| Inside Europe: Iberian Notes |
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News, politics, culture, history, languages, all live from Barcelona by John. Our focuses are Barcelona, Catalonia, and Spain.
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"The Sexy Scourgers of Spanish Socialism" - Jessica Harbour
"The King of the Spanish Bloggers" - Kaleboel "A wanker...an expat loser." - Anonymous "Occasionally downright Fascist but always readable" - The Entertainer Online Saturday, November 30, 2002
Posted
16:00
by John
Just a thought, but why didn't the victorious allies get rid of that cunt Franco at the end of the war? Des | Email | 11.25.02 - 8:55 pm -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- During the war, Franco's personal sympathies were with the Axis. However, he managed to avoid openly committing himself to their side (in part he got lucky; he made major demands on Hitler in 1940 in exchange for joining the Axis, which Hitler refused. If Hitler had met those demands Franco would have entered the war and gone down for sure) and by '44 Churchill was openly flirting with Franco, knowing the war was won and not wanting to make it any longer by having to fight Spain, too. Using military force to overthrow Franco was never on the Allies' menu. Anyway, on June 19, 1945, at the San Francisco Conference, the United Nations (which was the reincarnation of the Allied Powers) voted unanimously to exclude Franco's Spain. Then, at the Potsdam Conference later that summer, Stalin proposed that everyone break all relations with Spain, a worldwide total boycott, and that the Allies should aid the "democratic opposition" within Spain; Truman was in favor, though he feared another civil war, but Churchill wasn't. (This might be the last time the Americans and Soviets ever agreed on anything.) Churchill pointed out, first, that Britain had strong trade links with Spain and the last thing anybody needed in Britain in 1945 was more people out of work due to a trade cutoff. He also said that "interference in the internal affairs of other states was contrary to the United Nations Charter." (Paul Preston, Franco, p.540; Chapter XXI in general). So Churchill made the same argument against getting rid of Franco that the anti-war people are making against getting rid of Saddam, who, to use your terminology, is an even bigger cunt than Franco was. Now, I'm not saying Franco wasn't a right cunt in many ways, but Saddam manages to out-cunt him, in my opinion. In the middle of Potsdam, Churchill lost a general election to Clement Attlee, who became Prime Minister; Attlee and Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin did not change British policy toward Spain. Anyway, the decision made at Potsdam was to definitely exclude Spain from the UN, but not to use economic and other diplomatic sanctions to try to force Franco out. Britain won out over the Soviets and Americans. Bevin washed Britain's hands when he said to the Commons on 20 August 1945, "The question of the regime in Spain is one for the Spanish people to decide." Charles de Gaulle, president of the French Council of Ministers, "sent a secret message to Franco to the effect that he would resist left-wing pressure and would maintain diplomatic relations with him" sometime in summer 1945; French Foreign Minister Georges Bidault was also against action against Franco. In January 1946, Dean Acheson, American Undersecretary of State, "suggested a joint declaration from France, the United States, and Britain that for Spain to be accepted into the international community, the Spanish people would have to remove Franco and set up a caretaker government to organize elections." But by then Washington was coming around to London's position, and Lord Halifax, the British Ambassador in Washington, pointed out the danger of a Communist takeover in Spain to Acheson. "American pressure diminished...British policy in fact aimed at restraining the French and the Americans from taking precipitate action against Franco." (p.552) On 26 February, a month after De Gaulle's resignation, the French government closed the frontier with Spain and broke off economic relations after Franco executed ten left-wing guerrillas. France wanted to bring the question of a total economic blockade of Spain to the UN Security Council, but both London and Washington did not want to give the Soviets a chance to influence anything. On 4 March Paris, Washington, and London released the Tripartite Declaration, in which they called Franco a right cunt but said "There is no intention of interfering in the internal afairs of Spain." Franco privately accused Truman of being a Mason, which, of all things, he really was. It was no secret; it's in his autobiography. Then on 5 March Churchill made the "Iron Curtain" speech in Fulton, Missouri, and it was all over. Friday, November 29, 2002
Posted
16:07
by John
Posted
14:29
by John
Thursday, November 28, 2002
Posted
21:39
by John
Posted
20:05
by John
Posted
18:22
by John
Posted
17:05
by John
In Bar�a's Group A, it's Inter Milan and Bar�a with three points each and Bayer and Newcastle zero. In Group B, Valencia tied Ajax last night, 1-1; the standings are Arsenal 3, Ajax and Valencia 1, AS Roma 0. Group C: Borussia Dortmund and AC Milan 3, Real Madrid and Lokomotiv Moscow 0. Group D: Manchester U 3, Deportivo and Juventus 1, Basel 0. The fallout from the fans throwing crap on the field last Saturday in FC Barcelona's Camp Nou is hitting the fan. Some joker threw a (roasted) piglet's head at Madrid player Luis Figo. Other possibly dangerous stuff, like mobile phones and a whiskey bottle, was also thrown. You need to remember, as the National Geographic survey proved, not all Europeans know too much about geography. The most that most people in Europe know about Barcelona is the soccer team, which, until now, was highly respected in the rest of Europe. (OK, people remember the Olympics, too. Gaud� is known among those who can read.) This episode has not made either the team or the city look too good. The German papers headlined, "Achtung! The pig throwers are coming!" over their stories about Bar�a's visit to Leverkusen. That is not precisely the image the city fathers wish to promote. Get this, one of the Bar�a executives commented regarding the piglet's head, "It's a setup by the Madrid papers. Here in Catalonia we don't eat roast piglet." (It wasn't a setup. It really happened; the TV footage shows it.) Van Gaal also had a good quote when some German reporter asked him how his team was reacting to the vilification of everything regarding the Bar�a by the German press: "I don't think my players read the Bild am Sonntag."
Posted
16:16
by John
This is overwhelming force. Saddam's government and army will fold up like a house of cards when it is turned loose. We just hope they get him before he can gas or infect our guys, which he will undoubtedly do if he gets the chance, since he knows the only outcome of this is his head on the end of a pike no matter whether he uses bio-chem weapons, which he certainly possesses, or not. There should be no retaliation by Allied forces with bio-chem or nuclear weapons. We'll win anyway, even without them, and it would be silly as well as inhumane to use that stuff on troops who are only a day or two away from surrendering anyway, not to mention any unfortunate civilians in the area. And how much do you want to bet they're planning some sort of Skorzeny-rescuing-Mussolini caper, ready to jump in there and grab Saddam by surprise? If they could somehow pull that off it would save a lot of lives.
Posted
15:18
by John
Posted
14:29
by John
Anyway, the GRAPO is just about finished and a good solid nail was driven into its coffin by the Guardia Civil, who busted seven of its leaders on Tuesday in Madrid. Among the arrested were two of the three members of the command troika and several smaller fish in the propaganda, finance, and communications organizations. Good. Lock 'em up and throw away the key. One of the arrestees, Mar�a Carmen L�pez Anguita, was released from prison in 1999. She had been sentenced to 385 years in 1979 for the murder of eight people in a Madrid coffee shop. Two of the other arrestees have also done serious time. Wednesday, November 27, 2002
Posted
19:06
by John
Posted
18:14
by John
Posted
17:48
by John
Sewers (urban and industrial waste): 1,343. Ship maintenance (cleaning, etc.): 466. Atmospheric emissions (carried by rain to the sea): 340. Natural sources (undersea geological releases): 229. Tanker accidents: 126. Oil drilling platforms (maintenance and accidental spills): 51. What the chart shows is that tanker spills have a disastrous effect but only in small, specific places. The best thing that can be done to protect the environment in general from petroleum pollution is to build water treatment plants and hazardous waste disposal sites and to stop dumping the stuff straight from the sewers into the ocean. This kind of pollution is concentrated in poor countries, since the rich ones have already built the necessary facilities. Barcelona has barely started on its water treatment plants; they've built a small one on the Llobregat south of town, but they have to build another to take care of all the crap from the Barcelona suburbs out there. As for the Bes�s north of town, they're building a big plant right now which will go into operation within a couple of years. But, right now, of the crap that Catalonia dumps into the Mediterranean, only about a fourth of it is treated; this hasn't been permitted in America since the Seventies. The other thing that really needs to be done is some enforcement of the international maritime standards on when and where you can clean the bilge out of your ship. Again, this kind of pollution tends to be concentrated in the Third World--the Equatorial Guinea harbor police, say, probably aren't nearly as efficient, or existent, as those in Copenhagen. After that, doing things to reduce emissions into the atmosphere, like mandating unleaded gas and getting cars with primitive, i.e. pre-Nineties in America, emissions systems off the road is important not only for air quality but for water quality, too. If I were to put my anti-pollution money where my mouth is, the first thing I'd do is get rid of my 1988 Renault and buy a new car with a catalytic converter. (The Spanish government runs a successful plan every few years to get old hunks of junk off the road, giving you a big tax break if you buy a new car and junk one that is more than, say, ten years old. They also have a strict vehicle-inspection program, and crappy old cars just don't pass it. We applaud both measures.) The second thing I'd do is demand that my taxes be raised in order to build bigger, better water treatment plants so that my poo will no longer just float on out to the Mediterranean. Well, I'm all for spending lots of my tax money on water treatment plants. That should be a major governmental priority. I'm just against spending it on some of the other dumb stuff they currently spend it on--not so much the conservative central government, which has balanced its budget three years in a row, but the Catalanist regional and Socialist municipal governments, neither of whom even bother to pretend not to be lavishly spending our money on toys.
Posted
17:03
by John
What I'd do to get rid of all the damn interruptions is to set up a very simple rule: Allow no substitutions during a series of downs and allow only thirty seconds between plays. Substitutions during a series could only be made if a player was injured, and that player couldn't return to the game. This would reduce the time between plays and would force the team to always have a player who could kick on the field, since you wouldn't be allowed to bring in specialist kickers and punters. The all-around player would have a big advantage over the specialist; you'd want decathletes instead of sprinters and weightlifters. You wouldn't see nickel backs or designated pass-rushers or third-down backs or deep snappers or quarterbacks who can't do anything but throw. Teams would go for it more often on fourth down and a 40-yarder would become a long field goal again. If you proceeded to get rid of TV timeouts, allow the same 30 seconds for a change of possession as for any other break between plays, get rid of the two-minute warning, get rid of video replays, and cut rosters to 40 players to force everyone on the team to be able to play both ways and in several positions, that should bring the game down to a little over two hours and make it a lot more exciting, much more like the glory days of the late fifties and early sixties that old-time fans remember as the best years of the NFL. As for TV commercials, there would be a lot fewer, sure; that would make them more valuable so the networks could charge more for each one--and if the game became even more popular because it was faster and more exciting, the ad spaces would cost advertisers that much more. Will they do this? Naah.
Posted
16:18
by John
hashish: chocolate, costo, grifa. marijuana: mar�a, hierba. a joint: un porro, un canuto, un petardo. a hit: una calada. stoned: fumado, colocado. a stoner: un fumeta. to light (a cigarette or a joint): petar. to roll (a joint): liar. La Ley del Fumeta: El que lo lia lo peta. The Smoker's Law: The guy who rolls it lights it.
Posted
15:58
by John
Miguel's place is interesting because not only is it an emporium for organic substances, but it's a regular bar that people come to for regular bar reasons. There wasn't much business last night, so I sat down with Miguel, this guy Llu�s, and this Dominican guy named Mike who lived in New York for a few years. He likes me because he can speak English with me--he's justifiably proud of his good English, and I understand his English better than his Spanish anyway because his Dominican accent is so thick. Dominicans drop word-final S, among other consonants, and they don't distinguish between the Y and LL; both sound like an English ZH. Mike pronounces the name Llu�s "zhoo-EE", while a Catalan would say something like "lyoo-EES". We engaged in mild substance abuse and watched the soccer on TV--Milan beat Real Madrid in Champions' League play, 1-0, and Deportivo tied Juventus 2-2. Both games were very good, and in deference to this blog's 75% American readership, I shall speak of soccer no more today, except for this TV note: All Champions' League games on the same day are played simultaneously, so they show one game live on the main Televisi�n Espa�ola channel, TV1, and don't tell you anything about the other one. Then, when the live game is over, you switch over to TV2 and they show the other game as if it were live, and since you don't know the final score, it might as well be. This is why, when Miguel let somebody into the bar during the second game, the first thing he said was "SSSHHHHTTTT!" just in case the guy was going to spill the beans. It's a great, compressed, three-and-a-half hour sports extravaganza, the best teams with the finest players in the biggest stadiums with the loudest fans, and you can see two whole games in the time it takes you to watch just one NFL game.
Posted
14:50
by John
Some American journalists are running around Europe digging into the environmental level of anti-Americanism. This search in Spain is completely useless. Here anti-American feeling died fifteen years ago. During decades it fed on two sources. The first, the defeat of 1898 in a war touched off by the falsehood of (American accusations of Spanish guilt in the sinking of) the Maine, which was perpetrated through the newspapers of William Randolph Hearst, a true man-before-his-time. Since then, all wars have been preceded by the necessary media preparation, destined to promote warlike ardor, spread hate, and foster antagonism. The second, the support provided by the United States to General Franco. The Americans say because of the necessities of the Cold War. But there is a contrast: in so many European countries the Americans were liberators from the Nazi-Fascist yoke, while here they appeared as a support for a dictatorship that without them and the agreement of the Holy See would have lacked the necessary oxygen to survive. Aguilar's point about the Spanish-American War is dead on. That was, realistically, a naked American power grab; the only possible excuses are the fact that other countries at the time were even more rapacious in their search for colonies and influence and by the fact that the Americans treated their colonized peoples better than anyone except the British. Aguilar, I think, is mistaken about the Americans and Franco. Franco had been in power by 1953 for fourteen years and he had no serious opposition within Spain. The Americans had tried being unfriendly to Franco between 1945 and 1953--Truman hated Franco and America refused to have anything to do with the Spanish government during that time. For example, America vetoed Spain's application to join the UN in 1946. Spain was not admitted to the original Marshall Plan. But a civil war was raging in Greece between the Communists and the Western-backed anti-Communists, and the Russians had just finished their own power grab in Eastern Europe, culminating in the 1948 coup in democratic Czechoslovakia and the Berlin Airlift. Then the Russians tested an atomic bomb and Franco began looking not so awful. When Eisenhower became President in 1953, replacing Truman, the last obstacle to a Hispano-American rapprochement was gone; Churchill had become British Prime Minister again the year before and he, too, was in favor of an aperture to Franco. The deal was made that same year: America would get bases in Spain and Spain would get American economic aid. The international acceptance of Spain coincided, probably not randomly, with the softening of the Franco regime. In 1950 Spain was desperately poor, internationally isolated, brutally governed, and dependent upon Argentina's Per�n for food shipments. In 1960 things were clearly looking up. Spain was more prosperous than before, in touch with the modern world, and Spaniards could pretty much do what they wanted except express themselves politically in public. Not a great situation, but better than before, and by 1970 democracy was clearly on the horizon. Anyway, Franco would not have been overthrown by the Spaniards themselves, and American aid didn't change that; Franco had already been in power for fourteen years in 1953 with no serious attempts at removing him, and the choices for America were 1) hold your nose and use Franco as an ally against the Russians, or 2) maintain Franco as an enemy and hold the moral high ground. There are good arguments for both possible choices, but everybody needs to accept that choice 3) get rid of Franco was not on the menu, unless the Spaniards did it themselves. And that they didn't do. Many Spaniards, like Aguilar, blame America for Franco's long dictatorship; they might do better to look in the mirror. Paul Hollander says that there are four causes of European anti-Americanism: historical grievances, Marxism, fear of the cultural threat, and nationalism. Aguilar is correct when he says that Spain's historical grievances against America are mostly forgotten in Spain today. That's largely true. If they're not completely forgotten, they're no longer deeply felt. As far as historical grievances go, the Spaniard-on-the-street is more likely to be anti-British (over Gibraltar) than anti-American. He is, however, obviously wrong on the other three counts, as our recent series of translations and dissections should demonstrate.
