Mis libros y citas

  Breves respuestas a las grandes preguntas Stephen Hawking Creo que estamos actuando con imprudente indiferencia hacia nuestro futuro en el planeta Tierra. En este momento no tenemos otro lugar adonde ir, pero a la larga la especie humana no debería poner todos sus huevos en una sola canasta o en un solo planeta. Solo espero que hasta entonces podamos evitar que la canasta se caiga.  

  What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets Michael J. Sandel Most of our political debates today are conducted in these terms - between those who favor unfettered markets and those who maintain that market choices are free only when they're made on a leveled playing field, only when the basic terms of social cooperation are fair. But neither of these positions helps us explain what's troubling about a world in which market thinking and market relationships invade every human activity. To describe what's disquieting about this condition we need the moral vocabulary of corruption and degradation, and to speak of corruption and degradation is to appeal, implicitly at least, to conceptions of the good life.  

  The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal Jared Diamond Geography sets ground rules for the evolution both biological and cultural of all species, including our own. Geography's role in determining our modern political history is even more obvious then its role in determining the rate at which we domesticate plants and animals.  

  Overheated: How Capitalism Broke the Planet--And How We Fight Back Kate Aronoff Neoliberals have always operated within a world of contradictions, arguing in public that the market offers freedom and that it needs to be insulated from democracy, painting the marker as a natural part of human existence while pushing to pass policies that keep it functional. Just like climate denial, there are some dupes who truly believe in laissez-faire and the invisible hand but the real movers and shakers have always been more pragmatic than dogmatic.    

  The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming David Wallace-Wells If the world's most conspicuous emitters, the top 10 percent, reduced their emissions to only the EU average, total global emissions would fall by 35 percent. We won't get there through the dietary choices of individuals, but through policy changes.  

  The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions Jason Hickel Economists often speculate that the Global South failed to develop because of a lack of capital. But there was no such lack. The wealth that might have provided the capital for development -precious metals in Latin America and surplus labor in Africa- was effectively stolen by Europe and harnessed to the service of Europe's own development. The Global South could theoretically have developed as Europe did were it not for the plunder of its resources and labor and were it not for the fact that it was forced by Europe to supply raw materials while importing manufactured goods. Whether or not they would or should have done so is another matter of course. After all, much of European-style development required violence towards other lands and other peoples, but the point remains. It is impossible to examine the economic growth of the West without looking at the base on which it drew.  

  The Hidden Wealth of Nations: The Scourge of Tax Havens Gabriel Zucman In the end, the taxes that are evaded have to be compensated for by higher taxes on the law-abiding, often middle class households, in the United States, Europe and developing countries. Nothing in the logic of free exchange justifies this theft.  

  The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution Richard Dawkins Right up to the middle of the twentieth century, life was thought to be qualitatively beyond physics and chemistry. No longer. The difference between life and non-life is a matter not of substance but of information. Living things contain prodigious quantities of information.  

  23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism Ha-Joon Chang Once you know that there is really no such thing as a 'free market', you won't be deceived by people who denounce a regulation on the grounds that it makes the market unfree. When you learn that large and active governments can promote rather than dampen economic dynamism, you will see that the widespread distrust of government is unwarranted. Knowing that we do not live in a post-industrial knowledge economy will make you question the wisdom of neglecting, or even implicitly welcoming, industrial decline of a country, as some governments have done. Once you realize that trickle-down economics does not work, you will see the excessive tax cuts for the rich for what they are: a simple upward redistribution of income, rather than a way to make all of us richer, as we were told.  

  Because We Say So Noam Chomsky In the future, historians, if there are any, will look back on this curious spectacle taking shape in the early 21st century. For the first time in human history, humans are facing the significant prospect of severe calamity as a result of their actions, actions that are battering our prospects of decent survival.  

  El infinito en un junco Irene Vallejo La invención de los libros ha sido tal vez el mayor triunfo en nuestra tenaz lucha contra la destrucción.  

