Tuesday, November 12, 2002
You are not going to believe this, but I swear it's true. This has been a weirdly porno-filled week for me. Honestly. My weeks are usually porno-empty. I once linked to a couple of funny and / or interesting sites, Tijuana Bibles, a collection of primitive '20s-40s comics circulated extensively "underground", and Retro Raunch, a collection of teens through about '50s French postcards and the like, but these two sites definitely have redeeming social importance--it's history, for Chrissakes! (Here's an article from Salon, actually the introduction to a book, by controversial cartoonist Art Speigelmann about Tijuana Bibles.) But those are the only remotely nasty sites I've ever linked to. Except for the UnaBlogger. Then, a few days ago, I find the extremely cool website True Porn Clerk Stories, which is a complete and total gas, the blog of a thirtyish woman who works in a Chicago videoclub that apparently specializes in adult videos. (How's that for a euphemism?) Then my wife gets the VCR working; we inherited the damn thing from an American woman named Jane, who went back to California a couple of years ago, and we finally found out what the correct cable we had to buy in order to make it work was. So she goes and rents a porno movie, without my knowledge, "just to see what they're like." Not that I was complaining. She decided it was pretty gross, though, when the male lead began to employ a certain non-traditional orifice belonging to the female lead. Then, today, I get this phone call from my London Irish pal Murph. He says that our American pal Mitch, who works for an Internet company here in Barcelona, has a job for us. He has a contact in London who wants us to translate some pornographic websites from English to Spanish. Of course, I said, "Sure. How much do we get paid?" So that's what we'll be occupied doing for the next few days. It'll probably be more fun than that enormous horribly dull thing we did on car painting. I think I'll get my business cards changed. Right now they describe me as "English teacher. Translator." I want them to say "English teacher. Translator. Pornographer."
Monday, November 11, 2002
While we were watching the Antena 3 news a few minutes ago, there was a human-interest story from Nowheresville, Galicia, the fifth pine tree. Some poor woman's donkey had wandered out in the road ten years ago and had gotten itself run over. The damage to the car and the fine cost more than the woman could pay, so she'll have to sell her little stone house to meet the bills, according to speedy Spanish justice. Now, of course, that the whole thing's been publicized, some magnanimous philanthropist will pay off the three hundred euros and everything will be fine. What struck me curiously, though, was that the woman was speaking Galician, a relative of Portuguese, spoken in the part of Spain that sticks out over the top of Portugal, to a reporter who was interviewing her in Spanish. I asked Remei to explain. She said something like this, paraphrased:
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 Coruña, 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-Perón 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.
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 Coruña, 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-Perón 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.
We did as we always do, watched the news starting at 2:30 on TV3, Catalan government TV, because they've got good international and local coverage. By about 2:55 they've pretty much run out of news, though, and they still have to run twenty more more minutes, so you see a lot of stories about this old guy who is like ninety-three and has three teeth and can barely walk, much less talk a dialect of either Catalan or Spanish that anyone can understand, who lives up in some town in the Pyrenees, where Jesus lost his sandals, that you can only get to by mule and is still making pots on a potter's wheel just like they did twelve hundred years ago or whatever that he's selling for two hundred euros each, so steeped in the essence of Catalanism is he. When the potters come on, we check our watch and get ready to switch over to Antena 3, whose news starts at 3PM, giving us about five minutes of basketweavers, medieval-dance revivalists, and their ilk before the rather happy-talky A3 folks give us their 45 minutes of Spanish-language private-channel Madrid-based point of view. That way we sort of get both sides of the story. Anyway, counting the 30 minutes we saw on TV3 and the 45 we saw on A3, that's an hour and a quarter of hardcore news viewing we've put in today. Not once, on either channel, was it mentioned that today is the anniversary of the 1918 Armistice. Just in case you were wondering.
Check out this photo from Samizdata.net of a poster advertising fool Michael Moore's stage show in London. Some sardonic anonymous Briton has made a major improvement on it.
