Manipulación y distorsiones

¿Por qué tiene que ir al escenario de los hechos el ministro o jefe superior?

Ernesto A. Holder
opinion@laestrella.com.pa

Sean McBride pudo haber sentido pena cuando el informe de su comisión fue rechazado en 1980. El documento llamaba, entre otras cosas, al establecimiento de ‘nuevas tareas sociales para los medios de comunicación' y también a ‘aminorar (…) las distorsiones que se producen en el momento de la difusión de la información'.

Independientemente de nuestro entendimiento sobre las causas actuales de la situación social y, el indudable poder que sobre ella ejercen los medios no me deja de asombrar —realmente asombrar— cuando las prácticas para difundir información han evolucionado hacia otros fines lejos de los objetivos generales de informar. Y muchos sectores de la población que pensaríamos ejercerían mejor juicio para contrarrestar esta desviación social (incluyendo el Gobierno nacional), han caído en la trampa mediática: la lucha por el rating y elevar el puntaje en las encuestas.

Subrayo dos eventos ocurridos en un espacio de ocho días. Carlos Jaramillo, molesto (por no decirlo en buen panameño) por las repetidas boletas que le han aplicado por violar las normas del tránsito, provocó la movilización de todos los estamentos de seguridad del Estado cuando subió al Puente de Las Américas para suicidarse. No era un terrorista, ya había protestado antes. Jaramillo, cantante de reggae que se hace llamar ‘Big Charlie ', se tomó un ‘selfie ' y lo subió a las redes sociales. Se apersonaron al área el ministro de Seguridad Pública, Alexis Bethancourt, y José Donderis, director del Sistema Nacional de Protección Civil. También llegaron agentes del Servicio Nacional Aeronaval, del Cuerpo de Bomberos de Panamá y de la Policía Nacional.

Días después, en la tarde del martes 25 de julio, se dio un incendio en el complejo comercial Los Pueblos. Además de los bomberos, todos los estamentos de seguridad acudieron al área nuevamente para ocuparse de las responsabilidades inherentes. Creo que hay una diferencia notable entre el fuego y el caso del puente con lo que respecta a la movilización de tantos recursos para atender y resolver cada uno de estos asuntos.

Probablemente pocas personas ven estos evento desde mi perspectiva, pero lo que me llamó la atención por una parte, fue la cobertura que le dieron los medios televisivos: en vivo y directo y ahora con toda la tecnología que tienen a su disposición. Y por la otra, en el proceso de comunicación de las autoridades. Percibo una desviación inusual y desafortunada.

En eventos que de alguna manera afectan la seguridad civil, la responsabilidad es la de orientar a la comunidad que puede ser afectada inmediatamente y por las consecuencias. Lo que percibí fue la ya conocida lucha por el rating y, peor aún, el interés de algunas de las autoridades por puntualizar y enaltecer su desempeño. En medio del esfuerzo por sofocar el incendio, el encargado de los bomberos tenía cifras muy puntuales de la cantidad de personal atendiendo el fuego, carros especializados, ambulancias, equipos, etc., además de varias líneas bien exactas sobre ‘lo rápido que han respondido las Fuerzas de Tarea Conjunta, los estamentos de seguridad… y otros mensajes puntuales ( talking points ) diseñados por los supuestos estrategas de comunicación y que en ese momento no venían al caso.

Podemos ser condescendientes y darle espacio para divulgar mensajes específicos, pero durante el desarrollo de una actividad peligrosa, la propaganda institucional no me parece. hicieron lo mismo con el sujeto del Puente de las Américas, resumir los objetivos de la institución en el marco de una situación difícil. ¿Por qué tiene que ir al escenario de los hecho el ministro o jefe superior?

No hay manera de evitarlo: si estamos considerando seriamente llevar adelante las reformas necesarias para ‘arreglar' los asuntos nacionales en los que la desmesurada corrupción es lo que nos indigna, debemos echar un vistazo a los medios de comunicación y el papel que juega en todo el sistema social.

Los famosos estrategas de comunicación solo funcionan para la propaganda y para desviar la atención. La única estrategia que cabe para los que nos gobiernan debe ser: decir la verdad, eso estamos esperando del caso Odebrecht y los otros temas de corrupción que nos acechan desde las esferas oficiales y los grupos de poder. Si hay que ‘patear la mesa', como dice Pedro Rivera, o revolucionar todo el sistema, indudablemente tenemos que redefinir los procesos de comunicación y el papel de los medios de comunicación.

COMUNICADOR SOCIAL.

