Toma nota.../Take note...

What is Participatory Democracy? One of the Basic Documents published by the PDCI in our pages establishes (in Spanish) that: «Participatory democracy implies the active role of citizens in the functioning of democracy, through mechanisms established in a free civil society that allow their manifestation and effective participation in decision making. It is a democracy in which citizens are protagonists.» And it adds later on that: «Participatory democracy implies fostering the ways and means to convert citizens and their groups into direct political agents, even if marginal, but together with the political action of political parties»; therefore, it does NOT replace representative democracy nor antaghonizes it, but rather strengthens it. It is developed using certain mechanisms of direct democracy, as we may learn in the case of the State of Maine, in the USA.

Direct democracy 

Ellsworth, Mar. 18.– Most municipalities in Maine operate under a town meeting form of government. For many New England towns, it has been that way since colonial times.

The town meeting is sometimes referred to as the purest form of democracy because citizens — not elected officials — make the important decisions for the operations of the town. In this direct form of government, elected officials carry out the will of the voters who are responsible for the adoption of laws and the raising of funds each year.

El primer pulsar fue detectado en 1967.

Hoy sería imposible ese descubrimiento.

Marzo 16.– La profusión de emisoras de TV y FM que, además, son cada vez más potentes, y la proliferación de múltiples antenas de telefonía celular están oscureciendo gravemente el acceso al espacio exterior que antes tenían los investigadores.

Aunque los convenios internacionales preservan ciertas zonas del espectro electromagnético para uso exclusivamente astronómico, una de ellas se encuentra asediada entre los 1,400 MHz y los 1,427 MHz, donde se halla la línea de 21 cm del hidrógeno neutro, que permite estudiar la formación estelar y la distribición de la materia en las galaxias. Está colocada entre dos bandas reservadas para los teléfonos móviles, cuyas necesidades son cada vez mayores a medida que se incluyen más y más funciones en su servicio.

También se ha invadido la zona en la que los astrónomos registraban las radioemisiones de Júpiter y otros planetas. Observar ahora, por ejemplo, al planeta gigante entre la cacofonía de señales de las emisores de radio y TV es prácticamente imposible.

Stephen Kotkin is one of our most profound and prodigious scholars of Russian history. His masterwork is a biography of Josef Stalin. So far he has published two volumes––“Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928,” which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and “Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941.” A third volume will take the story through the Second World War; Stalin’s death, in 1953; and the totalitarian legacy that shaped the remainder of the Soviet experience. Taking advantage of long-forbidden archives in Moscow and beyond ...

An analysis of the dictatorial and expansionist policy of Vladimir Putin

David Remnick.– Earlier this week, I spoke with Kotkin about Putin, the invasion of Ukraine, the American and European response, and what comes next:

Question: We’ve been hearing voices both past and present saying that the reason for what has happened is, as George Kennan put it, the strategic blunder of the eastward expansion of NATO. The great-power realist-school historian John Mearsheimer insists that a great deal of the blame for what we’re witnessing must go to the United States. I thought we’d begin with your analysis of that argument.

Stephen Kotkin: I have only the greatest respect for George Kennan. John Mearsheimer is a giant of a scholar. But I respectfully disagree. The problem with their argument is that it assumes that, had NATO not expanded, Russia wouldn’t be the same or very likely close to what it is today. What we have today in Russia is not some kind of surprise. It’s not some kind of deviation from a historical pattern. Way before NATO existed—in the nineteenth century—Russia looked like this: it had an autocrat. It had repression. It had militarism. It had suspicion of foreigners and the West. This is a Russia that we know, and it’s not a Russia that arrived yesterday or in the nineteen-nineties. It’s not a response to the actions of the West. There are internal processes in Russia that account for where we are today.

¿Qué es el Swift y por qué podría ser el arma definitiva contra Rusia? 

►¿Quienes son los aliados de Ucrania y Rusia? ←pulse aquí

►Tres propuestas de un exministro de Ucrania que colapsarían la economía rusa. ←pulse aquí

 
 Bruselas, Feb.26.– La guerra de Ucrania y Rusia puede provocar una serie de sanciones por parte de los países europeos, EE.UU., así como un posible bloqueo del sistema Swift, con el objetivo de tensionar la economía del país.

El Swift es la Society for World Interbank Financial Telecommnication. Es un sistema de mensajería interbancario que usan las entidades bancarias, con el fin de permitir agilizar las transferencias internacionales.

U.S. consumer prices post the biggest rise in nearly 40 years; inflation close to peaking

CPI surges 7.0% year-on-year.

Washington DC, Jan 12 (Reuters).- U.S. consumer prices increased solidly in December as rental accommodation and used cars maintained their strong gains, culminating in the largest annual rise in inflation in nearly four decades, which bolstered expectations that the Federal Reserve will start raising interest rates as early as March.