In Cool Madrid

La Oveja Negra, Lavapies

Anarcho-bar (formally known as Bar-kunin) serving vegan fast food in the vibrant district of Lavapies. Spent many an evening here with random fellow travellers in between visiting the Tabacalera arts centre and just wondering around. The interior is covered in political statements and it has an info shop with some good books and zines. Very reasonably priced, the burgers and hot-dogs went down well and usually came with a mind-blowing relish or two. The staff and clientele were also lovely despite my limited Spanish. www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant_Review-g187514-d4975012-Reviews-La_Oveja_Negra_Taberna_Vegana-Madrid.html

Oso y Mendigo in Madrid. Photo: codondesastre.blogspot.com

Forensic ADN & Art

La bella obra que observan tal vez se recobre si se identifica una huella genética que, posiblemente, dejó el ladrón.
Basta algo de saliva, un pelo, mocos, algo de sangre. Cualquier material biológico. El asunto se puede reabrir 17 años después de desaparecido el cuadro. Disfruten el presente detalle del lienzo perdido de Gustav Klimt

Cuando escribí "Genes en Tela de Juicio", que va de la aplicación de la biología molecular en la ciencia forense, no incluí ningún caso relacionado con robos de obras de arte. Me encanta que la cosa haya progresado al extremo que aquellos que profanan museos puedan ser atrapados y pagar por un delito que nos afecta a todos.
El artículo en inglés es de "The Guardian". Los enlaces están muy bien.  

"More than 17 years since it was stolen from a gallery in northern Italy,Gustav Klimt's Portrait of a Woman is reportedly once again the subject of a police investigation after technological advances allowed for the case to be reopened.

The oil painting, believed to date from 1916-1917, was stolen from the Ricci-Oddi gallery in Piacenza in February 1997 and disappeared without a trace.

Now, thanks to more sophisticated testing of the frame, investigators are hoping that new test results will provide a DNA match with one or more suspects, the Italian news agency Ansa reported.

In the aftermath of the theft, which appeared to be timed to coincide with renovation work in advance of which many works were removed from the gallery, police appeared flummoxed.

They were unable to say whether the thief – or thieves – had come in through the main entrance or had used a string and hook to fish the painting through a nearby skylight. All that was left was an empty frame with a partial fingerprint which police now hope will yield an answer.

The work, acquired by the collection in 1925, was thought to be too famous to sell on, leading some to speculate that it had been stolen to order.

In it, a young woman with dark hair and rouged cheeks is shown against a green background. It is one of the most sought-after stolen works in Italy.

The Austrian artist, a co-founder of the Viennese Secession, is the subject of an exhibition at the Palazzo Reale in Milan, near Piacenza"

Ugly Prada and Obama

This shoes, sandals, are Prada. A pair of very ugly, expensive, hoteras, and pijos ones.
I´m going to send a pair to, well I can not really said her venerable name in Spain.
We don´t have freedom of speach. We are a bunch of dirty pringaos.
Please Mr. Obama, send the Marines here. Take Madrid.
I want it all. I want it all. I want it all.
And I want it now. (Getty Photo).

Iraq legalize pedophilia

War and the Rights of Children: America’s Proxy Government Aims to Legalize Pedophilia in Occupied Iraq

By Felicity Arbuthnot
Global Research, March 13, 2014
Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/war-and-the-rights-of-children-americas-proxy-government-legalizes-pedophilia-in-occupied-iraq/5373303

Less than a month before the eleventh anniversary of the illegal US-led invasion of Iraq, the near destruction of much of the country, heritage, culture, secularism, education, health services and all State institutions, the country is poised to revert “two thousand years” say campaigners.

On 25th February Iraq’s Cabinet approved a draft law lowering the age of legal marriage for females to nine years old.

Iraq was, prior to the invasion, a fiercely secular country, with a broadly equal male, female workforce and with women benefiting from a National Personal Status Law, introduced in 1959, which remained “one of the most liberal in the Arab world, with respect to women’s rights.”

The legal age for marriage was set at eighteen, forced marriages were banned and polygamy restricted. Cohesion between communities was enhanced and fostered by: “eliminating the differential treatment of Sunnis and Shiites under the law (and erasing differentiation) between the various religious communities ...” Women’s rights in divorce, child custody and inheritance were an integral part of the Law, with Article 14 stating that all Iraqis are equal under the law.(1)

Equality was swept away from the first day of the invasion when George W. Bush and his Administration started to talk of Sunni, Shiite, Kurds, Christians and other religions and ethnicities and also effectively selecting the overseers of the “New Iraq” not by ability but by religion and ethnicity, effectively pitching Iraqi against Iraqi in what, for all the complexities had been a very cohesive society. “Divide and rule” pervaded all.

So far, however, the Personal Status Law still stands, if largely ignored by the US backed Parliament and a largely – with honourable and courageous exceptions – woefully wanting judiciary. The draft law if ratified, as it is aimed to be after the April elections, would sweep its admirable provisions aside and turn Iraq in to a pedophiles paradise.

This outrageous plan was first mooted as early as December 2003, just eight months after the invasion, by Abdel Aziz al Hakim, who heads the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, who cancelled the Personal Status Law when President of the Interim Governing Council. Due to opposition by women and others within the Council and from many civil and women’s organizations, the decision was revoked by Paul Bremer, arguably the only thing he got right during his woeful, ill informed tenure. Then, as now, the change: “would have transferred civil actions concerning family and personal law, including marriage, divorce, and inheritance, to the jurisdiction of clerics”, not civil Courts.