Posted
01:42
by John
Posted
01:31
by John
Tuesday, November 26, 2002
Posted
11:41
by John
Posted
00:07
by John
The disgraceful thing is not so much the Americans' lousy performance, which is pretty awful, worse than anyone except Mexico. Canada and Britain didn't do any better than America. It's everyone's lousy performance. People around the world are geographically illiterate. That doesn't mean you guys, it means the Great Unwashed out there. We suppose the story is this. Most people retain information that is useful to them and forget information of marginal or zero utility. If you don't travel and have a typical office job, if you don't read much and watch a good bit of TV, if you don't keep up with a newspaper or use the Net to get the news, you don't need to know much geography except for that of your immediate area, no matter where you live. So you forget it and are never reminded of it again in your life until you see it on a goofy test like this one. It's like the necessity of knowing a foreign language; if you stay in your country, don't need a foreign language for your job, and don't read much, you'll never need to know a foreign language in your life, so you forget what little you learned in school. And I sure don't remember the quadratic theorem, not having used it since Math 101 in fall semester 1984, in which I got a B. About the most I can do mathematically is simple algebra, because that's the maximum I need to know--that and enough about statistics to have some idea of whether they're legit or not. It's still pretty disgraceful that significant percentages of people got any of these geography questions wrong. Typical slackers. Monday, November 25, 2002
Posted
20:48
by John
Posted
20:34
by John
Posted
19:00
by John
Posted
18:42
by John
Northwest Spain: Galicia. Pop. 2.7 million. Economy: 6. Politics: PP, PSOE, BNG (in order). Most speak Galician. Asturias. Pop. 1.1m. Econ: 6. Politics: PSOE, PP. Strong regional identity. Cantabria. Pop. 0.5m. Econ: 7. Politics: PP, PSOE. Basque Country. Pop. 2.1m. Econ: 7. Politics: PNV, PSOE, PP, Batasuna. Some speak Basque. Navarra. Pop. 0.6m. Econ: 8. Politics: PP, PSOE. A few speak Basque. La Rioja. Pop 0.3 m. Econ: 8. Politics: PP, PSOE. Aragon. Pop. 1.2m. Econ: 8. Politics: PP, PSOE. Some regional identity. Mediterranean: Catalonia. Pop. 6.3m. Econ: 9. Politics: CiU, PSOE, PP, ERC. Most speak Catalan. Valencia. Pop. 4.2m. Econ: 8. Politics: PP, PSOE. Some speak valenciano (Catalan). Balearic Islands. Pop. 0.8m. Econ: 9. Politics: PP, PSOE. Some speak Catalan variants. Murcia. Pop. 1.2m. Econ: 7. Politics: PP, PSOE. Central and South: Castile and Leon. Pop: 2.5m. Econ: 8. Politics: PP, PSOE. Madrid. Pop. 5.4m. Econ: 9. Politics: PP, PSOE, IU. Castile-La Mancha. Pop. 1.8m. Econ: 7. Politics: PSOE, PP. Extremadura. Pop. 1.1m. Econ: 6. Politics: PSOE, PP. Andalusia. Pop. 7.4m. Econ: 6-7. Politics: PSOE, PP, IU. Strong regional identity. Canary Islands. Pop. 1.7m. Econ: 7. Politics: PSOE, PP, CC. Somewhat distant from Peninsula. Ceuta and Melilla. Pop. 0.15m. Econ: 5. Politics: Unpredictable. Not an autonomous community. Cities on N. Moroccan coast.
Posted
17:13
by John
Posted
16:25
by John
Posted
15:11
by John
After the English betrayal of Catalonia (1714), as payment for their services, Castile ceded them the occupation of Gibraltar so that they could defend the Strait with their powerful Navy as long as they considered it necessary, and then return it without transferring it to a third party. This was confirmed in the Treaty of Utrecht, in which it was specified that Gibraltar could only be occupied by the British Army and Navy and that no civilian could reside there. Therefore, the current inhabitants are squatters with no right to self-determination or anything else. And even less so the Moroccans, the Indians, et cetera, who the British brought there when Franco closed the frontier in response to Churchill's new betrayal; he had promised that if granted a little more Spanish territory to build an airport, when the war against Nazism ended, they would return the Rock to Spain, but they forgot about it. And now Spanish airplanes are not even allowed to land there, while they illegally overfly Spanish territory whenever they feel like it. In the end, Gibraltar has become a cave of Ali Baba, where, without paying taxes to anyone, every souvenir stand gives out the address to open up hundreds or thousands of fictitious companies that launder money and traffic in drugs and then invest the enormous profits in land all over the Costa del Sol. If the British had any common decency (vergonya, literally "shame"), something they've never had, they wouldn't have a colony within a European state like theirs which is even in NATO. JOSEP-ANTON GELI PUYOL Platja d'Aro Note the entirely made-up history--France was Spain's ("Castile's") ally in the war that ended in 1714, not England; the war ended with the French royal house, the Bourbons, on the throne of Spain. The English had given some support to the Catalans, many of whom opposed the Bourbons, but when the general war ended in 1713, a peace treaty was signed at Utrecht, England got Gibraltar (among other things) as a victorious power, and the Catalans obstinately held out. The British washed their hands and the Catalans got stomped. Some betrayal. And I seriously doubt Churchill promised Franco anything other than a swift kick in the ass if he didn't do as told, since after it became obvious in 1943 that the Nazis were going to lose Franco was hanging by a thread. The Allies seriously discussed ousting Franco as a consequence of World War II. Also note the conspiracy theory about Gibraltar as an important nexus of cash and illegality, the ridiculous resentment at the English "illegally overflying" Spanish territory, the antidemocratic assertion that those who live in Gibraltar have no rights, the racist-sounding statement that "Moroccans and Indians" have even fewer than no rights, the persnickety legalism about strict adherence to insignificant clauses of a 1713 treaty, the intemperate insult about the British lack of vergonya, and the nationalist fury behind the whole letter. This guy is angry because Britain has dissed Spain by not giving up Gibraltar when politely requested to, so he hates the entire British people, in his eyes just a bunch of poca-vergonyas and hijos de la Gran Breta�a. In Spanish, hijo de la gran puta means, literally, "son of the great whore" and figuratively "motherfucking son-of-a-bitch". Hijo de la Gran Breta�a is obviously a play on this. That's what they call you guys around here, Des. Do you like it?
Posted
13:59
by John
Anyway, the Mediterranean regions of Spain desperately need more water. There are millions of people living along a narrow coastal strip with a dry climate. The small rivers in southeastern Spain, the J�car and the Segura, just don't provide enough water, especially with the drought that's affected that area over the last few years. So what they want to do is spend a bunch of government money on what's called the National Hydrological Plan, which would ship water from the Ebro River, the only large river in Spain that flows into the Med, south to Valencia and Alicante, and would purchase water from the Rhone in France, which carries an inexhaustible supply of fresh water out of the Alps, to be carried to the Barcelona area by aqueduct. (They say in Barcelona that the Rhone is the river that empties the most water into the Med. That would imply that it carries more water than the Danube, the Nile, and the Dnieper. I don't know whether this is true, but the Rhone is certainly an impressively big river when you see it at, say, Avignon. The Ebro's really not too much of a river by American standards; it's wide but shallow. The Rhone is deep.) A good many people are against this plan, mostly Aragonese from the Ebro Valley, who want the Ebro's water to be used for irrigation in Aragon itself rather than farther south. The Catalans from the Ebro Delta are against it, too, because they fear that the rich Ebro Delta rice-growing area might dry up--the Plan says that won't happen, that only excess water unnecessary to sustain the lower river valley and delta will be sent south. The Ebro Delta Catalans don't particularly trust the government, though. This plan has created beaucoup de political problems. The conservative governing PP has lost support in Aragon, maybe even enough to put Aragon in Socialist hands at the next elections. The PP never had much support anyway in Catalonia, but the Plan serves as something for enemies of the government to rally around. But in Valencia, a PP stronghold, the Plan is quite popular, and the Valencian Socialists are in trouble, since they can't oppose it like the Aragonese and Catalan Socialists can. The Valencian Socialists' support base is in favor of the plan, so they're left with a dilemma: support the Plan, which would imply supporting their enemies, the governing PP, or oppose the plan and anger their base. The Greens are agitating against the Plan, which makes sense, and the Communists are too, which doesn't. Both groups might pick up some single-issue support in the next elections but I doubt that either will make anything more than minor, very short-term gains. Sunday, November 24, 2002
Posted
18:50
by John
Posted
16:35
by John
Anyway, we had to stand up at the back but at least it wasn't crowded and we could see the TV pretty well. I keep thinking somebody ought to introduce the sports-bar concept into this country; they could at least put in several TVs, invest a thousand bucks, so everyone could see better. But no bar has more than one, and that one is often no bigger than 21 inches. The game itself wasn't very exciting. The first half was quite dull; both teams were playing scared and couldn't put anything together on the attack because they were both playing on the defensive so much. Bar�a coach Louis Van Gaal changed his standard 3 defensemen-4 midfielders-3 forwards formation, an attacking setup, for a more balanced 4 defensemen-2 defensive midfielders-3 attacking midfielders-1 forward formation. The guys who were supposed to be attacking midfielders played defensively during the whole first half. Mendieta, who is not having a great year--he may be too old at 29--was especially static and Kluivert, the forward (Van Gaal benched the small and rather one-dimensional forward Saviola for the bigger and more multifaceted midfielder Motta) was all by himself in the middle of about eight Madrid guys. Ronaldo didn't play for Madrid, he's sick or something. Figo played and he stood up to the pressure very well, with all 108,000 fans yelling for his scalp. The very first thing Cocu, who was marking him, did was to foul him. By minute two Cocu had fouled him twice. And the next forty-three minutes went more or less like that, with the sole exception of a very nice bicycle kick (what they call a chilena here) by Cambiasso that Bar�a's goalie Roberto Bonano stopped with no problem. Ra�l was never a factor. Neither were any of the other Madrid players for the rest of the game. The closest they got to the Bar�a goal for the rest of the match was a corner kick, a very eventful corner kick, for sure. Bar�a came out for the second half fired up and in a 3-4-3 formation, and after three minutes Mendieta, from the point, made a very nice first-touch pass with his heel for Gabri, who had burned his man Iv�n Helguera and who was onside on the inside of the box, and who just as quickly fed it to Kluivert charging into the small box, who was wide open and blasted the ball into the lower-right corner of the goal well outside the reach of a diving Casillas. The ref annulled the goal, incorrectly, saying that Gabri had been offside. In the ref's defense, the play was very fast and I'm sure his error was unintentional. On the other hand, I'd like to strangle the son-of-a-bitch. The Bar�a players then began bombarding Casillas, Madrid's goalie, with long shots that he stopped without much trouble. Then Cocu muffed one when he was wide open in front of the goal, and then Motta injured Makelele with a vicious tackle for which he should have been red-carded. Then, with twenty minutes left, Figo went to take a Madrid corner kick and the fans began throwing shit at him, including an empty J&B whiskey bottle which might, with a little bad luck, have killed somebody. A couple of people threw mobile phones, which is pretty stupid when you figure that if you throw your own phone, the cops can probably figure out who it belongs to. On the other hand, the kind of guy who throws a mobile phone at an defenseless opposing soccer player's head is quite likely to have stolen said mobile phone. So the ref, quite rightly, suspended the game for ten minutes while the crowd got calmed down. Nothing much happened during the last twenty minutes except that Riquelme bounced a free kick off the crossbar that had Casillas beaten. It ended up 0-0 and with only one fairly serious bit of rioting. Let me make something clear about European soccer hooligans. The Spanish hooligans are considered soft by the Brits and perhaps by the Dutch, maybe even the Italians, but they're plenty violent by American standards. These Spanish guys, Bar�a's Boixos Nois, Madrid's gang of openly Fascist wealthy skinhead toughs Ultra Sur, the Frente Atl�tico, Espa�ol's wealthy and Fascist Brigadas Blanquiazules, that mob of squatter thugs that roots for Seville, Bilbao's pro-ETA Abertzale Sur, would all eat the Oakland Raiders' fans for lunch. That bunch of fat middle-aged drunken idiots wouldn't last a minute against these young guys who know how to fight and who carry weapons, often knives. Remember, the Frente Atl�tico murdered a Real Sociedad fan, stabbed him to death, only three years ago, and the Boixos Nois stabbed a French supporter of Espa�ol to death not so long ago, either. Earlier this year a lynch mob of Seville fans had a security guard at their mercy and beat him bloody before the TV cameras. Not even American hockey fans would stand a chance in a square-go with these thugs. Not even Detroit Red Wings fans. Not even those animals in Philadelphia. Saturday, November 23, 2002
Posted
14:41
by John
You can't predict what's going to happen since both teams' players get so pumped up for the game. The stadium, the Camp Nou, is packed with 108,000 fans screaming for blood. They especially want Figo's blood, since he played for Bar�a for many years and then suddenly jumped to Madrid for more money after promising eternal fidelity to the Bar�a and its colors. They'll want Ronaldo's, too, though he won't get nearly as much abuse as Figo. Ronaldo only played with FC Barcelona for one year and if was obvious that he was a hired gun--his play was brilliant but he didn't pretend that his emotions toward the Bar�a were the same as those of the fans. They don't feel nearly as betrayed by Ronaldo. He's just a mercenary in their eyes. When Figo came to the Camp Nou for the first time as a Madrid player two years ago, they virtually booed him off the field. He refused to (or was ordered not to) take the corner kicks from the right side, which is normally his job because he's the right wingman, because he or somebody was afraid they'd lynch him if he got that close to them. One of the local sports papers printed up phony 10,000 peseta notes with Figo's picture on the front instead of the King's and the Bar�a fans showered the field with them, like confetti. Then, last year, Figo didn't play when Madrid came to Barcelona. This year he's going to play, though. So is Ra�l, who is nursing nagging injuries and isn't in top form, and Ronaldo. Zidane is out, though, as is Hierro. Both Barcelona and Madrid have suspect defenses, and Fernando Navarro's suspension won't help Bar�a out. Van Gaal, Bar�a's coach, will substitute Gabri as a central defenseman for Navarro; Gabri is a good, utilitarian player who is a good defender for a midfielder but a bad defender for a defenseman. Luis Enrique is still out, injured, for Barcelona, and Bar�a could use him since he's the team leader on the field. He's a former Real Madrid player who considers himself shabbily treated by that club and its fans and jumped to Bar�a when his contract ran out about five years ago. He hates Madrid and they hate him. When he plays in Madrid they chant "�Luis Enrique, tu padre es Amunike!" Amunike was a Nigerian player with the Bar�a a couple of years back. I imagine the more brainless and racist Madrid fans find this very funny.
Posted
13:47
by John
The Vanguardia has a table of the fifteen worst oil spills of all time; this one so far, with 11,000 tons, is comparatively still very small. Even if all the oil in the sunken tanker gets out, this one would probably place about 25th in history. The biggest spill of all time was 1991 when the Iraqis sabotaged the Kuwaiti oilfields and dumped 800,000 tons of crude into the Persion Gulf, and the second was 1979 in the Gulf of Mexico when those Mexican oil rigs blew out and spilled 450,000 tons. The biggest tanker spill ever was number three on the all-time list when the tanker Atlantic spilled 280,000 tons into the Caribbean in 1979. What I found interesting was that none of these top 15 spills have happened since 1991. The Vanguardia's reporter, Antonio Cerrillo, who has done his research, says that after the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska in 1989, which was not among the top 15, by the way, the Americans passed laws prohibiting single-hulled tankers from docking at American ports and establishing that tanker owners must contract an unlimited-liability insurance policy, to pay off in case of accident. This means that if you want to do business with the Yanks, you have to play by their rules, and their rules have done a lot to reduce oil spills. It's not the American government on your ass to keep things safe: it's the insurance companies, and they're a lot meaner and tougher than Uncle Sam because it's their asses on the line if you screw up. In contrast, EU laws on the subject have not even gone into effect yet and contain a limit on the liability of the tanker owner. The single-hulled Prestige would not have been allowed to carry oil to the US and no American company would have insured it. Score one environmental point for the US. Greenpeace is complaining that the strict American laws concentrate the less safe tankers in Europe.
