé junto a las ondas gravitatorias. ¿Por qué subvencionan a teatreros, medios de comunicación, poetas encabronados, redes sociales, etc? Ahí, ahí está la solución, los partidos políticos mandan en toda esta chusma que se hacen pasar por juntadores de letras. Al final todo quedó reducido a la foto de las manos.

La frialdad elevada a la categoría de Jefe de Estado Ese era, al terminar el día, el gran debate nacional: ¿Ha sido un menosprecio? ¿Ha sido la traducción práctica del aviso de «le trataré como se merece»? ¿Ha sido el anuncio de tensiones futuras, si Sánchez logra la presidencia? ¿Ha sido la venganza por haberle quitado el protagonismo y la iniciativa política? Una imagen no vale más que mil palabras; vale más que mil reuniones.

La única novedad es que no hay novedad y eso si que es novedad.  Sánchez y Rajoy, dos hombres y un solo destino: El fracaso. El madrileño puede que  llegue a presidente del Gobierno, aunque solo sea por unos meses, lo que el mayor error propio y también de los socialistas. Al otro le queda la honrosa salida del paso atrás. Honrosa, reitero, con el país creciendo a más del tres por ciento, el  país que más crece de la UE, con las cifras de paro recortándose y con aquel déficit del 9,1 % regalo de Zapatero reducido a mucho más de la  mitad. Eso sí, con la corrupción como premisa y ensuciando más que nunca a su partido. Pero con otras elecciones ganadas por mayoría absoluta en pocos meses. 

Both the Democrats and Republicans Want Radical Change: Readers on the New Hampshire Primary

Bernie Sanders on the night of the New Hampshire primary.

Readers dissected the influence of gender, generation and political agenda in response to recent columns and editorials about Senator Bernie Sanders’s lopsided victory over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the New Hampshire primary.

“People are tired of old saws, they hate the establishment with a passion, they are fed up with the lack of attention to our borders,” Stephen Light of Grand  Marais, Minn., wrote in response to an editorial. “There is one message that Hillary must understand — both the Democrats and Republicans want radical change.”

Many readers noted that Mr. Sanders prevailed among almost every demographic group in the Democratic race. Others said Mr. Sanders’s strength among independent voters is important.

“It is Bernie who attracts the independents, not Hillary,” Maro wrote from Massachusetts. “The goal posts have been moved in the current election cycle. Income inequality and independence from corporate interest have become the two most significant signature issues for the voters in Democratic primaries.”

Women reflected on the symbolism of Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy. To some, the prospect of having a longtime feminist elected to the White House carries a powerful promise of change.

“The glass ceiling still exists and electing Hillary will finally shatter it. She is the smartest and most experienced presidential candidate in the race today and she is a woman,” Karen Kucinski wrote on Facebook. “Elect Hillary precisely because she is a woman — this country needs a woman’s perspective and leadership style to thrive.”

“I am a woman in my 30s, currently pregnant, desperately aware of how much gender has affected and will continue to affect my career compared to my partner’s. I am surrounded by women with everyday stories about injustice and abortions that fully equip us to understand the lived reality of sexism,” PHD wrote from California. “I want my daughter to grow up in a fairer world. And yet all of this does not compel me to vote for Hillary, nor should it compel older women to command that I do so from a perch of assumed intellectual and ethical superiority.”

Some women wrote that they had experienced overt discrimination in the same era as Mrs. Clinton, but their history did not make them want to vote for her.

“I once had to go to a business lunch through the kitchen, because women weren’t allowed to enter by the front door. I was told that ‘of course’ my work would decline during pregnancy, and when on maternity leave, they replaced me with a man,” Karen wrote from Boston. “This was Wall Street in the 70s and 80s. And you know what? I’m voting for Bernie.”

Some wrote of a deep distrust of Mrs. Clinton, documented in poll results, that they see around them.

“I live in Texas and Republicans hate, hate Hillary Clinton. She has little chance of winning over voters from the other side,” Kane wrote from Houston. “Bernie Sanders did very well with the 40 percent of New Hampshire residents who declared themselves independents.”

A national anti-establishment mood is changing politics, many readers said.

“I myself am very, very angry at what this country has become since Reagan’s voodoo economics started the downward slide of the middle class,” Maryse wrote from Mystic Island, N.J., in response to an op-ed by Jennifer Finney Boylan. “The political system is rigged. Who wouldn’t be angry?”

Some readers said that Democrats need to stress unity in the end, even as candidates compete for primary votes.

“For the sake of the party and to improve the tenor of the ongoing debate, I sincerely hope Clinton reboots her campaign by focusing less on her biography and more on substantive policy proposals,” Jean wrote. “At the end of the day, I will vote Democratic, but I remain a solid, feminist supporter of Sanders.”