Incredibly: “The proposal has been based on the Shiite Ja’fari school, called after an eighth century Shiite Imam. A Supreme Shiite Judicial Council in the holy city of Najaf will supervise nationwide religious tribunals that will settle family matters ...”

Woman’s groups and activists are vociferous in their outrage and condemnation and in spite of twenty one of the twenty nine present at the Cabinet decision voting in favour of the change, some clerics in Najav are distancing themselves from the proposal, which would also include women not being allowed to leave their home without the permission of their husband – and ironically a father’s permission being mandatory for a woman over eighteen to marry. Muslims will not be allowed to marry non-Muslims.

Hanaa Edwar, who heads the Al-Amal Association which fights for the socioeconomic improvement of Iraqis points out that among the poor – which since the invasion has spiraled, children as young as ten are already marrying and further, that  most of the: religious: “ illiterate people hear it’s based on Ja’fari (law) and think it must be good.”

Yanar Mohammed, President of the Organization for Women’s Freedom in Iraq is convinced that: “Iraqi people will not agree to the legalization of pedophilia ... the objections come from all sides, and the number of women who rais their voices is high ... It is an abuse of children’s rights and their bodily integrity.”(2)

Edwar and Mohammed are lobbying in and out of the parliament, but “pressure from outside Iraq is essential.”

As Iraq has ratified Convention on Elimination Against Women (CEDAW) the UN has already asked for the withdrawal of the draft law. CEDAW “provides that the betrothal and marriage of a child shall have no legal effect.”

At the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action adopted by the World Conference on Human Rights, held in Vienna from 14th- 25th June 1993, States were: “urged to repeal existing laws and regulations and to remove customs and practices which discriminate against and cause harm to the girl child. Article 16(2) and the provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child preclude States parties from permitting or giving validity to a marriage between persons who have not attained their majority. In the context of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, ‘a child’ means every human being below the age of 18 years  ...”

Human Rights Watch in a less than robust statement on the marriage of nine year olds, who, in the West would still in Primary school, a year too young to enter Secondary education, never the less state: “This draft personal status law (change) flies in the faces of the Iraqi government’s legal commitments to protect women’s and girls’ rights ... Passage of this law by parliament may lead to further discriminatory laws.” (3)

Silent is Ann Clwyd, MP., formerly Tony  Blair’s Human Rights Envoy to Iraq and currently Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Human Rights Group and of the All Party Parliamentary Iraq Group, as is.Middle East “Peace Envoy” Tony “I’d do it again” Blair, as are the US and British Ambassadors in Iraq and the self appointed “Vicar of Baghdad” Canon Andrew White.

The US and UK could put an end to this disgrace instantly by simply withdrawing trade, arms sales, and diplomatic presence. But Iraq is still a destroyed country, courtesy the same US and UK and there are also all those multi-million rebuilding, security, and military training contracts. As with the majority of those in their Iraq puppet Parliament, morality and integrity are long dead and buried.
Notes

1. http://www.lb.boell.org/web/52-263.html

2. http://rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/100320141

3. http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/03/11/iraq-don-t-legalize-marriage-9-year-olds

Copyright © 2014 Global Research

Figueres terrible

La hora la calculo entre las doce y la una de un jueves al viernes. Lo que relato tiene lugar en Figueres, Girona, Alto Ampurdán (Cataluña). Pueblo natal de Dalí. En las céntricas calles Joan Maragall y Perelada. El corazón comercial de una ciudad que presume de tiendas finas. Pues el asunto, a los que voy, es que en un ataque que presumo con barras de hierro, tal vez un gato hidrúlico, desconocidos reventaron los escaparates de una zapatería, una perfumería y una óptica. Me pregunto qué hubiera hecho yo si, a esa hora, no muy golfa, paso por allí. Y eso desde luego que es cagarla. Tener muy mala suerte. La policía, de momento, no tiene ni puñetera idea. Como no pillen un salivazo, un moco, una colilla de porro, analicen el ADN, lo llevan claro los maderos y munipas. También quedan los chivatos. Qué sé yo. La puñetera Figueres está muy chunga. Figueres la nuit es un merdé. Me dice un vecino de la calle San Pau (con edificios historiados y la bonita Plaza Triangular) que ya no conoce su ciudad. Que "antes no era así". Que no estaba infectada de cagadas de perros. Que las mujeres se arreglaban bien he iban solas o con las amigas a tomar el aperitivo o lo que les diera la gana.
Si uno se fija en los negocios con dueños previsores, están blindados. El bar de Neus Munill, "País de Vent", tiene una persiana a prueba de bazooka. "Poco se iban a llevar", comenta Neus. Pero allí hay un juego de porcelana del mil ochocientos y tanto, que si saben lo que es lo roban. O a lo peor lo destrozan.
La selva, vamos.
Yo me las piro. Y una mierda me asaltan, vamos

Serpientes del Islam

En el pueblo fronterizo donde habito Figueres, Alto Ampurdán, Cataluña, cada vez son más visibles los sujetos que van con la pinta del que captó el fotógrafo Antonio Ruiz, ("El País") en Melilla. Se llama Mustafá Maya. He visto numerosas mujeres con burka cerrado, esperando a su maridos tocados con el "gorrito" tejido. Ellos entran al super. Hacen la compra. Ellas, invisibles, esperan. En muchos casos suben juntos a un buen coche. Y que no me salga nadie con el asunto de la alianza de civilizaciones. He estado como viajera en Marruecos, Túnez y Argelia. Aprecio una cultura que es también nuestra.Y conocí combatientes argelinos. Del FNLA. Pero lo que se ha desatado es otra cosa. 

Cuba en danza

Temporada del Ballet Nacional de Cuba.
Buen finde.