John Mason Neale, Priest, Scholar, and Translator. 7 August 1866

John Mason Neale was born in London in 1818, studied at Cambridge, and was ordained to the priesthood in 1842. He was offered a parish, but chronic ill health, which was to continue throughout his life, prevented him from taking it. In 1846 he was made warden of Sackville College, a position he held for the rest of his life. Sackville College was not an educational institution, but an almshouse, a charitable residence for the poor.

In 1854 Neale co-founded the Sisterhood of St. Margaret, an order of women in the Anglican Church dedicated to nursing the sick. Many Anglicans in his day, however, were very suspicious of anything suggestive of Roman Catholicism. Only nine years earlier, John H. Newman had encouraged Romish practices in the Anglican Church, and had ended up joining the Romanists himself. This encouraged the suspicion that anyone like Neale was an agent of the Vatican, assigned to destroy the Anglican Church by subverting it from within. Once Neale was attacked and mauled at a funeral of one of the Sisters. From time to time unruly crowds threatened to stone him or to burn his house. He received no honor or preferment in England, and his doctorate was bestowed by an American college (Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut). However, his basic goodness eventually won the confidence of many who had fiercely opposed him, and the Sisterhood of St. Margaret survived and prospered.

Neale translated the Eastern liturgies into English, and wrote a mystical and devotional commentary on the Psalms. However, he is best known as a hymn writer and translator, having enriched English hymnody with many ancient and mediaeval hymns translated from Latin and Greek, including the following:

A great and mighty wonder
All glory, laud and honor
Alleluia, song of gladness
Blessed city, heavenly Salem
Blessed feasts of blessed martyrs
Brief life is here our portion
Christ is made the sure foundation
Christian, dost thou see them
Come, Holy Ghost, with God the Son
Come, ye faithful, raise the strain
Creator of the stars of night
Draw nigh and take the Body of the Lord
For thee, O dear, dear country
Jerusalem the golden
Jesus, Name all names above
Let us now our voices raise
Light's abode, celestial Salem
Now that the daylight fills the sky
O blest Creator of the light
O God, creation's secret force
O God of truth, O Lord of might,
O sons and daughters, let us sing
O Trinity of blessed light
O what their joy and their glory must be
O wondrous type! O vision fair
Of the Father's love begotten
Sing, my tongue, the glorious battle
Stars of the morning, so gloriously bright
The day is past and over
The day of resurrection
Those eternal bowers
Thou hallowed chosen morn of praise
To thee before the close of day 

and many others. More than anyone else, he made English-speaking congregations aware of the centuries-old tradition of Latin, Greek, Russian, and Syrian hymns.
A portion of an article by him follows:

Among the most pressing of the inconveniences consequent on the adoption of the vernacular language in the office-books of the Reformation, must be reckoned the immediate disuse of all the hymns of the Western Church. That treasury, into which the saints of every age and country had poured their contributions, delighting, each in his generation, to express their hopes and fears, their joys and sorrows, in language which whould be the heritage of their Holy Mother until the end of time--those noble hymns, which had solaced anghorets on their mountains, monks in their cells, priests in bearing up against the burden and heat of the day, missionaries in girding themslves for martyrdom--henceforth became as a sealed book and as a dead letter. The prayers and collects, the versicles and responses, of the earlier Church might, without any great loss of beauty, be preserved; but the hymns, whether of the sevenfold daily office, of the weekly commemoration of creation and redemption, of the yearly revolution of the Church's seasons, or of the birthdays to glory of martyrs and confessors--those hymns by which day unto day had uttered speech, and night unto night had taught knowledge--could not, by the hands then employed in ecclesiastical matters, be rendered into another, and that a then comparatively barbarous, tongue. One attempt the Reformers made--the version of the Veni Creator Spiritus in the Ordinal; and that, so far perhaps fortunately, was the only one. Cranmer, indeed, expressed some casual hope that men fit for the office might be induced to come forward; but the very idea of a hymnology of the time of Henry VIII may make us feel thankful that the prelate's wishes were not carried out.

The Church of England had, then, to wait. She had, as it has well been said, to begin over again. There might arise saints within herself, who, one by one, should enrich her with hymns in her own language; there might arise poets, who should be capable of supplying her office-books with versions of the hymns of earlier times. In the meantime the psalms were her own; and grievous as was the loss she had sustained, she might be content to suffice herself with those, and expect in patience the rest.
J M Neale, "English Hymnology: Its History and Prospects," in the periodical The Christian Remembrancer, 1849.

Neale died on 6 August 1866 (age 48). Since 6 August is the Feast of the Transfiguration, he is remembered on 7 August.