البؤس الجنسيّ في العالم العربيّ

بعد تحرّشات ساحة التحرير، جاء دور تحرّشات كولونيا. حين اندلعت الثورات العربيّة في عام 2011، ظنّ بها المتتبّعون خيرًا بيد أنّ الحماسات قد فَتُرت اليوم إذ تبيّن أنّ في هذه التحرّكات عللًا وبشاعات. لم يمسَّ زخْم المظاهرات لا الأفكار ولا الثقافات ولا الدين ولا العلاقات الاجتماعيّة المفضية شاء من شاء وأبى من أبى إلى الجنس. فالثورة لا تعني الحداثة بالضرورة. تحرّشات بعض المهاجرين العرب في كولونيا بألمانيا عشيّة رأس السنة، والتي شكت منها نساء غربيّات، ذكّرت بما حدث في ساحة التحرير في أوج أيّام الثورة.

حين رُبط بين التحرّشَيْن، تأكّد الغرب أنّ كبيرة البؤس في أجزاء واسعة من العالم العربي والإسلاميّ هي علاقته المرضيّة بالمرأة، فهي في بعض البلاد، تُحجّب وتُرجَم وتُقتَل وتُتّهم دومًا ببثّ الكيد والفتنة في "مجتمعهم المثاليّ " .

للردّ على ما حدث، سارعت بعض الدول الأوروبيّة إلى إنتاج وتوزيع أدلّة حسن تصرّف على المهاجرين واللاجئين!

الجنسُ من المحرّمات المعقّدة (تابو) فهو في بلاد كالجزائر و تونس و سوريا و اليمن نتاج الثقافة الأبويّة المحافظة المحيطة بكلّ نواحي الحياة، فمنذ أن نالت هذه البلاد استقلالها والتشدّد الإسلاميّ والتزمّت المستتر أحيانًا الذي حملته الاشتراكيّات التي تحكّمت من الناحية الإيديولوجيّة والثقافيّة هي التي هيمنت. هذه المفاعيل العجيبة، كانت كفيلة بوأد الرغبات وتهميشها وإشعار صاحبها بالذنب.

كم نحن بعيدون عن عصر ذهبيّ، أنتج ـ ـ الروض العاطر في نزهة الخاطر ـ ـ للشيخ النفزاوي، الذي تناول بلا حُجبٍ ولا عُقدٍ أعقد أمور النكاح وأطرفها.

التناقض هو سيّد الموقف في كثير من البلاد العربيّة حين يصلُ الأمرُ إلى موضوع الجنس المغيّب والمنكر رغم حضوره الصامت والطاغي. المرأة محجّبة بيد أنّها محوريّة في علاقاتنا وأحاديثنا. المرأة حاضرة في حديثنا اليوميّ كي نثبّت رجولتنا وشرفنا وقيمنا العائليّة، لا يُسمح لها في بعض البلدان الحضور في الحياة العامّة إلّا حين تتنازل عن جسدها. إن أُخلعت حجابها فهذا اعتراف يتمنّى الإسلاميّ والمحافظ والشابّ العاطل عن العمل نُكرانه. المرأة، صاحبة ـ ـ التنورة القصيرة المزلزلة ـ ـ خطرٌ، هذا ما يراه المجتمع ولا احترام لها إلّا في علاقة تملّكٍ، فهي زوجة فلان أو بنت فلان.

هذه التوتّرات، تخلق تناقضات لا تُحتمل، فالرغبات مقموعة ولا حميم لاثنين يودّان العيش معًا لأنّهما يصيران حديث الجماعة، ممّا يُسفر عن بؤسٍ جنسيٍّ يؤدّي إلى عبثٍ وهستيريا.

في بلادنا أيضًا، كثيرون يتمنّون قصص حبٍّ، لكن معوّقات اللقاء كثيرة والغواية والملامسات ممنوعة والنساء مراقبات دومًا ويُسألن باستمرار عن عذريّتهن، كما أنّ شرطة الأخلاق صاحبة يدٍ عليا. هذا ويُدفع لبعض الجرّاحين مبالغ لا يستهان بها لرتق البكارات.

الحروب التي تُشنّ في بعض بلاد الله ضدّ المرأة وضدّ كلّ راغبٍ بحياةٍ سويّةٍ تذكّر بمحاكم التفتيش. أيّام الصيف، تتألفّ زمرٌ عديدها شباب سلفيّون، تحمّسهم خطبُ إمامٍ راديكاليّ كلّفوا أنفسهم مراقبة أجساد نساء قرّرن السباحة بملابس البحر.

