Thursday, February 20, 2003
I have no idea whether Blogger is up or not. I wrote a long post that apparently got eaten because it isn't loading. If it hasn't come up tomorrow I'll try to summarize it. You may have lucked out--you may not have to read the whole bloody thing, but will instead be treated to a snappy recap of the main points instead..
Tuesday, February 18, 2003
There really hasn't been much news over the last couple of days, at least not any you haven't already heard about somewhere else. What I thought I'd do is translate a couple of passages from The New Spaniards, a book by former Guardian reporter in Spain, John Hooper, that I think are very revealing about today's Spain.
The fact that Spain underwent a transition rather than a revolution or anything of the kind (after Franco's death) is another important reason why tolerance should have emerged as the supreme value in contemporary Spain. But it is also, I believe, one of the causes of something which goes beyond mere tolerance: a sort of ethical emptiness which is equally characteristic of today's Spain.
A survey in (Spanish newsmagazine) Cambio 16 carried out at the time of the (1991) Gulf crisis found that only 8 percent of Spaniards would give their life for their country; only 3 percent thought it worth dying for love or liberty; and a mere 2 percent would sacrifice themselves for an ideal. The results clearly astonished the magazine's proprietor, Juan Tomás de Salas, who wrote an impassioned editorial saying that it was time "Spaniards stop believing that our destiny on this planet is to enjoy, enjoy, enjoy and that our problems will be taken care of by others." As a description of the spirit of post-Franco Spain it could scarcely be bettered.
"Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy." Not at all an unsuitable motto for a nation which, according to a government survey conducted in the winter of 1989-90, had 138,200 bars--only slightly fewer than in the whole of the rest of the european Union. No other people I have ever encountered put as much effort as the Spanish into having a good time. whatever its political and economic problems, the country is an immensely entertaining place...Today's Spaniards do have a passion for life that matches their traditional fascination with death. Indeed, the two are almost certainly linked--thinking so much about death gives them a heightened appreciation of life. An explosion of carefree hedonism was doubtless inevitable after so many years of oppression under Francop. What seems to have delayed it was the lack of real economic growth between 1975 and 1985. But if you look back over Spain's recent past what you see is a pattern of civil war followed by military dictatorship, not unlike that which characterized seventeenth-century England. It is perhaps not surprising therefore that Restoration Spain should have much the same frivolous air as Restoration England. Almodóvar as Congreve? There are worse comparisons.
Yeah, there are, like for example comparing my ass with the Hubble Space Telescope. Come on, dude, you're stretching it a bit thin there, and that stuff about the Spaniards and their fascination with death is a load of wank perpetrated by people who actually take Ernest Hemingway seriously.However, Mr. Hooper is absolutely correct about Spain's tolerance, its fun-loving spirit, its sheer entertainment value--and its complete ethical confusion.
The virtual absence of ideology from Spanish politics is also one of the most evident signs of something commented on in an earlier chapter: a certain moral vacuousness. By that I do not mean to suggest that today's Spaniards are amoral. When the dividing line between good and bad is clear, they are capable of mounting demonstrations of support or protest that put the rest of Europe to shame. If some young girl disappears into the clutches of a child-molester, for example, you can expect that thousands--and I mean thousands--of people will turn out onto the streets of her hometown to support her relatives and demonstrate their outrage. Today's Spaniard usually has his or her heart in the right place.
It is when the choice is difficult, when the moral dilemma is unexpected or unfamiliar, that the gap becomes apparent. How do you reconcile the conflicting demands for higher pay and lower unemployment? To what extent do women have a "right to choose" over abortion? And what really could be done about Bosnia? It is on these sorts of issues that the quality of debate can be low, with opinion-formers frequently choosing to take refuge in platitudes and aphorisms.
It is a phenomenon often attributed to the waning influence of the Roman Catholic church. The theory does not rest on whether the values supplied by the church were right or wrong, but on the fact that they were virtually the only ones the Spaniards had. In Britain, France, and Germany, and in other societies with more than one religion, there is a tradition of choosing between different moral outlooks which goes back centuries. In Spain, that tradition barely exists. Pople have had little choice but to take their ethical bearings from the Roman Catholic church, the only decision open to them being whether to accept or reject what is taught.
The prevalence of instinctively Catholic attitudes is far greater than the Spanish themselves perhaps realize. Castilian is crammed with phrases drawn from Catholic practice and dogma...Take away the creed which is at the root of these ideas and you--or they--are left with little but common sense. Because of the absence of a rival to Catholicism in Spain, the step which might take a British Anglican into Catholicism, or a French Catholic into Humanism, can launch their Spanish counterpart into a sort of ethical void in which he or she has to rely on a largely instinctive sense of what is good and bad...the fact that Spaniards find themselves all of a sudden left to their own ethical devices may provide a further explanation for that super-permissive atmosphere which imbues the new Spain.
Mr Hooper is right about the super-permissive and tolerant atmosphere in Spain. Teenagers openly smoke dope in public squares. Hardcore porn is available in plain sight at the local newsstand. The drinking age is whether you're tall enough to put your money on the bar or not. There are more topless chicks--and grandmas--at the beach than there are fully clothed. You can, literally, party without stopping for a week if you want to (and don't have to go to work).
I think Hooper is at least partly right about Spaniards' moral confusion. Catholicism is pretty much dead here--I doubt more than ten percent of people in Barcelona actually go to church, and I doubt that more than a quarter actually believe in the Christian God, though it is certainly true that Spain is culturally very Catholic and that many Catholic attitudes have survived and will survive here. To a great degree among literate people, a sort of vulgar Marxism has replaced Catholicism as a framework for their ideas, with all the problems that implies. The great majority of the working- and middle-classes are, in addition, believers in a paternalistic State that guarantees their lives from the cradle to the grave; this attitude is at least partially a remnant of Francoism and partially caused by the fact that Spain was damned poor until 1960 and pretty poor until about 1985. The fact that Marxism and neo-Francoism--neither of which are too big on capitalism or independent thinking--have been stirred in with what's left of the Catholic tradition in Spain, which has also never been too big on capitalism or independent thinking, causes most Spaniards' ideology, if you can call it that, to be a mix of paternalism, Socialism, and what they call here "philias and phobias". Most Spaniards have a particular foreign country that they rather admire, and can be called Francophiles or Anglophiles or Germanophiles, and another which they rather dislike, which is generally capitalist, antipaternalist, freethinking, aclerical America. There are Americaphiles here, but they're not more than 10% of the population and they often admire America for the wrong reasons.
Another reason intellectual debate here in the Hispanosphere often seems to be of low quality is, frankly, because it is. Spanish has a lot of speakers, but not too many of those speakers are well-educated; let's say that there are about 50 million well-educated Spanish speakers. I imagine that there are at least 150 million educated English-speakers, and I also imagine that English is by a long way the world language with the greatest number of educated speakers. I submit that the more educated speakers a language has, the higher the average level of debate in that language will be. Spanish has no New Statesman or Spectator or New Republic or National Review--it really doesn't have a Time or Newsweek, either, much less an Economist--and it has no Internet presence or scientific / technological presence. Its newspapers pale in comparison with the Daily Telegraph or the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal. What European languages often have that we don't are thick, dull, semi-philosophical texts written by some professor somewhere that get published because no one else in that language produces anything to print. They think, since they have this highbrow crap that nobody reads, that this makes them respectable intellectuals. I'm afraid they're wrong.
The fact that Spain underwent a transition rather than a revolution or anything of the kind (after Franco's death) is another important reason why tolerance should have emerged as the supreme value in contemporary Spain. But it is also, I believe, one of the causes of something which goes beyond mere tolerance: a sort of ethical emptiness which is equally characteristic of today's Spain.
A survey in (Spanish newsmagazine) Cambio 16 carried out at the time of the (1991) Gulf crisis found that only 8 percent of Spaniards would give their life for their country; only 3 percent thought it worth dying for love or liberty; and a mere 2 percent would sacrifice themselves for an ideal. The results clearly astonished the magazine's proprietor, Juan Tomás de Salas, who wrote an impassioned editorial saying that it was time "Spaniards stop believing that our destiny on this planet is to enjoy, enjoy, enjoy and that our problems will be taken care of by others." As a description of the spirit of post-Franco Spain it could scarcely be bettered.
"Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy." Not at all an unsuitable motto for a nation which, according to a government survey conducted in the winter of 1989-90, had 138,200 bars--only slightly fewer than in the whole of the rest of the european Union. No other people I have ever encountered put as much effort as the Spanish into having a good time. whatever its political and economic problems, the country is an immensely entertaining place...Today's Spaniards do have a passion for life that matches their traditional fascination with death. Indeed, the two are almost certainly linked--thinking so much about death gives them a heightened appreciation of life. An explosion of carefree hedonism was doubtless inevitable after so many years of oppression under Francop. What seems to have delayed it was the lack of real economic growth between 1975 and 1985. But if you look back over Spain's recent past what you see is a pattern of civil war followed by military dictatorship, not unlike that which characterized seventeenth-century England. It is perhaps not surprising therefore that Restoration Spain should have much the same frivolous air as Restoration England. Almodóvar as Congreve? There are worse comparisons.
Yeah, there are, like for example comparing my ass with the Hubble Space Telescope. Come on, dude, you're stretching it a bit thin there, and that stuff about the Spaniards and their fascination with death is a load of wank perpetrated by people who actually take Ernest Hemingway seriously.However, Mr. Hooper is absolutely correct about Spain's tolerance, its fun-loving spirit, its sheer entertainment value--and its complete ethical confusion.
The virtual absence of ideology from Spanish politics is also one of the most evident signs of something commented on in an earlier chapter: a certain moral vacuousness. By that I do not mean to suggest that today's Spaniards are amoral. When the dividing line between good and bad is clear, they are capable of mounting demonstrations of support or protest that put the rest of Europe to shame. If some young girl disappears into the clutches of a child-molester, for example, you can expect that thousands--and I mean thousands--of people will turn out onto the streets of her hometown to support her relatives and demonstrate their outrage. Today's Spaniard usually has his or her heart in the right place.
It is when the choice is difficult, when the moral dilemma is unexpected or unfamiliar, that the gap becomes apparent. How do you reconcile the conflicting demands for higher pay and lower unemployment? To what extent do women have a "right to choose" over abortion? And what really could be done about Bosnia? It is on these sorts of issues that the quality of debate can be low, with opinion-formers frequently choosing to take refuge in platitudes and aphorisms.
It is a phenomenon often attributed to the waning influence of the Roman Catholic church. The theory does not rest on whether the values supplied by the church were right or wrong, but on the fact that they were virtually the only ones the Spaniards had. In Britain, France, and Germany, and in other societies with more than one religion, there is a tradition of choosing between different moral outlooks which goes back centuries. In Spain, that tradition barely exists. Pople have had little choice but to take their ethical bearings from the Roman Catholic church, the only decision open to them being whether to accept or reject what is taught.
The prevalence of instinctively Catholic attitudes is far greater than the Spanish themselves perhaps realize. Castilian is crammed with phrases drawn from Catholic practice and dogma...Take away the creed which is at the root of these ideas and you--or they--are left with little but common sense. Because of the absence of a rival to Catholicism in Spain, the step which might take a British Anglican into Catholicism, or a French Catholic into Humanism, can launch their Spanish counterpart into a sort of ethical void in which he or she has to rely on a largely instinctive sense of what is good and bad...the fact that Spaniards find themselves all of a sudden left to their own ethical devices may provide a further explanation for that super-permissive atmosphere which imbues the new Spain.