Posted
01:23
by John
Friday, November 22, 2002
Posted
15:55
by John
Posted
14:03
by John
The results of the war for the Afghan people could well be called rotten fruits. It's because of this that Afghanistan has stopped appearing on the news, that no one has heard anything from Karzai, his government, and the warlords, nor about the promised reconstruction of the country, nor about the supposed liberation of the women. Just as the capture of Bin Laden has been a failure, the makeup used to beautify the military operation, as if that were possible, has been too. There is nothing farther from being fulfilled than the obligations acquired by the US regarding the political, economic, and human development of the country. Profundity Score on a 1 to 10 scale, with ten representing, say, Immanuel Kant and one representing, say, Tipper Gore: -3 for getting all her facts wrong. From health to food, from education to freedom, everything is shamefully lacking. Many people have to walk for days in order to reach a health center, in which the most basic services are lacking. Sometimes it's even worse and they find the health center levelled by bombs. Food is scarce for the immense majority of people, dreadfully poor after 23 years of military conflicts and finished off by the last one. As far as the refugees returning home, they find themselves with a panorama of destruction, unemployment, hunger, and lack of clean water. Lack of personal safety is also permanent, with the warlords doing as they want. Very few women have access to work, and very few have managed to free themselves from the burka, still submitted to the will of those in charge and frightened of being attacked. Profundity Score: -5 for expecting the US to have already turned Afghanistan into Denmark and for not blaming at least some of the Afghans' problems on, say, the SOVIET invasion which started all this off back in 1979. While some things are just the same as before the last war, the rest have gotten worse. If the bombings have borne any fruit it is that of mass poverty for the population, as we have already said, and that of becoming even more evil (envilecimiento) for those who have gotten rich off the conflict. Profundity Score: -9 for blatantly lying, for accusing the Americans of having profited off the Battle of Afghanistan, and for calling the United States evil without mentioning a single scrap of evidence. When we get down to it, there's nothing new under the sun when it comes to war. The landscape that weapons leave behind is always monotonously the same. This reiteration does not only not faze those who make money off devastation, but encourages them to probe its possibilities even more deeply. A man as lucid as Gabriel Jackson denounces, in the last issue of "Vanguardia Dossier" the attempt of the Bush Administration to revoke the ABM treaty, signed in 1972 to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. To the entire deadly arsenal that threatens the survival of defenseless civilians, they want to add the radioactive weapons that new countries may make. Insanity which we'll have to put the brakes on in some way. Profundity Score: -17 for not having any idea of what the ABM treaty deals with, for thinking that the US wants more countries to have nuclear arms, and for accusing the Americans of making war to make money again. The way is not starting another war, this time against Iraq under the pretext that it has dangerous armaments. It makes no sense to accuse someone else of having weapons of mass destruction when you have even more of them yourself. It's true that it's urgent to put an end to the potential danger that threatens the future of humanity, but that will only be possible if the weapons accumulated in every single country, including the one that claims to dispense justice, are eliminated. Profundity Score: -13 for failing to see the difference between nukes in American or British hands and nukes in Iraqi hands, for being a pacifist imbecile who actually thinks that weapons can be abolished, and for gratuitously insulting the US. Civil society must become aware both of the risk it is running and of the pressure it can exercise to remove from power the enemies of both peaceful development and a democratic distribution of the wealth of the world. Profundity Score: -21 for claiming that Communism is the answer. I've been accused of being too sensitive to anti-Americanism. But when faced every day with this kind of blind hate, it's kind of hard not to be. And don't believe the anti-Americans when they claim to hate the American government but respect the American people. They don't. They hate Americans as individuals, too. It's pure racism. And many Europeans like Eul�lia Sol�, whose face I will cheerfully spit in if I ever get the chance, are chock-full of anti-American racism. Like, for example, the above column. No European has ever had to listen to his country reviled in the way that I have to every day. Thursday, November 21, 2002
Posted
18:36
by John
Posted
15:55
by John
Q. The CIA says they were making chemical weapons. A. The first UN inspection was done with some rigor, but Butler's was working for the CIA, the Mossad, and the secret services of various countries. That wasn't serious. Q. I suppose that you don't support the mission that is beginning now. The mission is impossible: they have to find weapons of mass destruction and, if there aren't any, the United States will attack anyway. We all know that. Q. Why is it going to do that? A. Iraq is the second-largest oil producer in the world. It's simply that. The United States wants absolute control of the oil market. Q. Oil is an obsession of the Bushes. A. And Bush is ready to do whatever it takes to get control over it. And once it has absloute control, you can be sure that Europe will pay a very high price for that oil. Q. So why didn't they take over Iraq after they won the first Gulf War? A. Bush Senior pulled back at the possibility of an explosion of the Kurdish powder-keg and an Iranian intervention. It's a very complex area, very much so. Q. And what will they do after Hussein? A: A protectorate with military bases, as in so many other countries. A puppet government and an informal occupation. Q. That won't be easy. A. It will be bloody... Q. What do you think will happen? A. The worst. We'll attack Iraq, with the shameful complicity of the UN and of its secretary general, and we will commit genocide. And, after thousands of deaths and much suffering, the Bushes will finally have their oil. We won't comment too much, except that we wonder which star system this guy is receiving on his tooth fillings. Where did this pathological hatred for the Bush family come from? Where did he get this paranoia about the CIA and the Mossad controlling the UN? Why does he blindly believe, so simplistically, that America plans to attack Iraq in order to grab the oil after this canard has been debunked eight million times? And why is he so sure that America is acting in bad faith and its goal is to grab all the oil and then extort the Europeans? And who's the guy at the Vanguardia who keeps printing all this anti-American stuff, day in and day out? How about a little balance?
Posted
15:26
by John
Bush, in Prague at the NATO summit, promised to consult with America's NATO allies before any armed action against Iraq, which he said was avoidable--we assume by means of a total capitulation by Saddam. He also called on the nations of the world and the NATO countries in particular to openly show their diplomatic support for America and stated that if Iraq did not comply with a strict regime of inspections, America would form a coalition to be sure that Saddam is disarmed. Bush also called on the NATO allies to increase their defense budgets; America's defense budget is double that of all the other allies put together. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania, and Bulgaria will be formally invited to join NATO today. This will be the first admission of ex-Soviet republics into NATO, and also the first admission of an ex-Yugoslav republic. It serves as the official seal of approval on Slovakia, which took a good bit longer than its more advanced cousin, the Czech Republic, to democratize, and it's especially important for Romania and Bulgaria, who also took longer to democratize than their Hungarian neighbor. Romania and Bulgaria are scheduled to join the EU in 2007 and joining NATO will be a big boost to their credentials. (Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta and Greek Cyprus join the EU in 2004). Interestingly, both Romania and Bulgaria are very pro-American and have volunteered help against Iraq; so has Poland. Croatia, Macedonia, and--get this one--Albania are the candidates for the next expansion of NATO. We're all for it. Get them into the official clubs of civilized countries. That'll help make sure they never slide back out. NATO also agreed to extend its current peacekeeping mission in Macedonia six more months. The French got all into a snit because they want a European Union force to replace the NATO force in Macedonia. It was agreed that this will be discussed later. Meanwhile, the British are ready to roll on Iraq. They've got 20,000 men, a complete division, all set to go, the largest contingent except for the Americans. Among the units to be sent is the famous Seventh Motorized Brigade, the Desert Rats. Dirtbag ETArras Jos� Ignacio Krutxaga, Fernando Garc�a Jodr�, and Lierni Armend�riz are on trial in Madrid for murdering municipal cop Juan Miguel Gervilla in Barcelona. Seems that what happened is that they were going to carbomb the radio host Luis del Olmo on Dec. 20, 2000, but the red Fiat Uno they'd stolen and loaded up with twelve kilos of explosives--they were going to park it and blow it up by remote control when del Olmo passed by on his way to work, they knew his habitual routes--broke down on Avenida Diagonal, the main street leading into the central city from the west. The car was blocking a whole lane and it was eight in the morning, rush hour. The cop, who was directing traffic, came over to see what was up; Jodr� was pushing the Fiat from behind. The cop noticed a screwdriver in the ignition and immediately sussed the car was stolen. He went for his gun but Jodr� jumped him and they both went down to the ground. Krutxaga jumped out of the car with a gun and shot Gervilla, the policeman. Jodr� got up, grabbed his own gun which had fallen to the ground in the fight, and shot Gervilla in the head as he lay on the ground holding up one arm to protect himself. This cell of terrorists is also responsible for the murder of former Socialist cabinet minister Ernest Lluch; they got 33 years each for that. I personally wouldn't mind at all using the death penalty on them. I imagine most Spaniards agree with me, but it's very politically incorrect to say so, especially if you want to be considered one of the enlightened, solidarious, and hip. Also, some jackass etarra named Urtzi Murureta Gondra blew himself up with the explosives he was manipulating as part of an ETA training course being held in a remote area of central France near Limoges. Unfortunately he didn't die, though he was badly wounded in an arm and a leg. He is thought to be one of the cell that murdered Judge Jos� Mar�a Lid�n. Wednesday, November 20, 2002
Posted
23:59
by John
The plot develops, cleanly and linearly, this analytic process (Oh, great, another French...well, Belgian novel that takes place on a psychiatrist's couch) and, at the same time, introduces another motif that ends up becoming the obsessive self-exploration of the narrator-psychologist: the discovery of a hidden truth that concerns not only the boss, but the whole company. This hidden truth, which the author never explicitly mentions, allows us to relate the logic of the business world--with its restructuring plans, its search for maximum profit, and its increases in productivity--with the universe of the Nazi concentration camps, the brutal form taken by the bureaucratic rationalizationation of the largest systematic business of the destruction of human lives in History. WHAT? The logic of capitalism is that of the Nazi concentration camps? Is this chick smoking better dope than I am, that stuff that you take one hit of and instantly see how to rearrange the world, or is she on a crazed ditchweed headache high? The Nazi concentration camps were first cousins of the Soviet gulag, honey. Oligarchical collectivism and all that. Totalitarianism. Not capitalism. Socialism. Remember, the Nazis were National Socialists, not National Capitalists. ...(This is the first) work of fiction that explores the survival in our world of the logic that made possible the death factories of Auschwitz and the other extermination camps. A logic that continues its labor among us, hidden among the folds of the most poswerul and apparently innocuous instrument of creation and modification of the world: language. Must be a crazed ditchweed headache high. She's going off on a Chomskyan tangent, as Chomsky believes that language is the most important tool that the capitalist oppressors use to keep the rest of humanity enslaved. I'd shout "Run for your lives," but for some reason the article comes to a dead end here, so there's no more Chomskyan crap. Vocabulary note: "Chomskyan" means "a person whose ideas are within the current of linguistic and philosophical thought founded by Noam Chomsky." Steven Pinker is a Chomskyan. "Chomskyite" means "a person who is a political follower of Noam Chomsky." Those morons in Rage Against the Machine are Chomskyites. Also, here we go again with "hidden truths". Spanish leftists, and a lot of Spanish non-leftists, are Gnostics: they believe that there's a hidden structure behind everything. Secret powerful forces run the world and manipulate everything. Everything happens for a reason, though we may not understand that reason; the powerful do, however. Nothing is true, since all knowledge is manipulated by those in charge. It's all one vast conspiracy, and the Americans / Jews / oil companies / arms manufacturers / CIA / cattle mutilators / crop-circle aliens / los que tienen muchas intereses are behind it. This is, of course, straight-out paranoia, and it's a distressingly common way of thinking in Spain, and I think in the other Latin countries as well.
Posted
22:07
by John
Posted
21:24
by John
Cinderella Bloggerfeller gives the Maoists well-deserved hell. Check it out. Sasha Castel, who has been kind enough to link to the Monsieur Stinky Cheese Psychologist interview, has a hilarious bit that she found somewhere, President Bush and Condi Rice doing the old "Who's on First" routine. Atl�tico Rules keeps you up to date on the Galicia oil spill, which is turning out to be a huge mess. The Galician coast is beautiful and teeming with life, much of which ends up on tables all over Spain. If you like fish and seafood, you'll love Spanish food, especially up on the north coast, anywhere from Tuy to Fuenterrabia. If you go to Las Pe�ucas in the Puerto Pesquero in Santander, you can get paella de marisco, gambas a la plancha, and merluza a la vasca for literally twenty bucks, I am not exaggerating, and that includes the house wine or a pitcher of beer, all recently dragged out of the cold Atlantic. Not the wine, the fish. Galicia is famous for percebes, a mollusk that looks so gross that I refuse to eat it. It's said to be delicious, so if you can bring yourself to actually put such a thing in your mouth, you'll probably love it. Coquilles St. Jacques, the scallop dish, is really of Galician origin. Galician-style octopus is famous throughout Spain; any real Gallego bar has a large pink octopus under the glass on the bar. They also serve tiny octopi in olive oil, parsley, and garlic sauce. Most people think they're delicious. Octopus in any form also grosses me out, though I have tried it. I feel sorry for them; I've seen documentaries of scientists making friends with them and of octopi solving problems, like figuring out how to open a jar with food inside it. After you've seen an octopus using a tentacle to caress a guy in a diving suit who is scratching the big mollusk's "nose" above its beak, it's hard to want to eat one. (Full disclosure: I'm a speciesist. I won't eat mammals, birds, reptiles, or amphibians, and I generally avoid seafood--I eat it once a month or so. Anything lower than amphibians is probably too dumb to have a consciousness, I figure.) Anyway, back to Galicia. The fisherpeople are doing everything they can to haul up all life forms before the ship's oil tanks blow. The ship has cracked in half and sunk, and its oil tanks are under extreme pressure since it's sunk to the bottom, which is like ten thousand feet down. Many places along the coast have already been contaminated by oil washing up on the beaches, and when the rest of the oil comes out, the whole Galician coast south of El Ferrol and maybe some of the Portuguese coast, too, is going to be a mess. No more percebes from there for a few years. This is ridiculous. There has got to be some way to make oil tankers generally safe. I can't think of an oil tanker that belonged to a big company that's caused a big mess like this since the Exxon Valdez. They must have the capability to make their tankers virtually unsinkable, and I'm sure they do it, since safety measures have got to be cheaper than cleaning up cormorants. Oil tankers that do not meet the highest standards of safety should simply not be allowed to do business. This is one place where the good of the commons (a non-oily sea) is more important than the individual right of Joe Blow to sail whatever kind of ship he wants wherever he wants. America and Britain and Canada and Australia ought to get together with the rest of the European democracies and anyone else who wants to sign on and simply not permit any tanker that does not meet the minimum standards to take on or unload oil in their countries. I don't think that ought to be too hard to do. Tankers are pretty big and easy to spot; it's hard to be sneaky with something like that. And, no, there's no comparison with the Kyoto Treaty (which the Europeans are never going to abide by, either), since the science behind the global warming theory is still under question. There's no dispute about the bad stuff that spilling oil into the sea does.
Posted
15:54
by John
Comment on flamenco: What you hear in the States is generally pop-disco flamenco, of which the most frightening recent example is "Macarena", though "Aserej�" has some flamenco influence in it. (The girls are named Ketchup because their flamenco-pop dad's monicker is Tomate. Get it?) Flamenco and its cousins sevillanas, copla espa�ola, rumba, and the like fulfill the same role in Spanish society as country music does in American. Both of them are musics of rural people who emigrated to the city, and they've both been heavily influenced by the technology available there. Both flamenco and its cousins, and country, have adopted synthesizers, drum machines, electric guitars, and the like; they are urban forms of music based on traditional rural styles but using modern technology and influenced by international pop. The traditional rural styles still exist, but only in flamenco's heartland and among modern middle-class hipsters, just the way that traditional gospel and folk music can still be heard in America--but most of its fans are the NPR crowd. (Should you, while in Barcelona, want to check out a bar with old-style flamenco, hit the Galp�n Sur on Calle Guilleries in Gr�cia and ask the bartender to put on something good. Every couple of weeks they have concerts--it's either flamenco, jazz, or South American. Everybody who goes there is some kind of Communist or worse but they're friendly enough if you can take a little joshing.) The most critically-acclaimed modern flamenco musicians are Camar�n de la Isla and Tomatito. Their stuff is influenced somewhat by rock, but it's definitely legit. These guys have soul. Camar�n died relatively young a few years ago and there's now a Camar�n cult, kind of like the Jim Morrison cult. A flamenco-rock band, mostly rock, that's worth checking out is Ketama. The Gypsy Kings are probably the most famous "Spanish" musicians; they're actually French. They play rumbas and they're a great party band. True flamenco aficionados look down on the Gypsy Kings as inauthentic and too poppy, but I like them. Another Frenchman is Manu Chao, whose political ideas are idiotarian supreme but who's a damn good musician, a rumba-rocker. He used to be the frontman for a group called Mano Negra, whose album Puta's Fever will get your next bash hopping. He had a song that was a big hit a few months ago called "Me gustas t�", which was the only thing that made the radio tolerable during the hellish "Operaci�n: Triunfo" summer of 2002. All of these guys ought to be easy to find on one of those music-sharing sites, in case you're interested. Manu Chao is really hip right now because he's one of those anti-globo wackos and plays shows at their demos, so if you want to tell your friends you're into what's cool in Europe, give Manu a listen. Comment on Jim Morrison: I went to Jim Morrison's grave once when I was in Paris. It's in the historic and really quite beautiful P�re Lachaise cemetery, where dozens of French notables like Voltaire and Chopin are buried. When you walk in the front gate, you can see tombs vandalized with signs that say JIM with an arrow pointing to his tomb. Just listen for "The End" blasting out of a boom box a hundred or so yards away and that's where you want to go. When you get there you'll see a bunch of freaks drinking beer, smoking pot, and communing around Jim's tomb, which has a small bust of Jim on it that's been painted and repainted over and over. One guy ceremonially poured a beer over Jim's head, which seemed like a waste of a perfectly good beer to me. Graffiti like JIM BROKE ON THROUGH FOR YOU AND ME and JIM IS THE LIZARD KING FOR EVER are scratched all over the neighboring tombs. Based on the graffiti, I'd say a lot of the pilgrims to Jim's grave are Italian. Are the Doors especially popular there? Anyway, a few years ago, whoever's in charge of P�re Lachaise announced that Jim's lease on the tomb was up and that he had to go somewhere else, and it was easy to get the impression that they didn't care where somewhere else was as long as it was a long way away from there. I don't know if they ever moved his grave or not. Interestingly enough, Jim Morrison, if he had any political ideas at all, which I doubt, would have been a rather unpleasant sort of conservative. He hated hippies, thought they were a bunch of idiots. He hated homosexuals. Though he'd take anything he could get hold of, his drugs were alcohol and speed, not pot and acid. He hated San Francisco; L.A. was much more his style of decadent. Though he hated his father, a lifetime US Navy officer, he was not against the war in Vietnam and thought the protestors were morons. He didn't really like anything too much except getting really fucked up and freaking out other people with his Lizard King crap. His death was suicide at age 27; he killed himself intentionally bit by bit rather than all at one go.
