Cultural note: Barcelona is quite a civilized place to live. It has a brand-new "National" Theater and 34 other stages for plays. Stuff that you might have heard of that's currently on includes "The Vagina Monologues" (hey, I didn't say it was all good or anything), "La Casa de Bernarda Alba" (there's always a Lorca revival on), "Sexual Perversity in Chicago" (there's almost always a David Mamet on, too), "Excess" by Neil La Bute, and "Arsenic and Old Lace". There are two bits of existential pretentiousness on, one by Bergman and the other by Camus. There are two local comic "showmen" on, Ángel Pavlovsky and idiotarian Pepe Rubianes, the internationally-known mime group El Tricicle, four musicals (two local originals) that I've never heard of before, and two plays by local dramatists (J.M. Segarra and J.M. Benet i Jornet, both of whom are also pretentious as all hell, but hey, at least they're producing local drama in big theaters and people go to see it). Local favorite actors Joan Pera and Paco Morán, who are very funny and who always have a crowd-pleaser--these guys' shows, Neil Simon-like comedies, run for months and sell out on the weekends--have another one out. Part of their schtick is they adapt these foreign plays so that the characters and their actions fit in with Catalan and Spanish daily life and popular culture--Oscar is a Barça fan, of course, in their version of "The Odd Couple". Also, fitting in with bilingual real life here in Barcelona, Pera (the straight man) speaks Catalan on stage and Morán (the clown) speaks Spanish. It's a masterful formula. Everybody's happy linguistically and can sit back and enjoy the show.
I am not much of a fan of classical music and don't claim to understand it, but if you like that sort of thing, Barcelona has a first-class opera house, the recently rebuilt and expanded Liceu, and two major concert halls, the much-criticized new Auditori and the Art Nouveau Palau de la Música Catalana, inside a spectacular Domenech and Montaner building. If you're a music fan you'll want to make a concert at the Palau part of your agenda while here. There's something on almost every night and prices are quite cheap. You don't have to dress up though, like, leather shoes, slacks, and a shirt with a collar might be nice.
There's a major trend that I've noticed here. All kinds of Eastern European orchestras are touring Western Europe playing popular favorites. They are advertised on billboards and with stick-up posters around the city. Coming to Barcelona soon are the Bielorussian Chamber Orchestra doing Handel's "Water Music" and Vivaldi's "Four Seasons", the Bulgarian State Opera Orchestra and Chorus doing chorales by Verdi and Bizet and "Carmina Burana", the Minsk Symphony doing De Falla's "Aranjuez", Rachmaninoff's Second concert for piano, "Swan Lake", and "Scheheradze", and the Russian National Orchestra and Chorus doing Bach's "Passion of Saint Matthew", Beethoven's Ninth, and Schubert's Unfinished. They must be making money doing this, giving the people what they want, and they must not have been making too much dough back home because if they had been, they'd be there, not here.
The Communists produced too many classically-trained musicians, more than their internal market could support, and not enough pop and rock and gadinga-dinga music. This is a beautiful example of the laws of supply and demand--there's not enough demand and too much supply of classical music in Eastern Europe since Communists disdained pop music and trained musicians only in classical styles, underemployed Eastern classical musicians see there's money in the West but not much demand, they create a demand by advertising they're going to play pieces that ordinary Joes like me have actually heard before, and they carry around prestigious-sounding names to reassure the casual concert-goer that he's seeing a real quality performance.
Meanwhile, I'll bet five bucks that Western pop groups are raking it in in Eastern Europe due to the lack of tradition of commercial pop over there. I know there are a lot of American groups playing American music--country, blues, gospel, rockabilly--who tour around Western Europe calling themselves authentic Americans with real roots and soul. There are a lot of Europeans interested in those kinds of music, but not enough of them to make that stuff part of the mainstream over here--but enough to pack a club. What these Americans are is competent bar bands who'd make a decent living back home but get treated as if they were, like, the real thing over here. Often, if it's a smaller band playing in a small club, only the frontman will be American and his sidekicks will be locals.
Monday, January 27, 2003
Sunday, January 26, 2003
In the Sunday section of today's Vanguardia, there's an article titled "A State Crime?". It's a full-page story, and the hook is that one William Pepper has published another book, this one called "An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King". William Pepper is a notorious conspiracy fruitcake whose crowning achievement was, in 1999, to persuade a mentally borderline Memphis jury to decide, in a civil case, that one Lloyd Jowers had been behind the King conspiracy. The award was $100.
The best book on the King assassination is Gerald Posner's Killing the Dream, which concludes that James Earl Ray did the murder, possibly with the help in the planning and the getaway of at least one of his brothers. It cannot be excluded that there was a low-level conspiracy, as it was a well-known rumor in America's prisons that there was a reward out, to be paid by some racist businessmen, for King's head. There's an outside chance that rumor might have been true.
I googled "william pepper king conspiracy" and found these five articles from fairly respectable sources, all of which condemn Pepper as a fraud, a nut, or both: The Washington Post (by Gerald Posner, a must-read), Court TV, CNN/Time, Slate, and the Boston Globe (another must-read, by Christopher Hitchens).
Here's the article, in italics, of course.
Maybe it was because of the glacial cold that froze the large neogothic tower of the Riverside church in Harlem last Thursday, but an audience of thirty people didn't seem like much to listen to the lawyer and former collaborator with Martin Luther King, William Pepper, at the release of his new book, "An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King". The work is the fruit of an investigation which has stretched on for more than ten years, in which Pepper has brought to life a series of evidence that prove that King was the victim of a plot coordinated by various American intelligence services, with the collaboration of the Army, the Memphis police, and the local Mafia.
"The media in the United States doesn't want to listen, this book will never come out in the newspapers," assured Pepper. And, in fact, despite the unending homages to the black leader rendered these days because of Martin Luther King Day, only the weekly Village Voice has published an article about the book. The New York Times asked Pepper for an op-ed, but they pulled out at the last moment.
Although Pepper's exhaustive investigation seems made for Hollywood, after the success of Oliver Stone's JFK, not even television has shown any interest. White but committed, Pepper worked with King during the year prior to his assassination on April 4, 1968. "They were times," Pepper recalls, "in which the reverend and civil rights activist became radicalized, strengthened his opposition to the Vietnam War, and widened his accusations to include "economic racism".
Just a year before falling, hit by a sniper's bullet on the balcony of a Memphis hotel, King had made a speech in the selfsame Riverside church in New york, and the rebellion of the Afro-Americans spread throughout the country and combined with the campaign against the war. "After that speech in this church," Pepper explains, "a hundred cities were under siege and the country in flames. They were very frightened in Washington, and King had to be eliminated."
This lawyer's arguments do not have much to do with the movies. Pepper is Professor of Law at Oxford University (???--not the one in England) and has been accumulating abundant evidence since he began representing James Earl Ray, the small-time crook who was accused of the death of King because of alleged racist motives and who remained in jail until his death in 1998.
"Ray was a docile, passive person who was no more racist than any working-class guy," explains the researcher. "He told me that he said he was guilty because they'd warned him that if he didn't confess, he'd fry in the electric chair." In any case, as soon as Ray entered jail, he asked for another trial. "Ray," says Pepper, "was set up in an operation planned together by the Army's military intelligence staff and a group of arms traffickers linked to the Mafia."
For this chronicler of the life and death of King, it is proven that the intelligence services considered that it was an absolute priority to subvert the civil rights movement, so they even infiltrated its ranks. The King operation was carried out by the Army, "because it had more blacks than the CIA and so it would have to take care of the protests."
"The role of the Army and other governmental agencies that collaborated in the murder of Dr. King," writes Pepper in his book, "has been one of the most sinister secrets of our country." According to his version, that afternoon of April 4, 1968, a team of Green Beret snipers just arrived from Vietnam had traveled to Memphis with one order: to assassinate Martin luther King and another black leader, the reverend Andrew Young.
Two of them, who now, after changing identities, live in Costa Rica and are Pepper's direct sources, were posted on the roof of a building nest to the Lorraine Motel, where King was staying the day before leading a demonstration of sanitation workers, principally blacks, as part of his campaign against economic racism.
Forced to change the room he had been given on the first floor for 306, on the third floor and much more exposed. King leaned over the balcony and was hit by a bullet that entered his jaw, went through his neck, and lodged in his shoulder. He was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.
Nevertheless, it wasn't the military intelligence agents who had fired, says Pepper. When he was aiming at Young, the military sniper, Pepper's source, heard another shot. It had been fired, Pepper assures, by Earl Clark, a Memphis policeman who was hiding with one of the members of the gang of arms traffickers among the weeds of a nearby vacant lot. Clark, according to the investigator, was following orders from the Mafia padrino of Memphis Frank Liberto and his superior in the New Orleans Mafia, Carlos Marcello, involved in illegal arms trafficking to Latin America.