تجول شرطة الأخلاق في الحدائق العامّة وتحاول ترهيب الأحباب ولو كانوا متزوّجين، وتمنعهم من ارتيادها. حتّى إنّ المقاعد الخشبيّة تُقصّ أحيانًا كي لا يجلس عليها متحابّان.

هذا المنع يُثمر خيالات من نمطيْن: البعض يحلمُ "بتفلّت" الغرب و "انحلاله"، والبعض الآخر بجنّة وحور عين…

هذان الخياران هما ما تقدّمه محطّاتُ التلفاز لمشاهديها في العالم الإسلاميّ: دعاةٌ متزمّتون ومطربات وراقصات لبنانيّات خضعن لمئات العمليّات التجميليّة، أجسادهنّ ليست بالمتناول وممارسة الجنس معهنّ من المستحيلات.

على صعيد الملبس، هذا التناقض الصارخ يتحوّل إمّا إلى برقعٍ كامل أو إلى "الحجاب المتبرّج" الذي يقرن بين حجابٍ ملوّنٍ وبنطال جينز مثير. شواطىء بلادنا بين بوركيني وبيكيني…

نادرون هم الأطبّاء المتخصّصون بالشؤون الجنسيّة في البلاد الإسلاميّة، أمّا نصائحهم فنادرًا ما تُؤخذ بعين الاعتبار.

لذا، يحتكر الإسلاميّون خطاب الجسد والجنس والحبّ. ما من شابٍّ عربيٍّ أو مسلمٍ لم يكتشف بعد دهاليز الإنترنت وتعدّد المحطّات التلفزيونيّة الفقهيّة. سيلٌ من المحطّات والمواقع بلغ زبى البورنوغرافيّة الإسلاميّة. بعض الدعاة يطلقون فتاوى مشوّهة من مثل: أنّه حرام على المسلم أن يمارس الجنس عاريًا، وأنّه يُمنع منعًا باتًّا على النساء لمس فاكهة الموز، وبحكم فتوى "إرضاع الكبير" لا يحقّ لرجلٍ الاختلاء مع زميلة له، ما لم تكن قد أرضعته من حليبها.

الجنسُ سيّد وهو في كلّ مكان وزمان وتحديدًا بعد الموت. لا نشوة خارج الرباط الزوجيّ الخاضع لجملة من الفتاوى الدينيّة. هذه نشوة خاليةٌ من الرغبة. لا نشوة إلّا بعد الموت. فالجنّة المأهولة بحور العين هي من مواضيع الدعاة الأثيرة، فلذّة ما وراء القبر هو ما سيكافأ به سكّان بلاد البؤس الجنسيّ. هذا ما يحلم به الانتحاريّ الخاضع لمنطق سورياليّ رهيب: النشوة قرينة الموت لا الحبّ.

إرتاح الغربُ وهو يتخيّلُ شرقه الاستشراقيّ، شرقٌ قرينٌ للغرب، فالاستشراق بوّابةُ أحلام واختلافات ثقافيّة، هنا شهرزاد، هنا الحريم، هنا هزّ خصرٍ… هذه اللطائف حالت، لا بل حجبت الأسئلة المتعلّقة بحقوق المرأة في العالم الإسلاميّ وها هو الموضوع يظهر اليوم في أوروبا مع وصول المهاجرين الشرق أوسطيّين والأفارقة الحاملين معهم أمراض وبؤس بلادهم الجنسيّ.

ما بدا بالأمس البعيد مشهدًا ظريفًا لبلاد بواحات وجِمال وحور عين، يستحيل اليوم مواجهة ثقافيّة على أرض الغرب. فروقات الأمس، تلك التي بدت مدجّنة بسبب المسافات والشعور بالتفوّق قد تحوّلت اليوم إلى تهديد مباشر يكتشفُه الجمهور الغربيّ بخوف وتململٍ، فالجنس مريضٌ في العالم العربيّ و ها قد انتقلت العدوى إلى أرض اللجوء.

لكمال داود مقالة رأي أسبوعيّة في صحيفةـ ـ يوميّة وهران ـ ـ الناطقة بالفرنسيّة ، له رواية ـ ـ معارضة الغريب ـ ـ التي تُرجمت إلى اللغة العربيّة عن دار الجديد، لبنان. 

Sex misery in the Arab world

The Sexual Misery of the Arab World

AFTER Tahrir came Cologne. After the square came sex. The Arab revolutions of 2011 aroused enthusiasm at first, but passions have since waned. Those movements have come to look imperfect, even ugly: For one thing, they have failed to touch ideas, culture, religion or social norms, especially the norms relating to sex. Revolution doesn’t mean modernity.