Mr Hooper is right about the super-permissive and tolerant atmosphere in Spain. Teenagers openly smoke dope in public squares. Hardcore porn is available in plain sight at the local newsstand. The drinking age is whether you're tall enough to put your money on the bar or not. There are more topless chicks--and grandmas--at the beach than there are fully clothed. You can, literally, party without stopping for a week if you want to (and don't have to go to work).
I think Hooper is at least partly right about Spaniards' moral confusion. Catholicism is pretty much dead here--I doubt more than ten percent of people in Barcelona actually go to church, and I doubt that more than a quarter actually believe in the Christian God, though it is certainly true that Spain is culturally very Catholic and that many Catholic attitudes have survived and will survive here. To a great degree among literate people, a sort of vulgar Marxism has replaced Catholicism as a framework for their ideas, with all the problems that implies. The great majority of the working- and middle-classes are, in addition, believers in a paternalistic State that guarantees their lives from the cradle to the grave; this attitude is at least partially a remnant of Francoism and partially caused by the fact that Spain was damned poor until 1960 and pretty poor until about 1985. The fact that Marxism and neo-Francoism--neither of which are too big on capitalism or independent thinking--have been stirred in with what's left of the Catholic tradition in Spain, which has also never been too big on capitalism or independent thinking, causes most Spaniards' ideology, if you can call it that, to be a mix of paternalism, Socialism, and what they call here "philias and phobias". Most Spaniards have a particular foreign country that they rather admire, and can be called Francophiles or Anglophiles or Germanophiles, and another which they rather dislike, which is generally capitalist, antipaternalist, freethinking, aclerical America. There are Americaphiles here, but they're not more than 10% of the population and they often admire America for the wrong reasons.
Another reason intellectual debate here in the Hispanosphere often seems to be of low quality is, frankly, because it is. Spanish has a lot of speakers, but not too many of those speakers are well-educated; let's say that there are about 50 million well-educated Spanish speakers. I imagine that there are at least 150 million educated English-speakers, and I also imagine that English is by a long way the world language with the greatest number of educated speakers. I submit that the more educated speakers a language has, the higher the average level of debate in that language will be. Spanish has no New Statesman or Spectator or New Republic or National Review--it really doesn't have a Time or Newsweek, either, much less an Economist--and it has no Internet presence or scientific / technological presence. Its newspapers pale in comparison with the Daily Telegraph or the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal. What European languages often have that we don't are thick, dull, semi-philosophical texts written by some professor somewhere that get published because no one else in that language produces anything to print. They think, since they have this highbrow crap that nobody reads, that this makes them respectable intellectuals. I'm afraid they're wrong.
Monday, February 17, 2003
We're looking up wacky anti-American sites on Google and found this one, which is apparently by Shining Path of Peru. We won't bother to translate it, but it does refer to the Americans as a bunch of "capitalist bloodsuckers". It's a wondrous example of Spanish-language blind Marxist-Maoist rhetoric. You'll want to take this opportunity to wallow in the majesty of Presidente Gonzalo's all-powerful thought. I hope the CIA is at the very least watching these people. For more insane anti-American stuff, we googled "contra el imperialism yanqui" and found all kinds of truly loopy agitprop. Check it out here.
Sunday, February 16, 2003
I'm still looking up Almodóvar's demo speech and I can't find it. I did find this from the Barcelona squatters' page, though, which calls for a boycott of the movie Talk to Her on the grounds that cruelty to animals was practiced during the bullfight scene. Finally I agree with the squatters! Boycott Almodóvar!
I'm looking up Almodóvar to see what he said at the big demo yesterday in Madrid. Haven't found it yet but I did stumble onto a Spanish message board where the question is, "Did the Spanish Academy err when they selected Mondays in the Sun to be the Spanish representative at this year's Oscars rather than Almodóvar's Talk to Her?" Mondays in the Sun is a Spanish lefty social commentary flick done by the usual government-subsidized jokers, including at least a couple of the Bardems, who are ultra-Communists. One of them just died and the was buried with a Communist party flag on his coffin. Anyway, you would think that this would be a nice, innocuous subject, a debate about which of two movies is better. Some of the opinions in the chat room are quite reasonable. However, here are some of the others:
15 - Ojalá se estrellaran 2 aviones en la gala de Hollywood y se fueran todos esos cabrones al carajo.
I hope two airplanes crash into the Hollywood gala and send all those bastards to hell.
22 - HAGAMOS LA GUERRA PERO EN EEUU y a ver si de una vez por toda se va ese puto pais al carajo.
Let's go to war but in the US and see if once and for all that fucking country goes to hell.
28 - Los Lunes al sol es un cine tan político como el pianista guns of new york o cualquiera de los bodrios ultraderechistas que nos endiñan al menor descuido. ¿Que no la han elegido? pues bueno, pues vale, pues bien. Es muy duro admitir que te escupan en la cara...¡Ah! se me olvidaba: ¡NO A LA GUERRA!
Mondays in the Sun is just as political a cinema as The Pianist, Guns (sic) of New York, or any of the ultra-right-wing garbage they palm off on us unless we watch out. They didn't choose it? Fine, who cares. It's very hard to admit it when they spit in your face...Oh, I forgot, no to the war!
35 - Mejor, este es un concurso Infecto, la pelicula es extraordinaria, al igual que la interpretación de Javier Bardem, pero los capitoste del decrepito cine de holibu, actuan al dictado de Bush. han castigado tanto a Fernando Leon,como a Javier Bardem por decir NO A LA GUERRA. Es una verguenza.
Fine, this is a phony competetion, the movie is extraordinary and so is Javier Bardem's performance, but the bosses of the decrepit Hollywood cinema, act at Bush's orders. They've punished both Fernando León and Javier Bardem for saying no to the war. It's pathetic.
36 - No jodais, que le den a los Americanos que no tienen ni idea de cine de verdad...Y por supuesto que la Academia española no se ha equivocado al elegir la película, son los americanos los que se han equivocado!.
No shit, fuck the Americans, who have no idea of real cinema...and of course the Spanish Academy didn't make a mistake choosing the film, it's the Americans who are wrong!
43 - Lo que está claro es que la imagen de Bardem proclamando a los cuatro vientos "NO A LA GUERRA" ha debido de incomodar a la academia norteamericana...
What's obvious is that the image of Bardem proclaiming no to the war must have made the American Academy uncomfortable.
Just thought you folks might find these comments enlightening. I didn't leave a message on the message board. You might want to, I don't know. Here's the link.
15 - Ojalá se estrellaran 2 aviones en la gala de Hollywood y se fueran todos esos cabrones al carajo.
I hope two airplanes crash into the Hollywood gala and send all those bastards to hell.
22 - HAGAMOS LA GUERRA PERO EN EEUU y a ver si de una vez por toda se va ese puto pais al carajo.
Let's go to war but in the US and see if once and for all that fucking country goes to hell.
28 - Los Lunes al sol es un cine tan político como el pianista guns of new york o cualquiera de los bodrios ultraderechistas que nos endiñan al menor descuido. ¿Que no la han elegido? pues bueno, pues vale, pues bien. Es muy duro admitir que te escupan en la cara...¡Ah! se me olvidaba: ¡NO A LA GUERRA!
Mondays in the Sun is just as political a cinema as The Pianist, Guns (sic) of New York, or any of the ultra-right-wing garbage they palm off on us unless we watch out. They didn't choose it? Fine, who cares. It's very hard to admit it when they spit in your face...Oh, I forgot, no to the war!
35 - Mejor, este es un concurso Infecto, la pelicula es extraordinaria, al igual que la interpretación de Javier Bardem, pero los capitoste del decrepito cine de holibu, actuan al dictado de Bush. han castigado tanto a Fernando Leon,como a Javier Bardem por decir NO A LA GUERRA. Es una verguenza.
Fine, this is a phony competetion, the movie is extraordinary and so is Javier Bardem's performance, but the bosses of the decrepit Hollywood cinema, act at Bush's orders. They've punished both Fernando León and Javier Bardem for saying no to the war. It's pathetic.
36 - No jodais, que le den a los Americanos que no tienen ni idea de cine de verdad...Y por supuesto que la Academia española no se ha equivocado al elegir la película, son los americanos los que se han equivocado!.
No shit, fuck the Americans, who have no idea of real cinema...and of course the Spanish Academy didn't make a mistake choosing the film, it's the Americans who are wrong!
43 - Lo que está claro es que la imagen de Bardem proclamando a los cuatro vientos "NO A LA GUERRA" ha debido de incomodar a la academia norteamericana...
What's obvious is that the image of Bardem proclaiming no to the war must have made the American Academy uncomfortable.
Just thought you folks might find these comments enlightening. I didn't leave a message on the message board. You might want to, I don't know. Here's the link.
Sorry. I made a post last night and another this morning and they don't seem to have loaded. I don't know whether this one will. The Comments don't seem to be working, either. It's probably the Cataloony Communists or their minions. They're trying to silence me, the only voice out there puncturing their pomposity! You're not paranoid if you know they're really after you.
I did a little research this morning. I looked up the manifestos and the demonstrations that were held in Spain against the NATO intervention in the Balkans. In case you don't believe me, here's a Spanish activists' page from 1999 proudly talking about the demos they'd held against the war. Now, we know that Slobodan Milosevic was a major prick, that 200,000 or so people were killed in the fighting in the ex-Yugoslavia, most of them civilians murdered by Serbs, and that more than 850,000 people were forced to leave their homes. Probably the most famous single events of the Balkan wars were the massacre at Srbrenica, where at least six thousand mostly Muslim men were murdered by Serbs, and the two-year shelling of Sarajevo, which culminated with a direct hit on the marketplace in August 1995 that killed 43 people and convinced the United States to say enough was enough. We then forced them to reach the accord at Dayton which stopped the war in Bosnia, and when they tried the same thing in Kosovo and killed some 3000-10,000 people, the Americans said no way, José, and organized NATO into the bombing campaign that resulted in the end of the Kosovo war and the eventual fall of Milosevic. Here's the United Nations' indictment before the International War Crimes Tribunal in case you need your memory refreshed about exactly how evil Slobodan is.
Among those who publicly opposed the war in Kosovo and accused the Americans of imperialism and mass murder and wanting the oil and the like were Ramsey Clark, Robert Fisk, Edward Said, Noam Chomsky, José Saramago, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Regis Débray, Eduardo Galeano, Tony Benn, Alice Mahon, and Ignacio Ramonet. Oh, yeah, Fidel Castro too. Seen those names recently in a similar context? Among the Spanish organizations that demonstrated publicly against the Kosovo war were the "mainstream Communist" United Left political party, the ETA front political party Herri Batasuna, the PCE(r) (a bunch of real wacko far leftists who support the terrorist gang GRAPO), the Green Party, and the Trotskyist labor union, third largest in the country, CGT. These folks were among the organizers of the anti-American "peace" protests yesterday in Spain. To their credit, the Spanish Socialist Party did not oppose the Kosovo intervention, and neither did Convergence and Union.
Among those who publicly opposed the war in Kosovo and accused the Americans of imperialism and mass murder and wanting the oil and the like were Ramsey Clark, Robert Fisk, Edward Said, Noam Chomsky, José Saramago, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Regis Débray, Eduardo Galeano, Tony Benn, Alice Mahon, and Ignacio Ramonet. Oh, yeah, Fidel Castro too. Seen those names recently in a similar context? Among the Spanish organizations that demonstrated publicly against the Kosovo war were the "mainstream Communist" United Left political party, the ETA front political party Herri Batasuna, the PCE(r) (a bunch of real wacko far leftists who support the terrorist gang GRAPO), the Green Party, and the Trotskyist labor union, third largest in the country, CGT. These folks were among the organizers of the anti-American "peace" protests yesterday in Spain. To their credit, the Spanish Socialist Party did not oppose the Kosovo intervention, and neither did Convergence and Union.