Posted
03:06
by John
Posted
02:47
by John
Posted
02:17
by John
First, you need to remember who European exchange students are. They are rich kids. Participating in an student exchange is not free. Also, your English needs to be good before you get to America or you're going to have real problems. Only rich kids have the money to go to the kind of private schools where they make sure you learn English. The father in the story said they were spoiled, which I have no problem believing with a Spanish kid, especially a boy, who really is the king of the house. These rich kids are super-hip; they're from big cities and are used to hitting snazzy discos on weekends and going sailing and the like. They have every kind of electronic gear imaginable and they use it, so they're absolutely up-to-the-minute on what's in and what's out in London, Paris, Berlin, and New York. Also, these kids drink and use recreational drugs. They can afford it. The absolute last place to send them is Utah, for God's sake. Of course they're going to hate it. America, unfortunately, except for New York, is not hip in the eyes of the rich kids. What's hip now is being anti-globalistic and solidarious and the like. The children of the wealthy are always the first to jump on every trend--they've got the motive, social competition, the opportunity, being able to find out instantly what's hip in Tokyo, and the ability, since they have tons of dough. Anyway, the trend now is pretending you're a squatter. Walk through rich parts of Barcelona like La Bonanova and Sarri� and you'll see fourteen-year-old kids dressed like Sixties hippies and with shit stuck through their faces. But almost all of America is square; high schools in Utah ask you to do silly stuff like take the homecoming game seriously and rent a tuxedo to go to the Prom. These Euro-kids are just going to be bored with that. And they're going to be bored in school, too, since European private schools are at least two grade levels above average American public schools. It shouldn't be too surprising that they should get into mischief--they're used to getting away with everything anyway. Also, part of being hip is being anti-American. You can't be hip and like George Bush, not even in America and especially not in Europe. What it's really hip to do, in fact, since being a squatter is so hip, is to mouth the squatters' ridiculous political slogans, which usually have something to do with smashing capitalism or justifying the ETA and other terrorists. Sixteen-year-old kids never see the contradictions between their lifestyles and radical politics. So you've got three immature though worldly rich urban European kids who think America's uncool and that Utah is especially uncool--the poor kids begged to be taken to Ogden, for God's sake, for a little urban atmosphere! And they do something really dumb and in rotten taste instead of, say, going back home when they decided they didn't like it. Nobody should be at all surprised. Also, I'm not surprised that the FBI checked them out, either--they damn well should have, with these morons filming themselves with a gun and yelling infantile squatter stuff about how terrorism is cool. You never know what the hell they might be up to. I have had several Spanish students in my Proficiency-level classes who had done an exchange in high school in the United States. They all had very positive experiences; I'm sure it helps a lot that these were nice rich kids whose parents hadn't spoiled them. These were kids who were interested enough in learning English that they continued trying to improve though their English was already very good. And none of them could remotely be described as hip. Thank God. Really, I think people who have friends over for dinner and go to a movie or maybe for a few drinks on Saturday night probably have a lot more fun, and are certainly a lot more fun to be around, than people who care so much about how others see them that they go out of their way to do silly crap so that other folks will think they're hip. Like stay out until seven in the morning in expensive discos listening to crappy music that's so loud you can't hear what people are saying and they have to yell in your ear while swallowing pills whose contents you're really not too sure about. This has been today's Startlingly Obvious Sermon. Thank you. Tuesday, November 19, 2002
Posted
01:27
by John
Paul Johnson wrote in A History of the American People, published in 1997, "(Joseph Kennedy's) lies centered on certain areas. One was Jack's health. Old Joe had learned many tricks in concealing the true state of his retarded daughter, Rosemary, buried alive in a home. He used them to gloss over the seriousness of Jack's back problems and his functional disorder, eventually diagnosed as Addison's disease. Strictly speaking, Jack was never fit to hold any important public office, and the list of lies told about his body by the Kennedy camp over many years is formidable. The back pain Jack suffered seems to have increased after he became President, and his White House physician, Dr. Janet Travell, had to give him two or three daily injections of novocaine. Jack eventually found this treatment intolerably painful. But he did not fire Travell, fearing that, though she had hitherto been willing to mislead the media about his health, she might now disclose his true medical history. Instead, he kept her on the payroll but put himself into the hands of a rogue named Dr. Max Jacobson, who later lost his medical license and was described by his nurse as 'absolutely a quack'. Known to his celebrity clients as 'Doctor Feelgood' , because of his willingness to inject amphetamines laced with steroids, animal cells, and other goodies, Jacobson started to shoot powerful drugs into Jack once, twice, even three times a week. Although he turned down a request to move into the White House, he had succeeded, by the summer of 1961, in making the President heavily dependent on amphetamines." Johnson says later that Kennedy's chubby cheeks, which he only developed after becoming President, were the result of all the cortisone that was being injected into him.
Posted
00:24
by John
Monday, November 18, 2002
Posted
17:51
by John
Posted
15:10
by John
Posted
14:32
by John
Q. What is American culture like? A. You can sum it up in one word: adolescent. Obsessed by violence, sex, and food. In reality, since it's adolescent, there's not much sex and a lot of violence. Q. Why adolescent? A. Because the US has never had a father. It has an enormous Oedipus complex. They never had to kill the king or the aristocrats, which are paternal figures in Europe. That's why there's so much obsession with age in the US. They think they can be "forever young", like the song. Q. And since 9-11? A. 9-11 has had a profound impact on the American mentality. They've never been invaded. The only wars were the ones in Hollywood. The answer is fear and the desire to fight. People want to say, don't mess with me! We've seen an incredible increase in the security budget. The US is becoming a militarized country. Q. How does this influence consumption? A. Things like the adaptation of a military vehicle, the Hummer, or bullet-proof vests have become fashionable. Executives from one of my clients, DuPont, have remarked to me that they are selling huge quantities of Kevlon, a material five times stronger than steel. I think we're going to see a comeback of bomber jackets. And military boots. Q. But "military chic" already existed. A. This is no longer military chic. This is real, much more visceral. Q. In what sense? A. I divide the motivation of the consumer in three categories. The cortex, which is intellectual. The limbic, which is realted to emotion. And third, the reptilian: an instinct for survival and reproduction. The reptilian is winning out. Although it may look for an intellectual alibi, power is reptilian and in the US, now more than ever, it is what's in charge since the events of 9-11. Q. Like the Hummer, for example. A. A car is much more than a vehicle to get from point A to point B. A car is a message. There's no need to have a Hummer to go shopping at the mall. But I think there's a reptilian instinct under the surface, in the depths of the mind, the message they want to emit is something like "Don't mess with me. If there's a collision, you're going to die and I won't." In Europe this would be perceived as too simplistic. But the United States is simplistic. Q. Will it stay like that? A. In reality, I think that 9-11 should mean the coming of age for the Americans. And this should express itself in respect for other cultures. Until now, the United States has had no foreign policy becuase they thought that the rest of the world was nothing more than a bunch of small countries that would wind up becoming little Americas. Q. How will this affect the strategies of the big corporations? A. Look at McDonald's. It's a symbol of old-time globalization. One product for the whole world. But this model was already being questioned and it died definitively on 9-11. Now they have to diversify, recognize that in France we like cheese as something alive with a smell, that's not dead like pasteurized American cheese. Q. Give some examples. A. A good one is L'Oreal in Japan. They've been very successful because of their respect for Japanese aesthetics, so different from the French. To do this you have to be sure of yourself. And L'Oreal has this because it's French. American companies can't rely on their culture because it's so poor. That's their problem. We won't comment too much here, except to say that we're shocked that DuPont, General Motors, and forty-eight of the other top Fortune 100 companies are actually paying this guy enough money to live in a mansion for spouting this drivel. We are also shocked that these companies are paying this guy to talk shit about their own country. We don't need to hire any Frenchmen to do that. We already have Chomsky, Vidal, Sontag, Lewis Lapham, Bill Moyers, Ramsey Clark, Susan Sarandon, Jessica Lange, Alec Baldwin, and Woody Harrelson. We suggest that if you, the reader, work for a company that hires Monsieur Clotaire Rapaille, or if you own stock in such a company, you might gently propose to someone on the board of directors that the company save some money by no longer hiring said unpleasant arrogant anti-American French psychologist to tell them crap they could have picked up from an intro marketing book, a bad Psych 101 textbook, and a couple of Naomi Klein manifestoes. We'd also like to point to good old nationalism as a reason for M. Rapaille's anti-Americanism. This is clearly visible in his last three answers. He thinks America doesn't respect other countries, like France, where we mistakenly tried to sell them non-stinky cheese. Such an affront to la belle France! Meanwhile France, so superior, is "successful in its exportations" because it respects other countries' cultures; it can do this because it has a rich culture, not a poor one like the American. M. Rapaille would not fall into such obvious chauvinism were he not a nationalist, blinded into thinking that his culture is superior to the adolescent American. He just can't understand why America is richer, more powerful, and more successful than his own beloved France, and he refuses to admit it just may be because American culture is superior to French in several important fields. Now, we'd prefer to say that America, as a culture, excels at some things, and France, as a culture, excels at others. Two of the things that America excels at are marketing in particular and business in general, and these are two things in which the French have always been weak. They have even historically turned up their Gallic noses at such matters; remember Napoleon's jibe that the British were "a nation of shopkeepers"? Well, the shopkeepers kicked Napoleon's superior French ass when it came down to the real fighting. British culture won out over French, and don't think the French don't know that and don't resent it (which is why they can be so snotty about French--they can't stand it that English is the world's first language rather than French), especially since France was, until the mid-1800s, the most populous country in Europe except Russia and should have been able to beat the English militarily, as with more inhabitants they should have had both more men and more money than the British. Yet since the War of the Spanish Succession, which ended in 1713 and in which France took a serious loss, France has been on the winning side in only one important war: the War of the American Revolution. Since then, they've lost all the big ones; I would hand them a loss in World War One since they'd have been conquered again if it hadn't been for first the British, for four long years of trench warfare, and then the Americans, with their 1918 contingent of fresh fighting men. They're clear losers in World War Two, no matter how much the postwar settlement tried to disguise that fact. Face it, Frenchmen: you're lousy at business and war. Be proud of the good things about your culture instead of bashing the British and Americans for being better at some things than you are. Sunday, November 17, 2002
Posted
21:06
by John
Posted
17:19
by John
Ali of True Porn Clerk Stories says that 100% of the pervos that rent barely legal videos are men over 45, so we figure that's the market our translations are aiming at. We did a little "research" with Google for barely legal sites in Spanish and discovered that they contain a lot of diminutives, especially to refer to parts of the female anatomy. The plot of the text that accompanies the photos always contains some reference to not being ashamed or embarrassed, which we figure is supposed to reassure the pervos, who are quite likely ashamed of themselves. The text emphasizes that the girls in the photo like to "play", which reminds the pervo that these girls are young and contains connotations of innocence, but it also emphasizes that the girls are inviting you, the pervo, to come and play with them. They are willing partners. They want to play with you. They like to play. It's OK because the girls like it. So you're not a bad person if you like it, too. At least, that's what the website is telling the pervo. Also, there's always a section in which the model "addresses" the viewer directly and explains how much she likes taking off her clothes and how sexually excited it makes her. This section is always full of juvenile slang, as if it had really been written by a teenager. Somewhere in here the girl "says" that she's always wanted to be a porno model and she's so happy that she's old enough now. The price of the service, by the way, is $35 a month, so they're not aiming at the "let's look up a porno site for fun" market here. They're aiming at real porno fans who have enough money to pay thirty-five bucks to look at pictures of 19-year-olds with pigtails wearing Catholic school uniforms exposing their genitals. The masturbating-with-a-stuffed-animal motif is also popular, as is playing with a hose, I suppose because of its connotations, if you know what I mean, and I think you do.
Posted
16:38
by John
Sasha and the Dodgeblog boys have come up with a solution to this problem by merging their already well-established blogs. I imagine that we'll see a lot of mergers within the next few months as people who want to continue blogging come to see it as a solution to the problem of not being to post at least every couple of days. Merging looks like a very convenient way of assuring that there are always a lot of high-quality new posts up on a blog and that traffic will remain high, as the new merged blog will reap the collected goodwill of both established blogs. Anyway, I think that there will be a continued influx of new polybloggers to take the place of those who just plain drop out, and established polybloggers will increasingly merge with others instead of simply giving up their blogs altogether when their life situations change. I really think mergers will provide more and better blogs, as people who post less frequently will average higher-quality posts. I don't know what the rest of your bloghabits are, but I find I can't keep up with more than about thirty blogs. I check in with all the ones on my blogroll at least once a week, and there are a few others that I look at occasionally that I really ought to link to. I check InstaPundit and the Spain-Europe oriented blogs every day and four or five others--Jane Galt, Steven Den Beste, Sullivan and Kaus, Samizdata--at least every two or three days. I imagine most blogreaders are sort of like me in their habits: there's a limit to how much of blogdom we can absorb at once. Merging blogs will reduce the number of blogs within our personal bloglimits, without giving up and allow us to read and keep track of more new, up-and-coming blogs. Saturday, November 16, 2002
Posted
17:50
by John
Posted
16:26
by John
Posted
15:08
by John
Friday, November 15, 2002
Posted
23:23
by John
Posted
21:33
by John
Posted
20:35
by John
Antonio says that the majesty of Islamic civilization is stressed in Spanish schools, or at least was when he was there; he thinks the real reason is that Spain was conquered by the Muslims from the Christians and then reconquered by the Christians after a war that lasted, on and off, for almost eight hundred years. Spain and Christianity look quite heroic as the vanquishers of such a powerful and rich culture, so said culture's real level of power and wealth tends to be inflated.. Also, several of the finer moments in Muslim history did occur in tradition-rich C�rdoba under the Umayyad Emirate, which continued holding power in Muslim Spain long after the Abbasids had overthrown them (750 AD) in the rest of the Muslim world. Islamic Spain was thus politically independent of the rest of the Muslim world, the only independent Muslim state outside the Baghdad Caliphate, and it shouldn't be a surprise that Muslim rule in Spain was different from Muslim rule across the Straits. Spanish Islam under the Umayyads was rather tolerant, the emirs and later caliphs established a functioning government and promoted agriculture and commerce, and C�rdoba was genuinely cosmopolitan. This generally happy state of affairs crashed after the death of Almanzor in 1002, when Islamic Spain broke up into tiny warlord states which were rather similar to the feudal duchies and counties of Christian Europe. Everything in Islamic Spain then proceeded to go straight to hell and only got worse until the Muslims finally got the boot from their last little enclave in 1492. The Spaniards quite reasonably feel somewhat proprietary about the accomplishments of Muslim Spain, since the number of foreign Muslims who came to occupy the land that is now Spain was small. Most Spanish Muslims were the same old Celt-Iberian-Roman-Visigothic people who had always lived in Spain who got converted, though there's no question that occupying Muslims left plenty of their genes to be passed down along with those of the folk who had already been there. (Also, the occupying Muslims brought many Slavic and black African slaves to Spain, where they of course reproduced and blended in with the already-existing mix.) There is still a definite tendency in Spain today to distinguish the noble Moors who fought against El Cid from the nasty Moroccans who pick lettuce. Source: Atlas hist�rico de Espa�a y Portugal.
