Type of texts 8:

1. It tipped a continental shelf. These tremblings often cause

floods; this colossus did the reverse, drew back the ocean as
a vast breath taken. The most secret level of our world lay
revealed: the sea-bedded - wrecked ships, facades of houses,
ballroom candelabra, toilet bowl, pirate chest, TV screen,
mail-coach, aircraft fuselage, canon, marble torso,
Kalashnikov, metal carapace of a tourist bus-load, baptismal
font, automatic dishwasher, computer, swords sheathed in
barnacles, coins turned to stone. The astounded gaze raced
among these things; the population who had fled from their
toppling houses to the martime hills, ran down. Where
terrestrial crash and bellow had terrified them, there was
naked silence. The saliva of the sea glistened upon these
objects; it is given that time does not, never did, exist down
there where the materiality of the past and the present as
they lie has no chronological order, all is one, all is nothing -
or all is possessible at once.

People rushed to take; take, take. This was - when, anytime,

sometime - valuable, that might be useful, what was this,
well someone will know, that must have belonged to the
rich, it's mine now, if you don't grab what's over there
someone else will, feet slipped and slithered on seaweed and
sank in soggy sand, gasping sea-plants gaped at them, no-
one remarked there were no fish, the living inhabitants of
this unearth had been swept up and away with the water.
The ordinary opportunity of looting shops which was
routine to people during the political uprisings was no
comparison. Orgiastic joy gave men, women and their
children strength to heave out of the slime and sand what
they did not know they wanted, quickened their staggering
gait as they ranged, and this was more than profiting by
happenstance, it was robbing the power of nature before
which they had fled helpless. Take, take; while grabbing
they were able to forget the wreck of their houses and the
loss of time-bound possessions there. They had tattered the
silence with their shouts to one another and under these cries
like the cries of the absent seagulls they did not hear a
distant approach of sound rising as a great wind does. And
then the sea came back, engulfed them to add to its treasury.

That is what is known; in television coverage that really had

nothing to show but the pewter skin of the depths, in radio
interviews with those few infirm, timid or prudent who had
not come down from the hills, and in newspaper accounts of
bodies that for some reason the sea rejected, washed up
down the coast somewhere.

2
As told by elders claiming direct descent from
Pa’ao, the master navigator who led the voyage to
Hawai’i across the sea by following the stars, the
story of the island’s first settlers begins with a
violent family quarrel.  In this version, Pa’ao’s older
brother, the chief priest Lonopele, accuses Pa’ao’s
son of stealing fish from the royal fishpond.  To
prove his brother wrong, the outraged Pa’ao kills his
son and rips open his stomach disclosing no sign of
the boy’s supposed transgression.  The breach
between the brothers widens to the point where
 Pa’ao, feeling he can no longer remain, takes steps
to migrate across the seas to a new land.  Preparing
three large canoes and gathering a group of
retainers to accompany him on the voyage, he
decrees that the “sacred” canoes remain untouched
by anyone without his permission.  Now it is the turn
of his brother Lonopele’s son to transgress when,
stealing out at dusk unaware that Pa’ao is watching,
the boy touches the lead canoe.  Instantly, the
vengeful Pa’ao kills his nephew and buries him in
the sand under the canoe.  As flies begin buzzing
around the corpse, Pa’ao hurriedly gathers his crew
and launches the three canoes, unaware that in his
haste, he’s left behind the aged astronomer-priest
Makuakaumana.  Climbing a cliff high above the
water, the old priest cries out but is told it’s too late;
there is no more room in any of the canoes.  At this,
the master stargazer Makuakaumana leaps from the
cliff and miraculously lands in the stern of Pa’ao’s
canoe to guide him across the ocean.   
Thus begins the voyage that brings Pa’ao and his
retainers to the shores of the Big Island of Hawai’i,
where he builds the first stone temple “heiau”
establishing a chiefly lineage whose contentious
beginnings still resonate throughout Pele’s sacred
forbidding terrain.
3. I remember when Philip Roth told me he’d
stopped writing fiction. He was talking with my
wife and me, and — looking honestly happy and
relaxed about his new situation — he said, “Now
I can have a glass of orange juice in the morning
and read the newspaper.” And I remember
thinking, You could have had your orange juice
after “Portnoy’s Complaint” or “The
Ghostwriter,” that you probably earned at least a
scan of the A-section by book 10 or 12 or 14.
Beyond Philip’s charm and wit, beyond the joy of
talking to him about anything and everything —
sharp and eloquent and funny, funny, funny right
up to the end — it was these kinds of offhand
reflections about craft from a master craftsperson
that always struck me. I saw them as inadvertent
tips on how to live the writing life from a person
who used his time on this earth for little else.
Philip once told me about finishing a novel, and
how, with a new book under his belt and nothing
to do, he’d walked out the door of his Manhattan
apartment to the American Museum of Natural
History, a few steps away. He’d strolled around
the displays and told me that, standing in the
museum’s Hall of Ocean Life, he’d gazed up at
the giant model of a blue whale hanging from the
ceiling and thought, “What am I supposed to do,
look at a whale all day?” And so he went back up
to his apartment and started writing again.
4.
More than once I have heard the assertion that the
wave of anti-establishment sentiment that has
affected many countries over the last decade,
expressing itself through various forms of
populism, nationalism, xenophobia and other
radical assaults against the established order, had
not affected Spain substantially, or at least not
sufficiently to shake the structures of power in any
significant way.