After King's assassination, the protest movement in which the campaign against the Vietnam War and the struggle for Afro-American civil rights entered into decline. A year before, Malcolm X--another irreplaceable leader--fell victim to another bullet. "Do you think the government killed Malcolm, too?" asked a middle-aged black woman in the Riverside church. "In the case of Martin Luther King I know for sure," Pepper affirmed; "with Malcolm X it would be a speculation, but yes, I believe the government killed him too."
Many of those present, survivors of the struggles back then, let it be known that they think the same thing. "The groups of special operations went to the demonstrations with photos of thise who the authorities considered to be dangerous, with orders to select them as targets in case a riot broke out," said Pepper.
What was said that day in Harlem should have been a front-page news story, if not in the United States, in the rest of the world. But it was too cold for the journalists to go to the Riverside church.
You see what we're up against over here? This article can kindly be understood as the ravings of a paranoiac schizophrenic or unkindly considered as the cynical lies of a charlatan, depending on what you believe William Pepper is. What it's not, though, is anything that anybody with the slightest common sense could believe. It is out-and-out bullshit. Bullcrap. And bullfuck. Yet it is published in La Vanguardia, the conservative leading newspaper--200,000 or so daily circulation--in Spain's second-largest city, as if it were fact. They didn't bother looking up William Pepper, that's for sure, so they're guilty of gross journalistic negligence at the very least. Of course, if they did look up Dr. Pepper, as he likes to be called, and discovered what a nut everybody respectable says he is, then they're guilty of bad faith. I suspect the latter, though the former can't be ruled out. Probably some combination of the two.
But if you're an average intelligent educated Spanish Joe who believes what he reads in the paper and sees on the TV news about the US, you see this crap and you believe it. Perfectly reasonably, they say, "Hey, that's what I read in the newspaper, so I believe it's true." No wonder they all think America is Satanic, if this is what the conservative press stakes its journalistic respectability to print. Imagine what the leftist press is like.
I did look up the Village Voice piece. It's mildly skeptical, not nearly enough. It does mention that Dr. Pepper's next mission is to go to Venezuela and preside a "fact-finding commission"--at Hugo Chávez's personal request.
The best book on the King assassination is Gerald Posner's Killing the Dream, which concludes that James Earl Ray did the murder, possibly with the help in the planning and the getaway of at least one of his brothers. It cannot be excluded that there was a low-level conspiracy, as it was a well-known rumor in America's prisons that there was a reward out, to be paid by some racist businessmen, for King's head. There's an outside chance that rumor might have been true.
I googled "william pepper king conspiracy" and found these five articles from fairly respectable sources, all of which condemn Pepper as a fraud, a nut, or both: The Washington Post (by Gerald Posner, a must-read), Court TV, CNN/Time, Slate, and the Boston Globe (another must-read, by Christopher Hitchens).
Here's the article, in italics, of course.
Maybe it was because of the glacial cold that froze the large neogothic tower of the Riverside church in Harlem last Thursday, but an audience of thirty people didn't seem like much to listen to the lawyer and former collaborator with Martin Luther King, William Pepper, at the release of his new book, "An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King". The work is the fruit of an investigation which has stretched on for more than ten years, in which Pepper has brought to life a series of evidence that prove that King was the victim of a plot coordinated by various American intelligence services, with the collaboration of the Army, the Memphis police, and the local Mafia.
"The media in the United States doesn't want to listen, this book will never come out in the newspapers," assured Pepper. And, in fact, despite the unending homages to the black leader rendered these days because of Martin Luther King Day, only the weekly Village Voice has published an article about the book. The New York Times asked Pepper for an op-ed, but they pulled out at the last moment.
Although Pepper's exhaustive investigation seems made for Hollywood, after the success of Oliver Stone's JFK, not even television has shown any interest. White but committed, Pepper worked with King during the year prior to his assassination on April 4, 1968. "They were times," Pepper recalls, "in which the reverend and civil rights activist became radicalized, strengthened his opposition to the Vietnam War, and widened his accusations to include "economic racism".
Just a year before falling, hit by a sniper's bullet on the balcony of a Memphis hotel, King had made a speech in the selfsame Riverside church in New york, and the rebellion of the Afro-Americans spread throughout the country and combined with the campaign against the war. "After that speech in this church," Pepper explains, "a hundred cities were under siege and the country in flames. They were very frightened in Washington, and King had to be eliminated."
This lawyer's arguments do not have much to do with the movies. Pepper is Professor of Law at Oxford University (???--not the one in England) and has been accumulating abundant evidence since he began representing James Earl Ray, the small-time crook who was accused of the death of King because of alleged racist motives and who remained in jail until his death in 1998.
"Ray was a docile, passive person who was no more racist than any working-class guy," explains the researcher. "He told me that he said he was guilty because they'd warned him that if he didn't confess, he'd fry in the electric chair." In any case, as soon as Ray entered jail, he asked for another trial. "Ray," says Pepper, "was set up in an operation planned together by the Army's military intelligence staff and a group of arms traffickers linked to the Mafia."
For this chronicler of the life and death of King, it is proven that the intelligence services considered that it was an absolute priority to subvert the civil rights movement, so they even infiltrated its ranks. The King operation was carried out by the Army, "because it had more blacks than the CIA and so it would have to take care of the protests."
"The role of the Army and other governmental agencies that collaborated in the murder of Dr. King," writes Pepper in his book, "has been one of the most sinister secrets of our country." According to his version, that afternoon of April 4, 1968, a team of Green Beret snipers just arrived from Vietnam had traveled to Memphis with one order: to assassinate Martin luther King and another black leader, the reverend Andrew Young.
Two of them, who now, after changing identities, live in Costa Rica and are Pepper's direct sources, were posted on the roof of a building nest to the Lorraine Motel, where King was staying the day before leading a demonstration of sanitation workers, principally blacks, as part of his campaign against economic racism.
Forced to change the room he had been given on the first floor for 306, on the third floor and much more exposed. King leaned over the balcony and was hit by a bullet that entered his jaw, went through his neck, and lodged in his shoulder. He was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.
Nevertheless, it wasn't the military intelligence agents who had fired, says Pepper. When he was aiming at Young, the military sniper, Pepper's source, heard another shot. It had been fired, Pepper assures, by Earl Clark, a Memphis policeman who was hiding with one of the members of the gang of arms traffickers among the weeds of a nearby vacant lot. Clark, according to the investigator, was following orders from the Mafia padrino of Memphis Frank Liberto and his superior in the New Orleans Mafia, Carlos Marcello, involved in illegal arms trafficking to Latin America.
After King's assassination, the protest movement in which the campaign against the Vietnam War and the struggle for Afro-American civil rights entered into decline. A year before, Malcolm X--another irreplaceable leader--fell victim to another bullet. "Do you think the government killed Malcolm, too?" asked a middle-aged black woman in the Riverside church. "In the case of Martin Luther King I know for sure," Pepper affirmed; "with Malcolm X it would be a speculation, but yes, I believe the government killed him too."
Many of those present, survivors of the struggles back then, let it be known that they think the same thing. "The groups of special operations went to the demonstrations with photos of thise who the authorities considered to be dangerous, with orders to select them as targets in case a riot broke out," said Pepper.
What was said that day in Harlem should have been a front-page news story, if not in the United States, in the rest of the world. But it was too cold for the journalists to go to the Riverside church.
You see what we're up against over here? This article can kindly be understood as the ravings of a paranoiac schizophrenic or unkindly considered as the cynical lies of a charlatan, depending on what you believe William Pepper is. What it's not, though, is anything that anybody with the slightest common sense could believe. It is out-and-out bullshit. Bullcrap. And bullfuck. Yet it is published in La Vanguardia, the conservative leading newspaper--200,000 or so daily circulation--in Spain's second-largest city, as if it were fact. They didn't bother looking up William Pepper, that's for sure, so they're guilty of gross journalistic negligence at the very least. Of course, if they did look up Dr. Pepper, as he likes to be called, and discovered what a nut everybody respectable says he is, then they're guilty of bad faith. I suspect the latter, though the former can't be ruled out. Probably some combination of the two.
But if you're an average intelligent educated Spanish Joe who believes what he reads in the paper and sees on the TV news about the US, you see this crap and you believe it. Perfectly reasonably, they say, "Hey, that's what I read in the newspaper, so I believe it's true." No wonder they all think America is Satanic, if this is what the conservative press stakes its journalistic respectability to print. Imagine what the leftist press is like.
I did look up the Village Voice piece. It's mildly skeptical, not nearly enough. It does mention that Dr. Pepper's next mission is to go to Venezuela and preside a "fact-finding commission"--at Hugo Chávez's personal request.