The biographies were written by James Kiefer

LinK:http://elvis.rowan.edu/~kilroy/JEK/home.html

ACUERDO DE COLABORACIÓN EFICAZ

Por: Miguel Antonio Bernal

Con el descaro propio de quienes obstruyen la construcción de un Estado Constitucional y Democrático en Panamá, se nos comunica que "Odebrecht Panamá ha suscrito un Acuerdo de Colaboración Eficaz con el Ministerio Público..."

       Este "Acuerdo para acordar" reasegura a la cleptocracia gubernamental (mezcla de autocracia con impunidad), y continuar así su actuar para que Panamá no sea un país y, sea un negocio para coimeados y coimeadores.

      Mientras los coimeados por Odebrecht se regordean con el "Misterio Público", sus coimeadores cínicamente, "piden disculpas a la sociedad panameña". El comunicado de marras, igual que la Procuradora y su relacionista pública, nos piden que confiemos en ellos, para que puedan así, seguir actuando irracionalmente de espaldas a la ciudadanía.

   La voragine que vivimos -desde hace tres lustros, en materia social y de política de Estado, pisotea las grandes mayorías nacionales. Cada día hay menos diálogo, menos debate pero, eso si, más manipulación mediática, más imposiciones, más arbitrariedades, más abusos de autoridad y de extralimitación de funciones.

    Ya he señalado que: "El debido proceso es pisoteado a diario, las garantías fundamentales irrespetadas, mientras que los Derechos Humanos son, cada vez más, un espejismo. El país político vive un carnaval permanente de farsa en farsa, mientras construye su próximo escenario para la tragedia, que les sirva de pretexto para permanecer en el poder, monopolizando todo, destruyendo –cual comejen-cualquier vestigio de institucionalidad y reforzando la camisa de fuerza que les permita mantener secuestrada cualquier aspiración democrática.  

   El "Acuerdo de Cooperación Eficaz" nos debe llenar de vergüenza pues, pisotea los principios básicos del Derecho constitucional y, manipula el caso Odebrecht para impedir que la población pueda saber la verdad y los nombres de los coimeados y ladrones, de los más de tres mil millones de balboas, que nos pertenecen a todos.

10 libros para este verano recomendados por sus editores:

1.- La Revolución Blockchain, de Don Tapscott y Alex Tapscott (Deusto, 2017).
Link: https://www.amazon.es/revolución-blockchain-Descubre-tecnología-transformará-ebook/dp/B01N5TK29G/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1487527447&sr=1-1

2.- El porqué de los populismos, coordinado por Fran Carrillo (Ediciones Deusto, 2017).
Link: https://www.planetadelibros.com/libro-el-porque-de-los-populismos/247006

3.- El quinto elemento, de Alejandro Suárez (Ediciones Deusto, 2014).
Link: https://www.planetadelibros.com/libro-el-quinto-elemento/201481

4.- Invirtiendo a largo plazo, de Francisco García Paramés (Ediciones Deusto, 2016).
Link: https://www.planetadelibros.com/libro-invirtiendo-a-largo-plazo/213705

5.- Charlas TED. La guía oficial para hablar en público, de Chris Anderson (Deusto, 2016).
Link: https://www.planetadelibros.com/libro-charlas-ted/201486

6.- Bajo una nueva gestión. Cómo las empresas líderes están cambiando la forma de hacer negocios. David Burkus.
Link: http://www.empresaactiva.com/es-ES/catalogo/catalogo/bajo_una_nueva_gestion-039000373?id=039000373

7.- Con la misma piedra. Los 10 errores que todos cometemos al decidir. Pablo Maella y Miguel Angel Ariño.
Link: http://www.empresaactiva.com/es-ES/catalogo/catalogo/con_la_misma_piedra-039000400

8.- Juntos es mejor. Un pequeño libro inspirador. Simon Sinek.
Link: http://www.amabook.es/juntos-es-mejor

9.- Las reglas del emperador. Los secretos atemporales del éxito, según el emperador más grande de la historia de China. Chinghua Tang.
Link: http://www.empresaactiva.com/es-ES/catalogo/catalogo/las_reglas_del_emperador-151000304

10.- Presentaciones memorables. Cree experiencias únicas que cautiven a su audiencia. Kenny Nguyen, Gus Murillo, Robert Killeen y Luke Jones.
Link: http://bigfishpresentations.com

Feast of the Transfiguration. 6 August NT

Today we celebrate the occasion (recorded in M 17:1-8 = P 9:2-8 = L 9:28-36) on which Christ, as He was beginning to teach His disciples that He must die and rise again, revealed Himself in shining splendor to Peter, James, and John. Moses and Elijah were present, and are taken to signify that the Law and the Prophets testify that Jesus is the promised Messiah. God the Father also proclaimed him as such, saying, "This is my Beloved Son. Listen to him." For a moment the veil is drawn aside, and men still on earth are permitted a glimpse of the heavenly reality, the glory of the Eternal Triune God.

