A great loss

Ingmar Bergman passed away yesterday at the age of 89 in the Swedish island of Faarö, where he spent his last years. Genious among the genious, every cinema lover should lament the loss of one of the best film directors and screenwriters ever.

Photo: Liv Ullman and Ingmar Bergman © Bettmann/Corbis

Wreck Beach

At last, a sunny day in this odd summer in Vancouver. Let´s go to the nearest beach, which in this case is Wreck Beach. A glimpse of what you may find there: a beautiful but never-ending stair-trail to descend to the beach itself, so steep that is equally exhausting to go up or down. Half of the people completely naked (it´s a nudist beach, what did you expect?). Among the nudists it´s difficult to distinguish any Asians (why?). Some old tattooed hippies coming directly from Berkeley in the 60´s or the movie ‘Easy ryder’. Some young hippies playing the guitar. Lots of people smoking pot while a policeman in shorts walks among them (I don´t know what for) apparently as relaxed as the smokers are, though it may well be for different reasons. Many families. Many UBC students. Naked surfers in the water, but no waves. A few dogs. Some swans and cygnets (black, not white) progressing so slowly in the water they seem just to be floating near the shore. An Asian beauty with a red umbrella. All kinds of stuff to be sold: fast food, cold drinks, colorful sarongs, massages, any kind of drugs, offered to you by naked dealers (I mean the drugs, not the mentioned goods and services). A multiethnic crowd, as multiethnic as the city of Vancouver itself. Lots of people speaking Spanish with a Mexican accent. Lots of people speaking Chinese… I don´t know exactly with which particular accent, since I don´t understand a word. A surprisingly clean sand. A liberal atmosphere, thought it´s not easy to find the right words to express why it is so. Or maybe it was just the smell of marihuana affecting my judgement. Finally, some very nice people you may have met last Saturday evening, kindly inviting you to sit with them in the sand to enjoy the amazing sunset while having a beer. Yes, it was a very nice afternoon at Wreck Beach.

Photo: Wreck Beach, Vancouver, 2007 © Loudsoul

The same old story: Uganda and Zimbabwe

A contemporary observer gives the following account of Idi Amin´s ousting of Asians from Uganda after his arrival in power in 1971:

Traders from the Far and Middle East have been coming to East Africa for centuries. Until the 1970s, South Asians ran most of Uganda’s businesses, factories, and sugar and cotton mills; they built many of the towns, taught in the university, and owned a great deal of property. Then, in 1972, Idi Amin threw them all out and gave their property to black Ugandans. Chaos ensued. The new African entrepreneurs were totally inexperienced and the economy fell into ruin. Amin spent what little foreign exchange remained in the country on whiskey and transistor radios to placate the army, and soldiers and other government henchmen looted at will.*

Some dictators -even when they hold several degrees by Western Universities- either never seem to learn from the past or they are too attached to their privileges to think of anything else but their political fate. Zimbabwe´s Robert Mugabe presided over a long period of political and economic stability during which Zimbabwean economy was among the strongest three in the continent. On the other hand, most property, especially land resources, remained on the hands of white Zimbabweans, a small minority of the population. For political motives (i.e.: enlarging the number of supporters with an eye on his goal of staying in power), disguised as a way of correcting a social injustice, Mugabe´s government is devastating what once was a succesful developing country -albeit economically and socially very unequal-, when it is currently taking land and farms from their white owners by force. Mugabe´s replica of Idi Amin´s policies -as it was the case in Uganda- are not benefiting the general population either, as many properties have been distributed among political cronies and supporters. It all -combined with the international sanctions imposed on the country to force its government to walk towards democracy and the rule of law- is resulting in the highest inflation rate in the world, an astonishing level of unemployment, a massive process of emigration, record poverty levels and the disintegration of Zimbabwean economy. Finally, even if Mugabe´s intention of correcting past -and present- grievances were genuine -which are not-, the ‘way’ he chose to do it only adds new wrongs for blacks and whites alike without solving none of the previous problems. Only by setting up real democratic institutions, the rule of law and a free market may those huge difficulties be overcomed in the long term.