It's an incredible day in La Vanguardia. I'm going to be here translating and typing all afternoon (hey, people, if you need an English-Spanish / Spanish-English translator with lots of experience, just e-mail me at crankyyanqui@yahoo.com). Why? Because the only weapons we have against the idiotarians are logic, reason, facts, and ridicule in our war for the hearts and souls. Translating this vile steaming putrid suppurating filth (remember that disgusting room that Luke and Han Solo and Chewbacca get stuck in in Star Wars? Even more maggot-infested than that) gives us an ability to use those weapons against idiotarianism.
I've wondered whether what I've been doing here is mere "preaching to the choir", since I've been asked about it. I've decided that no, what I write is not going to convince too many people who have already decided that I'm wrong. However, it might convince some people who are right now sitting on the fence, not sure of what to think. It might also reinforce the opinions of those people who are predisposed to sympathize with my libertarian free-market hawkish perspective. So, since I'm not convincing a lot of Socialists and anti-Americans, am I wasting my time? I don't think so. It's not a waste of time at all to either provide more ammunition to your side or to try to bring over people who might not have made up their mind yet.
Now, what I need to try to do better is to focus my posts. I want some of them to give support to other people who share my ideas, and perhaps influence my allies on smaller points within the general framework of a democratic capitalist system (e.g. we may both be free-market on economics but you might believe in, say, exclusively private health care, while I would defend a mixed private-public system). But I want other posts to try to convince middle-of-the-roaders to come over to democratic capitalism, to vote for candidates and parties that support a democratic capitalist system. One thing I'm going to do in those posts is to cut down the ridicule and sneering (and bad language) that I so gleefully fill this blog with. Middle-of-the-roaders are people who aren't sure what they think, who can't choose between two or three or four options, and who are looking for someone to persuade them and win them over. Being straight-up, treating your opponents with respect, and trying to see the merit in opposing points of view while being firm in your own basic convictions is what will persuade the undecided of your decency and reliability.
Now we'll see whether I can actually do that. To paraphrase St. Augustine, "Give me good taste, credibility, and dignity--but not yet!"
Anyway, Cinderella Bloggerfeller has a post on today's Bartasar Porcel eruption. Someone also provided a rather free translation of Porcel's column at the Axis of Porcel HQ. Our translation here is somewhat more traditional yet less expressive. It's in italics. Wiseass comments by us which will only serve to annoy moderates and drive them away are not.
Models of War
The American secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, has insultingly nicknamed us "Old Europe". Well, he did it to France and Germany, which means the same thing. Because if it turns out that Spain, because Aznar blindly follows Bush's war drums, is the New Europe, we're ready: we're Luis de Galinsoga's (a Francoist writer) "sentinels of the West" again! Rumsfeld adds that the new center of European gravity has moved to the east. Where? Russia, Chechenia, the former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, places they barely know the location of? I don't think Bush is ignorant, as they say; I think his whole team is. Besides, so inefficient in preparing war--these months of rummaging around bellowing at thousands of soldiers have exasperated the Americans themselves--or in hunting Bin Ladin like Aznar has done and is doing with the chapapote (Galician oil spill).
Comments: a) the last sentence is out-and-out incomplete, with no subject or predicate, and can't be justified as a case of intentional rule-breaking for stylistic purposes. It's a case of Porcel's not even bothering to go over the three or four paragraphs of rant that he sents in to the Vangua every day. b) Porcel knows less about preparing war than my cat Oscar. c) Note the standard canard that Americans know less about geography than the cultured Europeans. My response when confronted with someone who tries this one--"Americans don't know where Barcelona is"--is always, "Oh, I managed to get here just fine. You just fly from New York to MADRID--that's BARAJAS Airport, near Madrid, which is the CAPITAL of SPAIN. Barajas, near Madrid, is a BIG airport to which LOTS of flights come from New York. Then you change to a SMALLER plane to fly on to Barcelona." If they persist I say, "Look, give me one really good reason why someone in Kansas needs to know where Barcelona is. It's not like he cares or anything." Fisticuffs are normally threatened at this point. d) Note that Porcel proudly includes himself among the "Old Europeans" without any invitation at all to do so. e) Note Porcel's obvious bad faith; he knows perfectly well that Rumsfeld and Fleischer were talking about NATO allies Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and, yes, Bulgaria, rather than Russia and Chechenia and Serbia, as the "New Europe". Were I from a Western European country, I would not shoot off my mouth regarding what happened in the former Yugoslavia.
Saddam is a brutal dictator who is only good at oppressing the people and submitting it to hunger, but Bush wants to overthrow him, we don't know exactly why, unless it's to give it to other masters, like for instance his allies the Saudi rulers, one of the major embarrassments on the planet and who whip up the fundamentalism that blew up the Twin Towers more than Saddam himself. And all because of the chapapote! Why doesn't Bush go to Galicia and get what's there, which has even been blessed by Fraga (the conservative prime minister of Galicia, rather a Strom Thurmond figure). It's shocking that international politics have reached such low quality.
Comments: a) Nice "yes, but". b) More bad faith or just stupidity: Iraq will not be turned over to the Saudis. That is just not on anyone's agenda. c) The Galicia oil spill, of course, had nothing to do with American international policy. Porcel is blatantly trying to swing both disparate clubs the Spanish anti-Americans and anti-Aznarites are trying to bash Aznar on: the oil spill and the upcoming Iraq war, which are entirely unconnected.
But we should be specific: the minister in Washington labels us old-fashioned because we don't believe in war or in war without reasons. That is, Germany, with three horrible wars in a century, the biggest that humanity has seen, and France, unleashing them too or suffering from them, while the peace of the EU has broght us an unimaginable tranquility and prosperity, should embrace weapons because (America says so), with blind enthusiasm. Donald Rumsfeld: we must remember that name and, if we see him on one side of the street, cross over to the other side. Russia, massacring the Chechens yesterday and today, and with its gulags behind it, has become the model: uf!
Comments: a) Russia is not the model for anything. It's Poland, the Czechs, and Hungary who are the model. This was explicitly stated. Porcel's bit of bad faith and / or ignorance is repeated, making it clear that the first time wasn't a mistake. b) Mr. Porcel, you and the rest of the European Left did damn little to dump the gulags on the trashpile of history. c) The contempt for Rumsfeld is rather pathetic, since it's fairly obvious who the better man is when we compare Rumsfeld and Porcel himself, and anyone who's been writing a newspaper column which opines on international issues for like about the last fifteen years ought to know who Donald Rumsfeld is already. d) Europe has enjoyed peace since 1945 because of NATO and the American nuclear umbrella, not because of anything the European Union ever did. Since Mr. Porcel is so eager to consider himself alluded to by the phrase "the Old Europe", he might remember Old Europe's admirable skill and dexterity in handling the Yugoslavian debacle. Old Europe neither can nor will fight and so it tries to make a virtue out of this.
It's true that the United States was basic and decisive in freeing western Europe from Naziism and we must be thankful. But this constant desire to go to war, whether with the Rifle Association which has the country under siege, with General Custer and company eliminating the Indians, with the ferocious internal racism, with the exporting of films with demential violence, or with its protection for the dictatorships of the south, it is not at all convincing, no.
Comments: a) Note the SECOND "Yes, but" of this article. b) It's obvious that Porcel's concept of the US comes almost completely from the movies, not from any sort of research into or reading about the subject. c) Boy, a good Porcelazo doesn't come along too often, but when we get one, it's a good one.
I've wondered whether what I've been doing here is mere "preaching to the choir", since I've been asked about it. I've decided that no, what I write is not going to convince too many people who have already decided that I'm wrong. However, it might convince some people who are right now sitting on the fence, not sure of what to think. It might also reinforce the opinions of those people who are predisposed to sympathize with my libertarian free-market hawkish perspective. So, since I'm not convincing a lot of Socialists and anti-Americans, am I wasting my time? I don't think so. It's not a waste of time at all to either provide more ammunition to your side or to try to bring over people who might not have made up their mind yet.
Now, what I need to try to do better is to focus my posts. I want some of them to give support to other people who share my ideas, and perhaps influence my allies on smaller points within the general framework of a democratic capitalist system (e.g. we may both be free-market on economics but you might believe in, say, exclusively private health care, while I would defend a mixed private-public system). But I want other posts to try to convince middle-of-the-roaders to come over to democratic capitalism, to vote for candidates and parties that support a democratic capitalist system. One thing I'm going to do in those posts is to cut down the ridicule and sneering (and bad language) that I so gleefully fill this blog with. Middle-of-the-roaders are people who aren't sure what they think, who can't choose between two or three or four options, and who are looking for someone to persuade them and win them over. Being straight-up, treating your opponents with respect, and trying to see the merit in opposing points of view while being firm in your own basic convictions is what will persuade the undecided of your decency and reliability.