Sunday, November 10, 2002
This book review from the Weekly Standard gives you a pretty good idea of who really writes Margaret Truman's books. I didn't know much of this stuff about ghostwriters, though of course I knew they exist, and that the guy's name who appears after the "with" on any book by a celebrity author is the guy who does the real writing.
In the year 1987, a woman named Rosario, a poor inhabitant of Santa Coloma, a Barcelona working class suburb (sort of the local equivalent of Raytown, Missouri), saw the Virgin Mary appear near a locust tree in an empty area of the neighboring suburb of Badalona. Since then, local believers, of whom there seem to be a good few, have erected an altar, built a professional-looking wooden platform around the tree, and generally cleaned up the area. However, the unused land where the sanctuary is belongs to the Badalona city government, and they've ordered the shrine to be removed, supposedly for environmental reasons. They will permit a wooden bench near the tree, where the devout sit to pray, but nothing more.
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.
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.
Eight words I never thought I'd see myself write: this is a good piece by Christopher Hitchens from FrontPage magazine. I must admit the guy is a good writer though I disagreed with him about 90% of the time in the past, until Sept. 11, 2001, anyway. If you don't check out FrontPage fairly regularly, you ought to, though David Horowitz is more than capable of being shrill. He's always off on a new crusade to bring the truth about something to the nation's college campuses, whether it be on 9-11 and the War on Terrorism, the overwhelming liberal Democrat bias of college professors, Nazi holocaust deniers, Noam Chomsky, or Harry Belafonte. It's often got very good links, to Mark Steyn, Victor Davis Hanson, and other writers of interest.
With regards to our translations of the fool Baltasar Porcel's columns compared to Cinderella B.'s, one of the interesting aspects of translation is that different translators translate the same original text differently. Joan Margarit, a fine local poet and a very learned man (he gets to meet with Prime Minister Aznar every time Aznar comes to Barcelona; one of Aznar's hobbies is poetry and he is said to be quite knowledgeable about it. Note that he chooses to visit Margarit and not Porcel. Aznar is wise enough to open doors in all fields, not only politics and business. Rumor has it that he's angling for Romano Prodi's or Javier Solana's job after his second term as Prime Minister runs out in 2004. We would be much less apprehensive about the future of the EU if Aznar were in charge of something important) has come out with a translation of the poetry of Thomas Hardy in Catalan. In his introduction, he provides three different translations of one of Hardy's poems, one from a good few years ago, one done quite recently by another contemporary poet, and his own, and invites the reader to compare them. It's really quite interesting, since he gives his own analysis of the similarities and differences.
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 Mossén 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'Atlàntida in 1878 and Canigó 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 Mojá. Then Verdaguer developed an obsession with exorcism. Toward 1889 he fell under the influence of a Paulist priest who haunted the Barrio Gótico, 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", "Dolça Catalunya / patria del meu cor / quan de tu s'allunya / d'enyorança 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 Faí, and Núria) 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 Canigó in the original Catalan:
Un cedre és lo Pirene de portentosa alçada;
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 colós és una branca,
ell és 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 Canigó?
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 Mossén 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'Atlàntida in 1878 and Canigó 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 Mojá. Then Verdaguer developed an obsession with exorcism. Toward 1889 he fell under the influence of a Paulist priest who haunted the Barrio Gótico, 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", "Dolça Catalunya / patria del meu cor / quan de tu s'allunya / d'enyorança 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 Faí, and Núria) 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 Canigó in the original Catalan:
Un cedre és lo Pirene de portentosa alçada;
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 colós és una branca,
ell és 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 Canigó?
Saturday, November 09, 2002
Jessica from The Blog of Chloe and Pete, which is well worth a read--go on over and check it out--has been kind enough to link to us. Even better, she's baptized us "The Sexy Scourgers of Spanish Socialism". We love it. Patrick, if you're reading this, can you find some way to work it into the template? Thanks in advance.
Check out Cinderella Bloggerfeller, an excellent website whose focus is Europe. They've been following the Baltasar Porcel saga, too, and have translations that are better than ours. A couple more notes about Porcel: 1) He's really ugly. 2) He's a Mallorcan. The stereotypical Mallorcan first name is Tomeu. Since most Mallorcans identify with Mallorca first and Spain and Madrid second, not Catalonia and Barcelona second, you could say that Mr. Porcel has sold out to the Catalans by taking their money and is thus a traitor to his people. You could even call him an "Uncle Tomeu".