Posted
15:34
by John
Posted
13:37
by John
Those who govern should be more intelligent and reasonable than those they govern. Those who direct a society must not be incompetent and, in addition, greedy and insensitive to the misery of others. This shouldn't happen, but it does. Profundity Score, on a scale of 1 to 10, with a ten score going to, say, Aristotle and a one score for, say, Jimmy Carter: 1.5. Their spokesmen try to distract us by waving around the crimes committed by small-time crooks who steal their victims' wallets. They try to ignore the fact that real insecurity comes from other sources. From the risk of catastrophic nuclear wars or accidents; from terrorist actions that can strike anywhere; from the constant war ultimatums. These spokesmen do not mention that after 9-11 the method used to put an end to terrorist attacks has failed. They refuse to recognize that the violence of war in Afghanistan, the deaf ears turned to the violence between Palestinians and Israelis, do nothing but generate more violence. Profundity Score: 1.2. As if human beings did not know how to communicate and negotiate, the most important of those who govern only promote the use of force and completely ignore the possibility of reaching a negotiated settlement. Is this mere short-sightedness or a reflection of an execrable moral status? Profundity Score: 1.1. Bush and his sidekicks want to assure themselves of the power of petroleum and they are ready and willing to massacre human lives. If they haven't done so yet, it is because those who are governed have declared themselves against it in many demonstrations and those who govern have been obligated to ask the permission of a UN that is not behaving as docilely as on other occasions. In Russia, President Putin prefers to prolong the war against Chechenia instead of signing an agreement similar to those reached with other ex-Soviet republics, while he responded to the terrorism personified in a Moscow theater by provoking more than two hundred deaths. Profundity Score: -8 for calling Bush and Powell and Rumsfeld and Rice and Cheney murderers, as well as for thinking that the anti-war left has accomplished anything significant and for comparing apples and oranges in the case of Bush and Putin.. No, they are not governing us well. And what does humanity do? What do the voters do in democratic systems or the oppressed under political or theological dictatorships? They distract themselves from their impotence with consumption, small thefts, religious fanaticism. But, are we really impotent? In the streets and among intellectuals and scientists there are more and more voices that question the established order and demand a different use and distribution of the wealth that comes from industry and nature. Profundity Score: -6, since this paragraph includes a defense of Communism. Against those who want to get drunk on petroleum without caring about the blood that must be spilled, more intelligent people of good will are promoting hydrogen as a clean source of energy, affordable by all countries and a generator of peace. Those who govern badly are those who refuse to modify their actions. What would then happen to their war-making arsenal, to the weapons factories, to the power that they accumulate by terrorizing the whole world? But hydrogen is there, unlimited, equitative. Clearer, less-selfish heads are already advancing its use. Profundity Score: -5 for grave scientific and economic stupidity and ignorance, as well as for the repeated "blood for oil" canard. We want to open this up for a vote. Who is a more ignorant fool, Baltasar Porcel or Eul�lia Sol�? Where does Haro Tecglen rank? How do they compare with such Anglo-American jackasses as the Baghdad Three, Maureen Dowd, Eric Alterman, Norman Mailer, Susan Sarandon, Woody Harrelson, or the Noamster himself? By exposing these clowns as what they are, are we just wasting our time? I'm not trying to convince the clowns themselves they're wrong, of course; they're unconvincible. I hope, though, that more people will take these ridiculous arguments these clowns make and refute them to their faces. We just may be able to convince a few bystanders that the clowns are just that. On this blog, however, we sometimes feel like we're preaching to the choir, that we're making the band laugh but not the audience. Well, there's nothing we can do about it except keep plugging away and hope that a few undecided bystanders fall into the clutches of the Blogosphere where we can grab them and slap some sense into their heads.
Posted
12:49
by John
Aznar's calm and patient diplomacy and his strong support for Spain's ally, the United States, have made him one of Europe's key movers and shakers; don't forget that Aznar is the elder statesman of European Union leaders, in office since 1996. Spaniards generally do not know about the high regard in which Aznar is held internationally; they often underestimate him as a little man with a silly mustache who lacks charisma. That's his external physical appearance, and it has nothing to do with what's inside the man's brain.
Posted
12:32
by John
Q. When Bush bombed Afghanistan, was that terrorism? A. No! He supported the Afghan moderates against the terrorists. Good for him! He didn't raze Kabul. People died, yes; there is no such thing as a clean war, of course. Look, sometimes it is necessary to use violence against terrorists. Q. Is Saddam one? Should we attack him? A. Didn't Saddam gas the Kurds? And there are hundreds of nuclear plants and oil production facilities that are impossible to defend; horror is coming closer and closer. Q. Tell me, what is Good? A. The absence of Evil! Good can not be conceived in a universal or absolute way. Good is relative. But Evil is absolute: it is the destruction of humanity. Q. So who wants Evil? A. I'll give you three exterminatory ideologies: Nazism (in the name of a superior race), Stalinism (in the name of a sole social class), and Islamism (in the name of a god). In the name of different things, yes, but with a nexus in common among the three: nihilism. Q. Define nihilism. A. Easy. "Everything is permitted; everything is right." Q. (Nihilism) is then a sort of suicidal destruction, like the 9-11 pilots. A. The awful thing is, after that happened, many people thought, "It's horrible, but the Americans deserved it for their historical bad behavior." Q. Isn't that true? A. Look, if we start reasoning like that, will any nation be saved? And blaming the victim is a form of being nihilistic.
Posted
12:07
by John
First we got the bomb and that was good 'Cause we love peace and motherhood Russia got the bomb but that's OK 'Cause the balance of power's maintained that way Then France got the bomb, but don't you grieve 'Cause they're on our side--I believe China got the bomb but have no fears They can't wipe us out for at least five years Japan will have its own device Transistorized at half the price South Africa wants two, that's right One for the black and one for the white Egypt's gonna get one too Just to use on you-know-who So Israel's getting tense, wants one in self-defense The Lord's our shepherd, says the Psalm But just in case, we better get a bomb Luxembourg is next to go And who knows, maybe Monaco We'll try to stay serene and calm When Alabama gets the bomb
Posted
10:23
by John
Thursday, November 14, 2002
Posted
21:39
by John
Posted
20:23
by John
Posted
19:54
by John
Posted
18:49
by John
Posted
18:36
by John
Speaking of demos, remember the P.J. O'Rourke bit about how he asks his friend why, whenever the Left gets its underwear all in a knot over something, thousands of protesters turn out, but whenever the Right is full of righteous indignation, all they get are three old ladies in tennis shoes and a couple of Young Americans for Freedom. His friend answers, "Simple. We have jobs." P.J. also said that you can tell which way the political tide is turning by checking whose side the good-looking girls are on. In the US and UK the good-looking chicks are generally apolitical, moderate or right of center. Non-good-looking chicks are the ones who dye their hair green, get all kinds of shit stuck through their faces, and wear black lipstick. British lefty chicks are particularly horrid. But extremely easy. Just get 'em drunk--they don't need much persuasion--while telling them that England is much more culturally vital or some crap like that than America and they begin behaving in a truly beastly fashion. On the Continent, though, watch out. There are some good-looking conservative chicks, but they're conservative, if you know what I mean, and I'll bet you do. But some good-looking chicks over here get their hair dyed silver and wear blue lipstick and have had a screw drilled all the way through their heads or whatever. And there are lots of real leftist babes, which is something I find preoccupying.
Posted
18:02
by John
Posted
17:50
by John
Posted
16:59
by John
So these are the new Thirteen United States. I tried to make groupings that fit together logically, sometimes dividing existing states, especially in order to keep metropolitan areas together. I chose as capitals attractive smaller cities, none of which is capital of an existing state and each of which is centrally located in its new state. I provided two possible names, one geographical, like the French departments, and the other honoring a Founding Father or a former President. I considered transport routes, politics, and the ethnic makeup of the population. There are four states from the West, three from the South, three from the Midwest, and three from the Northeast. Six states tend Democratic and seven tend Republican. The populations range from about 10 million to about 45 million. The old states will completely disappear as entities; that is, we're not creating regional groupings of existing states here, we're creating all-new states. North Pacific (Washington): AK, WA, OR, North CA (down to Bakersfield-San Luis Obispo). Capital: Eugene, OR. Population: 24.9m. Politics: Strong Dem. South Pacific (Reagan): HI, South CA (below Bakersfield), S. NV (Vegas metro), AZ. Capital: Flagstaff, AZ. Population: 25.9m. Politics: Tends Rep. Interior Mountains (Hamilton): MT, ID, WY, North NV (except Vegas metro), UT, CO. Capital: Jackson Hole, WY. Population: 9.8m. Politics: Strong Rep. South Plains (Eisenhower): NM, TX, OK. Capital: Lubbock, TX. Population: 26.4m. Politics: Strong Rep. Central Plains (Truman): NE, KS, IA, MO. Capital: Lawrence, KS. Population 13.9m, including St. Louis metro in IL and Quad Cities metro in IL. Politics: Tends Rep. North Plains (Kennedy): ND, SD, MN, WI, Upper Peninsula MI. Capital: LaCrosse, WI. Population 12.6m. Politics: Strong Dem. Great Lakes (Lincoln): Lower Peninsula MI, OH including Cincinnati metro in KY, IN except Louisville metro, IL except St. Louis and Quad Cities metros. Capital: South Bend, IN. Population 38.4m. Politics: Tends Dem. Ohio-Tennessee (Franklin): KY except Cincinnati metro, TN including Memphis metro in AR and MS, Louisville metro in IN. Population: 9.9m. Politics: Tends Rep. South Mississippi or Gulf Coast (Jackson): AR, LA, MS, AL, FL panhandle, except Memphis metro in AR and MS. Capital: Greenville, MS. Population: 15.9m. Politics: Tends Rep. South Atlantic (Madison): FL except panhandle, GA, SC, NC. Capital: Savannah, GA. Population 35.7m. Politics: Strong Rep. Chesapeake (Jefferson): VA, WV, MD, DE, DC. Capital: Charlottesville, VA. Population: 15.6m. Politics: Strong Dem. Hudson-Delaware (Roosevelt): NY, PA, NJ, Fairfield County, CT. Capital: Ithaca, NY. Population: 45.7m. Politics: Strong Dem. New England (Adams): ME, NH, VT, MA, RI, CT except Fairfield Co. Capital: Bennington, VT. Population: 11.9m. Politics: Socialist. The political repercussions of this would be several. The states would be divided into House districts as they are now, on the basis of population. An almost round number of 501 seats seems about right. Each state would get six Senators serving six-year terms like now, with two per state up every two years for election. That would give us a Senate with 78 members. There would be a less strong rural bias than there is now, with California and Wyoming having the same number of senators; power would still be relatively decentralized and not all in the hands of the most populous areas, though. We could either throw out the Electoral College system all together and decide the President on the basis of popular vote, perhaps with the top two candidates going to a runoff, or we could set up an Electoral College just like now, with each state having the same number of electoral votes as it does number of Senators plus Representatives. I rather like a British-style system in which the top vote-getter of the Presidential election in each Congressional district wins one electoral vote. That'll keep down the third parties. As for the states, each would have a popularly elected governor and legislature to do as they see fit. Since each state would have at least ten million people, a great deal of money could be saved through economies of scale; each state would also be large enough to handle many current federal government capacities. The powers of the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, Transportation, and the like could be returned to the states. The Feds would keep running the military and international affairs, along with other things that involve more than one state, and there are a lot of other things we'd want to leave under federal control like, say, I dunno, minimum acceptable environmental standards. Of course, the Supreme Court, just as now, could declare state laws unconstitutional in case somebody started getting a little too radical, so there'd be no need to worry about something like a redneck party in South Mississippi getting hold of power and segregating the schools again. We're not off an a radical states-rights kick, just arguing for a bit more decentralization and for saving a lot of money and complexities. Just think of how many bureaucrats we could fire and bureaus we could close! Will this plan be adopted? Naah. Too sensible. Besides, it would require the current states to vote themselves out of existence, which ain't gonna happen. And, we guess, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. The United States ain't broke. What do you think? You probably think I've been wasting my time, and you're probably right, but in case you think anything else, let us know. Wednesday, November 13, 2002
Posted
19:26
by John
Let us stipulate several things. 1) We do not sympathize with the Franco dictatorship. 2) We consider garrotting to be an unacceptably cruel form of execution. 3) Puig Antich didn't get anything resembling a fair trial. 4) Had we been the judge, we would have granted mercy and imposed a life sentence figuring Puig Antich would be released in 20 or 30 years, since he was guilty of doing what he did and had to be punished, but he was also obviously a reclaimable project, a basically decent person who could be reformed and who was likely to seriously repent what he had done within a year or two. Puig Antich was no psychopath, he was a normal person like you or me who made the bad mistake of believing, of allowing himself to be persuaded, that ideology justifies violence. Even George Orwell once believed that. And Orwell was a lot smarter than Puig Antich showed any signs of having been. 5) He was, however, guilty as hell of murdering a police officer, a regular cop, not a Gestapo man; he also knew damn well when he picked up a gun that anarchists like him were garrotted if they killed cops and got caught. He made his own choice, fully aware of the risks it involved. 6) He received the support of the international Left in his appeals because of the ideological nature of his crime; many Spanish leftists would argue that Puig Antich was justified in shooting the cop, since he was an idealistic anarchist, after all, not a nasty Fascist. And he received the sympathy of the average Catalan man-on-the-street since he was one of them, a nice boy with TWO Catalan surnames who went to school by evening and worked in an office by day who had just happened to kill a man. 6) What happened to Puig Antich was his own fault, but it's hard not to blame, at bottom, the Santiago Carrillos and Pasionarias and Eduardo Haro Tecglens and Manuel V�zquez Montalb�ns and Llu�s Llachs and the whole bunch of Seventies progres whose Utopia, whose false Utopia, glorifying all forms of Leftist revolution, seduced impressionable and idealistic kids like him and led them into terrorist gangs that justified and practiced violence when it was used against the right people. Salvador Puig Antich and his tiny cell were, essentially, the equivalent of the SLA in the United States or the Baader-Meinhofs, the Red Army Faction, in West Germany. They had no popular support and no idea about how to be proper terrorists. They were rank amateurs playing revolutionaries, fired up by the Spanish left's incendiary rhetoric which they tragically took seriously. And they got people killed, including one of themselves. Anyway, there has been a big stink over the last few days because the Camilo Jos� Cela Museum had, on display, the garotte that was used to kill Puig Antich. The eccentric Nobel Prize-winner, who actually wrote a couple of books worth reading but whose general level of talent was sadly below that expected of a Nobel Lit winner, put the garrotte in the room dedicated to his novel The Family of Pascual Duarte. The novel's protagonist is, like Puig Antich, garrotted. When this hit the fan, there were protests everywhere, including several rather sad letters to the editor by Puig Antich's poor sisters, the real victims--along with the policeman and his family--in this story with no heroes. We think the protests were perfectly justified. Displaying a garrotte used to kill people is in pretty poor taste except in a museum seriously devoted to the history of crime and punishment, and can only add to the misery of Puig Antich's family. And Cela apparently obtained it illegally, anyway; he asked someone he knew in the Socialist government for it back in 1995 and it was just sort of given to him. Gotta love Spain.
Posted
16:55
by John
Posted
16:13
by John
Two hundred intellectuals and artists sign for ideological pluralism Some two hundred personalities from the Catalan cultural world, among them the journalist Maruja Torres, the authors Rosa Reg�s and Ram�n Folch, and the actor Joel Joan, have signed the manifesto on liberty backed by the Foundation for Peace and the NGO Justice and Peace, issued on October 3 in Barcelona, against "ideological uniformity". A total of 32 personalities, among them the author Manuel V�zquez Montalb�n, the singer Llu�s Llach, and the architect Oriol Bohigas, read on Oct. 3 the manifesto "For a world in which all worlds fit, no to the reduction of liberty", which is intended to be the "starting point" for those who reject war and defend political pluralism. The document calls on the citizenry to "the defense and the amplification of liberty, human rights, justice, dialogue, and peace", criticizes decisions made by the Government like the Political Parties Law (illegalizing Batasuna, the pro-ETA party), the "decretazo" (modification of the Education Law that would, like, make school way too hard), and the Foreigners Law (which lets the government kick out at least some illegal aliens), and in addition denounces the United States's doctrine of preventive defense. The document was also signed by the lawyers Francesc Casares and Gil Matamala and the philosophers Josep Mar�a Terracabras and Francisco Fern�ndez Buey, and the urban planner Jordi Borja, who defended the necessity of accusatory manifestos like this one, since "the world is threatened" by the president of the United States's "new Fascism and aggressive imperialism". No comment, except to say that these people are all notorious Communists and a fine sample of our local population of blabbering ignorant loudmouths. Note that none of the people who are mentioned as signers have real jobs. (If Bohigas is a real architect I'm Mark Steyn.) And what they mean by ideological pluralism is they want us to let Marxism back into the house of intellectual respectability. Oh, well, most of these people are over 55 and drink and smoke a lot, so they'll probably die pretty soon. Except Joel Joan, who is sort of our Alec Baldwin but dumber. Maybe more like our Woody Harrelson. Llu�s Llach, in particular, is rumored to have a major strike against him on the living-a-long-time front. Oh, yeah, this appeared as a news article in the politics section, not on the editorial page; it isn't even boxed and labeled something like "News Analysis".