Now we'll see whether I can actually do that. To paraphrase St. Augustine, "Give me good taste, credibility, and dignity--but not yet!"
Anyway, Cinderella Bloggerfeller has a post on today's Bartasar Porcel eruption. Someone also provided a rather free translation of Porcel's column at the Axis of Porcel HQ. Our translation here is somewhat more traditional yet less expressive. It's in italics. Wiseass comments by us which will only serve to annoy moderates and drive them away are not.
Models of War
The American secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, has insultingly nicknamed us "Old Europe". Well, he did it to France and Germany, which means the same thing. Because if it turns out that Spain, because Aznar blindly follows Bush's war drums, is the New Europe, we're ready: we're Luis de Galinsoga's (a Francoist writer) "sentinels of the West" again! Rumsfeld adds that the new center of European gravity has moved to the east. Where? Russia, Chechenia, the former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, places they barely know the location of? I don't think Bush is ignorant, as they say; I think his whole team is. Besides, so inefficient in preparing war--these months of rummaging around bellowing at thousands of soldiers have exasperated the Americans themselves--or in hunting Bin Ladin like Aznar has done and is doing with the chapapote (Galician oil spill).
Comments: a) the last sentence is out-and-out incomplete, with no subject or predicate, and can't be justified as a case of intentional rule-breaking for stylistic purposes. It's a case of Porcel's not even bothering to go over the three or four paragraphs of rant that he sents in to the Vangua every day. b) Porcel knows less about preparing war than my cat Oscar. c) Note the standard canard that Americans know less about geography than the cultured Europeans. My response when confronted with someone who tries this one--"Americans don't know where Barcelona is"--is always, "Oh, I managed to get here just fine. You just fly from New York to MADRID--that's BARAJAS Airport, near Madrid, which is the CAPITAL of SPAIN. Barajas, near Madrid, is a BIG airport to which LOTS of flights come from New York. Then you change to a SMALLER plane to fly on to Barcelona." If they persist I say, "Look, give me one really good reason why someone in Kansas needs to know where Barcelona is. It's not like he cares or anything." Fisticuffs are normally threatened at this point. d) Note that Porcel proudly includes himself among the "Old Europeans" without any invitation at all to do so. e) Note Porcel's obvious bad faith; he knows perfectly well that Rumsfeld and Fleischer were talking about NATO allies Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and, yes, Bulgaria, rather than Russia and Chechenia and Serbia, as the "New Europe". Were I from a Western European country, I would not shoot off my mouth regarding what happened in the former Yugoslavia.
Saddam is a brutal dictator who is only good at oppressing the people and submitting it to hunger, but Bush wants to overthrow him, we don't know exactly why, unless it's to give it to other masters, like for instance his allies the Saudi rulers, one of the major embarrassments on the planet and who whip up the fundamentalism that blew up the Twin Towers more than Saddam himself. And all because of the chapapote! Why doesn't Bush go to Galicia and get what's there, which has even been blessed by Fraga (the conservative prime minister of Galicia, rather a Strom Thurmond figure). It's shocking that international politics have reached such low quality.
Comments: a) Nice "yes, but". b) More bad faith or just stupidity: Iraq will not be turned over to the Saudis. That is just not on anyone's agenda. c) The Galicia oil spill, of course, had nothing to do with American international policy. Porcel is blatantly trying to swing both disparate clubs the Spanish anti-Americans and anti-Aznarites are trying to bash Aznar on: the oil spill and the upcoming Iraq war, which are entirely unconnected.
But we should be specific: the minister in Washington labels us old-fashioned because we don't believe in war or in war without reasons. That is, Germany, with three horrible wars in a century, the biggest that humanity has seen, and France, unleashing them too or suffering from them, while the peace of the EU has broght us an unimaginable tranquility and prosperity, should embrace weapons because (America says so), with blind enthusiasm. Donald Rumsfeld: we must remember that name and, if we see him on one side of the street, cross over to the other side. Russia, massacring the Chechens yesterday and today, and with its gulags behind it, has become the model: uf!
Comments: a) Russia is not the model for anything. It's Poland, the Czechs, and Hungary who are the model. This was explicitly stated. Porcel's bit of bad faith and / or ignorance is repeated, making it clear that the first time wasn't a mistake. b) Mr. Porcel, you and the rest of the European Left did damn little to dump the gulags on the trashpile of history. c) The contempt for Rumsfeld is rather pathetic, since it's fairly obvious who the better man is when we compare Rumsfeld and Porcel himself, and anyone who's been writing a newspaper column which opines on international issues for like about the last fifteen years ought to know who Donald Rumsfeld is already. d) Europe has enjoyed peace since 1945 because of NATO and the American nuclear umbrella, not because of anything the European Union ever did. Since Mr. Porcel is so eager to consider himself alluded to by the phrase "the Old Europe", he might remember Old Europe's admirable skill and dexterity in handling the Yugoslavian debacle. Old Europe neither can nor will fight and so it tries to make a virtue out of this.
It's true that the United States was basic and decisive in freeing western Europe from Naziism and we must be thankful. But this constant desire to go to war, whether with the Rifle Association which has the country under siege, with General Custer and company eliminating the Indians, with the ferocious internal racism, with the exporting of films with demential violence, or with its protection for the dictatorships of the south, it is not at all convincing, no.
Comments: a) Note the SECOND "Yes, but" of this article. b) It's obvious that Porcel's concept of the US comes almost completely from the movies, not from any sort of research into or reading about the subject. c) Boy, a good Porcelazo doesn't come along too often, but when we get one, it's a good one.
John Bono from No Replacement for Displacement has a hilarious takedown of the Rolling Stones' pretentious anti-global-warming concert.
Saturday, January 25, 2003
I just do not get this column from NRO. If I read it right, the author is saying that real pirates and buccaneers were horrible people, and it is incongruent that pirates have rather a rebellious, devil-may-care image today when in real life they were horribly frightening. So far so good. Then he tells us that he thought it was appropriate that the Patriots won the Super Bowl last year because of their name. OK, no prob. Then he says we should root against the Buccaneers because their name is so inappropriate, like calling a team the Rapists or the Robbers or the Murderers. I'm still with him, but the problem here is that the Buccaneers' rival is the Oakland Raiders. Uh, the Raiders use pirate imagery, too, and have been using it for more than forty years, while the Bucs have only existed since '77. In order to be consistent, we would have to root against both teams for glorifying pirates. I always root against the Raiders, no matter what--I could no more root for the Raiders, ever, even if they were playing the SS Amerikanisch Fussball Reichsformationgruppe team, than I could for the Cowboys, or the Yankees, or the Lakers--so I'm going to ignore the whole glorifying-pirates issue and root for Tampa Bay. Even though they have some insufferable loudmouths on their team and I like Rich Gannon and Jerry Rice.
Just a few jottings while wondering whether Shane McGowan ever got his teeth fixed...Sandra Bullock, in Madrid to flog a movie with Hugh Grant, said, "Why doesn't Bush take a vote so that the American people can give their opinion?" Uh, Sandy, we already did that. It's called an election. Hugh Grant kept his mouth shut, demonstrating that he really is smarter than most actors...The "parking garage" murderer is still on the loose after killing two women in twelve days in the same uptown Barcelona parking garage. The papers are really hinting that the cops are interested in the second victim's husband. In both cases the killer took the victim's credit card and tried to use it; he got 300 euros out of a bank machine after the first murder...A band calling itself the Misfits, with Jerry as the only original member left, Marky Ramone on drums, and Dez Cadena of Black Flag on guitar played here in Barcelona. They did about forty songs, including half a dozen Ramones covers. I'm sorry I missed it, though those guys are just as big dinosaurs now as the Floyds and Zeps and ELPs that they started out as a reaction to were then...Johann Mühlegg, the "Spanish" "winner" of two gold medals at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, has been hit with a two-year suspension for what they call "doping" over here. He got mad at the German Olympic committee and decided to change nationality, so he sold himself to the highest bidder, who turned out to be Spain--€72,000 per gold medal. Mühlegg won two gold medals in cross-country skiing. He then came in first in the main event, the 50-km race. He then failed a drug test. They stripped him of the medal for the 50-km race but allowed him to keep the other two. His suspension will run out before the next Olympics, so he's training away...Pau Gasol almost had a 20-20 game; he had 24 points and 17 rebounds against Sacramento. The FC Barcelona basketball squad's pride and joy, Slobovian (or some country called something like Slobovia) small forward Gregor Fucka, is having a disappointing season. We have nicknamed him, of course, "Mutha".