The absence of clearly anti-European political

projects, the fact that there has been no popular
rejection of foreigners here, and the weakness of
both far-right and far-left organizations, have
occasionally led us to conclude that in Spain, the
system had somehow resisted better than in other
places against the onslaught of forces that
originally emerged out of the 2008 economic crisis.
Yet nothing could be further from the truth. The
fact is, Spain’s political system has been seriously
eroded, especially in the last four years, by
movements that are very similar to those we have
witnessed elsewhere in Europe and in the United
States, albeit at a different pace and expressed in a
way that adapts to our own history and traditions.
The result is turning out to be just as lethal, or even
more so, than in other latitudes: in Spain, the
traditional party system is cracking, nationalism is
gaining ground at the expense of models based on
solidarity and cooperation; feelings are trumping
reason; and populism is taking precedence over
politics. As a result, Spain is experiencing the worst
crisis of its entire democracy – on a level with the
[failed coup of] February 23, 1981 – and not a
single one of its institutions is safe

4.
The bare-bones ceremony at which Quim Torra
took office as the new Catalan premier on Thursday
is of singular importance, as all symbolic events
are. Above all, it expressed what little appreciation
the new leader has for the Generalitat, the historic
institution of Catalan self-government. And it also
illustrated his scant willingness to recognize the
Catalan parliament as a source of legitimacy, since
he does not even consider himself a full-fledged
premier with all the powers that come with such
office, but rather as a stand-in at the service of a
fugitive from justice.