The attacks on Western women by Arab migrants in Cologne, Germany, on New Year’s Eve evoked the harassment of women in Tahrir Square itself during the heady days of the Egyptian revolution. The reminder has led people in the West to realize that one of the great miseries plaguing much of the so-called Arab world, and the Muslim world more generally, is its sick relationship with women. In some places, women are veiled, stoned and killed; at a minimum, they are blamed for sowing disorder in the ideal society. In response, some European countries have taken to producing guides of good conduct to refugees and migrants.

Sex is a complex taboo, arising, in places like Algeria, Tunisia, Syria or Yemen, out of the ambient conservatism’s patriarchal culture, the Islamists’ new, rigorist codes and the discreet puritanism of the region’s various socialisms. That makes a good combination for obstructing desire or guilt-tripping and marginalizing those who feel any. And it’s a far cry from the delicious licentiousness of the writings of the Muslim golden age, like Sheikh Nafzawi’s “The Perfumed Garden of Sensual Delight,” which tackled eroticism and the Kama Sutra without any hang-ups.

Today sex is a great paradox in many countries of the Arab world: One acts as though it doesn’t exist, and yet it determines everything that’s unspoken. Denied, it weighs on the mind by its very concealment. Although women are veiled, they are at the center of our connections, exchanges and concerns.

Women are a recurrent theme in daily discourse, because the stakes they personify — for manliness, honor, family values — are great. In some countries, they are allowed access to the public sphere only if they renounce their bodies: To let them go uncovered would be to uncover the desire that the Islamist, the conservative and the idle youth feel and want to deny. Women are seen as a source of destabilization — short skirts trigger earthquakes, some say — and are respected only when defined by a property relationship, as the wife of X or the daughter of Y.

These contradictions create unbearable tensions. Desire has no outlet, no outcome; the couple is no longer a space of intimacy, but a concern of the whole group. The sexual misery that results can descend into absurdity and hysteria. Here, too, one hopes to experience love, but the mechanisms of love — encounters, seduction, flirting — are prevented: Women are watched, we obsess over their virginity, the morality police patrols. Some even pay surgeons to repair broken hymens.

In some of Allah’s lands, the war on women and on couples has the air of an inquisition. During the summer in Algeria, brigades of Salafists and local youths worked up by the speeches of radical imams and Islamist TV preachers go out to monitor female bodies, especially those of women bathers at the beach. The police hound couples, even married ones, in public spaces. Gardens are off-limits to strolling lovers. Benches are sawed in half to prevent people from sitting close together.

One result is that people fantasize about the trappings of another world: either the West, with its display of immodesty and lust, or the Muslim paradise and its virgins.

It’s a choice perfectly illustrated by the offerings of the Arab media. Theologians are all the rage on television and so are the Lebanese singers and dancers of “Silicone Valley,” who peddle the promise of their unattainable bodies and impossible sex. Clothing is also given to extremes: At one end is the burqa, the orthodox full-body covering; at the other is the hijab moutabaraj (“the veil that reveals”), which combines a head scarf with slim-fit jeans or tight pants. On the beach, the burqini confronts the bikini.

Sex therapists are few in the Muslim world, and their advice is rarely heeded. So Islamists have a de facto monopoly on talk about the body, sex and love. With the Internet and religious TV shows, some of their speeches have taken monstrous forms, devolving into a kind of porno-Islamism. Religious authorities have issued grotesque fatwas: Making love naked is prohibited; women may not touch bananas; a man can be alone with a female colleague only if she is his milk-mother, and she has nursed him.

Orgasms are acceptable only after marriage — and subject to religious diktats that extinguish desire — or after death. Paradise and its virgins are a pet topic of preachers, who present these otherworldly delights as rewards to those who dwell in the lands of sexual misery. Dreaming about such prospects, suicide bombers surrender to a terrifying, surrealistic logic: The path to orgasm runs through death, not love.

The West has long found comfort in exoticism, which exonerates differences. Orientalism has a way of normalizing cultural variations and of excusing any abuses: Scheherazade, the harem and belly dancing exempted some Westerners from considering the plight of Muslim women. But today, with the latest influx of migrants from the Middle East and Africa, the pathological relationship that some Arab countries have with women is bursting onto the scene in Europe.

What long seemed like the foreign spectacles of faraway places now feels like a clash of cultures playing out on the West’s very soil. Differences once defused by distance and a sense of superiority have become an imminent threat. People in the West are discovering, with anxiety and fear, that sex in the Muslim world is sick, and that the disease is spreading to their own lands.

Hillary Clinton’s Mixed Immigration Message

In Thursday night’s Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton defended her past statements that Central American migrant children needed to be sent home from the border to “send a message” to other families: Don’t come.

Wrong answer — which Bernie Sanders immediately pointed out.

“Who are you sending a message to?” he said, reminding her that mothers and children were fleeing Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala to avoid being murdered. “I don’t think we use them to send a message. I think we welcome them into this country and do the best we can to help them get their lives together.”