According to La Vanguardia, the State Department has announced that Americans living abroad should be prepared for a possible evacuation. I'm not too worried, but I am going to call up the consulate and let them know where we are just in case. You never know.
The Vanguardia's take on the current diplomatic turmoil is that the Americans and British are willing to wait a few more weeks for the UN inspectors to continue inspecting between now and the eventual attack on Iraq, which everybody seems to have decided sometime during the week is now inevitable. There's definitely a feeling in the Spanish media that the decision has been made and the war is on, that it's only a question of when. The purpose will be to do a little more convincing and arm-twisting on Congress and American public opinion while giving Germany and France another chance to get on board. Meanwhile, Spanish Foreign Minister Ana de Palacio met with Secretary of State Colin Powell yesterday in Washington and backed the American position in the press conference afterward. Madrid "is considering" a second Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq. That means Spain, with a seat on the Security Council (though no veto--we're not a permanent member, only on for two years) will vote yes should the Americans and/or British introduce such a measure. The Vangua mentions that the NYT reported that a White House source says that Bush talks with Aznar more often than with any other European leader. Good. Aznar deserves recognition for his gutsy stand with the US and UK and Australia and Canada against terrorism.
I suppose you've all heard that Donald Rumsfeld referred to Germany and France as "the old Europe" and Ari Fleischer emphasized that the US was by no means "going it alone", that we have the support of the UK, Australia, Spain, Italy, Poland, the Czech Republic, and several other Eastern European nations. Boy, did the Axis of Weasels ever get mad. Said elegant, sophisticated Roselyn Bachelot, the French minister of Ecology, "Merde." That was also the title of the lead editorial of Libération, the French Socialist newspaper. Jacques Derrida said "It is a shocking, scandalous, and typical statement. (Rumsfeld's) words do no more than underline the importance of European unity." Derrida, therefore, seems to wish that the US and Europe were enemies rather than friends. Jürgen Habermas said "Rumsfeld is responsible for a security doctrine that laughs at international law. The criticisms of his European friends trip over the American ideals of the 18th century." Romano Prodi said, "It's not age that makes Europeans oppose the war, but prudence. The Europeans are not old, they are wise." Jorge Semprún said, "We could turn the question around and say: the problem is Bush. While Europe tries to prevent an unjust and absurd war it will be, whether old or young, in the correct position." Le Figaro called Rumsfeld's words "an insult to Europe" and Le Monde said "Old Rumsfeld's words reveal the incapacity of America to tolerate an independent ally that will be called Europe." Régis Débray, who got himself thrown in jail back in the sixties for helping Che Guevara start a failed revolution in Bolivia and who probably should have been shot then, said, "The joint opposition of France and Germany against America and their rejection of war make me happy and fill me with hope...At last Europe has a dimension of foreign policy."
Huh. These Europeans are mighty sensitive. Who was it who said the Americans were simplistic or cowboys or warmongers or crudely imperialistic? Who called Israel a shitty little country? Whose newspapers are full of vicious anti-Americanism every day? Seems that they can dish out insults but can't handle the truth. The truth is this. Europe was the most important place in the world from about 1500 to 1945. In 1945, America and Russia took over as most important, but between 1945 and 1991, Europe was one of the most important places in the world in American eyes--remember we all thought that if war with the Russians came, it would be triggered by Soviet economic weakness and come in the form of a Soviet conventional invasion overrunning Germany? I remember thinking that until about 1988. We needed the Europeans then, not only for diplomatic support, but to fight.
What happened, though, is that when the Warsaw Pact collapsed everybody cut defense spending hugely. America did, too, and hawks repeatedly claimed that Clinton had been underfunding the military for eight years. But the Europeans, even the Brits, cut their defense spending so much that they didn't really have legitimate armed forces anymore. They left themselves dependent on the idea that there would be no more threats, that they could finally relax, that the threat of war that hung over the whole twentieth century (1914-1991) in Europe was finally finished. They also left themselves dependent on the United States for protection against outside threats, whether they realized what they were doing or not; no European country is now capable of fighting a real war alone. If you are a dependent, your status is different than that of a smaller equal.
Check out this metaphor. Imagine that you, a generally decent and fairly moral person, go to a tough high school where there are bullies who sometimes gang up against smaller, weaker people. You are a big, strong guy, and the bullies can't push you around. They don't even try. You worry, though, about all the bullies ganging up on you at once, and so you need friends. There are some other decent, moral fellows in the school who don't like the bullies, either, and so you all naturally gravitate toward one another and help one another out. If you have to fight one of the bullies, your friends watch your back. They may not be as big and strong as you are, but you need them, and you respect them. Now, you also have dependents. These are guys who can't take care of themselves, who aren't strong enough to fight the bullies. You, being a fairly decent guy, sometimes interfere if the bullies start picking on these guys. These dependents really hate you, because they hate themselves for being weak, and you always have to watch out for them. They are actually a danger to you, because they're untrustworthy and indecisive and are so insecure that they'll take unfair advantage to move up the pecking order and regain some self-respect. They can even be brought to side with the bullies against you if they think that it will help them regain status.
So, anyway, you finally cow all the bullies. Some of your friends remain your friends, ready to fight bullies, though their help isn't needed anymore. Others forget that they once needed to fight and sink to the level of dependents.
Europe is no longer one of the most important places in the world to the Americans, and hasn't been one for about twelve years. Britain, Spain, and Italy have been realistic; they've seen that it is both intelligent and right to be friendly with America even though they have lost importance in America's eyes. The Norwegians, Danes, and Dutch have similar attitudes. They don't like bullies and aren't going to stand for any bullying. Even though America doesn't need them, they're decent folks and will still watch America's back. Other countries like Sweden and Belgium have generally been more neutral, but have not usually fallen into unfriendliness. France and Germany, however, have ranged from pricklish neutrality to downright unpleasantness. They've become dependents. They've lost their moral strength so much that they either stupidly don't recognize or, worse, cravenly connive with, the small bullies who are still around trying to stir up whatever trouble they can.
The Vanguardia's take on the current diplomatic turmoil is that the Americans and British are willing to wait a few more weeks for the UN inspectors to continue inspecting between now and the eventual attack on Iraq, which everybody seems to have decided sometime during the week is now inevitable. There's definitely a feeling in the Spanish media that the decision has been made and the war is on, that it's only a question of when. The purpose will be to do a little more convincing and arm-twisting on Congress and American public opinion while giving Germany and France another chance to get on board. Meanwhile, Spanish Foreign Minister Ana de Palacio met with Secretary of State Colin Powell yesterday in Washington and backed the American position in the press conference afterward. Madrid "is considering" a second Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq. That means Spain, with a seat on the Security Council (though no veto--we're not a permanent member, only on for two years) will vote yes should the Americans and/or British introduce such a measure. The Vangua mentions that the NYT reported that a White House source says that Bush talks with Aznar more often than with any other European leader. Good. Aznar deserves recognition for his gutsy stand with the US and UK and Australia and Canada against terrorism.
I suppose you've all heard that Donald Rumsfeld referred to Germany and France as "the old Europe" and Ari Fleischer emphasized that the US was by no means "going it alone", that we have the support of the UK, Australia, Spain, Italy, Poland, the Czech Republic, and several other Eastern European nations. Boy, did the Axis of Weasels ever get mad. Said elegant, sophisticated Roselyn Bachelot, the French minister of Ecology, "Merde." That was also the title of the lead editorial of Libération, the French Socialist newspaper. Jacques Derrida said "It is a shocking, scandalous, and typical statement. (Rumsfeld's) words do no more than underline the importance of European unity." Derrida, therefore, seems to wish that the US and Europe were enemies rather than friends. Jürgen Habermas said "Rumsfeld is responsible for a security doctrine that laughs at international law. The criticisms of his European friends trip over the American ideals of the 18th century." Romano Prodi said, "It's not age that makes Europeans oppose the war, but prudence. The Europeans are not old, they are wise." Jorge Semprún said, "We could turn the question around and say: the problem is Bush. While Europe tries to prevent an unjust and absurd war it will be, whether old or young, in the correct position." Le Figaro called Rumsfeld's words "an insult to Europe" and Le Monde said "Old Rumsfeld's words reveal the incapacity of America to tolerate an independent ally that will be called Europe." Régis Débray, who got himself thrown in jail back in the sixties for helping Che Guevara start a failed revolution in Bolivia and who probably should have been shot then, said, "The joint opposition of France and Germany against America and their rejection of war make me happy and fill me with hope...At last Europe has a dimension of foreign policy."