  El gran diseño Stephen Hawking,    Leonard Mlodinow Somos el producto de fluctuaciones cuánticas del universo muy primitivo. Si uno fuera religioso, podría decir que Dios juega realmente a los dados. Mucha gente a lo largo de los siglos ha atribuido a Dios la belleza y la complejidad de la naturaleza que, en su tiempo, parecían no tener explicación científica. Pero así como Darwin y Wallace explicaron cómo el diseño aparentemente milagroso de las formas vivas podía aparecer sin la intervención de un Ser supremo, el concepto de multiverso puede explicar el ajuste fino de las leyes físicas sin necesidad de un Creador benévolo que hiciera el universo para nuestro provecho.  

  Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space Carl Sagan The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Due to our own actions or inactions, and the misuse of our technology, we live at an extraordinary moment, for the Earth at least - the first time that a species has become able to wipe itself out. But this is also, we may note, the first time that a species has become able to journey to the planets and the stars.   

  The Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet Noam Chomsky,    Robert Pollin The core of the global green new deal is to advance a global project to hit these IPCC targets and to accomplish this in a way that also expands decent job opportunities and raises mass living standards for working people and the poor throughout the world. It is that simple.  

  The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History Elizabeth Kolbert One of the many unintended consequences of the Anthropocene has been the pruning of our own family tree. Having cut down our sister species -the Neanderthals and the Denisovans many generations ago- we are now working on our first and second cousins. By the time we're done, it's quite possible that there would be among the great apes not a single representative left, except that is, for us.  

  Humankind: A Hopeful History Rutger Bregman When we're holed up in our own trenches, we lose sight of reality. We're lured into thinking that a small hate-mongering minority reflects all humankind.(...) To believe people are hardwired to be kind isn't sentimental or naive. On the contrary, it's courageous and realistic to believe in peace and forgiveness.  

  The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design Richard Dawkins ...living organisms exist for the benefit of DNA rather than the other way around. ... The messages that DNA molecules contain are all but eternal when seen against the time scale of individual lifetimes.  

  Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism Ha-Joon Chang So the two champions of free trade, Britain and the US, were not only not free trade economies, but have been the two most protectionist economies among rich countries, i.e. until they each in succession became the world's dominant industrial power. Unlike what neo-liberals say, market and democracy clash at a fundamental level. Democracy runs on the principle of 'one man (one person), one vote'. The market runs on the principle 'one dollar, one vote'.  

  Los nuevos centros de la esfera William Ospina Un progreso efectivo de la humanidad habría que plantearlo en términos éticos más que en términos simplemente mecánicos o técnicos. Aprender a respetar la naturaleza, aprender a convivir, aprender a comprender y valorar lo que es distinto, tener una relación creadora con el mundo y no una mera actitud de saqueo y derroche, permitir que los niños crezcan en un medio generoso y estimulante que forme su carácter, que descubra sus talentos, que aliente su actividad y que despierte su imaginación; la posibilidad de un mundo que acompañe y oriente de un modo sabio y austero su desarrollo: eso sería un progreso.  

  Cosmic Queries: StarTalk's Guide to Who We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We're Going Neil deGrasse Tyson Imagine a world where nations find the search for life in the universe more interesting than the taking of life on Earth.  

Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine Noura Erakat Israel's aims then and now, are the same - to achieve and maintain a Jewish demographic majority and also to acquire the greatest amount of land with the fewest possible number of Palestinians on it. It achieves this through civil law in Israel, a mix of administrative and martial law in East Jerusalem, martial law in the West Bank and all out warfare in Gaza.      

  Método y locura: La historia oculta de los ataques de Israel en Gaza Norman G. Finkelstein El uso desproporcionado de la fuerza y la conversión de infraestructuras civiles en objetivos constituyen crímenes de guerra en el derecho internacional. Israel ha elegido a Gaza a menudo para convertirla en objetivo prioritario de su estrategia criminal.  

  Gaza, cuna de mártires Mikel Ayestarán Los efectos de la guerra son incomparables a los dos lados de la verja; cualquier intento de igualar a los dos bandos supone una manipulación de un conflicto totalmente desproporcionado.  

  Palestine, Israel and the U.S. Empire Richard Becker The reactionary triple alliance of imperialism, Zionism and Arab reaction first clearly appeared in opposition to the revolutionary movement in Palestine in this period (1936-1939). That counterrevolutionary alliance, with the United States taking Britain’s place as the lead imperialist power in the 1950's, has confronted all revolutionary movements in the region ever since.