Posted
15:24
by John
The presumption that a Europe open to Turkey and other Islamic countries (Morocco) is an idea that is at heart progressive, and that a non-expansionist EU that is sincere about the role of Christianity in its genesis is a right-wing reactionary attitude, is an excessively Manichean position. It just doesn't fit. Wait a minute. I think this guy is saying that if you want to join the EU, you have to be a Christian country. Then what does he want to do about Muslim Albania, Kosovo, and Bosnia when their turn comes up? Is he going to say to the people of Sarajevo, Tirana, and Pristina or to the survivors of Srbrenica that they're just not good enough to get in? And what would the officially secular, non-Christian French state, with its 10% Muslim population, have to say about the idea of a Christian EU? And where do the Jews fit in here? And, when you get right down to it, keeping the Turks out just because they're not Christians is politely called racism, at least where I come from. The proof is named Bush. The United States is the largest source of pressure for Turkey to be admitted to the Union. The imperial optics are diaphanous on this issue. Not only do they want to nail down a key piece of the puzzle that is the Western defensive system, the safest access route to the energy resources of the Caucasus, Arabia, and Mesopotamia. but they want to water down the strength of Brussels. The bigger Europe is, the better for Washington. The more it looks like Mercosur or NAFTA, the farther we are from the old ideal of the nation of nations, from the new political body that has never quite been born and which we will perhaps never see. Good God, where do we start? First, check out his logic. Admitting Turkey to the EU can't be "progressive" because Bush is for it, and anything that reactionary Bush is for must automatically be bad. Second, note the bad geography. Oil from Mesopotamia and Arabia will continue to be shipped by tanker because that's the most convenient method. True, stability in Turkey and the Caucasus is necessary for the explotation of Caspian Sea oil and its transport by pipeline, but there's not much oil in the Caucasus. The oil's in the Caspian, down around Baku, and this is not a new find; it's always been known that the Caspian basin is rich in oil. Hitler was trying to grab it in late 1942 in his drive toward the Caucasus; the Wehrmacht's target was Baku. Third, the Americans, let me repeat again, occasionally have foreign policy objectives that have nothing to do with oil, and methinks this is one of them. America simply figures that after 50 years of alliance, the Europeans really owe it to Turkey to set reasonable conditions (e.g., say, the legalization of education in Kurdish) and a deadline that the Turks would have to meet to get in. If the European Union is going to expand to Romania and Bulgaria, and they've set a tentative date for admission of those countries for 2007, then they should also expand to Turkey, much more deserving than either of these two. It's that simple. Washington is lobbying on behalf of its good friend Turkey, which ought to be a good friend of Europe, too; at least that's what Turkey would like. And this guy Juliana is again suffering from typical Spanish conspiracy-theory-itis regarding America and everything else. Since the Spaniards don't trust anybody, much less themselves, they are always prone to believe that a sinister ulterior motivation, in this case the destabilization of the European Union, is hiding behind the most innocent-seeming American initiative.
Posted
14:21
by John
I mentioned this several months ago, but thought I'd recap it. Soccer clubs in Spain often represent a political or nationalistic current. FC Barcelona, for example, is the representative of Catalan nationalism. It's always been a symbol of the left, especially during the Franco period. Real Madrid is its opposite, the representative of Spanish centralism. It was the team favored by the Franco regime during those dark days, or so at least say the Bar�a supporters. Real Madrid is often called unfairly a "Fascist team", and it's true that they have a big group of skinhead supporters called the Ultra Sur. They're also considered the right-wing team in Madrid, as opposed to Atl�tico de Madrid, which is the anti-establishment team. Barcelona's right-wing team, also unfairly called "Fascist", has always been RCD Espa�ol. Espa�ol has about one-fifth the number of fans as Bar�a and is usually thought of as anti-Catalanist and pro-Spain. They have a bunch of Fascist skinhead supporters called the Brigadas Blanquiazules. Ironically, though, the last deaths in hooligan violence in Spain were the murder by an At. Madrid hooligan of a Real Sociedad fan about four years ago and the murder by a gang of Bar�a hooligans of an Espa�ol fan about ten years ago. Both of these were unprovoked attacks on innocent, non-violent fans, and both were committed by hooligans loyal to "left-wing" clubs against fans of "right-wing" clubs. Both Valencia and Mallorca are also considered conservative, anti-Catalanist teams. In Valencia there's a second-division team, Levante, which wears the same colors as Bar�a and is the left-wing opposition to mighty Valencia CF. In the Basque Country Athletic Bilbao is the rad team and Real Sociedad is the conservative team. In Sevilla, historically, Sevilla CF was the conservative bourgeois team and Real Betis was the left-wing working-class team. Those roles have switched over the last few years, and now Betis is conservative and Sevilla has attracted the most hardcore left-wing supporters in Spain. Whether or not this is a coincidence, Sevilla is known as the team with the most violent, dirtiest players. At. Madrid has always had that reputation, too, as has At. Bilbao. I wonder if the fact that all these clubs are considered to be left-wing has to do with the stigma of being clubs that play dirty. In Asturias Sporting Gij�n is the working-class team while Real Oviedo is the bourgeois team. In Galicia Celta de Vigo is the left-wing, Galician-nationalist team, and Deportivo de la Coru�a is the conservatrive, pro Spain team. Teams that wear white--Real Madrid, Valencia, Sevilla, Oviedo--have historically always been considered conservative, though Sevilla has now gone over to the left.
Posted
12:55
by John
Posted
12:21
by John
In a similar vein, just in case you were interested, the ten most expensive streets on which to rent a commercial space in Spain are Preciados and Serrano in Madrid and Portal de l'�ngel and Paseo de Gr�cia in Barcelona, all well over 1000 euros / sq. meter / year; and Rambla de Catalunya and Avenida Diagonal in Barcelona, the Gran V�a in Bilbao, Col�n in Valencia, Tetu�n in Sevilla, and Jaume III in Palma de Mallorca, at 600-800 euros / square meter / year. The most expensive commercial space in the world is now at Fifth Avenue and 57th Street in Manhattan, at 7600 euros / sq. meter / year.
Posted
12:02
by John
Tuesday, November 12, 2002
Posted
17:58
by John
pijo: 1) a snobby rich kid. Wears only expensive brand-name clothing. Drives a Volkswagen Golf. Probably studied business but is not a yuppie; yuppies work hard and strive. This guy doesn't. He works for his dad's company or one of his dad's friends' companies. Speaks, stereotypically, with an exaggerated low-high-low intonation in his sentences and slightly drawled vowels. Probably comes from Sarri�-Sant Gervasi in Barcelona or Salamanca in Madrid. Is often named something retarded like "Borja" or "Alejo". 2) one who tries but fails to emulate a real pijo. He is sometimes called a "pijo-hortera". In this case he is named something retarded like "Jonathan", pronounced "Yon-ah-tan", that his parents thought sounded classy, rather in the way some American parents name their kids inappropriate things like "Tiffany", which is a BRAND NAME, for God's sake, or "Brandy", which is an ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE. I think I'll name my kid "K mart" or "Boilermaker". But definitely not Jonathan, Alejo, or Borja. hortera: tacky in a cheesy sort of way. Often implies that you are trying to put on airs above your station or that you are doing something or behaving in a way exaggeratedly stereotypical of farmers in town in their Sunday best. Can, however, merely mean "in bad taste". cursi: nerdy in sort of a teacher's pet sort of way. The kind of clothes that a teacher's pet would wear, for example, is cursi. un empoll�n: a nerd. Again, usually refers to the sort of person who tries to please authority submissively. d�nde Jesucristo perdi� las alpargatas (where Jesus lost his sandals): the middle of nowhere, Nowheresville. A wide place in the road. A jerkwater town. Also el quinto pino (the fifth pine tree). el quinto co�o (the fifth cunt) (vulgar): Assboink, Idaho, or Bumfuck, Egypt. el veranillo de San Mart�n: Indian summer.
Posted
14:16
by John
Monday, November 11, 2002
Posted
17:31
by John
Everyone in Spain can understand Spanish, at least the standard dialect, which they've heard on the radio and TV all their lives. Besides, almost everyone went to school, at least for a few years, and if you're older than about 35 you were taught mostly or completely in Spanish, no matter what part of Spain you're from. In Catalonia, everyone can speak Spanish. Some may speak it so badly that they're embarrassed to do it, but if forced to, they could manage. People in small villages don't usually speak very good Spanish. In bigger towns and smaller cities in Catalonia, they use Catalan among themselves but are perfectly competent in Spanish, though they probably have an accent. Barcelona is completely bilingual, perhaps even majority Spanish-speaking. In the Basque Country and Navarra everybody who speaks Basque can speak Spanish perfectly too. In Valencia and Mallorca they speak Valencian and Mallorcan, both versions of Catalan, among themselves and perfect Spanish with outsiders. Some Valencians and Mallorcans go so far as to say that their "languages" are not related to Catalan, which is just plain ridiculous. And they claim that they don't understand Catalan, so that when dealing with people from Catalonia they will say, 'Speak Spanish, I don't understand Catalan," which is even more ridiculous. They have every right to speak whatever language they want, of course, but everyone in this damn country has some sort of silly attitude about languages and nationalism. Anyway, in Galicia, there are lower-class people in small mountain villages who are mostly elderly and illiterate and really don't know how to speak Spanish. Understand the TV and radio, yes, but they've never had to open their mouths to speak Spanish in their lives. I suppose that when these people die out, which will be within ten or fifteen years, there will be no more monolingual Galician speakers, as there are already no monolingual speakers of Catalan or Basque. UPDATE: Antonio says it's important to add that Catalonia, Valencia, the Balearics, Navarra, and the Basque Country have always (at least in the last few hundred years) been rich, fertile provinces agriculturally, that all these people except the Navarrese have historically had large commercial and fishing fleets and big ports, that these were the first provinces to become industrialized, and that they were the first areas to develop important financial institutions. They've always been rich, densely populated areas, and they've always been zones that received a steady in-migration that only spoke Spanish from poorer areas of Spain. The in-migration has diluted the use of the local languages in all those places. Galicia, however, has always been poor, and it's always been an overpopulated source of out-migration. Anybody from outside Galicia who in-migrated there went to one of the ports like Vigo or La Coru�a, still heavily Spanish-speaking today. But rural Galicia received absolutely no in-migration from other parts of Spain because there was absolutely no reason to move there, kind of like Oklahoma in the '30s. Since Galicia was so poor, (it's gotten a lot better; it's barely distinguishable from the rest of Europe, except in very tiny isolated places) many older people never went to school, where Spanish was taught, and the only exposure they've ever had to Spanish is TV and radio. They have probably met only a few non-Gallego speakers in their lives, and they've been just fine speaking only Gallego to one another in their little villages. Antonio says that the reason that people in Argentina call all Spaniards "gallegos" in an insulting manner is because most Spanish immigrants to Argentina were Galician, and they were a bunch of oafish rednecks in sophisticated, rich pre-Per�n Buenos Aires. Now the tables have been turned and the Argentinians are the poor cousins from overseas while the Spanish are the rich, sophisticated folks; it was reported in the Spanish press that there has been friction that has become problematic between Spanish and Argentinian employees who work for one of the large Spanish companies (BBVA, BSCH, Repsol-YPF, and several others) in Argentina. The Argentinians claim that the Spaniards are overbearing, rude, arrogant snobs who act superior. This is probably a little unfair. They can't be that bad, though I wouldn't be surprised if there are a few prize pijo specimens who give all Spaniards a bad rap.
Posted
16:27
by John
Posted
16:03
by John
Sunday, November 10, 2002
Posted
20:18
by John
Posted
16:53
by John
This is ridiculous. I know the piece of land they're talking about and it's just a big vacant lot, a few dozen acres or so. People dump crap there. If these people are cleaning it up and building a little shrine, it's not hurting anything; in fact, it's good, since someone is picking up the garbage, and if decent people are going there regularly to pray, it keeps the junkies and the prostitutes away, all of which does immense good for the environment. The real reason is almost certainly that Badalona and Santa Coloma have an image problem. They're generally crappy dumps, though there is a nice part of Badalona, and they're seen by the rest of the metro area as being undesirable places to live. The last thing they need is a bunch of Andalusian redneck women with no teeth and black shawls ululating deliriously at the tree where the Virgin Mary appeared.
Posted
16:30
by John
Posted
15:00
by John
Anyway, 2002 has been declared by somebody the Verdaguer Year, and the Catalan cultural authorities seem determined, even square-headed, about making sure that everyone possible is exposed to the collected opus of Moss�n Jacinto Verdaguer, usually considered Catalan literature's leading poet. Says Vanguardia cultural reporter Josep Massot, "The Verdaguer Year, far from being a failure, continues unveiling important surprises." Surprise my ass, this was funded by the Generalitat's Department of Culture, as it says clearly but very briefly near the bottom of the story, and as for important, let Bernard / Ossian let you know what he thinks, as I'm sure he will when he finds out that this whole thing was inspired by Harold Bloom, who "rediscovered" Verdaguer after having read him in French translation. One Ronald Puppo, a Californian teacher at the University of Vic, has taken it upon himself to translate Verdaguer to English for the first time ever, with the generous support of my tax money. This particular year, 2002, was designated the Verdaguer Year because it marks the 100th anniversary of the poet's death. Jacinto Verdaguer was a priest and was also quite clearly several croquetas short of a plato combinado. While he wrote his two major works, both rabidly Catalanist (L'Atl�ntida in 1878 and Canig� in 1885, extremely dull and overblown epic poems, rather comparable to "Hiawatha" or "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" in English), he was patronized by a rich family. By 1885 or so he was clearly going completely insane. As Robert Hughes says in Barcelona, "(Verdaguer) began to show embarrassing signs of zeal. As almoner, he was expected to give alms to the poor on (rich patron the Marquis of) Comillas's behalf; now his handouts af the marquis's money became so large and frequent that long lines of the poor and ragged, flocking in from the slums of the Barrio Chino, were always waiting at the back door of the Palau Moj�. Then Verdaguer developed an obsession with exorcism. Toward 1889 he fell under the influence of a Paulist priest who haunted the Barrio G�tico, Joaquim Pinyol. This charismatic quack became his confessor and spiritual adviser. He convinced the poet that the street people of lower Barcelona were infested with demons, and that it was their combined mission to exorcise them. Before long Verdaguer was spending every moment he could find reciting the orders of exorcism opver writhing epileptics and mumbling crones, with Pinyol showing him the needles and pieces of glass they had vomited up. Then Pinyol was joined by a family of morbid il�luminats called Durna, whose daughter, Deseada, appears to have convinced poor Verdaguer that the Virgin Mary's voice spoke through her." The poor bastard only got worse until he died in 1902. Verdaguer is best known for composing the quatrain "L'Emigrant", "Dol�a Catalunya / patria del meu cor / quan de tu s'allunya / d'enyoran�a es mor." Hughes's translation is "Sweet Catalonia / homeland of my heart / to be far from you / is to die of longing." It was rather common at this time of rapid urbanization to write sentimentally about one's far-away homeland or country house or hometown and the old folks back home and all that; hell, Eric Hobsbawm, the Marxist historian, asserts that modern nationalism springs from this Victorian romanticism about the national essence being back home on the farm with good old Ma and Pa. In Catalan they call verse written on this theme great poetry. In America we call it country music. In Germany they called it Nazism, or didn't you notice the parallels between the Catalan excursionists and the early, 1920s Hitler Youth? Don't get angry, we're not calling the Catalan nationalist excursionists evil, they neither desire a dictatorship nor want to kill anyone, but their emphasis on youth and healthy living and idealization of nature and going back to the land and homage-like visits to nationalist-tradition-rich places (in Catalonia almost always sites related to Catalan national Catholicism like Montserrat, Poblet, Sant Miquel del Fa�, and N�ria) and possession of a naive redistributive Marxist ideology (in Catalonia the nebulous "solidarity" inspired by liberation theology, influential in Spain) participation in nationalist ceremonies and exaltation of everything Catalan sure is reminiscent of the Hitler Youth. We must admit that the Boy Scouts remind us a good bit of the '20s Hitler Youth as well, though to a lesser degree as American nationalism is more implicit than explicit in the American Scouts. So back to poor old Verdaguer and comparative translation, which is what I think I started off talking about. Here is a famous section of the Verdaguer epic Canig� in the original Catalan: Un cedre �s lo Pirene de portentosa al�ada; com los ocells, los pobles fan niu en sa brancada, d'on cap voltor de races desallotjar pot; quiscuna d'eixes serres, d'a on la vida arranca son vol, d'aqueix superbo col�s �s una branca, ell �s lo cap de brot. This is Ronald Puppo's translation: The Pyrenees are a cedar flung high; Peoplse nest, like birds, among its branches, Whence no race-feeding vulture can remove them; Each and every range where life takes hold Forms a branch of this mighty colossus, This superb trunk of life. And this is Sir Mix-a-Lot's translation: I like big butts and I can not lie You other brothers can't deny That when a girl walks in with an itty bitty waist And a round thing in your face You get sprung Wanna pull up front Cuz you notice that butt was stuffed Deep in the jeans she's wearing I'm hooked and I can't stop staring Oh, baby I wanna get with ya And take your picture My homeboys tried to warn me But with that butt you got Me so horny Ooh, rub all of that smooth skin You say you wanna get in my Benz Well use me, use me cuz you ain't that average groupy For Class Discussion: How would you compare and contrast these two versions of Verdaguer's Canig�? Saturday, November 09, 2002
Posted
20:02
by John
Posted
19:26
by John
Posted
18:45
by John
Posted
17:12
by John
What's on the menu at the next European Union summit? Turkey and Giblets. Sorry. Couldn't resist.