Saturday, February 15, 2003
Well, they read the platform of the demonstration, the "Let's Stop the War" platform, which all the sponsoring bodies signed onto. It consisted of a virulent anti-American harangue spoken by the actress Carme Sansa, which basically accused America and Americans of wanting Iraqi babies to die so we could get more oil. It was foul and it stank of hate. It demanded not only an American climbdown before the Franco-German position, which I could almost understand, but demanded the lifting of the embargo on Iraq, the "national unification of the Kurdish people", the enforcement of the UN resolutions against Israel, and, like, justice and shit for the Palestinian people. All these demands were spiced with violently anti-American rhetoric reminiscent of the best days of the Moscow Party line, which a lot of these people followed at one time or another. In fact, the point of the demonstration wasn't to protest against war, it was to protest against America.
And the crowd shouted along and applauded. Hundreds and thousands of them. I was repulsed. I am repulsed. It was sickening. I have never seen so much anti-Americanism concentrated in one place. Among the signs held up were "Aznar lameculos de Bush" (Aznar, Bush's ass-licker), "No somos el ojete de Bush" (We aren't Bush's asshole), and "Fuck Bush" (original English, quite large). All the politicians participated in the march and said how wonderful it was that all the people were marching together for peace and that this just proved what wonderful people Catalans are. Socialist Mayor Joan Clos and Communist leader Joan Saura were rather outspoken in their America-bashing, while the others refrained from naming names and spouted a bit of guff about peace. Wise old fox Jordi Pujol didn't show up, but Artur Mas and Joan Rigol from the conservative-yet-anti-American Convergence and Union party did. So did Pasqual Maragall.
There's no doubt, the verdict of the people of Barcelona is overwhelming. They don't like us. Not one bit. They came out and told us so, in public, loud and clear. It's a beautiful city, but keep today in mind when planning your future vacations.
Pedro Almodóvar is going to read the speech at the demo in Madrid. Let's see what he has to say, and then see how it compares with what he says when he shows up at the Academy Awards ceremony. By the way, the movie to boycott is "Hable con ella" (Talk to Her). Pedro Almódovar's hard to miss. He's the guy who can't speak English who made a fool of himself at the Academy Awards a couple of years ago when he won something. He is rather flamboyant. He has a big poofy hairdo.
And the crowd shouted along and applauded. Hundreds and thousands of them. I was repulsed. I am repulsed. It was sickening. I have never seen so much anti-Americanism concentrated in one place. Among the signs held up were "Aznar lameculos de Bush" (Aznar, Bush's ass-licker), "No somos el ojete de Bush" (We aren't Bush's asshole), and "Fuck Bush" (original English, quite large). All the politicians participated in the march and said how wonderful it was that all the people were marching together for peace and that this just proved what wonderful people Catalans are. Socialist Mayor Joan Clos and Communist leader Joan Saura were rather outspoken in their America-bashing, while the others refrained from naming names and spouted a bit of guff about peace. Wise old fox Jordi Pujol didn't show up, but Artur Mas and Joan Rigol from the conservative-yet-anti-American Convergence and Union party did. So did Pasqual Maragall.
There's no doubt, the verdict of the people of Barcelona is overwhelming. They don't like us. Not one bit. They came out and told us so, in public, loud and clear. It's a beautiful city, but keep today in mind when planning your future vacations.
Pedro Almodóvar is going to read the speech at the demo in Madrid. Let's see what he has to say, and then see how it compares with what he says when he shows up at the Academy Awards ceremony. By the way, the movie to boycott is "Hable con ella" (Talk to Her). Pedro Almódovar's hard to miss. He's the guy who can't speak English who made a fool of himself at the Academy Awards a couple of years ago when he won something. He is rather flamboyant. He has a big poofy hairdo.
I'm not going down to the demo, since I'd probably get mad and get in a fight. That would not be good. The demo is being televised live on Catalunya TV; they've cut away and will be back in fifteen minutes or so. There are police helicopters, two of them, flying over our neighborhood. The demo started at the corner of Diagonal and Paseo de Gràcia at five sharp with all the politicians in front. The turnout is enormous. I have no way of judging how many people are there but there are a hell of a lot. I saw a Republican Left balloon, a whole bunch of red flags interspersed with Catalan ones, a couple of Spanish Republican flags and a couple of Cuban flags, and a lot of hand-lettered signs, mostly saying unpleasant things about Bush and / or Aznar. It's chilly out, too, and they're getting a lot of people. The trains and buses are all full and they can't get in and out of the metro at the downtown stations. The official demo route goes down Paseo de Gràcia, the city's main commercial street, known for its architecture, for a mile or so and then makes a left on Gran Vía and goes another half-mile or so to Plaza Tetuán. I'll keep y'all posted.
Well, the big demo starts in just under two hours. As I have said before, the Barcelona demo is sponsored by, among others, the Socialist Party and its labor union, the Communist Party and its labor union, the Republican Left, and conservative Catalan nationalists Convergence and Union. Also among the sponsors are a group of violent anarchist squatters and at least two organizations that justify and apologize for ETA terrorism. Are these people pacifists? Of course they are not. They approve of the use of violence in circumstances where it favors their ideological goals. They approve of Zapatista violence and of Sandinista violence and Tupamaro violence. They approve of the Russian Revolution and of the French Revolution. They approve of the violence used against businesses that stay open the day of a general strike. At least some of them approve of the violence meted out against the United States on September 11; I am sure that all those who vote Communist, some 5% of Spaniards, and those to their left, another 1 or 2 percent, approve of the attacks and think America got what it deserved.
This is not a pacifist demo. If it were, they would be protesting at the French intervention in the Ivory Coast. They're not. They would be protesting at the ridiculous situation in Central Africa in Congo and Rwanda and Burundi and Uganda with Zimbabwean and Angolan troops in the middle and the French with no idea what to do, but they're not. They would be protesting at the brutal gangs running Sierra Leone and Liberia and Guinea and the rest of West Africa. They've never heard of those places. They would have been protesting at what happened in East Timor. They didn't. They would have been protesting at the Russian crushing of the Chechens, whether bandits and terrorists or not. They didn't. They would have been protesting at the evil Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. They didn't. They would have been protesting about Bosnia and Kosovo--wait a minute, they did. Half of them blamed America for the "root causes"--y'all who weren't over here then may not have heard about the anti-intervention demos in Europe over Kosovo, especially--and protested against our intervention and the other half blamed America for not intervening fast enough.
This is just not an anti-war or anti-violence protest. None of these people gives a rat's ass about the Iraqis. If they did, they'd do something to help to overthrow the murderer and oppressor Saddam. This is, pure and simple, an anti-American protest. It is an opportunity for a crew of the usual suspects, the left and the nationalists, to spew hatred and enjoy doing it. I forgive them. It's not their fault they hate us after all the crap both their media and our media fill them full of. The ones I won't forgive are the little crowd of Americans who protested at the American embassy in Madrid yesterday. They have their right to voice their opinions, of course. And I have the right to despise them for those opinions. It's in appalling taste, it shows a lack of moral compass, and it's just plain stupid for an American to join in this America-bashing, America-smearing orgy, especially in a foreign country. It's like a black guy marching at the head of a Klan rally and carrying the torch they're going to use to light the cross.
This is not a pacifist demo. If it were, they would be protesting at the French intervention in the Ivory Coast. They're not. They would be protesting at the ridiculous situation in Central Africa in Congo and Rwanda and Burundi and Uganda with Zimbabwean and Angolan troops in the middle and the French with no idea what to do, but they're not. They would be protesting at the brutal gangs running Sierra Leone and Liberia and Guinea and the rest of West Africa. They've never heard of those places. They would have been protesting at what happened in East Timor. They didn't. They would have been protesting at the Russian crushing of the Chechens, whether bandits and terrorists or not. They didn't. They would have been protesting at the evil Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. They didn't. They would have been protesting about Bosnia and Kosovo--wait a minute, they did. Half of them blamed America for the "root causes"--y'all who weren't over here then may not have heard about the anti-intervention demos in Europe over Kosovo, especially--and protested against our intervention and the other half blamed America for not intervening fast enough.
This is just not an anti-war or anti-violence protest. None of these people gives a rat's ass about the Iraqis. If they did, they'd do something to help to overthrow the murderer and oppressor Saddam. This is, pure and simple, an anti-American protest. It is an opportunity for a crew of the usual suspects, the left and the nationalists, to spew hatred and enjoy doing it. I forgive them. It's not their fault they hate us after all the crap both their media and our media fill them full of. The ones I won't forgive are the little crowd of Americans who protested at the American embassy in Madrid yesterday. They have their right to voice their opinions, of course. And I have the right to despise them for those opinions. It's in appalling taste, it shows a lack of moral compass, and it's just plain stupid for an American to join in this America-bashing, America-smearing orgy, especially in a foreign country. It's like a black guy marching at the head of a Klan rally and carrying the torch they're going to use to light the cross.
Here's a link to a Saturday Night Live cast interview with Playboy in 1976. The first excerpt is extremely sad, whether they were being serious or kidding. The second one just shows what a prick Chevy Chase always has been.
Aykroyd: I would lodge a personal protest if I knew anybody was working under the influence. I would refuse to go on camera with him. That's the way I feel about it. It's a matter of breaking the law that's there to legislate physical purity, which is all we have to work with, this body.
Belushi: It's a discipline. It's like Muhammad Ali when he trains for a fight. He's been in this long because of discipline. If we burn ourselves out with drugs or alcohol, we won't have long to go in this business. You can't work with an alcoholic or a drug addict....
--------------------------
Chase: Yeah. Let me put it this way. The election was so close that that had he (Ford) taken New York, he would have tied the electoral vote. It's the most heinously egotistical thing to say I had anything to do with it, but I think it must have had some influence. I was clearly not a Ford fan. I was, in fact, a Udall man.
Playboy: How about after the convention?
Chase: I supported Carter. Carter was the better man. It's not that Ford isn't a nice fella. It's just that he never gave a shit about people.
Playboy: Why was Ford such a subject for parody? Was he inherently funny?
Chase: Anybody who was so guilty about being President that he kept trying to kill himself was inherently funny. It was the guilt that kept him banging his head on helicopter doors.
Playboy: When you hosted the Radio and Television Correspondents' banquet in Washington, the one that Ford also attended, what did your act consist of?
Chase: I just did Ford. I was him. I was invited to be the host. I marched in with the President to Hail to the Chief and sat on the dais between the secretary of the Navy or somebody and the President. I was a little nervous because I didn't exactly know what I was going to do, except that I was going to stumble a lot, walk into the podium and do my terrible impression of Ford. I took John and Dan down as my Secret Service escort--mostly so they could have the experience and wear dark glasses. John, at that time, could still walk.
Aykroyd: I would lodge a personal protest if I knew anybody was working under the influence. I would refuse to go on camera with him. That's the way I feel about it. It's a matter of breaking the law that's there to legislate physical purity, which is all we have to work with, this body.
Belushi: It's a discipline. It's like Muhammad Ali when he trains for a fight. He's been in this long because of discipline. If we burn ourselves out with drugs or alcohol, we won't have long to go in this business. You can't work with an alcoholic or a drug addict....
--------------------------
Chase: Yeah. Let me put it this way. The election was so close that that had he (Ford) taken New York, he would have tied the electoral vote. It's the most heinously egotistical thing to say I had anything to do with it, but I think it must have had some influence. I was clearly not a Ford fan. I was, in fact, a Udall man.
Playboy: How about after the convention?
Chase: I supported Carter. Carter was the better man. It's not that Ford isn't a nice fella. It's just that he never gave a shit about people.
Playboy: Why was Ford such a subject for parody? Was he inherently funny?