The sharp exchange on refugees was a welcome break from the Democrats’ one-note squabbling over who is a progressive and who hates the banks more. The border is a subject of manic intensity on the Republican side, but Mr. Sanders and Mrs. Clinton have not been talking about it much. They generally agree that President Obama’s enforcement policies have been too harsh, and they promise to do more than he did to help immigrants live and work without fear of deportation. On the trail, though, they have not always led with this information.

Over the years, Mrs. Clinton has shown an unfortunate tendency to oscillate between harshness and compassion on immigration questions. She seems to reach instinctively for the tougher-sounding policy before coming around, eventually, to positions that more closely reflect American ideals of welcome — ideals that Mr. Sanders voiced fluently on Thursday night.

Running for president in 2008, Mrs. Clinton gave a muddled answer to a debate question about driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants. She later clarified — she would oppose such driver’s licenses as president — and then, more recently, decided that she supports them after all.

It was after the number of Central American migrant children at the border spiked in 2014 that she said they should be sent back to send a message. “Just because your child gets across the border, that doesn’t mean the child gets to stay,” she said. Now she says children should have access to lawyers and not be held in family prisons, but she was tripped up again by her “send a message” line.

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Mrs. Clinton now has an opportunity to clarify her message: Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, introduced a bill on Thursday that would help to guarantee due process for border refugees. It would require the attorney general to appoint lawyers for unaccompanied children and others who are vulnerable, like victims of abuse or torture and those with disabilities. The Department of Homeland Security would have to make sure that all migrants had access to counsel, knew their rights and obligations, and understood what was happening to them. The bill seeks to correct the appalling injustice of refugee children facing court proceedings alone and being deported back to grave danger at home.

The border influx was a humanitarian emergency before it became a concocted homeland-security crisis and political pickle. It will take courage, and require a lot of money, for the country to stand up for the rights of the uninvited and desperate. Volunteer lawyers and advocacy organizations have struggled mightily to provide representation for migrants who face the real threat of death if their asylum claims fail.

San Valentín, si este no; el próximo con amor y novio.

Ya, mañana o pasado mañana es San Valentín que, para mí, termina el año  que viene por estas fechas, justo donde empieza el siguiente. El que aún no tenga novio es problema mío, no de San Valentín. Este año que coincide con el carnaval pensaba que me iba a enamorar y nada. Creo que tengo gustos de otra galaxia pero no me gusta que lleven alas. En realidad, me gustan los hombres con pasado, presente y futuro ¿es posible? Creo que quedan pocos y los pocos que quedaban se los han llevado mis amigas, el caso es que los devuelven.

Para el próximo San Valentín seguro que tengo UN novio y habré dejado a otro, así esperan lo mismo  que he esperado yo. El otro día, de paso, escuche como me llamaban “moza vieja”

La poesía, la poesía………ME encanta: 

He poblado tu vientre de amor y sementera,

he prolongado el eco de sangre a que respondo

y espero sobre el surco como el arado espera:

he llegado hasta el fondo.

Morena de altas torres, alta luz y ojos altos,

esposa de mi piel, gran trago de mi vida,

tus pechos locos crecen hasta mí dando saltos

de cierva concebida.

Ya me parece que eres un cristal delicado,

temo que te me rompas al más leve tropiezo,

y a reforzar tus venas con mi piel de soldado

fuera como el cerezo.

Espejo de mi carne, sustento de mis alas,

te doy vida en la muerte que me dan y no tomo.

Mujer, mujer, te quiero cercado por las balas,

ansiado por el plomo.

Sobre los ataúdes feroces en acecho,

sobre los mismos muertos sin remedio y sin fosa

te quiero, y te quisiera besar con todo el pecho

hasta en el polvo, esposa.

Cuando junto a los campos de combate te piensa

mi frente que no enfría ni aplaca tu figura,

te acercas hacia mí como una boca inmensa

de hambrienta dentadura.

Escríbeme a la lucha, siénteme en la trinchera:

aquí con el fusil tu nombre evoco y fijo,

y defiendo tu vientre de pobre que me espera,

y defiendo tu hijo.

Nacerá nuestro hijo con el puño cerrado,

envuelto en un clamor de victoria y guitarras,

y dejaré a tu puerta mi vida de soldado

sin colmillos ni garras.

Es preciso matar para seguir viviendo.

Un día iré a la sombra de tu pelo lejano.

Y dormiré en la sábana de almidón y de estruendo

cosida por tu mano.

Tus piernas implacables al parto van derechas,

y tu implacable boca de labios indomables,

y ante mi soledad de explosiones y brechas

recorres un camino de besos implacables.

Para el hijo será la paz que estoy forjando.