In the East, the Festival of the Transfiguration has been celebrated since the late fourth century, and is one of the twelve great festivals of the East Orthodox calendar. In the West it was observed after the ninth century by some monastic orders, and in 1457 Pope Callistus III ordered its general observance.

At the time of the Reformation, it was still felt in some countries to be a "recent innovation," and so was not immediately taken over into most Reformation calendars, but is now found on most calendars that have been revised in the twentieth century. A recent tendency in the West is to commemorate the Transfiguration on the Sunday just before Lent, in accordance with the pattern found in the Synoptics, where Jesus is represented as beginning to speak of his forthcoming death just about the time of the Transfiguration, so that it forms a fitting transition between the Epiphany season, in which Christ makes himself known, and the Lenten season, in which he prepares the disciples for what lies ahead.

Whether observing the Transfiguration then will affect the observation of it on 6 August remains to be seen.

The biographies were written by James Kiefer

LinK:http://elvis.rowan.edu/~kilroy/JEK/home.html

Oswald, King of Northumbria, Martyr. 5 August 642

Beginning in the year 449, the pagan Germanic peoples known as the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes invaded Britain and drove the native Britons, a Christian Celtic people, north and west into Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and Cornwall. They established seven principal kingdoms (the Heptarchy) in England: The Saxon kingdoms of Essex, Wessex and Sussex (East Saxons, West Saxons, and South Saxons), the Angle kingdoms of East Anglia, Mercia, and Northumbria, and the Jute kingdom of Kent (in southeast England, the London area). To this day, there are seven principal dialects of English spoken in England, and the seven areas in which they are spoken are substantially the same as the areas of the seven ancient Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.

In 597, Augustine, a missionary from Rome, established a mission in Kent, where he was favorably received, and became the first Archbishop of Canterbury (51:17 N 1:05 E). (He is remembered on 26 May.) However, his influence was initially confined to the southeast of England.

In Northumbria (the region north of the Humber River), in the north of England, in 616, Edwin seized the throne (replacing his sister's husband, Aethelfrith the Ravager), and Oswald, son of Aethelfrith, fled into Scotland, to the monastic settlement founded by Columba (see 9 June) in the late 500's on the island of Iona (off the west coast of southern Scotland, 56:19 N 6:25 E). Here Oswald encountered the Christian faith and was converted and baptised. Edwin married Ethelburgha, a princess of Kent, who brought with her the missionary Paulinus, who became first Archbishop of York. Edwin and many of his court accepted baptism in 627. In 632, King Cadwallon of Wales and the pagan king Penda of Mercia invaded Northumbria and killed Edwin in battle. The queen and the archbishop fled south, and Christianity was temporarily suppressed in the North.

The following year, Oswald returned from exile to claim the throne. He met Cadwallon (or Cadwalla) in battle near Hexham (54:58 N 2:06 W). The night before the battle, vastly outnumbered, with a small army of whom not more than a dozen were Christians, he set up a wooden cross, and asked his soldiers to join him in prayer. They did so, and promised to be baptised if they won the battle. The battle was accordingly joined, and Oswald won a victory "as complete as it was unlikely," defeating and slaying Cadwallon (the victor, as the Welsh bards tell us, of forty battles and sixty single combats). The battle site was thereafter known as Heavensfield. Northumbria, now united, became the most powerful of the Seven Kingdoms, and Oswald was recognized as paramount king of the Heptarchy.

His concern was for the conversion of his people to Christianity, and he sent messengers to Iona, where he had himself received the Gospel, asking for a Christian preacher. The first man sent (a monk named Coorman) was tactless and a failure, but his replacement, Aidan (see 31 August), was an outstanding success. Since he did not at first speak the Anglo-Saxon language, Oswald, who was fully bilingual, stood beside him as he preached and interpreted the sermon. Aidan was soon joined by other missionaries, and the Church flourished in Northumbria. Oswald went to Wessex (the second most powerful of the Seven Kingdoms, and later to be the most powerful, and the nucleus of a united England) in order to seek a bride. Wessex was at that time largely pagan, but his bride, Kineburga, agreed to become a Christian, and so did her father, the King of Wessex. Thus a door was opened for the Gospel in southwestern England.