Chase: Anybody who was so guilty about being President that he kept trying to kill himself was inherently funny. It was the guilt that kept him banging his head on helicopter doors.
Playboy: When you hosted the Radio and Television Correspondents' banquet in Washington, the one that Ford also attended, what did your act consist of?
Chase: I just did Ford. I was him. I was invited to be the host. I marched in with the President to Hail to the Chief and sat on the dais between the secretary of the Navy or somebody and the President. I was a little nervous because I didn't exactly know what I was going to do, except that I was going to stumble a lot, walk into the podium and do my terrible impression of Ford. I took John and Dan down as my Secret Service escort--mostly so they could have the experience and wear dark glasses. John, at that time, could still walk.
Postulate: The purpose of government is to protect its citizens' human rights.
Postulate: The basic human rights are those of life, liberty, and property.
Since no one is more zealous in the preservation of his rights than the citizen himself, he should be the one who decides what the government must and can't do through some kind of regulated voting system.
In order to prevent possible abuses of human rights by a true democracy (e.g. we all get mad at Socrates and decide he must be executed), previously agreed-upon limits on the government's power must be set down in writing.
Theorem: The system that best protects these three basic human rights is a government elected by the citizens that is restricted by the rule of law.
Argument: While imperfect, the United States government is elected by its citizens and does operate under the rule of law. It is thereby empowered to protect its citizens and their rights, if it operates within its own laws in doing so.
Any quibbles? Argue with my logic if you want, and I'm sure I've committed at least one error that Aristotle would immediately call bogus on, but if we don't fundamentally agree on these things, we're just not operating on the same page.
So, the United States government's main duty is to protect its citizens against infringements on their rights from inside the country (criminals, outlaws, fraudsters, robbers, wannabe dictators, unscrupulous politicians and military officers) and from outside the country (invaders, terrorists, pirates, raiders).
On September 11, 2001, the rights to life, liberty, and property of many more than the 3000 citizens killed directly by extremist Muslim terrorists were infringed upon from outside the country. If we include the pursuit of happiness, basically a reformulation of the rights of liberty and property, as a right, then the terrorists infringed upon every American's rights. Every American's basic rights are threatened by terrorism.
Are we still together? I hope so.
In order to protect the rights of its citizens, the United States government has two responsibilities: to punish those responsible for the past infringement of rights, in order to demonstrate that violators of Americans' rights must pay serious consequences to discourage others from doing the same thing, and to impede those who may not have learned the lesson not to mess with Americans' rights from doing exactly that in the future.
In response to the grave violation of Americans' rights that happened on 9-11, those responsible must be punished. Many of them, Al Qaeda members and their protectors in the Taliban, already have been. But many of them haven't yet. Also, those who plan to violate Americans' rights must be stopped before the violation can happen.
Any problems here? I don't see any myself except for the standard pacifist argument that all violence should be renounced.
Postulate: You can't renounce violence completely. The only ways to stop infringers of rights are to threaten them with violence (you burglarize your neighbor's home, you're violating his rights, you will be arrested, tried, convicted, and sent to jail; if you try to escape before you are released, you will be shot) or to actually use violence against them (note that when the Japanese violated American rights at Pearl Harbor, we blew up their homeland in retaliation). Renouncing violence may be highly moral, but it is not precisely a good survival and defense mechanism.
OK, here it comes.
I submit that there is a loose alliance of terrorist organizations and rogue states, including Al Qaeda, Iraq, the PLO, Syria, the PFLP, Sudan, Hezbollah, Iran, the ETA, North Korea, Islamic Jihad, Libya, the FARC, Cuba, Abu Sayyaf, the Al Aqsa Martyrs, ad infinitum. The common enemies of these organizations are capitalist democracy and human rights, symbolized by the United States, their chief hate. Their motivation is wounded pride caused by their own weakness. I also submit that several so-called American allies, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan, harbor many sympathizers with the cause of the terrorist organizations and rogue states. I do not consider this to be a conspiracy theory because there is a good deal of evidence that these people are actually conspiring--ETA guys training in PLO camps in Libya and the like. There are thousands of similar connections. A connection nearly all these groups and states have is with the former Soviet Union; they received subsidies, arms, training, infrastructure, and many other kinds of support from the Soviets. The lion is dead but the hyenas and jackals that trotted at its heels are still alive.
All of these states and organizations are involved either directly or indirectly in the 9-11 bombings. Either they actually did it themselves or they, at one time or another, trained, supplied, funded, hid out, collaborated with, or somehow helped the guys who did it. They must, therefore, be punished for what they did so that in the long term no one ever gets the idea in his head that he can violate Americans' rights in such a way again, and those whose goal is still to violate Americans' rights must be impeded from doing so in the short term. The best and by far most effective way to impede them is by using violence. That violence, of course, must be as limited as possible.
America is very careful about using violence inside its borders. The police and judicial system, whose job is to enforce the laws that protect us against internal violations of our rights, operate under a great many legal limitations that are also designed to prevent citizens' rights, in this case against overzealous, corrupt, or arbitrary treatment which would violate the rights of the accused. He's a citizen and he has rights, too, unless a judge should take them away from him after due process. (Note that judicial punishment #1, the death penalty, deprives the convict of his right to life, punishment #2, jail, deprives him of his liberty, and punishment #3, a fine, deprives him of his property.) False arrest or imprisonment or conviction or police shooting of a citizen are treated as major scandals within the US, and deservedly so.
The problem is that there is no world legal system. The United Nations does not protect citizens of states; it protects states. It is an organization of governments, not of peoples. Most of these governments are dictatorships and most of them are murderous, corrupt, or both. They are in violation of every single line in the UN Charter and of every single honest resolution the UN has passed. Yet the UN insists on protecting them, because the UN is a union of dictatorships. In fact, for most of the UN's career two dictatorships held veto power over every significant UN action, and even today one dictatorship and one corrupt half-dictatorship hold veto power. The UN is by no means democratic, and it is by no means a legitimate organization. It holds no honest elections and it obeys no rule of law. It does nothing useful to protect anybody's basic human rights, much less those of American citizens. I submit that the United States has no reason even to be a member of the UN, much less to actually pay any attention to any of its dictates.
NATO is a different story. NATO is a union of democracies, and it has always been made up mostly of democracies. The problem with NATO is that a minority can hold out and stymie the alliance because each country has veto power. However, there's nothing that says the United States has to operate within the confines of NATO if it feels that its citizens' rights are in danger. The fact that fifteen NATO countries support the US and three do not is telling, and the fact that the Gang of Eight and the Vilnius 10 also support the US is even more telling. The great majority of decent, democratic states in this world are on America's side because they value their citizens' human rights and they know just as well as the Americans that the loose terrorist-rogue state alliance is a threat to them, too.
As for the European Union, we're not a member, so who cares what they say?
Three notes. I am not saying that might makes right. I am saying that governments have the duty to protect their citizens and their rights, and if America's government does so and somebody else gets pissed off, that is that somebody else's problem. You can't get your rights if you don't have any might. There are many kinds of might, not only economic and military and political, but also moral. The Western democracies, including America, have might. Their responsibility is to use it well. Second, I understand that citizens of other countries should enjoy the same rights that America's government more or less successfully guarantees to its citizens. This is why I hate dictatorships and corruption, and why I am unwilling to respect any country's government that tolerates such things at home. The problem is tolerating such things abroad. The United States cannot solve everyone's problems, and it should avoid intervening in other people's business as much as possible. We should never fight against any other democracy under the rule of law. Those people are taking care of their own rights. We often must deal with dictatorships. As a practical manner, we can't just cut off all relations with, say, China, much as we'd like to. But we don't have to be any friendlier than necessary, and if some dictatorship is genuinely a threat to the people of the United States and the civilized world, we should have no qualms about wiping it out, just as we would have no qualms about wiping out an organized crime family back home. We will be safer and their people will be much better off. Third is the "who are we to judge?" argument. Well, as an internal matter, who are we to judge those of our citizens who try to kill or kidnap or steal? Who are we to put them in prison or fine them or execute them? We are the legally established government, elected by its citizens and bound by the Constitution. That's who we are to judge. I don't see the difference between an individual who kills or kidnaps or steals and a state or an organization that does so. They're all dangerous to our rights. They all must be stopped.
Postulate: The basic human rights are those of life, liberty, and property.
Since no one is more zealous in the preservation of his rights than the citizen himself, he should be the one who decides what the government must and can't do through some kind of regulated voting system.
In order to prevent possible abuses of human rights by a true democracy (e.g. we all get mad at Socrates and decide he must be executed), previously agreed-upon limits on the government's power must be set down in writing.
Theorem: The system that best protects these three basic human rights is a government elected by the citizens that is restricted by the rule of law.
Argument: While imperfect, the United States government is elected by its citizens and does operate under the rule of law. It is thereby empowered to protect its citizens and their rights, if it operates within its own laws in doing so.
Any quibbles? Argue with my logic if you want, and I'm sure I've committed at least one error that Aristotle would immediately call bogus on, but if we don't fundamentally agree on these things, we're just not operating on the same page.
So, the United States government's main duty is to protect its citizens against infringements on their rights from inside the country (criminals, outlaws, fraudsters, robbers, wannabe dictators, unscrupulous politicians and military officers) and from outside the country (invaders, terrorists, pirates, raiders).
On September 11, 2001, the rights to life, liberty, and property of many more than the 3000 citizens killed directly by extremist Muslim terrorists were infringed upon from outside the country. If we include the pursuit of happiness, basically a reformulation of the rights of liberty and property, as a right, then the terrorists infringed upon every American's rights. Every American's basic rights are threatened by terrorism.
Are we still together? I hope so.
In order to protect the rights of its citizens, the United States government has two responsibilities: to punish those responsible for the past infringement of rights, in order to demonstrate that violators of Americans' rights must pay serious consequences to discourage others from doing the same thing, and to impede those who may not have learned the lesson not to mess with Americans' rights from doing exactly that in the future.
In response to the grave violation of Americans' rights that happened on 9-11, those responsible must be punished. Many of them, Al Qaeda members and their protectors in the Taliban, already have been. But many of them haven't yet. Also, those who plan to violate Americans' rights must be stopped before the violation can happen.
Any problems here? I don't see any myself except for the standard pacifist argument that all violence should be renounced.
Postulate: You can't renounce violence completely. The only ways to stop infringers of rights are to threaten them with violence (you burglarize your neighbor's home, you're violating his rights, you will be arrested, tried, convicted, and sent to jail; if you try to escape before you are released, you will be shot) or to actually use violence against them (note that when the Japanese violated American rights at Pearl Harbor, we blew up their homeland in retaliation). Renouncing violence may be highly moral, but it is not precisely a good survival and defense mechanism.
OK, here it comes.
I submit that there is a loose alliance of terrorist organizations and rogue states, including Al Qaeda, Iraq, the PLO, Syria, the PFLP, Sudan, Hezbollah, Iran, the ETA, North Korea, Islamic Jihad, Libya, the FARC, Cuba, Abu Sayyaf, the Al Aqsa Martyrs, ad infinitum. The common enemies of these organizations are capitalist democracy and human rights, symbolized by the United States, their chief hate. Their motivation is wounded pride caused by their own weakness. I also submit that several so-called American allies, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan, harbor many sympathizers with the cause of the terrorist organizations and rogue states. I do not consider this to be a conspiracy theory because there is a good deal of evidence that these people are actually conspiring--ETA guys training in PLO camps in Libya and the like. There are thousands of similar connections. A connection nearly all these groups and states have is with the former Soviet Union; they received subsidies, arms, training, infrastructure, and many other kinds of support from the Soviets. The lion is dead but the hyenas and jackals that trotted at its heels are still alive.