Posted
17:05
by John
Anyway, back to the Giblets. It's true that Gibraltar no longer has any particular strategic value, not with the US naval base at Rota only a hundred kilometers away. It's also true that Gibraltar is a haven for smuggling into Spain, but this is a problem that can be stopped with some decent police work; you don't have to change sovereignty to solve this one. If the Spaniards would agree to let a few Royal Navy speedboats patrol the coasts, smuggling would, I'm sure, be greatly reduced. There really is no particular reason Gibraltar can't keep the status it has. Nothing would much change if sovereignty of this tiny peninsula with some 20,000 inhabitants were transferred from Britain to Spain in the long run, and nothing would much change if it weren't, either. Nothing's broke. There's no reason to try to fix it. There's nothing for anyone to get his undies all worked up over. There's no crisis. So, since we all agree that democracy is a good thing, let's be democratic. Let the Giblets have a binding referendum on what they want to do, become independent, go over to Spain, or stay with Britain. Co-sovereignty is a dumb idea that will never work, so don't even include it as a choice. The Giblets will vote nearly unanimously to stay with Britain, and their wishes should be honored. Comparisons with the Basque Country are silly. Perhaps 30% of the Basques want independence, whereas 99% of the Giblets want to stay with Britain. I actually wouldn't mind amending the Spanish constitution to give the Basques a referendum on independence (under the Spanish constitution Spain is indivisible) provided it was stipulated that it would be 50 years before another such referendum could be held. Or 100. I don't normally like the idea of amending constitutions, figuring that as few changes in the basic law of a country should be made as possible as long as said constitution is generally fair and decent. In the Basque case, though, a clear defeat for the independentistas might do a lot to remove anything left of ETA's legitimacy. Hell, let the Catalans have a referendum, too, under the same conditions. The independentistas would lose and lose badly. Then they might shut up for a while. Comparisons with Ceuta and Melilla, however, are appropriate. Ceuta and Melilla are small Spanish cities on the north coast of Morocco which form an integral part of Spain; they do not have colonial status (neither do the Canary Islands, which are also an integral part of Spain). Morocco claims them, and Spain quite justifiably refuses to hand them over to Morocco. The Ceutans and Melillans, of course, want to remain part of Spain, as do the Canarians. Massive hypocrisy here on the part of the Spaniards, right? We want to keep our enclaves in Morocco, but we want you to give up your enclave on our shores. The tortuous explanation that Spanish diplomats will give you is that Ceuta and Melilla have been Spanish since the Spaniards themselves founded them in the 1500s and the modern country of Morocco did not exist at that time, while Gibraltar became British under the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht when Spain was recognizably the same entity as it is now (for example, it's still ruled today by the same royal family, the Bourbons, that acceded to the Spanish throne precisely according to the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht), and Gibraltar was definitely Spanish territory before it was ceded to Britain. The Spaniards therefore, they say, have the right to demand that their land, Gibraltar, be given back to them, while the Moroccans do not have the right to do so because Ceuta and Melilla were never their land. I don't buy it, of course. During the Franco days, the Spaniards used to argue that Britain had to give up Gibraltar because the Brits had violated one of the clauses of the Treaty of Utrecht by allowing Jews to settle in Gibraltar; the treaty had specified that no Jews were to be allowed to get so close to Judeophobe Spain. This claim is, of course, no longer made. Also, the majority of the Giblets are some kind of mix of Maltese, seafaring Italian (e.g. Genoese, Pisans, and Venetians, not, say, Calabrian peasants), Spanish, and British, with probably a good dash of North African. Atl�tico Rules has a very different take on this subject..
Posted
03:02
by John
We're going to try again, with this missive to Jack McCallum, their pro basketball guy: People here are big fans of their hometown hero, Memphis's Pau Gasol. How's he doing this year? Looks like he's been scoring and getting some rebounds, and playing a lot of minutes. But his team loses game after game. Is Pau at all to blame for his team's poor record? What do you think of his defensive game? Do you think he needs to put on more muscle? How good do you see him getting in a few years--do you think he'll be a regular player, an above-average player, a minor star? Major star? Or out of the league? Best, John Chappell
Posted
02:12
by John
Posted
02:07
by John
Posted
01:41
by John
Posted
01:36
by John
Posted
01:14
by John
Posted
01:08
by John
Why do these people who claim to be the paladins of freedom and human welfare fear tomorrow so much? Because the historical process shows that such prophecies have turned out to be false, whether they be the War of the Worlds, "Blade Runner" or the Orwellian Big Brother that haunts us so. When humanity is progressing in all aspects, although it be among scares and imperfections: we are more cultured, healthier, and freer than half a century or half a millenium ago. Such a futurism does not really foresee tomorrow, but rather is based on the past as destiny, as if humanity were only old and malignant. It is prophecy: you will only be admitted to the Truth of the Lord it you annul yourself and become the servant of a new master. Repugnant. But true. Like Bush, who preaches freedom versus terrorism, which we must obey forgetting the slightest criticism and viewing as the only enemy the second producer of petroleum, Iraq, when those who have economically supported the Bushes are the oilmen of Texas, the state of the Union with most environmental pollution, and who additionally fear finding themselves without oil now that it looks like the reserves will run out in 20 years, and which will additionally be replaced by another completely different source of energy, like hydrogen. The demon Saddam would be acceptable, then, if he were an ally like Saudi Arabia is or like Pinochet was. Bush's and fatalistic futurism's reactionary nature: we're losing ground. Like Bin Laden's ideology: the human being must be mummified in a piece of metaphysical ignorance from a thousand years ago or be killed. Like Holy Mother Russia: after decades of trying to finish off Chechenia, if Chechenia attacks in order to defend itself, then it's terrorism, and justice is found in Putin's gases and bombs.
Posted
00:49
by John
Thursday, November 07, 2002
Posted
23:32
by John
Two rules change ideas: 1) Two points for a run, one for a kick. You can either line up at the 25 and either kick for one or fake kick and then run or pass for two, or line up at the 5 and run or pass for two. Kicking for one would be illegal if you lined up at the 5. The ball would remain in play, no matter what, until whistled dead, so a blocked kick, fumble, or interception could be returned for a TD. These changes would make extra points something reasonably difficult to get and even slightly risky, not just something automatic like a kick from the 9-yard line. A 42-yarder would be a bit of a challenge but usually doable by most kickers. But if your kicker is hobbling and it's ten below in Green Bay with the winds swirling and blowing snow around, then what do you do? You might just fake that kick. And choosing to go for two from the five means that they'll have to run wide, pass, or use play-action or some other deceptive play, not just slam it into the line--unless the defense gets too worried about all the wideouts you flood the end zone with. You then give the ball to your big back to take right up the middle for two--unless the defense doesn't bite... Stopping the extra point/s might actually shift momentum in favor of the team about to receive the kickoff. Whatever, I think adopting this solution would make the extra point/s much more interesting for the fans without corrupting the essence of the game. I would indeed argue that since the essence of the game is running plays and defending against them in clutch situations, this rule change would dramatically improve the game by creating many more clutch situations. 2) Borrow this one from soccer. Give a yellow card to any player guilty of a personal foul or unsportsmanlike conduct foul, in addition to the 15-yard penalty. If a player accumulates two yellow cards in a game, he gets a red card and is ejected for the rest of that game and the team's next one too. A direct red card can be given by the ref in case of a truly flagrant foul. The player is then directly ejected and also misses the next game. If a player accumulates five yellow cards over the course of the season, he is also ejected from the match and suspended for the next game. This would nip things like the Derrick Thomas Monday night meltdown in the bud, and provide some real punishment to those players who frequently break the rules. If you're suspended for a game, you don't get paid for it; the paycheck worth 1/16 of your net yearly NFL salary goes to some league charity. And would you sign a guy who you knew would miss two games and parts of two others if you were a GM? What if you had another guy who was almost as good in the same position, but never gets called for flagrant fouls? Who would you trade? This would cut down massively on violent play. Sorry for being so long-winded; I tried to respond to all possible objections and add a few details. So what do you think? Best, John Chappell
Posted
21:53
by John
Posted
19:22
by John
Posted
17:20
by John
Good God, where do we start? First, Porcel must be a complete imbecile if he hadn't noticed that Halloween has become a popular celebration, especially among kids, in the last ten years in Spain. (Interestingly enough, Spain gets many of its American trends through France, of all places. Four of them are Halloween, country music, blue jeans--in again--and fast food. The French sort of filter and vet American trends, and the ones that catch on there make it to Spain in a year or so.) Second, most Americans are about as "Anglo-Saxon" as Porcel himself. Les anglosaxons is slightly snooty French for anyone who speaks English; they need a term to lump us Brits and Yanks and Aussies all together with. Francophile / Anglophobe Spaniards like to show how sophisticated they are by adopting the term. Third, who is Porcel to dis Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker? Or the brilliant filmmakers behind the original Frankenstein and Dracula movies? Would he do the same to Edgar Allan Poe, who wrote in a similar vein? Or Victor Hugo? Or even Stephen King, of whom I am no huge fan, but who is a thousand times the writer that Porcel is? Or the guys who make those silly Freddy and Jason horror movies? Sure, they're silly, they're supposed to be silly, for Chrissakes, just bits of fluff entertainment. The people who make those movies aren't morons and the teenagers who like those movies aren't morons. It's all just for fun. The only morons around here are the people like Porcel who take seriously a silly but fun bunch of crap like children's dressing up as monsters for Halloween. Trust us. Halloween is meaningless for us Americans. It won't contaminate Catalan culture. Look, Halloween is the American equivalent of Spanish / Catalan Carnival. People get to dress up in costumes and go to parties. That's all it is; like New Year's Eve, it's just an excuse to have a good time. You already have Carnival. Why not two dressing-up holidays? They say that Halloween comes from the Celts. I don't know. But the Celts had a concept of the immortal soul, their celestial pots full of delicious wild boar, the venerated priest, the druid, who even constitutes an antecedent of the Christian soul. Meanwhile, Halloween is a disrespectful, tacky (hortera) masquerade which instantly plants two disquieting questions: would you like to be thought of like that, on the part of the living, once you've died? Do you contemplate the memories of your parents and grandparents as cheesy (chabacano) and repulsive? That's not the point, those who are always up-to-date rush to say, Halloween is just for fun, though macabre fun. OK, fine. But the real problem stands: the child will not be taken to the cemetery, true to that cult of the dead that creates deep family and territorial, even patriotic, traditions, understood like the land where you grow with your roots, and which gives to the human being a historic heritage and transcendence, a metaphysical mystery. No, the child will be induced to dance around foolishly, strictly within himself, as if the Beyond were reduced to a silly game. Good God, where do we start? It's clear that Porcel just doesn't get that, while Catholics are the largest religious group in the US, America's Ur-culture is Protestant. That is, we don't generally do Catholic holidays like the Immaculate Conception or Lent or the Assumption of the Virgin or All Saints' Day, or any saint's day at all. Because we don't observe All Saints' Day, does that mean we don't honor our dead? No, we honor our dead so much that we have both Memorial Day, the holiday to honor the dead in general, and Veterans' Day, the holiday to honor war veterans, both living and dead. In addition, anyone is free to honor the dead whenever he or she pleases, and perhaps there is more virtue in doing so on a day which is NOT scheduled for such observances. I also remember a year or so ago that some Spaniards criticized the American homage to the dead of the Sept. 11 attacks, calling it maudlin, exaggerated, and chauvinistically patriotic. Well, which is it? Maudlin and exaggerated, or superficial and disrespectful? Please choose one at the sound of the buzzer. Slander America one way or the other, but please be consistent. And there's no reason why the kid can't both dress up as a monster for the class Halloween party in the morning and then go with his folks to lay flowers at the cemetery in the afternoon, anyway. Notice, though, that Cataloonies like Porcel (along with many other Europeans, especially the butts of this ten-year-old Francophobe Spanish joke: "You know, the Gulf War was so short that the French didn't even have time to change sides.") are prepared to read something sinister into the most innocent manifestation of American culture. Why must Porcel not only criticize, but even ridicule and insult something that he obviously does not understand at all? Where does he get this knee-jerk anti-Americanism? Orwell would have said that the answer is that he's a nationalist and so he sees everything in terms of the comparative prestige of the unit he owes allegiance to. Catalonia's comparative prestige internationally is pretty low, as it is seen in Europe by even those who are aware of its existence as a region of Spain with some local peculiarities. Outside Europe, it's virtually unknown. The Catalanists just can't stand this. If an American celebration is being adopted in Catalonia, but no Catalan celebrations are being adopted anywhere, much less in America, then this is a priori a bad thing in Catalanist eyes. Changing the subject: we are evidently looking at a commercial operation, the most gratuitous consumerism, as we are also again obeying the command of the dominant culture, the North American, in another of its most banal manifestations. And here's where Halloween fits in: a world of immigrants who have come from everywhere, for whom roots and tombs no longer exist, only material and moral deserts in which the wolf devoured the carrion of the dead under the ululating delirium of the night wind. And I repeat my emphasis on the dimensions of Greco-Latin and Chinese culture: no other possesses their almost 3000 years of fruitful riches. Well, at least we know where to start: great imagery, there, "ululating delirium". Translating this has been such a pain in the ass that I'm going to smoke a whole bunch of dope to escape the blubbering idiocy this guy Porcel has reduced me to. Maybe I'll even hit the state of ululating delirium, but this hash is pretty weak so I don't think I'll get that stoned. Anyway, first, what consumerism? Costumes are dirt-cheap, just paint the kid's face or put a sheet with eyeholes over his head. Candy is not precisely a hugely expensive item either. Maybe it's all a plot of the pumpkin growers, who did some tidy business during October this year. Note the sneer, by the way, in "another of its most banal manifestaciones". Note the fear of immigration. Note the fear of change. Note Porcel's very arrogant assumption that he somehow has more roots than other people, that he has more roots than 300 million Americans. All I can say about my roots are that three of my grandparents were descended from British Isles and Palatinate German ancestors who arrived in the United States before the Revolution, and that the fourth was of Austrian Empire German descent, specifically from Bukovina, who arrived in the 1880s. They'd emigrated from W�rttemberg to the Austrian Military Frontier out east sometime in the 1700s and from there to Kansas 150 years later. The fact that my roots are from fairly distant places doesn't mean I don't have any. This is something Mr. Porcel should know, as his roots are in Mallorca, not here in Barcelona where he lives. Also, Mr. Porcel should recognize that we Americans, as members of Western civilization, are just as much the cultural heirs of the Greco-Romans (and the Judeo-Christians, too, which Mr. Porcel failed to mention) as anyone else. Or does he think that our laws, our economic and business practices, our popular and cultural traditions, our way of doing things in general, were not inherited by the northern Europeans who founded the United States from their ancestors? And what about the cultural contributions of the descendents of the Africans who were brought to America against their will but have done so much to make America what it is? Of course, what America is today has been influenced by many other cultures as well besides the WASPs and the blacks (the later arrivals influenced America's outside appearance much more than its foundations, though), most notably the Italians, the Eastern European Jews, the Eastern European Slavs, and the Mexicans, all of whose roots are also in the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian tradition. (Right. I know, Mexico, the Aztecs, and all. But they speak Spanish and are Christians.) The only group of non-European Americans that has strongly influenced general American culture is African-Americans; the black heritage in our shared culture is what differentiates us European Americans from other Westerners. Is that what Mr. Porcel's problem really is? Of course not, but he's so anti-American that he doesn't understand that being anti-American means being anti-African-American too. And I haven't noticed Mr. Porcel leading any demonstrations to increase the number of immigrants to Catalonia from North and sub-Saharan Africa. Oh, by the way, China's existed as a culture for considerably more than 3000 years, and should Mr. Porcel find it congenial, he is most welcome to move there. And did you notice that he didn't mention the fruitful cultural riches of the Jewish heritage, yet again, though Jewish culture is also some 3000 years old and has been as influential as any other on Western civilization except possibly the Greeks? Wednesday, November 06, 2002
Posted
23:31
by John
Posted
21:48
by John
So, I go to the AKIP website, which, by the way, I had a lot of trouble downloading. Their site boasted that they were the third largest political party in Alaska, which I don't buy because I figure the Republicans are #1, the Democrats are a very distant #2, and the Libertarians are a strong #3, leaving the AKIP #4 at best. I dunno. Maybe the Democrats are really #4. You can never figure Alaskan politics. Anyway, a quick glance through some of their screeds showed that they're in favor of "Accountability", which we suppose we are too; "End(ing) Waste in Government", which it's pretty hard not to go along with; "Equal Use of Fish and Game", where our Catalanist friends will probably jump off the AKIP bandwagon, since it's pretty clear by now that this is an Alaskan white people's party demanding equal access with the Indians, Eskimos, and Aleuts to fishing and hunting stocks (the Catalanists would of course side with the nonwhite natives, not the white invaders); and "Resource Development", which will cause the lefty Catalanists to freak out, since they're often Greenies too, and Resource Development means mines and oil drilling and logging and other ways of developing, or exploiting, Alaska's natural resources. A point in their favor: though they still want to be independent after Sept. 11, they condemn the terrorist attacks and express their sympathy for the victims. So I think, wonder if Hawaii has one? Shore nuf, they have at least two. One of them, called Hawai'i Independent and Sovereign, uses very Catalanist-style rhetoric when it says that one of its missions is to "protect our rights and way of life under the occupation system." I think that means, "We'll bitch about being oppressed but are thrilled to grab government subsidies and pork for Hawaiian-folklore projects." Not too many Catalanists would go along with one of their other planks, though, the one that wants to bring back the Hawaiian monarchy. They tend to be rather republican in sentiment, though a few of the older, more romantic, very traditional, Catholic Catalanists (like Mr. X, a well-known gentleman who we are not identifying because we're not sure he's officially out of the closet but who is known for his medievalist proclivities; he's both gay and ultra-Catholic, and is best known for his expertise in heraldry. He'd just love a restoration of the old Crown of Aragon monarchy, or even better the Counts of Barcelona. He'd get all busy drawing up new coats of arms and stuff) probably would like an independent Catalan kingdom or county or whatever. So then I go back to the Google page and see this web page dedicated to minor American political parties. It turns out that not only do Alaska and Hawaii have pro-independence parties (along with Puerto Rico, of course) but so do Alabama, California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Vermont. The Vermont guys call themselves the Green Mountain Boys, of course. We're rather afraid to check out the Alabama independence party website, as we can't help but think that very few black people are members. As for the New Jersey independence party, I say more power to them!