Additionally, it underscored to what

extent secessionist degradation has perfected its
own sense of opportunism. It is not even capable of
giving its own people the right, which they earned
at the polls, to have a normal, serious, competent
executive. Instead, it takes every opportunity to
make the most of every legal loophole – which
exist in democracies, though not so much in
autocracies – that might favor partisan self-benefit,
power privileges for members of the sect, and even
personal perks.
Autonomous power, they say to themselves, but
only to destroy it from within in favor of an
increasingly radical and racist form of separatism,
mirroring the positions held by Torra’s friends in
Italy’s League or by xenophobic Flemish
nationalists. None of which deters or even curbs
some of the movement’s leading ideologues and
journalists, who were once progressives and who
now risk ending up like another notable proto-
socialist, Benito Mussolini. Their silence is what
stands out the most about the radical drift
symbolized by Torra.
The central government has also been affected by
the institutional corrosion evident at the
Generalitat’s only inauguration unworthy of that
name – and there were controversial ones in the
past, especially during the difficult circumstances
of exile under Franco, which was a real exile.
Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy should not have
washed his hands because of the likelihood that the
ceremony would demonstrate bad faith; on the
contrary, he should have been there with a
delegation of high-ranking officials, as
representatives of an entity initiating the transfer of
power, and out of political responsibility towards
citizens who are only feeling marginally relieved
ever since the Catalan governing team who
perpetrated the September coup was fired. To
govern means to be present, in good times and in
bad, and to demonstrate the strength of the rule of
law, its principles and democratic values.
Torra consider himself as a stand-in at the service
of a fugitive from justice
It was also wrong to set up the meetings between
Rajoy and opposition leaders Pedro Sánchez and
Albert Rivera the way they were, with a
premeditated effort to belittle the head of
Ciudadanos in connivance with the leader of the
Socialist Party. All of them must make efforts to
rebuild their unity. And it that sense, it is worth
praising Sánchez’s decision to support the
executive in a fundamental matter of state, and
even more so his proposals for indispensable legal
reforms to make it harder for secessionists to keep
taking advantage of legal loopholes, which has
become the movement’s specialty. Let’s trust that
constitutional unity will hold together in the likely
event that Article 155 should have to be
implemented once again, as its current edition
cannot legally be extended as Ciudadanos wants to
do.
In the meantime, the most positive thing about this
inauguration is that it undercuts the slanderous
claim that people are going to jail in Spain for
having separatist ideas. In Spain, a separatist can be
the head of the Catalan government...as long as no
crimes are committed.
5.
Gun control is undoubtedly an issue that
most Americans have been exposed to. In
1989, guns killed 11,832 Americans. The
National Rifle Association (NRA) members
believe that it is their constitutional right to
own guns, stating that guns are not the root
of the crime problem in the United States.
Gun control activists like the members of the
Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (CSGV) argue
that guns are responsible for the majority of
violent crimes that take place. They wish to
instill many types of bans and waiting
periods on firearms, making it nearly
impossible to obtain a handgun. In fact, in
1993 the Brady Bill, which mandates a
waiting period on buying firearms, was
passed. Their arguments range from
protecting children to saying that guns are
diseases, but when one looks at the facts,
though, the arguments of gun control
advocates seem irrelevant and it becomes
clear that guns should not be controlled.

The Supreme Court has been very careful in

limiting the rights of individuals to carry
firearms. They have also been debating about
weather the framers intended the Second
Amendment to apply to individuals, or to
state militias. In U S v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S.
542 (1875) the court ruled that laws could be
passed regarding gun control. The court said
The right they're specified is that of 'bearing
arms for a lawful purpose.' This is not a right
granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in
any manner dependent upon that instrument
for its existence. The second amendment
declares that it shall not be infringed; but
this, as has been seen, means no more than
that it shall not be infringed by Congress.
This is one of the amendments that has no
other effect than to restrict the powers of the
national government, leaving the people to
look for their protection against any violation
by their fellow-citizens of the rights it
recognizes, to what is called, in The City of
New York v. Miln, 11 Pet. 139, the 'powers
which relate to merely municipal legislation,
or what was, perhaps, more properly called
internal police,' 'not surrendered or
restrained' by the Constitution of the United
States (FindLaw). This case laid the
groundwork for future gun control
legislation. The court again ruled that it
could limit the right to bear arms in Cases v.
United States, 131 F. 2d 916, 922 (1st Cir.
1942), cert. denied, 319 U.S. 770 (1943). The
court, upholding a similar provision of the
Federal Firearms Act, said: ''Apparently,
then, under the Second Amendment, the
federal government can limit the keeping and
bearing of arms by a single individual as well
as by a group of individuals, but it cannot
prohibit the possession or use of any weapon
which has any reasonable relationship to the
preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated
militia'' (FindLaw). Through all of this, the
court always emphasized that it must be
careful not to infringe on the rights granted
under the second amendment. The debate
still rages on to this day over weather or not
the second amendment applies to individuals
or not.

Gun ownership by private citizens is

protected under the second Amendment. It
states that a well-regulated Militia, being
necessary to the security of a free State, the
right of the people to keep and bear Arms,
shall not be infringed. The forefathers of our
country meant for the people to own and use
firearms, and any law or control on that right
would be unconstitutional. Gun control
activists essentially believe the Second
Amendment guarantees only to its militia the
right of arms, but the Gun control
proponents have yet to identify even a single
quote from one of the founders to support
their claim (Silver 78). The Second
Amendment supports gun owners, and hard
evidence that it does otherwise is
nonexistent.