All of these states and organizations are involved either directly or indirectly in the 9-11 bombings. Either they actually did it themselves or they, at one time or another, trained, supplied, funded, hid out, collaborated with, or somehow helped the guys who did it. They must, therefore, be punished for what they did so that in the long term no one ever gets the idea in his head that he can violate Americans' rights in such a way again, and those whose goal is still to violate Americans' rights must be impeded from doing so in the short term. The best and by far most effective way to impede them is by using violence. That violence, of course, must be as limited as possible.
America is very careful about using violence inside its borders. The police and judicial system, whose job is to enforce the laws that protect us against internal violations of our rights, operate under a great many legal limitations that are also designed to prevent citizens' rights, in this case against overzealous, corrupt, or arbitrary treatment which would violate the rights of the accused. He's a citizen and he has rights, too, unless a judge should take them away from him after due process. (Note that judicial punishment #1, the death penalty, deprives the convict of his right to life, punishment #2, jail, deprives him of his liberty, and punishment #3, a fine, deprives him of his property.) False arrest or imprisonment or conviction or police shooting of a citizen are treated as major scandals within the US, and deservedly so.
The problem is that there is no world legal system. The United Nations does not protect citizens of states; it protects states. It is an organization of governments, not of peoples. Most of these governments are dictatorships and most of them are murderous, corrupt, or both. They are in violation of every single line in the UN Charter and of every single honest resolution the UN has passed. Yet the UN insists on protecting them, because the UN is a union of dictatorships. In fact, for most of the UN's career two dictatorships held veto power over every significant UN action, and even today one dictatorship and one corrupt half-dictatorship hold veto power. The UN is by no means democratic, and it is by no means a legitimate organization. It holds no honest elections and it obeys no rule of law. It does nothing useful to protect anybody's basic human rights, much less those of American citizens. I submit that the United States has no reason even to be a member of the UN, much less to actually pay any attention to any of its dictates.
NATO is a different story. NATO is a union of democracies, and it has always been made up mostly of democracies. The problem with NATO is that a minority can hold out and stymie the alliance because each country has veto power. However, there's nothing that says the United States has to operate within the confines of NATO if it feels that its citizens' rights are in danger. The fact that fifteen NATO countries support the US and three do not is telling, and the fact that the Gang of Eight and the Vilnius 10 also support the US is even more telling. The great majority of decent, democratic states in this world are on America's side because they value their citizens' human rights and they know just as well as the Americans that the loose terrorist-rogue state alliance is a threat to them, too.
As for the European Union, we're not a member, so who cares what they say?
Three notes. I am not saying that might makes right. I am saying that governments have the duty to protect their citizens and their rights, and if America's government does so and somebody else gets pissed off, that is that somebody else's problem. You can't get your rights if you don't have any might. There are many kinds of might, not only economic and military and political, but also moral. The Western democracies, including America, have might. Their responsibility is to use it well. Second, I understand that citizens of other countries should enjoy the same rights that America's government more or less successfully guarantees to its citizens. This is why I hate dictatorships and corruption, and why I am unwilling to respect any country's government that tolerates such things at home. The problem is tolerating such things abroad. The United States cannot solve everyone's problems, and it should avoid intervening in other people's business as much as possible. We should never fight against any other democracy under the rule of law. Those people are taking care of their own rights. We often must deal with dictatorships. As a practical manner, we can't just cut off all relations with, say, China, much as we'd like to. But we don't have to be any friendlier than necessary, and if some dictatorship is genuinely a threat to the people of the United States and the civilized world, we should have no qualms about wiping it out, just as we would have no qualms about wiping out an organized crime family back home. We will be safer and their people will be much better off. Third is the "who are we to judge?" argument. Well, as an internal matter, who are we to judge those of our citizens who try to kill or kidnap or steal? Who are we to put them in prison or fine them or execute them? We are the legally established government, elected by its citizens and bound by the Constitution. That's who we are to judge. I don't see the difference between an individual who kills or kidnaps or steals and a state or an organization that does so. They're all dangerous to our rights. They all must be stopped.
It's gray and chilly today in Barcelona, about 40 degrees or so with a light drizzle. This ought to keep a few of the peaceniks home from the demo this afternoon. On Saturday mornings most of us Barcelonese have to be alert for the butane-tank man. You see, we don't have central heating here. You can get it, and it's not very expensive--we could afford it and we sure ain't rich--but it just seems unnecessary to install when you would only use it five or ten days out of the year and when effective butane-powered space heaters are available for a hundred bucks or so and last for years. A replacement of the butane tank costs eight bucks, and we go through one about every couple of weeks. Most people have two, one in use and a spare, and when your tank in use runs out you start looking for the butane guy to replace it.
The butane guys come around every couple of days but most people work in the mornings and so we miss them, which is why Saturday is the big butane day. The guys drive these rattletrap old trucks piled high with these fireplug-size orange metal tanks which weigh a ton empty and two tons full. They wear these scruffy bright-orange jumpsuits, now rather a dull orange, and they park their truck down in the Plaza Rovira and spread out around the surrounding few blocks with dollies carrying five or six tanks. They bang a metal bar on the tanks to alert the neighborhood that it's butane time. When you hear the banging you go out on the balcony and yell down to the guy how many tanks you want and which apartment you live in. He brings what you've ordered up and exchanges his full tank for your empty one. His job really sucks because if your apartment building doesn't have an elevator, and many don't (ours dates from the '70s and has one), he has to carry the full tank up the stairs and the empty one down. Also, he's probably an Arab or Pakistani illegal immigrant working for tips. The tank is eight euros so I just give the guy ten. He needs the cash more than I do.
Our hot-water heater and stove, like most people's, are hooked up to natural gas, but some people use butane tanks to power them, too. Our last apartment was like that. We went through at least a tank a week, and if we missed the butane guy, we were screwed. My understanding is that in interior Spain and the north coast people generally do have central heating, but along the Mediterranean coast it's rare. Air-conditioning is pretty rare, too, because you really need it only about two weeks out of the year, in August, and we're often gone in August anyway, either to the US or someplace nice and cool like the Pyrenees or the north coast. We also spend a good many summer weekends in Remei's tiny hometown of Vallfogona de Riucorb, where they have a big old stone house that's wonderfully cool inside, where there's a very nice municipal swimming pool with full bar service--the only rule is that you get your drink in a plastic glass, they don't allow real glass in the pool area--and where it's dry and hot, therefore tolerable, during the day, but breezy and cool at night. Air-conditioning is becoming more and more common in Barcelona since it's cheap to install and people don't run it very much. We're not going to get it since we don't need it. I will admit, though, that while I am a vegetarian, I have been known to go over to the McDonald's over on Mayor de Gràcia, the only fast-food joint in the neighborhood, and order a Coke, just to sit in the A/C for half an hour or so.
The butane guys come around every couple of days but most people work in the mornings and so we miss them, which is why Saturday is the big butane day. The guys drive these rattletrap old trucks piled high with these fireplug-size orange metal tanks which weigh a ton empty and two tons full. They wear these scruffy bright-orange jumpsuits, now rather a dull orange, and they park their truck down in the Plaza Rovira and spread out around the surrounding few blocks with dollies carrying five or six tanks. They bang a metal bar on the tanks to alert the neighborhood that it's butane time. When you hear the banging you go out on the balcony and yell down to the guy how many tanks you want and which apartment you live in. He brings what you've ordered up and exchanges his full tank for your empty one. His job really sucks because if your apartment building doesn't have an elevator, and many don't (ours dates from the '70s and has one), he has to carry the full tank up the stairs and the empty one down. Also, he's probably an Arab or Pakistani illegal immigrant working for tips. The tank is eight euros so I just give the guy ten. He needs the cash more than I do.
Our hot-water heater and stove, like most people's, are hooked up to natural gas, but some people use butane tanks to power them, too. Our last apartment was like that. We went through at least a tank a week, and if we missed the butane guy, we were screwed. My understanding is that in interior Spain and the north coast people generally do have central heating, but along the Mediterranean coast it's rare. Air-conditioning is pretty rare, too, because you really need it only about two weeks out of the year, in August, and we're often gone in August anyway, either to the US or someplace nice and cool like the Pyrenees or the north coast. We also spend a good many summer weekends in Remei's tiny hometown of Vallfogona de Riucorb, where they have a big old stone house that's wonderfully cool inside, where there's a very nice municipal swimming pool with full bar service--the only rule is that you get your drink in a plastic glass, they don't allow real glass in the pool area--and where it's dry and hot, therefore tolerable, during the day, but breezy and cool at night. Air-conditioning is becoming more and more common in Barcelona since it's cheap to install and people don't run it very much. We're not going to get it since we don't need it. I will admit, though, that while I am a vegetarian, I have been known to go over to the McDonald's over on Mayor de Gràcia, the only fast-food joint in the neighborhood, and order a Coke, just to sit in the A/C for half an hour or so.
Friday, February 14, 2003
Breaking News: Televisión Española is reporting that Jesús Gil, flamboyant multimillionaire owner of the Atlético de Madrid soccer team and former mayor of the Eurotrash resort town of Marbella, has been sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison for embezzlement and fraud in the "caso Atlético". Two of Gil's co-conspirators received prison sentences as well. Gil and his minions apparently squeezed the club dry after he assumed the club's presidency in 1992. Among other shenanigans, Gil, as mayor of Marbella, made a deal with himself, president of the Atlético de Madrid soccer club, that the town of Marbella would pay the Atlético de Madrid in exchange for the players' wearing an advertisement promoting Marbella on their shirts. God knows how much money got suctioned out of various people's pockets as part of that deal. In the early '90s, Gil also conspired with his players to pay them large sums of money "tax-free" under the table. I can't believe that none of the players went to jail--hell, one of them, Paolo Futre, is now the general manager of the team (director deportivo). Futre was famous as one of the few players who smoked; another was Prosinecki. Another thing he did that was illegal was to buy 95% of the club's shares in exchange for assuming its enormous debt, which he never paid a penny of. Part of the sentence against Gil is that he has to give up his shares, which he will be free to bid for when they are sold, and another part is that he will actually have to pay the debt he promised he would. It's really a pretty harsh sentence. The problem, of course, is that Gil is going to appeal it. The case has been going on since 1999, and this sentence will not go into effect until Gil's appeal gets turned down, assuming that the often horribly incompetent and occasionally corrupt Spanish judiciary turns it down.
For the first time ever, I am going to try to launch an Internet campaign. I would like my esteemed co-blogger "Jesús Gil" from Ibidem to change his web handle. He is a loyal fan of Atlético de Madrid, which he has every right to be, but he could find a more socially responsible fellow than Jesús Gil to name himself after. Not one to criticize without proposing remedies, I suggest former Atlético player and current coach Luis Aragonés, admired by everyone in the world of Spanish soccer and beloved by Atlético fans, as a worthy replacement. Luis Aragonés is someone like Yogi Berra or Phil Rizzuto with the Yankees, a real lifetime supporter of his team. Jesús Gil is like a combination of George Steinbrenner and Marc Cuban and Jerry Jones, squared. Come on, people, make your voices known on this critical issue.
The system under which Spanish soccer clubs operate is actually a great deal more free-market than the American sports systems. Some of the most important differences are:
1) Spanish clubs are historically nonprofit, social organizations. They have historically been governed by their members, who vote to elect the club president, who in turn hires the general manager and coach and is the boss. Club presidents are known for interfering with the professionals and especially for firing coaches left and right. One year Atlético had something like five coaches. Last year Español had three coaches and this year they're on their second. Anyway, early in the '90s all the clubs got way over their heads in debt, and only Real Madrid, Barcelona, Athletic Bilbao, and Osasuna of Pamplona were able to clean up their finances and maintain the old regime. All the others had to go private, selling to owners, who now function as club presidents. They all hold absolute power over their clubs, and some, like the guy who used to run Sevilla (González de Caldas?), have abused their power. The Sevilla guy used club money to spend on his model girlfriend (= high-priced prostitute) Sofia Mazagatos while the team was sliding toward Second Division.