Y al fin en un océano de irremediables huesos,

tu corazón y el mío naufragarán, quedando

una mujer y un hombre gastados por los besos.

Pero claro este poema es de Miguel Hernández que estaba casado, ahora muerto, era de izquierdas y yo de una derecha que llaman “rancia”. Mejor dejo esto del amor para el próximo año y mientras, soñando, veo muchos príncipes azules, aunque no sean de mi alma. La misma afrodita no era la diosa como tal de nuestro amor cristiano sino del eros, de la atracción física o sexual. Para eso prefiero ser afrodita en paro.

Princesa de mis sueños. 

.

                                 Juan Manuel Serrat

Commerzbank-Chef verabschiedet sich mit Milliardengewinn

Freitag, 12. Februar 2016, 10:57

Commerzbank's headquarters are pictured before the bank's annual news conference in Frankfurt, Germany, February 12, 2016.

Commerzbank-Chef Martin Blessing verabschiedet sich bei seiner letzten Jahresbilanz mit einem Milliardengewinn und der ersten Zahlung einer Dividende seit 2007.

Deutschlands zweitgrößtes Geldhaus vervierfachte im vergangenen Jahr den Nettogewinn auf 1,06 Milliarden Euro - das erste Mal seit fünf Jahren, dass die in der Finanzkrise schwer gebeutelte Commerzbank wieder mehr als eine Milliarde verdient hat. "Das Jahr 2015 hat gezeigt, dass unsere Strategie richtig ist und die Umsetzung erfolgreich verläuft", bilanzierte Blessing, der die Bank spätestens im Oktober verlässt, am Freitag in Frankfurt. Nach jahrelangem warten sollen die Aktionäre - wie von Blessing im Herbst versprochen - eine Dividende von 20 Cent je Aktie erhalten. Das dürfte auch Bundesfinanzminister Wolfgang Schäuble freuen, hält der Staat doch noch 15,6 Prozent an der Bank.

Auch die Anleger fassen wieder Vertrauen: Die Commerzbank-Aktie schoss um 15 Prozent auf 7,35 Euro nach oben und holte die Verluste der vorausgegangenen vier Tage damit wieder auf. Die Erholung bei anderen Banktiteln fiel deutlich verhaltener aus. Während die Commerzbank aus dem Gröbsten heraus zu sein scheint, steht der große Rivale Deutsche Bank gerade am Anfang seiner lange aufgeschobenen Sanierung. Die Deutsche Bank schließt Filialen und streicht Tausende Stellen. Eine Dividende will der Branchenprimus weder für 2015 noch für das laufende Jahr zahlen.

SCHÄUBLE KASSIERT 39 MILLIONEN EURO

Bei der Commerzbank darf sich Bundesfinanzminister Schäuble dagegen über 39 Millionen Euro Dividende freuen. In ein paar Jahren könnte das deutlich mehr werden, stellte Finanzchef Stephan Engels in Aussicht. Das Aktienpaket ist mit rund 1,4 Milliarden Euro allerdings weit weniger wert als der Bund in der Finanzkrise dafür bezahlt hatte.

Größter Gewinntreiber war 2015 die Privatkunden-Sparte, die in drei Jahren gut 800.000 Kunden gewonnen hat. Ihr operativer Gewinn schnellte um zwei Drittel auf 751 Millionen Euro nach oben. "Die größte positive Überraschung waren die starke Verbesserung der Kapitalquoten und der weitere Abbau der Schiffskredite", erklärte Equinet-Analyst Philipp Häßler. "Die vorsichtige Prognose ist etwas enttäuschend, aber angesichts des schwierigen Marktumfelds verständlich." Die Commerzbank will den Gewinn im neuen Jahr leicht steigern, obwohl die Rückstellungen für faule Kredite wieder "moderat" anziehen dürften. 2015 waren sie um 40 Prozent auf 696 Millionen Euro gesunken.

Mit der Auflösung der internen "Bad Bank" NCA setzt Blessing ein Zeichen, dass er die Krise der Commerzbank als endgültig überwunden sieht. Er hatte 2012 den Abbau aus der Finanzierung von Schiffen und gewerblichen Immobilien beschlossen. Die Abbau-Einheit war zuletzt noch 63 Milliarden Euro schwer. Nun soll der Großteil auf die Mittelstandsbank und die Privatkunden-Sparte übertragen werden. Übrig bleiben 18 Milliarden an riskanteren Engagements, um die sich bis 2019 eine kleine "Asset & Capital Recovery Unit" kümmern soll. Bis zu 850 Millionen Euro Verlust hat die Bank dafür noch eingeplant.