Well, it looks like all concerned got what they wanted out of the UN resolution. France and Russia got to feel important and respected, America and Britain will have their war against Saddam (no one seriously thinks Saddam is going to comply), and China and all the other countries that voted yes mark up one in the Favor Book. In other European news, a bunch of antiglobalization wackos marched this afternoon in Florence. It looks like they got a pretty good demo together; I didn't see any figures but I'd bet at least 10,000. What cheesed me off was that the Spanish TV reporters kept referring to these people as "peace marchers" and "hunger activists" and "solidarity groups". All I can say is that from the brief footage of the demo on both the TV3 and then Antena 3 news, there sure looked like there were a lot of red flags. So far, at least, there hasn't been any violence, but I'm writing at six in the evening, around dusk, and that's the time that the demos get ugly in Barcelona--the local folks, union members, high school kids playing rads, and lefty-foo-foo teachers and bureaucrats have all gone back to their comfortable homes. Then the real rads, a lot of whom have come in from out of town for the occasion and now have nothing else to do, come out just around when it gets dark and start smashing shit up and attacking the cops when they arrive at the scene of the disturbance. A few local high-school kids who really shouldn't be out after dark anyway in downtown Barcelona and especially not when there are angry cops in the vicinity join in and get whacked around too and then their parents sue the cops. In case you were wondering, the three McDonald'ses in Florence have shuttered up and taken down the Golden Arches signs in order not to become mob targets, as have many of the famous Florentine luxury shops, so much fun for window-shopping. Here in Barcelona the traditional targets are first the McDonald's on the Ramblas and then bank branches in general, and if I were running a luxury shop on the day of a demo I'd close it up too. Valéry Giscard "d'Estaing", president of the Convention on the future of the European Union, whatever that is, said that the admission of Turkey to the European Union would be "the end of the EU". Well, at least he's being honest; many other European Thlaylis don't like the idea of admitting Turkey, either. Giscard said that "Turkey's capital is not in Europe and 95% of its population lives outside Europe...Turkey, with its 66 million inhabitants, would become the largest member State." To pick a few nits, Ankara is not in Europe but Turkey's largest city, Istanbul, with its 10 million people in the metro area, 10 times the population of Ankara, is famously in Europe. I would guess that 15-20% of Turks live on the European side of the Straits. Also, Germany, with its 83 million, would remain the largest member State in population, though Turkey would become the largest EU country in area. Giscard added that the next thing that would happen after Turkey's admission would be Morocco's pressure to get in too, as Morocco has also petitioned to be allowed into the EU. Well, good. Tell the king of Morocco, hey, set up a representative democratic government with an independent judiciary and the rule of law backed by an inviolate Constitution, which everyone else has to do to get into the EU, and we'd love to let you in. That would be the best thing that could possibly happen to Morocco, being forced to liberalize and getting payback by being let into the economic club when they've proven they're serious about it. If the Turks successfully continue their evolution toward meeting the above conditions--they're not there yet, but they've been making progress, and the way the new "Islamic Democrat" Turkish government behaves and how the army reacts will let us know how close they are to getting there very soon--they damn well deserve to be let into the economic club as soon as they meet those criteria, since they've stood by the European NATO countries for more than 50 years in the military club, including when the going was tough. M. Giscard, by the way, is extremely well known to be a snooty bastard in general. Apparently everyone who has ever known him hates him except maybe for Chirac. He picked up the noble-sounding "d'Estaing" as part of his endless quest for public homage; his uncle, René Giscard, a social climber, had sought to add luster to his surname by adding the appendage d'Estaing, which was in disuse as its last holder got shaved by the rasoir national in 1794, a very bad year in general anywhere near France. This appendage-adopting is permissible in France, and Uncle René was confirmed as the rightful possessor of the appendage in 1923. Valéry Giscard, as Uncle's nephew, saw fit to add said appendage to his own name. Giscard, get this, claimed that he was descended from Louis XV through an illegitimate connection; one of his female ancestors had been one of Louis's chambermaids. He also tried to get into the Society of the Cincinnati, a very exclusive club that is restricted to the descendants of French officers who fought in the American Revolution, on the grounds that the last d'Estaing (who was an admiral) was his ancestor. Didn't work. (Source: Fragile Glory by Richard Bernstein, an excellent overview of French society, now just a little out of date as it's from 1990.)
