Vic

Lo tienen en saldos de ficción

How does it feel for President Trump to be a loser? He chose not to answer

La ultraderecha pasa de la prepotencia al llanto. Sin Trump su santo pontífice; el que ganó las elecciones en Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Chile, Perú, Bolivia. Sin ese “escudo de las Americas” que les hacía creerse invencibles. Luego de que el magnate que iba a salvarles, pese a toda la plata y las trampas que hizo, perdiera ante Lula, sufriera una vergonzosa y aplastante derrota en las elecciones intermedias y no pudiera salvar a su lacayo en Paraguay; los libertarios antes tan orgullosos callan y se apagan. Y mientras la cuenta regresiva corre y De la Espriella, Kast y Milei ven que les llega su hora aquí Salinas Pliego, el que como su ídolo argentino, amenazaba con aniquilar a los “zurdos de mierda”, se quiebra y en un arrebato telenovelero ruega; “…no me dejen solo…” Ya lo dijo @Claudiashein: #LaDerechaAquiNo

El Coach Hambres, pa los cuates.

In 1936 Reinhard Heydrich wanted to fence for Germany at the Berlin Olympics. People mostly know him as the head of the SS security service and one of the main architects of the Holocaust. He was also obsessed with fencing. He was a good saber fencer, but not good enough to make the Olympic team. So he went after the sport another way. In May 1940 Germany conquered Belgium. In Brussels lived Paul Anspach, a lawyer and one of the greatest fencers who ever lived. He won two golds in épée at the 1912 Olympics and medaled at three other Games. He had also helped write the rules modern fencing still uses, and he was president of the International Fencing Federation. Heydrich saw his name in a report and sent the Gestapo to his house. They took everything: the federation's records, archives, diplomas. That December Heydrich made himself head of the German Fencing Association. In February 1941 Anspach was ordered to Berlin and spent hours with Heydrich at the Kaiserhof hotel. Heydrich wanted Anspach to hand him the presidency of world fencing. Anspach said no. Two SS officers escorted him back to Brussels. A few days later another SS officer showed up with a resignation letter already written and told him to sign it. Anspach asked for 24 hours. The next day he refused in writing, saying 37 national federations had elected him and he couldn't hand their authority to just one of them. Picture it: a Belgian lawyer in an occupied country telling the head of the Gestapo no, twice, over a fencing federation. Heydrich tried once more, then dropped it. He had other priorities. In the months after that he was given the job of organizing the "Final Solution," and in January 1942 he chaired the Wannsee Conference. On May 27, 1942, two Czechoslovak paratroopers trained in Britain, Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš, ambushed his car in Prague. Gabčík's Sten gun jammed. Kubiš threw a grenade. Heydrich died of his wounds eight days later. Hitler wanted revenge. The Gestapo had a flimsy lead tying the attack to the small mining village of Lidice. It turned out to be false. On June 10, 1942, German police surrounded Lidice. The men were taken to a farm and shot in groups of ten, 173 of them. The women went to Ravensbrück concentration camp. The children were taken away. A handful judged "racially suitable" were given to German families. 82 were gassed at Chełmno. Then the Germans burned the village, blew up what was left, dug up the cemetery, and leveled the ground so nobody would know a town had ever been there. It backfired. Towns around the world renamed themselves Lidice so the name would survive, including Lidice, Illinois and neighborhoods in Mexico, Brazil, and Venezuela. Paul Anspach outlived all of it. The archives Heydrich stole were destroyed in the war, but Anspach stayed president of world fencing until 1948. He went to the 1972 Munich Olympics at 90 and died in 1981, five months short of his 100th birthday. The man who couldn't make the Olympic team ended up in a Prague grave. The Olympic champion who refused him lived to almost 100.