Die Problem-Kredite hatten lange viel Kapital gebunden. Der Abbau trieb die harte Kernkapitalquote im vergangenen Jahr auf 12,0 von 9,3 Prozent. Auch die Verschuldungsquote - das Verhältnis von Eigenkapital zur Bilanzsumme - verbesserte sich deutlich auf 4,5 von 3,6 Prozent. "Wir haben 2015 die Risiken weiter reduziert und die Stabilität der Commerzbank deutlich erhöht", sagte Engels.

KAPITALZIELE ERREICHT - RENDITEZIELE NICHT

Blessing, dessen Nachfolger spätestens im April gefunden sein soll, hinterlässt eine gemischte Bilanz: Die Ziele für die Kapitaldecke und den Abbau von Risiken hat er zwar vorzeitig erreicht. Die angepeilte Eigenkapitalrendite von mehr als zehn Prozent im Kerngeschäft sei wegen der Dauerniedrigzinsen aber auf absehbare Zeit ebenso wenig erreichbar wie eine Kostenquote von 60 Prozent. Im Vorjahr lag die Rendite bei 8,1 Prozent, die Kostenquote bei 72 Prozent.

Nach Blessings Abschied könnte der Commerzbank schneller als erwartet ein kompletter personeller Neuanfang bevorstehen. "Ich hänge an der Bank, aber ich klebe nicht an meinem Stuhl", erklärte Aufsichtsratschef Klaus-Peter Müller im Mitarbeiter-Portal der Bank. Der 71-Jährige Vorgänger Blessings als Bankchef kann sich nun doch vorstellen, vor 2018 abzutreten. Forderungen danach waren zuletzt vor allem aus der Politik laut geworden.

10,000 Child Refugees Are Missing

According to the European police agency Europol, more than 10,000 children who entered Europe during the last two years have disappeared, vanishing through the gaping cracks in Europe’s chaotic system for dealing with refugees and migrants.

The fear is that many of the missing children have been trafficked into the sex trade by the same organized criminal groups that are profiting handsomely by ferrying refugees into and across Europe.

In addition, many children are believed to have fled detention centers, where they do not feel safe and are too often kept in the dark about their rights. Some are teenage boys, many from Syria and Afghanistan, who have been sent ahead by families hoping to join them later. Once on the streets, they are easy prey for drug dealers, pimps or petty theft rings. Younger children and adolescent girls are also at great risk of sexual and other abuse.

Some children may have become separated from their families along the routes refugees take through Europe after landing in Greece or Italy. Others arrive in Europe as unaccompanied minors — 26,000 last year — according to the humanitarian group Save the Children.

And more are arriving every day. The United Nations says that more than a third of refugees crossing the Mediterranean by boat to reach Europe are now children. Last year, more than 70 percent of refugees who arrived in Europe were men.

“The implications of this surge in the proportion of children and women on the move are enormous — it means more are at risk at sea, especially now in the winter, and more need protection on land,” warned Marie-Pierre Poirier, Unicef’s special coordinator for the refugee and migrant crisis in Europe.

Britain’s Department of International Development is setting up a 10 million pound ($14 million) fund to support refugee and migrant children on the Continent. That is helpful, but Britain, which has so far balked at taking any refugees already in Europe, should also take in a fair share of unaccompanied children — as should all other European countries.

The European Union also needs to increase funding to improve services for these children. The trafficking networks must be broken, and any perpetrators of crimes against children must be apprehended and punished.

All European countries have signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and have a duty to provide for the safety and well-being of children on European soil. That Europe has failed to protect these most vulnerable among the desperate people arriving on the Continent is unconscionable.

Kerry anuncia una tregua de paz que podría ser definitiva en Siria

SIRIA CONFLICTO

Kerry anuncia una tregua de paz, durante una semana, en Siria. 

El secretario de Estado de Estados Unidos John Kerry anuncia tregua de paz durante una semana en conferencia de prensa.

El secretario de Estado de EEUU, John Kerry, anunció hoy que la comunidad internacional, incluida Rusia, han acordado el "ambicioso" objetivo de lograr el cese de la violencia en Siria en una semana.Kerry realizó estas declaraciones en una rueda de prensa con el ministro de Exteriores ruso, Serguéi Lavrov, y el enviado especial de la ONU para Siria, Staffan de Mistura, tras el encuentro que mantuvo hoy en Múnich (sur de Alemania) el Grupo Internacional de Apoyo a Siria.

Einstein: Finding Beauty in the Darkness

WITH presidential primaries in full steam, with the country wrapped up in concern about the economy, immigration and terrorism, one might wonder why we should care about the news of a minuscule jiggle produced by an event in a far corner of the universe.