2) There is no salary cap. Teams are free to wheel and deal with players' contracts, and they do. Players are bought and sold for cash. There is no draft. Clubs are divided into various divisions, in Spain First (20 teams), Second A (22 teams), Second B (80 teams), and Third (a lot of teams, at least a couple of hundred). First Division clubs range in size, wealth, and power from FC Barcelona and Real Madrid, as big and rich and tradition-packed as major US franchises as the Yankees or Cowboys or Niners or whatever, to several clubs at the bottom that operate at a Triple A level or so. In Spain, at the end of every season, the bottom three teams in First drop down to Second, and the top three teams in Second go up to First. This makes the season exciting down to the wire. The lower-division clubs are not controlled by the First Division clubs in an American-style farm system; they are independent units, and they hope to win their division and to move up.
3) The teams play in two different competitions. One is the League, in which every First Division team plays each other one home and away and whoever comes in first wins, no playoffs or anything. The top six teams, in Spain, go on to play in Europe-wide competitions the next year. Teams that play in Europe receive lots of TV money that they keep for themselves. The second is the Cup, in which teams from First, Second, and Second B play a knockout, playoff-style competition. The Cup winner also plays in Europe the next year.
4) There's advertising all over the place. Barça makes a big deal about how they haven't cheapened themselves by selling advertising on their shirts. Everybody else does, and Barça's stupid pride is costing them ten million euros or so a year.
For the first time ever, I am going to try to launch an Internet campaign. I would like my esteemed co-blogger "Jesús Gil" from Ibidem to change his web handle. He is a loyal fan of Atlético de Madrid, which he has every right to be, but he could find a more socially responsible fellow than Jesús Gil to name himself after. Not one to criticize without proposing remedies, I suggest former Atlético player and current coach Luis Aragonés, admired by everyone in the world of Spanish soccer and beloved by Atlético fans, as a worthy replacement. Luis Aragonés is someone like Yogi Berra or Phil Rizzuto with the Yankees, a real lifetime supporter of his team. Jesús Gil is like a combination of George Steinbrenner and Marc Cuban and Jerry Jones, squared. Come on, people, make your voices known on this critical issue.
The system under which Spanish soccer clubs operate is actually a great deal more free-market than the American sports systems. Some of the most important differences are:
1) Spanish clubs are historically nonprofit, social organizations. They have historically been governed by their members, who vote to elect the club president, who in turn hires the general manager and coach and is the boss. Club presidents are known for interfering with the professionals and especially for firing coaches left and right. One year Atlético had something like five coaches. Last year Español had three coaches and this year they're on their second. Anyway, early in the '90s all the clubs got way over their heads in debt, and only Real Madrid, Barcelona, Athletic Bilbao, and Osasuna of Pamplona were able to clean up their finances and maintain the old regime. All the others had to go private, selling to owners, who now function as club presidents. They all hold absolute power over their clubs, and some, like the guy who used to run Sevilla (González de Caldas?), have abused their power. The Sevilla guy used club money to spend on his model girlfriend (= high-priced prostitute) Sofia Mazagatos while the team was sliding toward Second Division.
2) There is no salary cap. Teams are free to wheel and deal with players' contracts, and they do. Players are bought and sold for cash. There is no draft. Clubs are divided into various divisions, in Spain First (20 teams), Second A (22 teams), Second B (80 teams), and Third (a lot of teams, at least a couple of hundred). First Division clubs range in size, wealth, and power from FC Barcelona and Real Madrid, as big and rich and tradition-packed as major US franchises as the Yankees or Cowboys or Niners or whatever, to several clubs at the bottom that operate at a Triple A level or so. In Spain, at the end of every season, the bottom three teams in First drop down to Second, and the top three teams in Second go up to First. This makes the season exciting down to the wire. The lower-division clubs are not controlled by the First Division clubs in an American-style farm system; they are independent units, and they hope to win their division and to move up.
3) The teams play in two different competitions. One is the League, in which every First Division team plays each other one home and away and whoever comes in first wins, no playoffs or anything. The top six teams, in Spain, go on to play in Europe-wide competitions the next year. Teams that play in Europe receive lots of TV money that they keep for themselves. The second is the Cup, in which teams from First, Second, and Second B play a knockout, playoff-style competition. The Cup winner also plays in Europe the next year.
4) There's advertising all over the place. Barça makes a big deal about how they haven't cheapened themselves by selling advertising on their shirts. Everybody else does, and Barça's stupid pride is costing them ten million euros or so a year.
The Vanguardia's lead headline today is "Bush demands that UN obey him". There's impartiality for you. Bush did say that if the UN wimps out it will become an "ineffective and irrelevant debating society". Well? It will. If the Americans have to act against the UN's wishes, they will do so, and the UN will then be revealed to be as powerless as the old League of Nations was. Colin Powell is leaning on the French, Russian, and Chinese foreign ministers in New York right about now. There's not really much news on the international diplomatic front, or on the domestic political front, either. The media seems to be waiting suspensefully for today's Hans Blix report.
Reports that a Spanish judge had freed the alleged Al Qaeda members arrested a couple of weeks ago here in Barcelona jumped the gun a little; they will be held at least for another week while more evidence is presented against them......The high school kids cut class and had an antiwar demo today downtown; five of them got themselves arrested. Cool. Of course their mommies and daddies won't let anything happen to them. Get this, on March 5 they've called a nationwide high-school students' strike against the war. What kind of turnout do you think they're going to get? If I were a high-school teacher I'd schedule a major exam for that day. No makeups. Miss it, get a zero......It is starting to look like little time will be wasted fooling around before the invasion of Iraq. Wanna bet they introduce a Security Council resolution tomorrow after Hans Blix tells them that Saddam still isn't cooperating? Rumor has it that Condi Rice is leaning on Blix big-time; she went to see him Tuesday. Colin Powell is accusing the Weasels of "delaying", "diverting attention", and "getting Iraq off the hook". That's pretty strong language. I think he means it. Even Powell is disgusted by the Weasels. The Reichsminister to the UN said the Reich was backing Paris on a proposal for more inspections that will be made tomorrow, if the French ambassador has the gall to propose it after Blix's second report......Spanish TV is reporting that Americans are panicking in craven fear. Now, now. Stocking up on bottled water does not a panic make. If café chat is any sign, and I'm fairly well tuned in on the café-chat radar, people here in Barcelona are a bit concerned about what might happen, but I wouldn't call it a panic. I doubt things are too much different in Kansas City......I still think the alleged Bin Laden tape is phony, though I will admit it might have been some sort of montage using his voice; they must have thousands of Bin Laden tapes out there they could edit together......Aznar met with Reichskanzler Schröder. They didn't call one another poopheads, but they strongly disagreed publicly on the war......The Vangua is making a very big deal about the Pope's envoy in Baghdad......Mexico and Chile will probably back a US resolution in the Security Council, though they don't dig preventive war. They dig the concept of multilateralism more than they don't dig preventive war, however......There is talk that our very own major-league terrorist gang, ETA, was behind that last FARC bombing in Bogotá that killed 35 people in a nightclub. There is all kinds of evidence of an ETA-FARC connection......Baltasar Porcel says that American arrogance has always been intolerable......A fourth large Barcelona chain of English-language academies, Cambridge School, has gone down, closing 13 centers and leaving nine thousand students in the street with courses paid for in advance through bank loans. This is turning out to be a major consumer fraud. English-teacher unemployment is through the roof, since with Opening, Brighton, Oxford, and now Cambridge down, and with Wall Street having closed down half its centers, about 500 people have been thrown out of work since September 2002 when Opening crashed. The talk among local English teachers is that times are tough, and I have heard that several people have gone back to England......Perhaps the biggest news of the day here in Barcelona is that Fútbol Club Barcelona president Joan Gaspart has resigned effective immediately and has been replaced by Enric Reyna. This is a major Convergence and Union coup, since their men have taken over the organization of the club to the detriment of Gaspart and his predecessor, José Luis Nuñez, both of whom are strong PP sympathizers. Watch Barça become much more stridently Catalan nationalist.
Wednesday, February 12, 2003
The Tripartite Axis of Weasels is holding out in NATO, unwilling to cave in to the pressure of the other sixteen nations to prepare to defend Turkey, which has formally invoked Article Four for the first time ever. That means that all other NATO member states are required to participate in consultations. France, Belgium, Germany, the Vatican, and the EU are not going to help "the U.S. and its fifteen loyal allies", which would be Canada, Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Holland, Luxembourg, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Greece, Turkey itself, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and the UK, to protect Turkey. Admittedly, Turkey is already under American protection, and it also has the second largest military in NATO, with 700,000 troops including a 50,000-man rapid reaction force which can be ready to move in a few hours and three mobile infantry divisions (not already committed to any of Turkey's frontiers) in reserve, plenty of attack helicopters, about 1000 M-60 main battle tanks, and 164 F-16s and more than 200 other planes, mostly F-4s. Additionally, Turkish soldiers have the reputation of being tough and well-trained, unlike, say, the Belgians. The Turks could stomp Iraq on their own if they had to. The Turks, however, want reassurance that they will be supported internationally to pacify Turkish public opinion. Additional note: Turkey is friendly with Israel, and the two have been known to cooperate on international and military issues. The Economist has reported on this more than once.
Small note: Luxembourg has changed sides. They were originally going to go with the Weasels but flip-flopped. Outside the Weasels, it looks like the Dutch and Norwegians are on board with the Alliance.
An audiotape claimed to be from Osama Bin Laden appeared last night on Al-Jazeera. The Vanguardia's front-page lead headline is "Bin Laden asks for support for Iraq", and there is a quarter-page photo of Osama on page 4. I originally thought, until I read closely, that photo was new and that Osama was really alive; it's merely an old photo of Osama on a television screen saying "Al-Jazeera Exclusive". In the caption they tell you that photo is from the archives. The whole thing is intentionally misleading. First, there's not one whit of evidence that this tape is really from Osama. It's just an audiotape. So the headline is completely false because it lacks the word "Alleged". Second, the photo appears to be new. It isn't. Third, Osama is dead anyway, because if we didn't kill him his poor health did. Osama's kidneys didn't work, among other things, and he hadn't been able to get dialysis on the run. Fourth, the tape says that all Islam should defend Iraq. That's dumb. That's only going to get Iraq in worse trouble. It's like when the Ku Klux Klan endorses a candidate for election: no help.
Possibilities: 1) The tape is American disinformation aimed at showing there's a Bin Laden-Saddam connection. 2) The tape is some kind of Al Qaeda message to Osama's followers. 3) The tape is Al Qaeda disinformation aimed at sowing confusion. 4) The tape is Iraqi disinformation, a last-ditch effort at rallying worldwide radical Islam behind secular Saddam. 5) The tape really is Osama. I figure number two and number four are most likely, especially since the speaker on the tape refers to the Baath Party as Communists, but says that Islamists can nonetheless ally themselves with it. A good rule of thumb for sniffing out who's behind obvious propaganda is whether it includes a mild attack, rather beside the point, on somebody. That somebody is likely to be the source of the information, and he's included the mild attack to distract attention from himself. Saddam would never call himself a Communist, would he? Uh, yeah, he might, if there were an overriding purpose.