Posted
18:28
by John
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17:01
by John
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16:30
by John
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16:13
by John
Posted
15:57
by John
Posted
02:27
by John
Posted
01:04
by John
Posted
00:29
by John
Tuesday, November 05, 2002
Posted
04:32
by John
Posted
02:16
by John
Posted
01:35
by John
What the French are doing when they ascribe base motives to the Americans is simply projecting what they would do in such a situation. They would do what they thought was in the interests of France, whether that was moral or right or not. They would go to war for 23% of Iraqi oil, so they think we would, too. The abovementioned article points that France sold some $20 billion worth of jet fighters and the like to Saddam's Iraq, and the French government is a part-owner of the French aerospace industry. This means that Mitterand and Chirac and Jospin and Jupp� thought the profit they could make off selling arms to one of the world's nastiest dictators was in the interest of France. They all probably figured that it wasn't too likely that a Frenchman would get within target range of any of these weapons anyway. But, cry the French and their Spanish acolytes like La Vanguardia's Jos� Mart� G�mez, the Americans are the ones who armed Iraq! Well, first, if that was true, then why wasn't Iraq using American arms against us in the Gulf War? Second, it's true that America, figuring that what we were really rooting for in the Iraq-Iran War was for both sides to lose, "tilted" toward whichever side we thought was behind. Remember the Iran-Contra scandal? What that was all about was selling arms to the Ayatollah, if we remember correctly mostly Soviet-made formerly Arab equipment captured by the Israelis in one of their many wars, with which to fight Iraq, and sending the money to fund the contras in Nicaragua. We were arming the Iranians as well as the Iraqis, mostly at different times and in smallish quantities. There are a couple of France-based conspiracy theories going on in Continental Europe. One involves a supposed spy satellite operation called Echelon run by the CIA and MI5 or 6 or whichever it is and, like, Australia and Canada and New Zealand are involved. The English-speaking conspirators spy on France and steal French industrial secrets, with which they perfidiously make more money than the Jacques Brel-listening surrender monkeys. We have no idea whether there is any truth at all in this story. We doubt it. Another one is Operation Condor, which was supposedly a plot through which the United States organized the military juntas that ran much of South America in the late 1970s. Again, we doubt it. Another is a supposed smear job on "Latin" ex-Francoist Juan Antonio Samaranch by the "Anglo-Saxon" press; the French and Spanish and Italians are convinced that Samaranch is their man and all the corruption talk is just the jealous Anglos trying to get the Latin guy. A very common theory with no basis at all is that the Americans set the prices for such goods as coffee, forcing the Latin American peasantry into poverty by holding down prices. This one quite obviously orignated in Latin America and spread from there into Spain, France, and Italy. Monday, November 04, 2002
Posted
23:46
by John
Posted
21:21
by John
Posted
21:20
by John
December 22 is the day of the prize draw every year, and the numbers themselves are selected by, get this, blind children from a special school in Madrid; that, we suppose, is about as innocent as a hand can get. The whole country spends all morning watching the drawing on TV, and by the time of the afternoon news on TV the Big One has been drawn along with all the other prizes. The newspapers come out with special editions and everyone is checking his participations. The fun part is that the prize money is widely spread around since most people hold very small stakes in the number, just a couple of euros or so, and so the probably thousands of holders collect twenty or thirty or forty thousand euros each--ten thousand times the money they put in. The holders are concentrated in the one town or neighborhood where the number was distributed in the local shop or bar, so if you win, you and everybody you know are rather better off but not life-changingly rich. The TV networks immediately send their reporters to wherever the Big One and the several second, third, fourth and fifth prizes have fallen and film joyous small crowds jumping around and drinking cava. The clich�s, repeated every year, are that the Big One ha ca�do en un barrio popular (it landed in a working-class neighborhood) and that the prize money has been muy repartido (widely shared). And then it's Christmas, so if you won it's a very nice one and if you didn't win, you forget about it in a hurry.
Posted
20:40
by John
Posted
20:19
by John
Many Spaniards seem to agree with Remei that knowing English really is a rung up the ladder in the job market. La Vanguardia says that there are 900,000 students of English in Spain, and this does not include elementary and high school students. There are 3500 English schools which employ 20,000 people in Spain, and the Spanish demand for English employs many more people in Britain and in other English-speaking countries in the form of summer classes, textbooks, videos, and the like. (The US, curiously, doesn't much compete in the international English-teaching racket; American English-as-a-second-language materials tend to be directed at domestic use with often poorly-educated immigrants, very different from the British English-as-a-foreign-language books and software aimed at fairly literate and cultured Continental Europeans.) All totaled, the English-teaching business in Spain grosses �600 million a year, which is a healthy pile of money. So why, you ask, don't the Spaniards just learn English and get it over with? The problem is that learning English is seen in Spain as a New Year's resolution sort of thing, rather like losing weight, getting in shape, or learning the piano. That's because learning English is hard for Spaniards. It's difficult and time-consuming. The American Institute in Barcelona, a non-profit organization which has been in operation for 50 years, figures that it takes an average Spaniard about 500 class hours to reach the English skill level necessary to pass the Cambridge First Certificate exam, a diploma commonly accepted in Europe that certifies that one indeed does know English reasonably well, sufficient for most work purposes. Regular English classes are normally held twice a week for an hour and a half. If you attend class three hours a week for forty weeks a year, you'll take about five years to reach First Certificate level--and this figure does not include the hundreds of out-of class hours reading, watching movies or TV, surfing the Net, or just chatting that a learner needs to do on his own. Now you're saying "Five years?! Five freakin' years?" Yep, that's how long it takes. Learning a language is not just a question of sitting down and studying it and then regurgitating it on the test; it takes active practice time. You have to practice speaking and listening to and reading and writing English until you get good at it, just like the piano or cooking or driving a car or anything else. And it helps you a great deal if you have a competent teacher to assist you in learning, but there's no magic formula. No silver bullet. No way a teacher can unscrew your head and pour English in. But that doesn't mean there aren't people out there trying to sell you the idea that they can. We suppose that the definition of fraud is making promises about what you're selling that aren't true. Over the last fifteen or twenty years in Spain, ever since the Spaniards realized that they'd better learn English, a whole different category of businesses has started up. Traditionally in Barcelona, English classes have been held at the Escuela Nacional de Idiomas, a government-subsidized institution; the British Council, run by the British government; the American Institute, run as a non-profit by an independent board; and neighborhood "language academies", run by individuals, who specialize in personal treatment and attention and run the gamut between very good and plain awful. But since people began to wake up to the fact that they needed English in the mid-80s, the sharp operators jumped on board. First came two competing chains, Wall Street Institute, now controlled by the American company Sylvan, and Opening School, owned by the old-line distance-courses company, CEAC. What these guys did is advertise a "totally new method" of learning English painlessly and with no work or struggle. All you had to do is come into a Wall Street or Opening branch, spend a few hours a week there, plug into a computer or listen to audiocassettes, and you'd teach yourself English. The scheme was a little more complicated than this, but that was more or less it. They put up a big advertising blitz promising people the moon, linguistically, and convinced a lot of people (also using techniques like cold-calling, and always, always, the hard sell) who didn't know much about language and how it is learned but were desperate to learn English. Meanwhile, they sold franchises to people who didn't know anything about language either, but were willing to kick in the cash to buy the Wall Street or Opening system, including the computer and electronic setups. So you had ignorant franchisees running "education centers", which were basically language labs, selling English to ignorant customers who bought the hard-sell. Meanwhile, very little English was getting learned by anybody in these places, but after about 1995 they became almost ubiquitous. Both Wall Street and Opening opened a couple of dozen franchises in the Barcelona metropolitan area; seeing one was as common as seeing a McDonalds. By about 1998 or so it was starting to become clear that these franchised systems were not getting the job done. Letters from disappointed customers became common in the newspapers and very negative gossip began going around the Barcelona English-speaking community, much of which depends on the English-teaching sector for its livelihood. Also, Opening and Wall Street used the typical health-club sales scam, getting the customer to sign up for a year at a time at prices approaching $2000 and paying in advance, while the company knew the whole time that most students would drop out fairly quickly when they got tired of typing stuff at a keyboard and listening to audiocassettes and not even frequently receiving help from an authentic native speaker, much less an authentic English teacher. The two chains advertised a money-back guarantee with so many escape clauses in it that it wasn't worth anything, and a lot of people became very irritated at not getting their money back when they tried to. By about 2000 the bottom was beginning to drop out of the market for Wall Street and Opening; you started to see shuttered-up franchises and fewer TV advertisements, then none at all. At exactly this time, Brighton, a chain of traditional English activities with a very poor reputation for hiring unqualified teachers, sometimes illegally (i.e. by reporting one salary to the government for tax purposes and really paying a different one; this is politely known in Spain as tax fraud) and then not paying them on time or at all, jumped into the market with both feet. Its flamboyant owner, an Argentinian wheeler-dealer whose name is Alfredo Ib��ez Nicol�s but who uses the slightly improved Alfred Iba�ez de Nicol�s, opened up several more outlets to the chain. Rumor has it that Ib��ez leads a very expensive lifestyle that includes the consumption of large quantities of cocaine. Ib��ez started running full-page advertisements in the Vanguardia every day advertising something called the B.T.S., also known as the Brighton Total System. This consisted of having normal (but generally lousy) traditional-style English classes and access for customers to an extremely ratty room with a few computers, a VCR, and a boom box. Brighton did the same thing as Wall Street and Opening but with a lower budget; no TV ads but lots of direct-marketing hard-sell phone calling. About this time all three chains figured something out: that there would be real money if you made it possible for potential customers to finance their English "studies". Students would take out bank loans for the amount of the course and the bank would directly pay the school in full. The bank would then be in charge of collecting the loan, which the student didn't normally know he'd gotten into because the contracts they signed had an awful lot of fine print, big words, and confusing clauses. In 2002 the chains began to crack up. In August, Opening announced that it was closing permanently after a couple of months of irregular operation during which several franchisees closed down and others began opening only for limited hours. Then it all hit the fan when customers began to ask about getting their money back. Uh, they weren't going to get their money back, and not only that, they had to pay off their bank loan whether or not they were getting any English out of it. Opening didn't have any money to give back, or at least they said they didn't, and the banks certainly weren't about to become angels of charity. Brighton went down at the end of October under much more spectacular circumstances; their teachers went on strike after not having been paid since May. Ib��ez, apparently coked up, called a staff meeting in which he vehemently promised that everybody would be paid. He then proceeded to disappear with the main computer's hard disk and files and the company's books, not to mention whatever cash was lying around; the staff at the main office, when telephoned by a Vanguardia reporter to see what was going on, replied, "Ib��ez has run off with the money." Some 5000 customers in the Barcelona area have been affected by the Brighton collapse alone. Most of them are out fairly substantial sums of cash, at least several hundred bucks and usually more. They're suing. The banks want their money back. Best of luck. Wall Street, meanwhile, is still plugging away, though they admit losing almost a third of their students in the past twelve months; they officially announced that they were down to about 50,000 all over Spain, from the 72,000 they claimed last year. Such a messy, undignified end as those of Opening and Brighton seems unlikely for Wall Street, as they're backed by Sylvan, but Wall Street is in trouble too. They had 167 branches in October of last year and they're down to 126 as of now. Meanwhile, the American Institute, now in its fifty-second year, is seeing an enrollment increase. Now, if you'll please excuse me, I have to go teach an English class. Sunday, November 03, 2002
Posted
01:11
by John
We sent an e-mail to Stacy Tabb, who was very nice and helpful and responded within a few hours. (Folks, if you have a few hundred bucks and need a website, this is your person.) However, she quoted us a price that was very reasonable by American standards but which we just can't swing on Spanish salaries. We can't afford to use Stacy's Sekimori, nor do we have the technical knowledge to use anything but Blogger all by ourselves. So that's what we're gonna do. Let us give you some kind of idea about what our material lifestyles are over here. Remei and I live in a three-bedroom apartment with a living room, kitchen, and full bathroom; it's about 75 square meters, not counting the balcony. It's in a good neighborhood, middle-class / working-class, kind of boho, centrally located. We have a used car, a 1988 Renault Supercinco (yes, it's an updated Renault Le Car). We could afford a newer used car or a bare-bones new one, but this one works just fine for taking us out to the village, which is about all we use it for anyway since Barcelona has generally decent public transportation and awful traffic and worse parking. We have a refrigerator, a washing machine, a 21-inch TV, a VCR, and this here computer with an ADSL connection--that's why we can't justify spending any more money on the computer than we are, since the ADSL line runs forty bucks a month. We are lucky enough to have access to a large house in the country which belongs to my wife Remei and her mother. That more than makes up for the lack of a home theater or a 25-inch computer monitor. I am an English teacher and translator and Remei is an office worker, so we're just normal, regular folks, earning normal, regular folks' salaries. We won't tell you exactly how much, but you might get some idea from these statistics: United States GDP per capita US$33,900; United Kingdom $21,800; Canada $23,300; Australia $22,200; Ireland $20,300; Singapore $27,800; New Zealand $17,400; Spain $17,300. (Figures 1999 est.; Source, Time Almanac 2002) So here in Spain we're not doing too badly. We're right up there with more famous countries, though we're not super-rich; we're happy with what we've got, if that makes sense. It's not poor but proud; it's more like middle-class and proud, especially since we really do top the States in culture per capita. Not that that makes us either better or worse. Y'all in the States are about twice as rich on average than we are in Spain and you're a good deal richer than the folks in most of the other English-speaking countries. This doesn't make you good people or bad people but you ought to keep it in mind when thinking of non-Americans' purchasing power. (And no, we aren't whining to Stacy for a discount, we hoe our own row, thank you). Of course, we need to remember that prices in Spain tend to be a good bit lower, especially for locally-produced stuff. If you figure that the American GDP is double the Spanish GDP and the dollar and euro are one-to-one, which they have been for the past several months, with swings of a cent or two one way or the other, mostly against the euro, then you can figure out what life costs here if you multiply our prices by two and then think of how much the equivalent would cost you in America. Rent, 3-br apt, good area $400 if you're from here and look around; cheapest possible safe room $250 Liter of gasoline $0.85 Second-hand computer, PII $300 (box only) Good used car, 6-8 yrs old $3000, a lot more is possible, so is less but at your own risk Large Ikea sofa-bed, new $300 Liter fresh milk $0.90 Liter UHT milk $0.65 Daily newspaper $1 Pack Camel cigarettes $2.15 6-pack San Miguel beer $2.40 Coffee in bar $0.90 100% wool Marks&S sweater $40 Book $5-$20, much more is possible 3 80g cans tuna $0.96 4 150g good yogurts $1.41 Bunch 5 bananas $1.30 2 liter Coke $0.86 Remember, that's what it would cost you if you bought it here. To get an idea of our standard of living, double these prices and then think about them within your current salary. Friday, November 01, 2002
Posted
23:43
by John
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