The answer is simple. While the political displays we have been treated to over the past weeks may reflect some of the worst about what it means to be human, this jiggle, discovered in an exotic physics experiment, reflects the best. Scientists overcame almost insurmountable odds to open a vast new window on the cosmos. And if history is any guide, every time we have built new eyes to observe the universe, our understanding of ourselves and our place in it has been forever altered.

When Galileo turned his telescope toward Jupiter in 1609, he observed moons orbiting the giant planet, a discovery that destroyed the Aristotelian notion that everything in heaven orbited the Earth. When in 1964 Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson of Bell Laboratories detected radio waves emitted by celestial objects, they discovered that the universe began in a fiery Big Bang.

One hundred years ago, Albert Einstein used his newly discovered general theory of relativity (which implies that space itself responds to the presence of matter by curving, expanding or contracting) to demonstrate that each time we wave our hands around or move any matter, disturbances in the fabric of space propagate out at the speed of light, as waves travel outward when a rock is thrown into a lake. As these gravitational waves traverse space they will literally cause distances between objects alternately to decrease and increase in an oscillatory manner.

This, of course, is far from the realm of human experience. In the absence of alcohol, your living room doesn’t appear to shrink and grow repeatedly. But, in fact, it does. The oscillations in space caused by gravitational waves are so small that those ripples in length had never been seen. And there was every reason to suspect they would never be seen.

Yet on Thursday, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO, announced that a signal from gravitational waves had been discovered emanating from the collision and merger of two massive black holes over a billion light-years away. How far away is that? Well, one light-year is about 5.88 trillion miles.

To see these waves, the experimenters built two mammoth detectors, one in Washington State, the other in Louisiana, each consisting of two tunnels about 2.5 miles in length at right angles to each other. By shooting a laser beam down the length of each tunnel and timing how long it took for each to be reflected off a mirror at the far end, the experimenters could precisely measure the tunnels’ length. If a gravitational wave from a distant galaxy traverses the detectors at both locations roughly simultaneously, then at each location, the length of one arm would get smaller, while the length of the other arm would get longer, alternating back and forth.

To detect the signal they observed they had to be able to measure a periodic difference in the length between the two tunnels by a distance of less than one ten-thousandth the size of a single proton. It is equivalent to measuring the distance between the earth and the nearest star with an accuracy of the width of a human hair.

If the fact that this is possible doesn’t astonish, then read these statements again. This difference is so small that even the minuscule motion in the position of each mirror at the end of each tunnel because of quantum mechanical vibrations of the atoms in the mirror could have overwhelmed the signal. But scientists were able to resort to the most modern techniques in quantum optics to overcome this.

The two black holes that collided, which the LIGO experiment claimed to have detected, were immense. One was about 36 times the mass of our sun, the other, 29 times that mass. The collision and merger produced a black hole 62 times our sun’s mass. If your elementary arithmetic suggests that something is wrong, you’re right. Where did the extra three solar masses disappear to?

Into pure energy in the form of gravitational waves. Our sun will burn for 10 billion years, with the intensity of over 10 billion thermonuclear weapons going off every second. In the process, only a small fraction of its total mass will be turned into energy, according to Einstein’s famous equation, E=mc2. But when those black holes collided, three times the entire mass of our sun disappeared in less than a second, transformed into pure energy. During that time, the collision generated more energy than was being generated by all the rest of the stars in the observable universe combined.

Too often people ask, what’s the use of science like this, if it doesn’t produce faster cars or better toasters. But people rarely ask the same question about a Picasso painting or a Mozart symphony. Such pinnacles of human creativity change our perspective of our place in the universe. Science, like art, music and literature, has the capacity to amaze and excite, dazzle and bewilder. I would argue that it is that aspect of science — its cultural contribution, its humanity — that is perhaps its most important feature.

What more can we learn about the universe from a stupefying experimental feat observing a stupefying wonder of nature? The answer is anyone’s guess. Gravitational-wave observatories of the future will be able to explore the exotic features of black holes. This may shed light on the evolution of galaxies, stars and gravity. Eventually, we may be able to observe gravitational waves from the Big Bang, which will push the limits of our current understanding of physics.

Gravitational waves emerge from near the “event horizon” of black holes, the so-called exit door from the universe through which anything that passes can never return. Near such regions, for example, time slows down by a huge amount, as anyone who went to see the movie “Interstellar” knows. (Coincidentally the original treatment for “Interstellar” was written by Kip Thorne, one of the physicists who helped conceive of the LIGO experiment.)

Ultimately, by exploring processes near the event horizon, or by observing gravitational waves from the early universe, we may learn more about the beginning of the universe itself, or even the possible existence of other universes.

Every child has wondered at some time where we came from and how we got here. That we can try and answer such questions by building devices like LIGO to peer out into the cosmos stands as a testament to the persistent curiosity and ingenuity of humankind — the qualities that we should most celebrate about being human.