Temas 24.05.2013

El círculo vicioso de la Europa zombi, por Daniel Lacalle.

Casi toda la liquidez que inunda Europa con las políticas del BCE se queda en dos sectores zombis: empresas semi quebradas, que se mantienen vivas artificialmente, y deuda soberana insostenible de estados muy endeudados.

De cara a la muerte: El crimen organizado y los migrantes, por Shaila Rosagel.

La tragedia humanitaria es enorme. Ahorita el albergue se quedó vacío y qué crees que puede pasar con esa gente. Seguramente van muchos criminales arriba que más adelante, empiezan a sacar sus armas, amenazar a los migrantes, más adelante se suben más delincuentes, en algún punto de la ruta migratoria tiran a uno, a dos. Nosotros durante esta última semana hemos detectado muchos migrantes mutilados, muertos porque los tiran del tren. Es algo muy fuerte convivir con la muerte y la sangre.

Obama se mete en líos con la libertad de prensa, por Jordi Pérez Colomé.

El gobierno tiene difícil ganar esta batalla. La primera enmienda -que defiende la libertad de expresión y de prensa- es difícil de contestar. Con Wikileaks, fueron los mismos medios americanos los que procuraron proteger la seguridad nacional. Más allá, los límites serán siempre ambiguos. En este caso, el gobierno y AP tienen algo de razón: Obama quiere poder hacer misiones secretas sin temor y AP quiere averiguarlas. Ambos defienden su coto. No será la última vez.

Israel: Canary in the coal mine, by Michael Rubin.

Israel is a vibrant democracy; its neighbors rely on strict ethnic and sectarian quotas if not outright autocracy.

Throughout the Middle East, Christians are under assault. They are fleeing Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and the Palestinian territories. Only in Israel do Christians feel safe and secure, knowing that they are protected by the rule of law.

In Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the Gaza Strip, homosexuality is a capital offense; in Israel, gays march openly. Throughout the West, women struggle for full equality — entering the military and other fields once the sole domain of men. Within the Islamic world, women are instead fighting for rights which a generation of religious conservatives have had stripped away from them.

Israel has become an international center for science and technology, providing life-saving treatments for cancer and — in the case of the woefully prejudicial British physicist Stephen Hawkings — the technology to communicate. Education has become the stuff of hatred and religious indoctrination in neighboring states.

That Israel enjoys a vibrant press is reflected by the fact that the best criticism Freedom House could levy against it was that there has actually been too much competition.

Israeli lawyers and civil society activists strive to right wrongs and improve Israeli society. Arab citizens must rebel if they want change and even then the forces of tyranny deny it to them.

Means Are Not Ends, by Don Boudreaux.

“At the height of its power, agriculture employed 90 percent of the population and produced output worth vastly more than half of U.S. GDP. It even invented countless plant hybrids and animal breeds. But today nearly all farms of the past have gone bankrupt (or, seeing the economic writing on the wall, were transformed to other uses). Agriculture today employs only about one percent of the workforce. Where did all those jobs disappear? And what happened to the wealth that all those good agricultural jobs created?”