Read more about the current situation in Zimbabwe here.

(*) Helen Epstein, The Invisible Cure (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007, p. 10), citing the following sources: Yoweri Museveni, What Is Africa’s Problem? (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000); and Henry Kyemba, A State of Blood: The Inside Story of Idi Amin (Kampala: Fountain Publishers, 1997).

Photo: Mbarara, Uganda, 2006 © salarios

Isonomia today

May a socially and economically unequal society enjoy politic and civil equality? By ‘politic and civil equality’ I mean all citizens are equal before the law and enjoy the same chances of participating in government tasks. The Athenian polis gave an affirmative answer to this question. It did not employ a single definition of equality but many of them. Isonomia (equal political rights), isegoria (equal right to address the political assemblies), isomoria (equal distribution of land, which we might compare to income redistribution policies in our time), and so on. Of these, isonomia and isegoria were paramount in the Athenian political system, and while isomoria was claimed by most Athenian peasants and poor citizens, the city never granted it. The farthest it went in this regard was to engage in some public works, which meant jobs for the poor, and to pay some money (obol) to those attending the assemblies, for the polis was committed with the idea of equal political and civil rights for its citizens, not with their economic well-being. Here we have a functioning egalitarian political system despite its citizens basic material inequality. Nowadays things seem rather different. While libertarians and classic liberals claim equality before the law is the only possible equality we may attain without jeopardizing the very idea of freedom, egalitarian liberals, socialdemocrats, the few remaing republicans, and even conservatives -or collectivists in disguise, for some observers-, the latest for reasons dealing more with the maintenace of status quo, consider that without some basic economic and social equality there can be no equal political participation because political power will always rest on the hands of the economically powerful. Roughly speaking, they are committed with the idea of equality, because without it one cannot fully enjoy political freedom, or because if one has to devote most energy to satisfaying basic needs there is no time left for participation, or because in a socially unequal world some will always dominate others, preventing them to become full citizens. Since the goal of achieveing material equality in a society is a perfect recipe for disaster (think of all the collectivist projects in human history), but given the fact that a generalized economic insecurity entails a very biased power distribution and very restrictive patterns of political participation, the questions are: how much economic equality may we attain without putting at risk our basic liberties and our economic development potential? Which degree of material equality is needed to enjoy a meaningful sense of freedom? Is there a trade-off between political equality and social equality? Is isonomia possible in today´s world?

Liquid sunshine

Rain, and then more rain over the Vancouver region. Last saturday we had a great sunny afternoon, so Wreck Beach was crowded. Since then, nothing but grey, cloudy skies and rain. Affectionately, locals call this weather ‘liquid sunshine’… Here we all long for a real sunshine, though. I can´t help thinking of the Spanish blue skies and long sunny days during summer…

Photo: Rainy day, UBC campus, Vancouver, 2007. Photo © Loudsoul

A reactionary dream

Wonderful op. article today in the newspaper El País by the Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo on the many prerogatives and privileges the Catholic Church still has in Spain, and its ceaseless thirst for more. There are many in the Spanish Church who would like to bring our country back to the dictatorship times, when there was only one approved way of thinking, subject to the religious-political powers. No wonder about that, since we have got the most reactionary Church in the Western World, along with Italy. What is really shameful is the readiness of some political forces -’conservative’ and not ‘liberal’, as many leftists wrongly think- to side by it, as if the word ‘pluralism’ was completely alien to them -and, therefore, the word ‘democracy’-. Particularly pungent are Goytisolo´s mockery of the ‘Clash of Civilizations’ theory by Samuel Huntington and his comment on the secret envy the Catholic Church feels towards Islam as an organized religion: they wish they could have their faithful continuously congregated in their churches as the islamic believers are in their mosques. No, their real and common enemies are laicism and the secular, pluralist and free societies.

Read more: ‘Nostálgicos del trono y del altar’.

Photo: Miniature nuns, Brooklyn, New York, 1955 © Betty Blade