Here's our take on Gibraltar, which hasn't changed because of the recent non-binding and unofficial referendum. The referendum did show that the Gibraltarians (we'll call them the Giblets) overwhelmingly want to keep their current status. Well, public opinion in the UK, notwithstanding British behavior regarding Hong Kong, has a thing about giving loyal subjects away to some other country against the will of said subjects. Remember, for example, the Falklands War. Tony Blair's hands are tied. Relinquishing British sovereignty, or even part of it, over Gibraltar, would be a very serious political negative for Blair, and we all know that Tony Blair is notorious for tailoring his words and deeds to fit public opinion, rather like a somewhat more ethical Bill Clinton. (This is why we have been gratifyingly surprised at Blair's backbone during the entire War on Terrorism so far, since a significant proportion of Brits oppose an attack on Iraq and even opposed the Battle of Afghanistan. Perhaps we shouldn't have been so surprised, since Blair also showed backbone in the Northern Ireland negotiations, the Balkans, and in Sierra Leone. If Tony doesn't think an issue is a life-or-death matter, it seems like he's a leaf turning itself this way and that in order to get the most sunlight possible. But we'll have to give him a lot of credit for being tough and clearheaded and usually right when he has to make a decision that may affect history.)
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. Atlético Rules has a very different take on this subject..
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. Atlético Rules has a very different take on this subject..
No luck. Paul Zimmerman from CNN-SI didn't answer my NFL rules proposals in his mailbag, although mine weren't nearly as silly as the proposal he liked best (which was, actually, pretty funny), nor as stupid as his own assertion that you just can't expect players not to commit violent infractions like helmet hits when they're trained to do that.
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
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
Oh, yeah, feel free to e-mail me at crankyyanqui@yahoo.com. Sorry I haven't got a permanent link for it yet.
Here's an interesting colloquium on anti-Americanism from FrontPage magazine. Since we're on the subject, I thought a link here would be appropriate. Paul Hollander, in particular, is someone whose work I am familiar with and whom I greatly respect, and I tend to agree with him more than I do with the other three. Victor Davis Hanson is definitely my second favorite of the bunch. This guy Flynn, we're willing to admit, is a tad bumptious. This discussion might be something interesting for non-Americans--how a group of conservative American intellectuals react to what they consider to be anti-Americanism. One might also compare the quality of discourse in the colloquium and the quality of discourse in Mr. Porcel's columns.
Baltasar Porcel doesn't know when to shut up. Here he goes again, from Friday, November 8's La Vanguardia. Remember, this guy is considered one of Catalonia's leading intellectuals. The following article, titled "Futurism and reaction", is quite obviously the work of a drooling imbecile. Porcel is not even as smart as Noam Chomsky. We're going to leave it up to you, dear readers, to discover the blatant lies, obvious logical fallacies, complete non sequiturs, and just plain moronic crap in Porcel's text, in italics below. Post your faves up on the Comments section.
I attended a screening of "Minority Report", a typical American movie, skilfully made, from the agile rhythm and suggestive camerawork to effects like the spectacular mechanical spiders. The director is a virtuoso of the industry, Spielberg. Although the movie turns out to be disgustingly morbid. A professor used to say that the Americans confuse tragedy with brutality, poetry with sentimentality. As if their official idealism were hiding a sensory dirtiness. Which the film also reveals: we're dealing with science fiction, crime prevention in the middle of the 21st century, which is also portrayed in the manner of the futurism that is so abundant in the English-speaking novel and cinematography and which is based on terror, dehumanization, catastrophism, oppression.
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.
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.
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