Huh. These Europeans are mighty sensitive. Who was it who said the Americans were simplistic or cowboys or warmongers or crudely imperialistic? Who called Israel a shitty little country? Whose newspapers are full of vicious anti-Americanism every day? Seems that they can dish out insults but can't handle the truth. The truth is this. Europe was the most important place in the world from about 1500 to 1945. In 1945, America and Russia took over as most important, but between 1945 and 1991, Europe was one of the most important places in the world in American eyes--remember we all thought that if war with the Russians came, it would be triggered by Soviet economic weakness and come in the form of a Soviet conventional invasion overrunning Germany? I remember thinking that until about 1988. We needed the Europeans then, not only for diplomatic support, but to fight.
What happened, though, is that when the Warsaw Pact collapsed everybody cut defense spending hugely. America did, too, and hawks repeatedly claimed that Clinton had been underfunding the military for eight years. But the Europeans, even the Brits, cut their defense spending so much that they didn't really have legitimate armed forces anymore. They left themselves dependent on the idea that there would be no more threats, that they could finally relax, that the threat of war that hung over the whole twentieth century (1914-1991) in Europe was finally finished. They also left themselves dependent on the United States for protection against outside threats, whether they realized what they were doing or not; no European country is now capable of fighting a real war alone. If you are a dependent, your status is different than that of a smaller equal.
Check out this metaphor. Imagine that you, a generally decent and fairly moral person, go to a tough high school where there are bullies who sometimes gang up against smaller, weaker people. You are a big, strong guy, and the bullies can't push you around. They don't even try. You worry, though, about all the bullies ganging up on you at once, and so you need friends. There are some other decent, moral fellows in the school who don't like the bullies, either, and so you all naturally gravitate toward one another and help one another out. If you have to fight one of the bullies, your friends watch your back. They may not be as big and strong as you are, but you need them, and you respect them. Now, you also have dependents. These are guys who can't take care of themselves, who aren't strong enough to fight the bullies. You, being a fairly decent guy, sometimes interfere if the bullies start picking on these guys. These dependents really hate you, because they hate themselves for being weak, and you always have to watch out for them. They are actually a danger to you, because they're untrustworthy and indecisive and are so insecure that they'll take unfair advantage to move up the pecking order and regain some self-respect. They can even be brought to side with the bullies against you if they think that it will help them regain status.
So, anyway, you finally cow all the bullies. Some of your friends remain your friends, ready to fight bullies, though their help isn't needed anymore. Others forget that they once needed to fight and sink to the level of dependents.
Europe is no longer one of the most important places in the world to the Americans, and hasn't been one for about twelve years. Britain, Spain, and Italy have been realistic; they've seen that it is both intelligent and right to be friendly with America even though they have lost importance in America's eyes. The Norwegians, Danes, and Dutch have similar attitudes. They don't like bullies and aren't going to stand for any bullying. Even though America doesn't need them, they're decent folks and will still watch America's back. Other countries like Sweden and Belgium have generally been more neutral, but have not usually fallen into unfriendliness. France and Germany, however, have ranged from pricklish neutrality to downright unpleasantness. They've become dependents. They've lost their moral strength so much that they either stupidly don't recognize or, worse, cravenly connive with, the small bullies who are still around trying to stir up whatever trouble they can.
Thanks to InstaPundit for instapunditing us and Ibidem. All y'all first-time visitors, thanks for coming by and we hope you'll stay around a while and set a spell.
The Al Qaeda arrests here in Barcelona (see below) are significant news. They are solid proof that Al Qaeda is a threat to the civilized world. They planned to commit acts of terrorism, apparently using chemicals, right here. And in London, Paris, and Strasbourg. If this doesn't convince Europeans, including those in France, for God's sake, that it's time to draw a line in the sand and say "Take your stand. You're either with us and against the terrorists, and we mean all the terrorists; you're neutral and will enjoy the advantages and also suffer the drawbacks of having been a fence-sitter; or you're on their side. Which is it?"--then I don't know what will. And if anyone doesn't see by now that Al Qaeda is in cahoots with Hezbollah, Al Fatah, Islamic Jihad, the PFLP, and all those other flaming bags of shit, you are willfully ignoring the obvious. And where do those people get their money, weapons, and support? Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, North Korea, Sudan, Algeria. AND certain people, some highly placed, in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and everywhere else in the Arab / Muslim world and a lot of places outside it.
What I find amazing are all the educated, intelligent people who are perfectly willing to believe that mobile phones fry their brains, that Monsanto is trying to take over the world, that the CIA or the Mafia or the Teamsters killed Kennedy, that there's a conspiracy between the government, the referees, and some obscure figures with "muchos intereses" to screw FC Barcelona out of the League again this year, that opening the window when it's hot outside is bad for you, that you can catch a cold if the wind blows on you, that crystals have a lot of power and so do pyramids and that everyone has an energy field (and that mine is negative), that feng fuckin' shui is something more than a millenarian superstition, that electric power lines give off radiation, that there are people out there who pay untold sums of money to watch snuff movies, that there are Satanic cults sacrificing babies infiltrating our nursery schools, that it's possible to lose weight without eating less, exercising more, or both, that AIDS is a plot by the federal government to exterminate blacks or gays or both, that the CIA was running drugs from Nicaragua into the USA to fund the contras, that you can learn a foreign language by paying thousands of dollars and sitting at a computer terminal, that the US Army had hit squads to kill deserters in Vietnam, that O.J.'s son was the one who really did it, or that this whole war thing is a devilish plot cooked up between the oil companies, the Pentagon, the arms manufacturers, Dick Cheney, and the Bavarian Fuckin' Illuminati, yet they are unwilling to believe that there are governments and organizations out there that are working together with the goal of destroying everything that we all cherish about our Western society and that maybe we ought to take action against them now while we still can rather than wait until we can't anymore.
What I find amazing are all the educated, intelligent people who are perfectly willing to believe that mobile phones fry their brains, that Monsanto is trying to take over the world, that the CIA or the Mafia or the Teamsters killed Kennedy, that there's a conspiracy between the government, the referees, and some obscure figures with "muchos intereses" to screw FC Barcelona out of the League again this year, that opening the window when it's hot outside is bad for you, that you can catch a cold if the wind blows on you, that crystals have a lot of power and so do pyramids and that everyone has an energy field (and that mine is negative), that feng fuckin' shui is something more than a millenarian superstition, that electric power lines give off radiation, that there are people out there who pay untold sums of money to watch snuff movies, that there are Satanic cults sacrificing babies infiltrating our nursery schools, that it's possible to lose weight without eating less, exercising more, or both, that AIDS is a plot by the federal government to exterminate blacks or gays or both, that the CIA was running drugs from Nicaragua into the USA to fund the contras, that you can learn a foreign language by paying thousands of dollars and sitting at a computer terminal, that the US Army had hit squads to kill deserters in Vietnam, that O.J.'s son was the one who really did it, or that this whole war thing is a devilish plot cooked up between the oil companies, the Pentagon, the arms manufacturers, Dick Cheney, and the Bavarian Fuckin' Illuminati, yet they are unwilling to believe that there are governments and organizations out there that are working together with the goal of destroying everything that we all cherish about our Western society and that maybe we ought to take action against them now while we still can rather than wait until we can't anymore.
The Vanguardia is reporting (click here for their 10:30 PM local time update) that the 16 suspected terrorists in custody in Spain are members of the Salafista splinter of the Algerian GIA. They provided information and infrastructure to Al Qaeda. Spanish police made 12 raids in Barcelona and the surrounding autonomous region of Catalonia. Among the items confiscated, as well as some chemicals (earlier reports said "ricin", this update says "resins") and explosives, along with bomb-making materials and all sorts of electronic gear, not to mention enough radio gear to contact Algeria and Chechenia, and a few guns and lots of papers and documents, was equipment for forging documents and credit cards. The forged credit cards were a source of income.
Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar confirmed that the "suspects" were preparing attacks with explosive and chemical material. He stated that this was "an important unraveling of a network of terrorists linked to al Qaeda", and a "strong blow" at the terrorists' financing network. He also confirmed that the suspects had been in contact with those arrested in Britain and France who had planned attacks in Strasbourg, Paris, and London. Minister of Interior (law enforcement) Ángel Acebes said that Spain was "at the forefront" of the struggle against Islamic and all other forms of terrorism, and pointed out that 35 suspected Islamic terrorists have been arrested in Spain since Sept. 11, 2001.
Two different groups were broken up; one was based in Barcelona and led by Mohamed Taraqui, and the other was based in Banyoles, a small city with a fairly large population of Arab immigrants near the French border, and was led by Bard Eddu Farji. Both men are Algerian, as were some of the other men arrested; others are Moroccan and Pakistani. All those arrested have been identified and their names released except two.
The origin of the trail leading to today's actions begins with the arrest of Mohamed Bensakhria by the Spanish police in Alicante in June 2001. He was the leader of Al Qaeda's operations organization.
For lots more information check Ibidem.
Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar confirmed that the "suspects" were preparing attacks with explosive and chemical material. He stated that this was "an important unraveling of a network of terrorists linked to al Qaeda", and a "strong blow" at the terrorists' financing network. He also confirmed that the suspects had been in contact with those arrested in Britain and France who had planned attacks in Strasbourg, Paris, and London. Minister of Interior (law enforcement) Ángel Acebes said that Spain was "at the forefront" of the struggle against Islamic and all other forms of terrorism, and pointed out that 35 suspected Islamic terrorists have been arrested in Spain since Sept. 11, 2001.
Two different groups were broken up; one was based in Barcelona and led by Mohamed Taraqui, and the other was based in Banyoles, a small city with a fairly large population of Arab immigrants near the French border, and was led by Bard Eddu Farji. Both men are Algerian, as were some of the other men arrested; others are Moroccan and Pakistani. All those arrested have been identified and their names released except two.
The origin of the trail leading to today's actions begins with the arrest of Mohamed Bensakhria by the Spanish police in Alicante in June 2001. He was the leader of Al Qaeda's operations organization.
For lots more information check Ibidem.
Friday, January 24, 2003
Here's Catalunya TV's take on the Al Qaeda arrests in Catalan. What they say here is pretty much what everyone else is reporting. They clarify that if the arrestees are not charged with any crime in Spain they will be extradited to France. The anti-government spin on this one is that the government screwed up and looked like doofuses. My take on this one is the government arrested sixteen terrorist dirtbags and while doing so arrested three people who were later released and incorrectly broke down some drunk old slag's door. So far there have been no further updates of importance.
Here's Fox News's report in English on the Spain Al Qaeda arrests; it's their top international story. Check out Jesús Gil's Ibidem for more info; he's all over this one.
Breaking News: Major Al Qaeda Bust in Barcelona
Click here to read La Vanguardia's online story in Spanish.
Acting on information from the French judicial police, Spanish police arrested 19 people in Catalonia this morning in an operation that began at 3:30 AM. Three of them have been released. Eleven have been sent to Madrid where they will be held under tight custody. More than 150 police officers participated in the more than a dozen raids made. Guns, bomb-making material, explosives, and two barrels of ricin were confiscated. The arrested are allegedly linked to Al Qaeda and to an Algerian radical splinter group. They have been linked to the bombing in Bali, the planned attempt to blow up Strasbourg Cathedral, and the plans to release gas in the Paris metro and the London underground.
The arrests were made in Barcelona and Girona provinces, some in Barcelona and Girona themselves, and others in Banyoles, Olot, Salt, Santa Coloma de Gramanet, and L'Hospitalet. The arrested are of Algerian, Pakistani, and Moroccan ancestry. They had apparently planned to use the confiscated material for actions in Algeria and Chechenia.
I have checked three news sources; La Vanguardia and Television Española emphasize the arrests, the confiscated material, the police work, and the terrorist connections of the arrested. TV Catalunya, however, controlled by the Catalan nationalist government, emphasized the police errors--they interviewed one of the arrested who was later freed and he said, "They came in with guns and kicked down the door and my wife and kids were in there." (Sorry, dude, if you're suspected of being a terrorist they can kick your door down and arrest you with a warrant, which they had. Be thankful you live here where you get turned loose if you're really innocent, unlike, say, wherever you come from.) They interviewed a Catalan friend of one of the others arrested, who looked like a goddamn squatter (the Catalan guy), and he said, "He's not guilty of anything. And if he's guilty of something, then it's being a good person and letting some people stay at his house." (Uh, I think that's called harboring, if those people were terrorists and he knew it.) They showed several of the kicked-down doors and a couple of weeping wives. (Sorry they took hubby away. Hope he's innocent for both of your sakes. But I'll bet he's not.) In general, they made it look like this was the act of the oppressive police going after framed people. The police did bust down one wrong door, realized they had the wrong place--TV Catalunya gave a long interview to the woman, who looked like an old slapper and was clearly drunk while the reporter was talking to her--said, "Sorry," left, and busted down the right door.
Click here to read La Vanguardia's online story in Spanish.
Acting on information from the French judicial police, Spanish police arrested 19 people in Catalonia this morning in an operation that began at 3:30 AM. Three of them have been released. Eleven have been sent to Madrid where they will be held under tight custody. More than 150 police officers participated in the more than a dozen raids made. Guns, bomb-making material, explosives, and two barrels of ricin were confiscated. The arrested are allegedly linked to Al Qaeda and to an Algerian radical splinter group. They have been linked to the bombing in Bali, the planned attempt to blow up Strasbourg Cathedral, and the plans to release gas in the Paris metro and the London underground.
The arrests were made in Barcelona and Girona provinces, some in Barcelona and Girona themselves, and others in Banyoles, Olot, Salt, Santa Coloma de Gramanet, and L'Hospitalet. The arrested are of Algerian, Pakistani, and Moroccan ancestry. They had apparently planned to use the confiscated material for actions in Algeria and Chechenia.
I have checked three news sources; La Vanguardia and Television Española emphasize the arrests, the confiscated material, the police work, and the terrorist connections of the arrested. TV Catalunya, however, controlled by the Catalan nationalist government, emphasized the police errors--they interviewed one of the arrested who was later freed and he said, "They came in with guns and kicked down the door and my wife and kids were in there." (Sorry, dude, if you're suspected of being a terrorist they can kick your door down and arrest you with a warrant, which they had. Be thankful you live here where you get turned loose if you're really innocent, unlike, say, wherever you come from.) They interviewed a Catalan friend of one of the others arrested, who looked like a goddamn squatter (the Catalan guy), and he said, "He's not guilty of anything. And if he's guilty of something, then it's being a good person and letting some people stay at his house." (Uh, I think that's called harboring, if those people were terrorists and he knew it.) They showed several of the kicked-down doors and a couple of weeping wives. (Sorry they took hubby away. Hope he's innocent for both of your sakes. But I'll bet he's not.) In general, they made it look like this was the act of the oppressive police going after framed people. The police did bust down one wrong door, realized they had the wrong place--TV Catalunya gave a long interview to the woman, who looked like an old slapper and was clearly drunk while the reporter was talking to her--said, "Sorry," left, and busted down the right door.
Thursday, January 23, 2003
A cursory look at today's Vanguardia tells us that the French and Germans are making antiwar noises again. I don't think it means too much, though French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin suggested that France might use its veto on the Security Council to torpedo any authorization for war on Iraq. I'm not demanding that it's France's duty as an ally to support us. I am saying that it's their duty as an ally not to actively oppose us. I don't care if they abstain. It doesn't even really matter whether Germany backs us up or not, though a German no vote in the Security Council would be a clear sign of lack of German common decency. But if France vetoes a US-UK proposal to go to war in Iraq, I vote we revoke all France's privileges. They should no longer be considered even a friend, much less an ally. No need to make an enemy of them, but no reason to do them any favors, either. We'll nod politely as we pass one another on the street, and that'll be it.
In Venezuela, underhanded Chávez maneuvers--he's retroactively fired one of the judges and invalidated all decisions he had taken part in--caused the Supreme Court to suspend the February 2 non-binding referendum demanding that Chávez resign which opposition petitions, signed by more than 2 million people, had legitimately demanded. Sounds a lot like what the Nazis did in order to seize power in Germany. Instead, Chávez bussed thousands of his rural supporters into Caracas with the objective of intimidating demonstrators. Sounds a lot like the March on Rome. (The Blackshirts didn't march, they traveled by train. You think Mussolini could have marched more than about twenty feet with that gut?) Venezuela is looking at a 25% drop in GNP, unemployment up to 28%, hyperinflation, and hyperdevaluation of the currency. They will have to suspend payments on the national debt within weeks.
What the Cataloonies seem most offended by, in Chief Judge of the Constitutional Court Manuel Jiménez de Parga's verbal diarrhea against the "historical nationalities", is that he said their ancestors were dirty and unwashed 1000 years ago while a great civilization flourished in Andalusia. Boy, did that ever make them mad. Meanwhile, the Catalan shopkeepers' association have said that they have no problem with the Generalitat law on the commercial use of Catalan, but they have requested subsidies in order to buy new signs. Yep; if the government is interfering with private businesses in matters that aren't related to public safety, it--that is us--ought to pay for the costs of its interference until we get together and vote said government out of office. One of the requirements of the law is that there must be at least one employee capable of attending clients in Catalan. So if I move to Barcelona from, say, Cáceres, because I want to open a comic book shop there, I have to either learn Catalan myself or hire someone who knows Catalan. What if I don't want to hire any employees? I have no choice. Catalan-language laws are effectively barriers and constraints on trade and employment. I should be allowed to use whatever language I want. If I want to attend clients in Latvian, that's my business. It might be smart for me to hire someone who knows Catalan, but I shouldn't be forced to do it. As PP Justice Minister José María Michavila said, "The problem is when language is not used as an element of communication but, on the contrary, when there are people who want to use it as an element of confrontation."