The French are all mad because they've been taking a bunch of flak in the American press. Le Monde is complaining about "Francophobia" in the States. The Vanguardia says that "Sectors of the (American) press and the diplomatic corps present a certain recurring vision of France as a country where anti-Semitism runs wild and synagogues burn every day." Uh, excuse me, but synagogues do occasionally burn and an awful lot of French folks voted for the anti-Semitic Le Pen in the last election. The French are concerned enough that they're sending a delegation to try to pacify American public opinion. Bet it don't take. Le Monde does say that the "virulent campaign" can be understood as "the answer of an America too frequently presented on this side of the Atlantic as a gang of trigger-happy cowboys ruled by a simplistic fundamentalist preacher." Uh, yeah. I can't get over this complaining about the United States finally speaking out, and loud, against the insults that have been continually sent our way over the last sixty years. When we finally get mad and respond, they act surprised and get mad themselves. Screw Old Europe.
Enric Juliana comments in the Vangua that "the Catholic Church has been subjected to a moral lynching in the United States". I've seen that line or something similar in several Vangua articles; the Vangua is Catholic and monarchist. No, the Catholic Church is suffering from a serious loss of credibility after too many Catholic priests were caught molesting the kiddies left in their care and too many bishops and cardinals who knew exactly what was going on were caught doing nothing to solve the problem, not punishing the guilty priests, allowing them to stay in positions where they had access to children, and generally covering up the whole thing. Anyone who thinks Richard Nixon's behavior regarding the Watergate scandal was immoral and despicable should think that this behavior is a hundred times worse, since Nixon covered up some insignificant political dirty tricks and the Catholic hierarchy covered up for repeat, pathological child-molesters. This is not a case of one poor, confused guy who once did something he shouldn't have. This is a case of MANY active pederasts with a pattern of behavior who were protected from the law, and even from punishment within the Church. Moral lynching, my ass. The American Catholic Church committed moral suicide.
There is certain resentment in Spain, and perhaps particularly in Catalonia, toward the United States on the part of Catholic intellectuals, I'm not sure why. Some of it must be because the US is majority Protestant, though the Catholics are the largest single religious group there, and because many US Protestants were openly anti-Catholic bigots until about the time of World War II. Some of the rest, though, is based on a traditionalist dislike of modernity and change, which the United States symbolizes in Spain. And there's a good part due to the liberation-theology leftism that reigns among much of the hierarchy, and there's another good part in Catalonia due to the fact that the section of the Catalan Church based at Montserrat is ultra-Catalanist and therefore anti-anythingelseist. (If you're looking for the Spanish Catholics in Catalonia, try Poblet.) Enric Juliana says, "...the unipolar new order could be a much more dangerous threat (than Communism) to Christianity in the long run: a slow but inexorable dissolution...Catholicism is the only "international movement"...capable of planting a strong moral objection to the "new order"." Gee, I thought the usual European criticism of America was that it was run by a bunch of religious nuts. But a religious European, Enric Juliana, says we're going to destroy the Catholic Church and that we're more dangerous to Christianity than the Communists. Looks like we can't win either way. Meanwhile, the Pope's emissary, French Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, is "praying for peace" in Baghdad.
The Iraqis have granted entrance visas to fifty "human shields". They will spread out to various neuralgic points in Baghdad. I'm nominating these guys right now for the 2003 Darwin Awards. I vote we pay no attention to their presence or absence when selecting military targets. I also vote we don't do anything more than we have to after the war to get them home alive if they're Allied citizens, and I vote we charge them with treason if war breaks out for giving aid and comfort to the enemy. If they're not citizens of an Alliance nation, I don't see why we should care whether they get out alive. And that goes double if they're French. I suppose basic Allied moral decency will prevent us from abandoning them to their fate, though.
The opposition parties in the Spanish Parliament called a vote that, if passed, would have tied the government's hands if a war breaks out and would have aligned Spain with the Weasels. It failed 151-175, with all the parties except Aznar's conservative PP voting in favor. Convergence and Union's Xavier Trias is trying to sit on the fence. He wants "public opinion to know we're working for peace" so that if war breaks out it will be because it was inevitable, "not just a whim", and that's why they voted in favor. Meanwhile, they're making noises about the peace march on the 15th; the manifesto says "Preventive war is a threat for the peace and the security of the world" and "(This is) an attempt to guarantee the control of the oil and to reorganize the region as a function of the political and economic interests of the United States." It stinks of anti-American conspiracy theory. Cándido Mendez of the Socialist labor union UGT said, "No blood for oil". Socialist leader José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero said, "Let's be responsible and stop the war". José María Fidalgo of the Communist union CCOO said, "We must defend different values and interests than the Bush Administration". And Gaspar Llamazares of the Communist United Left said, "Aznar is alone in the maze of the war and the American far right". Wimpo Artur Mas of Convergence and Union is going to cut short a visit to Quebec (the Catalan nationalists are always visiting Quebec) to come home and appear in the antiwar demo.
Mariano Rajoy of the PP blasted the Socialists, accusing them of having no principles and of trying to take advantage of the Iraq crisis for short-term political profit. He pointed to the repeated Socialist flip-flops on the issue; yesterday Zapatero admitted on TV that he was against the war personally but would accept it if there were another UN resolution. That's not much different from the official government position, and is distinctly contradictory to the strident antiwar posture the Socialists have been screaming out for months. Zapatero really is a weasel; he's trying to weasel out. He'll have a good old time shouting slogans at the demo and then support the war after it's over.
The Vangua published a Jimmy Carter op-ed. I didn't read it. But Quim Monzó notifies us that there is a website called Masturbate for Peace whose mission statement is "You can't love others if you don't love yourself. Evidently, masturbation is the greatest expression of self-esteem. So it is natural that we citizens of the world should unite to masturbate for peace." One of their slogans is "War is wrong, whack your schlong". Several people have written in explaining exactly how they will onanize for peace. In great detail. It is considered acceptable to self-pleasure either collectively or individually. Quim Monzó says, "I'm telling you this because the big demonstration will be next Saturday, the 15th, and it would be nice to see, in action, on the Paseo de Gràcia, the local members of this interesting movement."
Sadly, the Iberian lynx, the world's most endangered feline, is one step closer to extinction upon the death of a male who had been captured sick more than a year ago. They have to catch another male now for the breeding-in-captivity program, and it might be good if this one were healthy. There are between 160 and 200 Iberian lynxes alive in the Sierra Morena and the Doñana swamp, not enough to guarantee the survival of the species in the wild. Poaching, being hit by cars, tuberculosis, and the lack of rabbits are all factors in the decline of the species; the dead lynx had tuberculosis. There is a female at the Barcelona zoo. It's a beautiful animal, but the poor thing is locked in a tiny pen. They keep talking about greatly expanding the zoo, which would allow them to put the big cats in more appropriately-sized enclosures. But, anyway, if you ever come here check out the lynx at the zoo.
Small note: Luxembourg has changed sides. They were originally going to go with the Weasels but flip-flopped. Outside the Weasels, it looks like the Dutch and Norwegians are on board with the Alliance.
An audiotape claimed to be from Osama Bin Laden appeared last night on Al-Jazeera. The Vanguardia's front-page lead headline is "Bin Laden asks for support for Iraq", and there is a quarter-page photo of Osama on page 4. I originally thought, until I read closely, that photo was new and that Osama was really alive; it's merely an old photo of Osama on a television screen saying "Al-Jazeera Exclusive". In the caption they tell you that photo is from the archives. The whole thing is intentionally misleading. First, there's not one whit of evidence that this tape is really from Osama. It's just an audiotape. So the headline is completely false because it lacks the word "Alleged". Second, the photo appears to be new. It isn't. Third, Osama is dead anyway, because if we didn't kill him his poor health did. Osama's kidneys didn't work, among other things, and he hadn't been able to get dialysis on the run. Fourth, the tape says that all Islam should defend Iraq. That's dumb. That's only going to get Iraq in worse trouble. It's like when the Ku Klux Klan endorses a candidate for election: no help.
Possibilities: 1) The tape is American disinformation aimed at showing there's a Bin Laden-Saddam connection. 2) The tape is some kind of Al Qaeda message to Osama's followers. 3) The tape is Al Qaeda disinformation aimed at sowing confusion. 4) The tape is Iraqi disinformation, a last-ditch effort at rallying worldwide radical Islam behind secular Saddam. 5) The tape really is Osama. I figure number two and number four are most likely, especially since the speaker on the tape refers to the Baath Party as Communists, but says that Islamists can nonetheless ally themselves with it. A good rule of thumb for sniffing out who's behind obvious propaganda is whether it includes a mild attack, rather beside the point, on somebody. That somebody is likely to be the source of the information, and he's included the mild attack to distract attention from himself. Saddam would never call himself a Communist, would he? Uh, yeah, he might, if there were an overriding purpose.
The French are all mad because they've been taking a bunch of flak in the American press. Le Monde is complaining about "Francophobia" in the States. The Vanguardia says that "Sectors of the (American) press and the diplomatic corps present a certain recurring vision of France as a country where anti-Semitism runs wild and synagogues burn every day." Uh, excuse me, but synagogues do occasionally burn and an awful lot of French folks voted for the anti-Semitic Le Pen in the last election. The French are concerned enough that they're sending a delegation to try to pacify American public opinion. Bet it don't take. Le Monde does say that the "virulent campaign" can be understood as "the answer of an America too frequently presented on this side of the Atlantic as a gang of trigger-happy cowboys ruled by a simplistic fundamentalist preacher." Uh, yeah. I can't get over this complaining about the United States finally speaking out, and loud, against the insults that have been continually sent our way over the last sixty years. When we finally get mad and respond, they act surprised and get mad themselves. Screw Old Europe.
Enric Juliana comments in the Vangua that "the Catholic Church has been subjected to a moral lynching in the United States". I've seen that line or something similar in several Vangua articles; the Vangua is Catholic and monarchist. No, the Catholic Church is suffering from a serious loss of credibility after too many Catholic priests were caught molesting the kiddies left in their care and too many bishops and cardinals who knew exactly what was going on were caught doing nothing to solve the problem, not punishing the guilty priests, allowing them to stay in positions where they had access to children, and generally covering up the whole thing. Anyone who thinks Richard Nixon's behavior regarding the Watergate scandal was immoral and despicable should think that this behavior is a hundred times worse, since Nixon covered up some insignificant political dirty tricks and the Catholic hierarchy covered up for repeat, pathological child-molesters. This is not a case of one poor, confused guy who once did something he shouldn't have. This is a case of MANY active pederasts with a pattern of behavior who were protected from the law, and even from punishment within the Church. Moral lynching, my ass. The American Catholic Church committed moral suicide.
There is certain resentment in Spain, and perhaps particularly in Catalonia, toward the United States on the part of Catholic intellectuals, I'm not sure why. Some of it must be because the US is majority Protestant, though the Catholics are the largest single religious group there, and because many US Protestants were openly anti-Catholic bigots until about the time of World War II. Some of the rest, though, is based on a traditionalist dislike of modernity and change, which the United States symbolizes in Spain. And there's a good part due to the liberation-theology leftism that reigns among much of the hierarchy, and there's another good part in Catalonia due to the fact that the section of the Catalan Church based at Montserrat is ultra-Catalanist and therefore anti-anythingelseist. (If you're looking for the Spanish Catholics in Catalonia, try Poblet.) Enric Juliana says, "...the unipolar new order could be a much more dangerous threat (than Communism) to Christianity in the long run: a slow but inexorable dissolution...Catholicism is the only "international movement"...capable of planting a strong moral objection to the "new order"." Gee, I thought the usual European criticism of America was that it was run by a bunch of religious nuts. But a religious European, Enric Juliana, says we're going to destroy the Catholic Church and that we're more dangerous to Christianity than the Communists. Looks like we can't win either way. Meanwhile, the Pope's emissary, French Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, is "praying for peace" in Baghdad.
