Frank Zappa.
© Unknown.
© Unknown.
Viggo:
Fabián, I´m glad to know that artists like the Mondongo guys read us from time to time. That was dreadful! During these past years, they enjoyed a creative and rather close relationship with Kevin, and I´m sure they miss him very much.
With respect to the Copa Sudamericana match against River, I think we had a little bad luck there. As has happened many times to our team during the past tournament, San Lorenzo lost a bitch of a match despite having shown a quite superior collective game to that of their rival. These things happen, and I don´t think we need to agonize much over it, although it´s very infuriating to lose such a match on our field. I have faith in a comeback in the Gallinero [tr. note: Henhouse, River´s stadium,] and I dream of a feat at the same level as that of 2008 in the Copa Libertadores, with those legendary goals by Bergessio. Pizzi´s rotations don´t bother me. At the start of the current tournament, like in the last leg of the previous one, the coach´s strategy of mixing veteran and new players in different combinations has produced very good results. Tonight we play against Quilmes and this match we have to win, do or die. And then, next week, we have to see each other twice with Ramón Díaz' guys for the national tournament and the second leg of the Copa Sudamericana. It´s the time for brave men, but our guys deserve having us put our trust in them.
The debate, on the TV program "Crossfire", between Frank Zappa and the very repressed journalist from the Washington Times, John Lofton, is historically very interesting. Besides defending authors against censorship and theological repression, Zappa speaks clearly about what was generally going on in American society during Ronald Reagan´s presidency. It was 1986, and Zappa was warning that society was being dragged towards a sort of fascism based on (and justified by) Christian fundamentalism. During the first six years of his term of office, Reagan and his ultra-rightwing colleagues in the White House and Congress - among them people as bellicose and anti-democratic as Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and John Negroponte (who later also made war for George W. Bush) helped to speed up the long and painful march towards a conservatism that is severely puritanical, militaristic, internationally unsupportive (except with governments ready to crush their people in order to favour American corporations) and obsessed with giving free rein to a capitalism wildly independent of any regulation and social responsibility.
Nor have the Democrats Clinton and Obama, as much as some commentators would like to paint these presidents as "Kennedyesque," tried in any serious way to stop the promotion of an extremely conservative politics in an increasingly radical socio-economic, neo-liberal environment in the United States. By the way, Kennedy was no saint either. He also proved to be rather militaristic and imperialist, but that´s another story. A lot is being said about how anti-democratic and imperialist the George W. Bush government was, and very rightly so, but Clinton and, especially, Obama have been just as criminal in their international policy, just as neo-liberal in their economic policy. As a citizen of the USA, it often depresses me how little the presidents of the United States and their federal governments listen to their citizens, how little their actions reflect the innumerable speeches praising the nobility and the will of the people. I guess the historical path of every empire is more or less the same: a period of global domination, fed by economic oppression and abolition of the people´s civil rights, followed by an inelegant economic and military collapse. In any case, the marginalization of the individual as a consequence of the swing to the extreme right, initiated under Reagan, is something that Frank Zappa predicted.
Fabián, I´m glad to know that artists like the Mondongo guys read us from time to time. That was dreadful! During these past years, they enjoyed a creative and rather close relationship with Kevin, and I´m sure they miss him very much.
With respect to the Copa Sudamericana match against River, I think we had a little bad luck there. As has happened many times to our team during the past tournament, San Lorenzo lost a bitch of a match despite having shown a quite superior collective game to that of their rival. These things happen, and I don´t think we need to agonize much over it, although it´s very infuriating to lose such a match on our field. I have faith in a comeback in the Gallinero [tr. note: Henhouse, River´s stadium,] and I dream of a feat at the same level as that of 2008 in the Copa Libertadores, with those legendary goals by Bergessio. Pizzi´s rotations don´t bother me. At the start of the current tournament, like in the last leg of the previous one, the coach´s strategy of mixing veteran and new players in different combinations has produced very good results. Tonight we play against Quilmes and this match we have to win, do or die. And then, next week, we have to see each other twice with Ramón Díaz' guys for the national tournament and the second leg of the Copa Sudamericana. It´s the time for brave men, but our guys deserve having us put our trust in them.
The debate, on the TV program "Crossfire", between Frank Zappa and the very repressed journalist from the Washington Times, John Lofton, is historically very interesting. Besides defending authors against censorship and theological repression, Zappa speaks clearly about what was generally going on in American society during Ronald Reagan´s presidency. It was 1986, and Zappa was warning that society was being dragged towards a sort of fascism based on (and justified by) Christian fundamentalism. During the first six years of his term of office, Reagan and his ultra-rightwing colleagues in the White House and Congress - among them people as bellicose and anti-democratic as Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and John Negroponte (who later also made war for George W. Bush) helped to speed up the long and painful march towards a conservatism that is severely puritanical, militaristic, internationally unsupportive (except with governments ready to crush their people in order to favour American corporations) and obsessed with giving free rein to a capitalism wildly independent of any regulation and social responsibility.
Nor have the Democrats Clinton and Obama, as much as some commentators would like to paint these presidents as "Kennedyesque," tried in any serious way to stop the promotion of an extremely conservative politics in an increasingly radical socio-economic, neo-liberal environment in the United States. By the way, Kennedy was no saint either. He also proved to be rather militaristic and imperialist, but that´s another story. A lot is being said about how anti-democratic and imperialist the George W. Bush government was, and very rightly so, but Clinton and, especially, Obama have been just as criminal in their international policy, just as neo-liberal in their economic policy. As a citizen of the USA, it often depresses me how little the presidents of the United States and their federal governments listen to their citizens, how little their actions reflect the innumerable speeches praising the nobility and the will of the people. I guess the historical path of every empire is more or less the same: a period of global domination, fed by economic oppression and abolition of the people´s civil rights, followed by an inelegant economic and military collapse. In any case, the marginalization of the individual as a consequence of the swing to the extreme right, initiated under Reagan, is something that Frank Zappa predicted.
