Hail Blogger!!!

Lin, solo para los records, you should upgrade the blog to the new blog version, you only need a google account to do that, I guess the contributors need one as well, so if anyone needs a google invitation, just ask me for one, I've got tons.

Santa's Little Helper

Here I give to you a holiday picture with the big man himself Santa and one of his little helpers, hehehe.

Can You guess her name?

Mourning?

This month has seen the death of one of the most influential political figures of the late 20th century in Latin America, Augusto Pinochet. For right or wrong he was an influential figure not only in Chile, but also in Southern Latin America.
His physical disappearance has spurred the old Left vs. Right debate. Some hailed him as a hero who saved Chile from a Marxist-Leninist Government, others condemned him as being a ruthless tyrant responsible for the death and disappearance of thousand of Chileans. (1)

I have seen a phenomenon since I traveled to Europe in 2004 that I had been unable to address until now. At that time, I don't know if it still happens, everywhere you turned in Italy, Spain and France you could find Ernesrto "Che" Guevara merchandise. I don't mean to say that everyone who buys or sells this mechandise support "Che"'s ideals, but at least his image and thoughts are tolerated, he's viewed as a martyr (that's how I see it). No one takes into account the number of people who died during his tenure at La Cabaña Fortress or before and after the revolution (2). People seem to forget that although his objective was to create a fairer society, his means were just as abominable as Pinochet's.

The same goes for Mao Zedong, Francisco Franco, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot and Fidel Castro.

People wear Mao shirts, Che Guevara shirts. Why don't we wear Franco shirts, just to set the example? Personal cult of right-wing leaders is just as bad as left-wing ones.
I guess the question boils down to: Why are people more forgiving with left-wing leaders than right-wing ones?

I'm making my Franco Shirt, anyone interested?


(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinochet#Suppression_of_opposition
(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che_guevara#Cuba

Memo 22/12/06

Saludos.

Hablo por mí, cuándo digo que no tengo mucho tiempo para navegar, porque en mi trabajo no tengo acceso a internet y si lo tuviera, preferiría limitarlo a cosas concretas. Además, mi trabajo es de oficina, lo que significa que casi ningún día de la semana reviso el correo o navego en la casa.

Esa es una de las razones por las cuales no he contribuido activamente en el blog. Pero bueno, he aquí mi primer comentario.

A pesar de que no soy seguidor de la política / historia, me gusta leer y esuchar a un periodista argentino llamado Andrés Oppenheimer. Es especialista en América Latina y creo que está radica en USA. Es columnista del Miami Herald:
http://www.miami.com/mld/elnuevo/news/columnists/andres_oppenheimer/
Y uno de los libros que escribió se llama "Cuentos Chinos". Si lo quieren leer, solo me lo piden prestado y ya. Se los recomiendo strongly.

maní.

señores

Mis panas

Se que este blog es para escribir cosas profundas e inspiradoras. Solo les quiero desear en esta primera oportunidad las mejores navidades del mundo, muchas felicidades y exitos en el 2007.

Seguiremos escribiendo realidades.

Great Motivational Speech

Following the WWII trend, here's a great motivational speech from one of the best Generals of the European Theatre of Operations; George S. Patton. This speech was given to the men of the Third Army days before D-Day.

"Men, this stuff some sources sling around about America wanting to stay out of the war and not wanting to fight is a lot of baloney! Americans love to fight, traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. America loves a winner. America will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise a coward, Americans play to win. That's why America has never lost a war and will never lose a war.

You are not all going to die. Only two percent of you, right here today, would be killed in a major battle. Death must not be feared. Death, in time, comes to all of us. And every man is scared in his first action. If he says he's not, he's a Goddam liar... The real hero is the man who fights even though he's scared...

All through your army carrers, you've been bitching about what you call "chicken-shit drill". That, like everything else in the Army, has a definite purpose. That purpose is Instant Obedience to Orders and to create and mantain Constant Alertness! This must be bred into every soldier. A man must be alert all the time if he expects to stay alive. If not, some German son-of-a-bitch will sneak up behind him with a sock full o' shit! There are four hundred neatly marked graves somewhere in Sicily, all because ONE man went to sleep on his job... but they are German graves, because WE caught the bastards asleep! An Army is a team, lives, sleeps, fights and eats as a team. This individual hero stuff is a lot of horse shit. The bilious bastards who write that kind of stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don't know any more about real fighting under fire than they know about fucking!

Every single man in the Army plays a vital role... even the guy who boils the water to keep us from getting the G.I. shits!
Remember, men, you don't know I'm here... I'm not supposed to be commanding this Army... Let the first bastards to find out be the Goddam Germans. I want them to look up and howl, "ACH, IT'S THE GODDAM THIRD ARMY AND THAT SON-OF-A-BITCH PATTON AGAIN!"

We want to get this thing over and get the hell out of here, and get at those purple-pissin' Japs!!! The shortest road home is through Berlin and Tokyo! We'll win this war, but we'll win it only by showing the enemy we have more guts than they have or ever will have!

There's one great thing you men can say when it's all over and you're home once more. You can thank God that twenty years from now, when you're sitting around the fireside with your grandson on your knee and he asks you what you did in the war, you won't have to shift him to the other knee, cough, and say, "I shoveled shit in Lousiana."

Great Comics

There is a web site that has the most funny (in my sole opinion) morbid comic strip you could ever imagine. Some of you might recall the "Happy Tree Family" aired in MTV which depicted cute forest animals involved in rather gruesome and violent situations, well this site contains the comic equivalent of that show, but it's much more.

Just so you get a better idea of the site's content:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Perry_Bible_Fellowship

and the site's Link:

http://www.pbfcomics.com



Let me know what you think.

Leones del Caracas Campeon 2005-2006

Have you ever heard the phrase "back to back"?... You might this year

U2/Green Day - LIVE - Whole Set