However, Penda, the pagan king of Mercia, yet lived, and in 640 war between Mercia and Northumbria was renewed, with the former followers of Cadwallon allied once more with Mercia. In 642 Penda killed Oswald in a great battle near Maserfeld (Salop), on the border between their kingdoms. As he fell dying, Oswald prayed aloud for the souls of his bodyguards, who died with him, and for the salvation of the people of Northumbria, and for his pagan enemies. Penda ordered the corpse of Oswald to be dismembered and its parts set up on stakes as a sacrifice to Odin. The head was reclaimed by Christians and sent to Lindisfarne, and is now thought to rest in a tomb in Durham Cathedral (but it should be noted that because of invasions and tumults it has been moved several times, making its present location uncertain).

The biographies were written by James Kiefer

LinK:http://elvis.rowan.edu/~kilroy/JEK/home.html

Salvemos a los Anfibios - Calendario de actividades gratuitas

La Embajada de Activista por la Paz en la Universidad Tecnológica OTEIMA

John-Baptist Vianney, Pastor. 4 August 1859

Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney (better known as the Cure' d'Ars, or curate of Ars) was the son of a peasant farmer, born in France in 1786, three years before the beginning of the French Revolution. He wished to become a priest, but his studies were hindered, first by the poverty of his family, next by the anti-religious policies of the Revolutionary government, and finally by the wars of Napoleon. He was not a particularly bright student, and struggled hopelessly with Latin. He was 29 when he was finally ordained, his superiors having decided that his zeal and devotion compensated for his "academic underqualification."

He was sent as curate to the small and obscure village of Ars-en-Dombes (now called Villars-les-Dombes (46:00 N 4:50 E),about 30 kilometers northeast of Lyon (formerly Lyons, 45:46 N 4:50 E), where he proved an unexpectedly brilliant preacher. He campaigned vigorously against drinking, dancing, and immodest dress, but became chiefly known for his skill in individual counselling. He was blessed with extraordinary psychological insight, and knew when to tell someone, "You are worrying too much about your sins and failing to trust in the mercy of God," and when to say, "You are not worrying enough about your sins and are treating the mercy of God as a moral blank check." He would often tell people, "Your spiritual problems do not lie in the matters you have mentioned, but in another area entirely." Many people came away convinced that he must be a mind-reader. As his fame spread, people came for hundreds of miles to hear him preach (close to 100,000 in the last year of his life) and to receive his private counsel (he ended up spending eighteen hours a day hearing confessions). The work was exhausting, and three times he undertook to resign and retire to a monastery, but each time he felt bound to return to deal with the needs of his congregation. He died "in harness" at the age of 73, 4 August 1859. Once, when he was arguing with a Protestant peasant woman in his village, he asked her, "Where was your Church before the Reformation?" She promptly replied, "In the hearts of people like you."

Nicodemus, Rabbi, 3 August NT

Nicodemus was a religious leader among the Jews in Jerusalem in the time of Jesus. He is mentioned only in the Gospel of John, where he appears three times.
In John 3, he speaks privately with Jesus.

In John 7, he is present at a meeting of Jewish leaders who are considering how to silence Jesus, and he says, "Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?" To this, others reply, "Are you from Galilee, too?"

In John 19, Nicodemus joins with Joseph of Arimathaea (see 1 Aug) in giving an honorable burial to the body of Jesus.

The best-known of these passages is John 3, in which Jesus tells Nicodemus: "In order for a man to see (enter) the Kingdom of God, he must be born anew (or born from above), born of water and of the Spirit." Most Christians have understood this as a reference to Holy Baptism, but others suppose the water to be amniotic fluid, and take the reference to "water and the Spirit" as contrasting natural with spiritual birth. For a defense of the former position, send the message GET BORN OFWATER to the address "listserv@asuvm.inre.asu.edu" , or consult the web at http://www.ihi.aber.ac.uk/~spk/library/author/index.html.

The dialog between Jesus and Nicodemus is given in the form of three speeches by Nicodemus and three replies by Jesus. Since ancient manuscripts have no quotation marks, it is not certain whether Jesus' third reply extends to the end of verse 21, or whether it ends earlier, perhaps as early as the end of verse 12, with the remaining verses to the end of verse 21 being a meditation by the Evangelist. Either way, these verses (including the famous John 3:16) affirm that God sent His Son into the world to bring light and salvation.

The biographies were written by James Kiefer

LinK: http://elvis.rowan.edu/~kilroy/JEK/home.html