The Iraqis have granted entrance visas to fifty "human shields". They will spread out to various neuralgic points in Baghdad. I'm nominating these guys right now for the 2003 Darwin Awards. I vote we pay no attention to their presence or absence when selecting military targets. I also vote we don't do anything more than we have to after the war to get them home alive if they're Allied citizens, and I vote we charge them with treason if war breaks out for giving aid and comfort to the enemy. If they're not citizens of an Alliance nation, I don't see why we should care whether they get out alive. And that goes double if they're French. I suppose basic Allied moral decency will prevent us from abandoning them to their fate, though.
The opposition parties in the Spanish Parliament called a vote that, if passed, would have tied the government's hands if a war breaks out and would have aligned Spain with the Weasels. It failed 151-175, with all the parties except Aznar's conservative PP voting in favor. Convergence and Union's Xavier Trias is trying to sit on the fence. He wants "public opinion to know we're working for peace" so that if war breaks out it will be because it was inevitable, "not just a whim", and that's why they voted in favor. Meanwhile, they're making noises about the peace march on the 15th; the manifesto says "Preventive war is a threat for the peace and the security of the world" and "(This is) an attempt to guarantee the control of the oil and to reorganize the region as a function of the political and economic interests of the United States." It stinks of anti-American conspiracy theory. Cándido Mendez of the Socialist labor union UGT said, "No blood for oil". Socialist leader José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero said, "Let's be responsible and stop the war". José María Fidalgo of the Communist union CCOO said, "We must defend different values and interests than the Bush Administration". And Gaspar Llamazares of the Communist United Left said, "Aznar is alone in the maze of the war and the American far right". Wimpo Artur Mas of Convergence and Union is going to cut short a visit to Quebec (the Catalan nationalists are always visiting Quebec) to come home and appear in the antiwar demo.
Mariano Rajoy of the PP blasted the Socialists, accusing them of having no principles and of trying to take advantage of the Iraq crisis for short-term political profit. He pointed to the repeated Socialist flip-flops on the issue; yesterday Zapatero admitted on TV that he was against the war personally but would accept it if there were another UN resolution. That's not much different from the official government position, and is distinctly contradictory to the strident antiwar posture the Socialists have been screaming out for months. Zapatero really is a weasel; he's trying to weasel out. He'll have a good old time shouting slogans at the demo and then support the war after it's over.
The Vangua published a Jimmy Carter op-ed. I didn't read it. But Quim Monzó notifies us that there is a website called Masturbate for Peace whose mission statement is "You can't love others if you don't love yourself. Evidently, masturbation is the greatest expression of self-esteem. So it is natural that we citizens of the world should unite to masturbate for peace." One of their slogans is "War is wrong, whack your schlong". Several people have written in explaining exactly how they will onanize for peace. In great detail. It is considered acceptable to self-pleasure either collectively or individually. Quim Monzó says, "I'm telling you this because the big demonstration will be next Saturday, the 15th, and it would be nice to see, in action, on the Paseo de Gràcia, the local members of this interesting movement."
Sadly, the Iberian lynx, the world's most endangered feline, is one step closer to extinction upon the death of a male who had been captured sick more than a year ago. They have to catch another male now for the breeding-in-captivity program, and it might be good if this one were healthy. There are between 160 and 200 Iberian lynxes alive in the Sierra Morena and the Doñana swamp, not enough to guarantee the survival of the species in the wild. Poaching, being hit by cars, tuberculosis, and the lack of rabbits are all factors in the decline of the species; the dead lynx had tuberculosis. There is a female at the Barcelona zoo. It's a beautiful animal, but the poor thing is locked in a tiny pen. They keep talking about greatly expanding the zoo, which would allow them to put the big cats in more appropriately-sized enclosures. But, anyway, if you ever come here check out the lynx at the zoo.
Music Update: Check out KBON in Eunice, Louisiana, for some down-home Louisiana music ranging fron zydeco to two-step to swamp pop. This is a "people's" station that plays stuff the locals actually enjoy, so they throw in the occasional mainstream hit. This station is so cool that the DJs sometimes speak in Cajun French. Then there's an "aficionado's" station out of New Orleans called WWOZ that plays mostly jazz and blues. It's run by the New Orleans Tourist Board and is extremely professional. The blues shows rock, and the jazz shows play New Orleans jazz, not that "hard bop" stuff or whatever it is that jazz bores get off on so much. Both stations are highly recommended.
Just to piss off France, why don't American schools change their curriculum and teach Cajun French instead of Parisian French? That'd be great. Instead of "Voilà Monsieur Thibaut. Monsieur Thibaut habite la place d'Italie. Monsieur Thibaut aime beaucoup les allemands. Monsieur Thibaut n'aime pas les juifs. Le pére de Monsieur Thibaut était collaborateur. Sa mére et ses soeurs aussi, mais à la horizontale", we could learn to say, "Get away from my woman before I stab you with this broken-off whiskey bottle neck" or "Waitress, bring us three more pitchers of beer and some more crawfish and jambalaya" or "Let's get drunk and go gator huntin'." Much more patriotic, I think.
Just to piss off France, why don't American schools change their curriculum and teach Cajun French instead of Parisian French? That'd be great. Instead of "Voilà Monsieur Thibaut. Monsieur Thibaut habite la place d'Italie. Monsieur Thibaut aime beaucoup les allemands. Monsieur Thibaut n'aime pas les juifs. Le pére de Monsieur Thibaut était collaborateur. Sa mére et ses soeurs aussi, mais à la horizontale", we could learn to say, "Get away from my woman before I stab you with this broken-off whiskey bottle neck" or "Waitress, bring us three more pitchers of beer and some more crawfish and jambalaya" or "Let's get drunk and go gator huntin'." Much more patriotic, I think.
Tuesday, February 11, 2003
Baltasar Porcel is on a roll! He's been to New York, or maybe he's still there. All New York readers, hunt him down and slap him silly. Anyway, he's been writing about his impressions. I've excerpted his columns from Saturday, Monday, and today.
...I must return to New York, where in the United Nations the face of the world is being decided...This does not interest the United States or Bush, a man educated by and a politician paid for by Texan oil, which wants to control the Iraqi deposits, second in the world in production. And with another plan hiding behind that: the oil won't last, while the water of the great rivers that cross Iraq is eternal and even more necessary so the Middle East can develop: whoever controls it rules.
I've spoken with two personalities who do not count among those who will decide the war, but do among those who are consulted about its probability. And they think we are facing an unavoidable warlike resolution if Saddam doesn't surrender or go, which he won't do. And they explain something mediatically key: CNN, specialized in sensationalism, is suffering a serious economic crisis which can only be palliated by war, which it has been preaching for more than a year...
Porcel then tells us he doesn't like New York except for its skyscrapers, that he ate badly as usual except in an Italian restaurant full of Mafiosos, that he went to Chinatown...
...among thousands of Chinese families, without any mixed couples visible. It's not in vain that Chinatown, which goes back to 1870, is the most numerous nucleus of this race outside China. How many people are there, and how many are illegal, in these shacks, basements, shops, multiplied in the dirty alleyways, that often inside are revealed as elaborate, mysterious, and wealthy mansions. Besides, one can buy quality fish, fruit, meat, vegetables, at reasonable prices; it's the only New York market not controlled by the Mafia, or that's run by the Chinese Mafia: the real sovereignty of Chinatown is greater than that of the Catalan statutory autonomy.
I also approach, in Williamsburg, the orthodox Jewish neighborhood, another hermetic and endogamic microcosmos with a rigid exterior. But its antennas are open to the entire world: does it constitute the greatest existent concentration of economic power per square meter? New York is, besides startling for visitors, the capital of Jewish power. Saddam Hussein will have a bad time.
...in the great bookstores of New York or in the airport there are the same books, though in different quantities. And with a particularity: they've all been written by American authors, whether a historical study, a tourist guide, or a fish-factory manual. Translations are only seen in the literary section: Isabel Allende, Proust, you can conut them on the fingers of one hand. The European bookstore, full of translations from many languages, one of the most absorbing spaces that exist, is impossible here: the country lives enclosed and euphorized within itself. It's not strange, then, that Bush, when he acceded to the presidency, had not traveled nor owned a passport, that mass blind psychoses happen, and that its foreign policy is as arrogant as it is ignorant.
Comments: 1) I don't know what bookstores Baltasar went to. Good ones do exist. Even in New York. 2) Mass blind psychoses? Is this, like, say, when Americans all got mad because three thousand of us got murdered at once? 3) He certainly has a vibrant imagination. 4) It's not the oil, it's the water! You heard it from Baltasar first. 5) The war is a CNN plot. You heard it from Baltasar's informants first. 6) The Orthodox Jews who live in Williamsburg are mysteriously wealthy and powerful...hey, Baltasar, you failed to footnote the Protocols of the Elders of Zion for that one. You're busted for plagiarism.
...I must return to New York, where in the United Nations the face of the world is being decided...This does not interest the United States or Bush, a man educated by and a politician paid for by Texan oil, which wants to control the Iraqi deposits, second in the world in production. And with another plan hiding behind that: the oil won't last, while the water of the great rivers that cross Iraq is eternal and even more necessary so the Middle East can develop: whoever controls it rules.
I've spoken with two personalities who do not count among those who will decide the war, but do among those who are consulted about its probability. And they think we are facing an unavoidable warlike resolution if Saddam doesn't surrender or go, which he won't do. And they explain something mediatically key: CNN, specialized in sensationalism, is suffering a serious economic crisis which can only be palliated by war, which it has been preaching for more than a year...
Porcel then tells us he doesn't like New York except for its skyscrapers, that he ate badly as usual except in an Italian restaurant full of Mafiosos, that he went to Chinatown...
...among thousands of Chinese families, without any mixed couples visible. It's not in vain that Chinatown, which goes back to 1870, is the most numerous nucleus of this race outside China. How many people are there, and how many are illegal, in these shacks, basements, shops, multiplied in the dirty alleyways, that often inside are revealed as elaborate, mysterious, and wealthy mansions. Besides, one can buy quality fish, fruit, meat, vegetables, at reasonable prices; it's the only New York market not controlled by the Mafia, or that's run by the Chinese Mafia: the real sovereignty of Chinatown is greater than that of the Catalan statutory autonomy.
I also approach, in Williamsburg, the orthodox Jewish neighborhood, another hermetic and endogamic microcosmos with a rigid exterior. But its antennas are open to the entire world: does it constitute the greatest existent concentration of economic power per square meter? New York is, besides startling for visitors, the capital of Jewish power. Saddam Hussein will have a bad time.
...in the great bookstores of New York or in the airport there are the same books, though in different quantities. And with a particularity: they've all been written by American authors, whether a historical study, a tourist guide, or a fish-factory manual. Translations are only seen in the literary section: Isabel Allende, Proust, you can conut them on the fingers of one hand. The European bookstore, full of translations from many languages, one of the most absorbing spaces that exist, is impossible here: the country lives enclosed and euphorized within itself. It's not strange, then, that Bush, when he acceded to the presidency, had not traveled nor owned a passport, that mass blind psychoses happen, and that its foreign policy is as arrogant as it is ignorant.
Comments: 1) I don't know what bookstores Baltasar went to. Good ones do exist. Even in New York. 2) Mass blind psychoses? Is this, like, say, when Americans all got mad because three thousand of us got murdered at once? 3) He certainly has a vibrant imagination. 4) It's not the oil, it's the water! You heard it from Baltasar first. 5) The war is a CNN plot. You heard it from Baltasar's informants first. 6) The Orthodox Jews who live in Williamsburg are mysteriously wealthy and powerful...hey, Baltasar, you failed to footnote the Protocols of the Elders of Zion for that one. You're busted for plagiarism.
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