Some hypocritical and absurd questions found in the DS-160 form, needed to get a US Visa:
Do you have a mental or physical disorder that poses or is likely to pose a threat to the safety or welfare of yourself or others? Are you or have you ever been a drug abuser or addict? Have you ever violated, or engaged in a conspiracy to violate, any law relating to controlled substances?
Embarrassing. We should all be ashamed. At least we can access his words.
After 36 years of democracy, [Spain] is the second country in the world with the most “disappeared” after Cambodia
Source Regional President Camps free, the Duke Urdangarín seems like is not going to be punished… and judge Garzon being judged. And you ask me why I say I am “European” rather than “Spaniard” or “Valencian”?
This is not going to be one of those deep, thoughtful, analytical posts (as if I ever wrote one 😉 ). I just need to vent.
Last Saturday, in Prince Street, in the middle of Soho, a man (I will not mention his name, because as you will see, he does not deserve publicity) was handing out CDs. As with anything digital, I felt the urge to find out more, so I took it.
Yesterday I went to the New York Public Library to see Pedro Almodovars "Talk to her", as part of a <a title="https://www.nypl.org/blog/2011/12/06/films-pedro-almodovar" href="https://www.nypl.org/blog/2011/12/06/films-pedro-almodovar" target="_blank">series</a> of Almodovars films screenings in the NYPL. But, to my surprise, the screening (and remainder ones) had been cancelled.
I talked to the person in the information desk, and she told me that the collecting society (that would be the despicable SGAE, which does not even deserve a link in my blog) and Almodovar`s Production company (El Deseo Producciones) had raised what they had previously been asking for as royalties or compensation for the (free) screening of the (not in movie theater) films, and the amount they were now asking was so high, the NYPL could not afford it, so they had to cancel the screenings.
The net was all up in arms this week. After the marvelous uprising against SOPA and PIPA, the new battle ground was Twitter`s announcement of country specific censorship. Never mind that they are open about it (unlike Facebook), never mind that they are talking about their offices and employees in those countries where censorship is the law… if you hear “censorship” and “net” get up and scream! Wired has a nice piece about it.
When Émile Durkheim wrote on the concept of anomie (expanding on Jean-Marie Guyau`s work) in his 1897 book Suicide, he spoke of one end of anomie: a society with too much rigidity and little individual discretion causing a destructive mismatch (moral deregulation and an absence of legitimate aspirations).
This is happening in the XXI century world, in many countries: those totalitarian (military or religious) societies where the social rule, expectations, and repression conform a cage around individuals, deposessing them of their individuality, their aspirations, subtly (or otherwise) imposing a social corset where the individual can not be itself, concentrating only on breathing, surviving.