In a survey of 12,000 students between 12 and 16 years old in the five Spanish autonomous communities with most young immigrants, Madrid, Catalonia, Andalusia, Valencia, and Murcia, 36.5% have a negative point of view toward immigration, and 9.5% of them "totally reject" immigrants. It seems that Spanish parents do not object to immigrants if there are less than about 10% of them among the students; teachers do not see problems until the immigrant percentage gets up to 15-30%. Several elementary schools in the Barcelona immigrant ghettos downtown--Pakistanis on Sant Pau, Dominicans on Carders, Chinese around Princesa, Filipinos on Bonsuccés, Arabs and South Americans in several areas--have 60% or more immigrant children. The reporter lets an ethnic judgment slip through, implying that schools with a low percentage of Arabs among the immigrants have fewer problems than those with a high percentage of what are now called "Maghrebies".
A second woman was murdered inside the same parking garage in the Putxet area, right next door to Gracia, only fifteen or so minutes away from my apartment on foot, within the past two weeks. El Putxet is an upper-middle class area where nothing ever happens--at least not until a woman was stabbed to death twelve days ago by an unknown assailant. Somebody, either the same guy or someone else (sharp thinking there!), killed another woman yesterday; this time she was beaten to death. Looks like the cops might suspect the second woman's husband, at least in her own death.
Lay's gets busted! Lay's, the number one potato chip brand in Spain (pronounced "Lies"; "Roof-lehs" are also popular) has gotten itself into trouble for deceptive advertising. Lay's advertised one of its products, Lay's Mediterranea, as being made with olive oil; they went far enough as to hire Antonio Banderas to do TV ads. Well, only 6% of the oil used in the production of Lay's Mediterranea is real olive oil. So a judge sentenced Lay's, which is a subsidiary of Pepsi, to cease and desist and to pay the court costs. All right! Get those corporate cheaters! False advertising really pisses me off.
In Venezuela, underhanded Chávez maneuvers--he's retroactively fired one of the judges and invalidated all decisions he had taken part in--caused the Supreme Court to suspend the February 2 non-binding referendum demanding that Chávez resign which opposition petitions, signed by more than 2 million people, had legitimately demanded. Sounds a lot like what the Nazis did in order to seize power in Germany. Instead, Chávez bussed thousands of his rural supporters into Caracas with the objective of intimidating demonstrators. Sounds a lot like the March on Rome. (The Blackshirts didn't march, they traveled by train. You think Mussolini could have marched more than about twenty feet with that gut?) Venezuela is looking at a 25% drop in GNP, unemployment up to 28%, hyperinflation, and hyperdevaluation of the currency. They will have to suspend payments on the national debt within weeks.
What the Cataloonies seem most offended by, in Chief Judge of the Constitutional Court Manuel Jiménez de Parga's verbal diarrhea against the "historical nationalities", is that he said their ancestors were dirty and unwashed 1000 years ago while a great civilization flourished in Andalusia. Boy, did that ever make them mad. Meanwhile, the Catalan shopkeepers' association have said that they have no problem with the Generalitat law on the commercial use of Catalan, but they have requested subsidies in order to buy new signs. Yep; if the government is interfering with private businesses in matters that aren't related to public safety, it--that is us--ought to pay for the costs of its interference until we get together and vote said government out of office. One of the requirements of the law is that there must be at least one employee capable of attending clients in Catalan. So if I move to Barcelona from, say, Cáceres, because I want to open a comic book shop there, I have to either learn Catalan myself or hire someone who knows Catalan. What if I don't want to hire any employees? I have no choice. Catalan-language laws are effectively barriers and constraints on trade and employment. I should be allowed to use whatever language I want. If I want to attend clients in Latvian, that's my business. It might be smart for me to hire someone who knows Catalan, but I shouldn't be forced to do it. As PP Justice Minister José María Michavila said, "The problem is when language is not used as an element of communication but, on the contrary, when there are people who want to use it as an element of confrontation."
In a survey of 12,000 students between 12 and 16 years old in the five Spanish autonomous communities with most young immigrants, Madrid, Catalonia, Andalusia, Valencia, and Murcia, 36.5% have a negative point of view toward immigration, and 9.5% of them "totally reject" immigrants. It seems that Spanish parents do not object to immigrants if there are less than about 10% of them among the students; teachers do not see problems until the immigrant percentage gets up to 15-30%. Several elementary schools in the Barcelona immigrant ghettos downtown--Pakistanis on Sant Pau, Dominicans on Carders, Chinese around Princesa, Filipinos on Bonsuccés, Arabs and South Americans in several areas--have 60% or more immigrant children. The reporter lets an ethnic judgment slip through, implying that schools with a low percentage of Arabs among the immigrants have fewer problems than those with a high percentage of what are now called "Maghrebies".
A second woman was murdered inside the same parking garage in the Putxet area, right next door to Gracia, only fifteen or so minutes away from my apartment on foot, within the past two weeks. El Putxet is an upper-middle class area where nothing ever happens--at least not until a woman was stabbed to death twelve days ago by an unknown assailant. Somebody, either the same guy or someone else (sharp thinking there!), killed another woman yesterday; this time she was beaten to death. Looks like the cops might suspect the second woman's husband, at least in her own death.
Lay's gets busted! Lay's, the number one potato chip brand in Spain (pronounced "Lies"; "Roof-lehs" are also popular) has gotten itself into trouble for deceptive advertising. Lay's advertised one of its products, Lay's Mediterranea, as being made with olive oil; they went far enough as to hire Antonio Banderas to do TV ads. Well, only 6% of the oil used in the production of Lay's Mediterranea is real olive oil. So a judge sentenced Lay's, which is a subsidiary of Pepsi, to cease and desist and to pay the court costs. All right! Get those corporate cheaters! False advertising really pisses me off.
Pau Gasol of Memphis in the NBA gets a lot of attention over here, since he's a native of Barcelona. He gets outrageous praise in the local media since he's a hometown favorite. I googled around through the sports sites to see what real NBA writers had to say about Gasol, to see whether the press he gets here is overhyped. It isn't. Gasol is really considered to be one of the best young players in the NBA and a future All-Star, maybe as early as next year. He struggled for a while early this season, but so did everyone else on the team, and that was largely due to coaching confusion--Memphis fired its coach early in the season after going 0-8 and brought in old-school Hubie Brown, who is like 96 years old but who has stabilized the team. Hubie hadn't coached since 1986. Gasol has played quite well so far in January. He had four straight 20-point 10-rebound games. As a check, I googled "pau gasol sucks". No hits. Therefore, none of the many sports blogs, which are often highly critical and foul-mouthed and also often are dead-on in their puncturing of overblown jock egos, have it in for big Pau. That's unusual. To confirm, I googled "pau gasol blows". No hits. He really must be pretty good. The criticism I saw of him is that he needs to bulk up--he's still only 23, seven feet and 240 pounds--and that he has to play more consistently and, particularly, play tougher on defense. Hubie Brown ought to be able to convince him to do that, and those criticisms are rather mild compared to the praise Gasol gets--he can score 20 a game, he's got a nice touch, he's extremely well-coordinated for someone so tall, he's fast, he's a good rebounder and passer, he's a good outside shooter, he's a crowd-pleaser (loves to slam-dunk), and, according to this gay sports site I came across, good-looking. They ranked him as the fourth-hottest NBA foreign player. Not bad.
Wednesday, January 22, 2003
There's a discussion going on down the page in the Comments section about Dick Cheney's connections with Halliburton and Iraq. I googled "cheney halliburton iraq" and figured that these five articles from relatively respectable sources, National Review, UPI, the Washington Post, the Observer, and the Nation, summed up the story pretty well. Even the Nation admits that the two deals Halliburton did with Iraq, involving oil equipment worth some seventy million bucks, while Cheney was its boss during the period of the embargo, were legal under the oil-for-food arrangement. The deals were never a secret nor were they covered up by anyone. Regarding financial matters, Cheney's Halliburton pushed the law pretty close to its limit and got caught breaking it once, for which it was fined. In general, it looks to me like Cheney's conduct was not pure as the driven snow but not outrageously out of line for the boss of a big company. They've got nothing on him, which is why the matter has been dropped. A comment, by the way, is that Cheney has consistently opposed sanctions and embargoes as a part of US policy.
Here's a link to a National Review article by Andrew Stuttaford on cults, specifically the Raelians and suchlike. The article points out that Jimmy Carter once claimed to have seen a flying saucer, which is true. This one is on Chávez and Venezuela, from FrontPage. Comment: an ad hoc international "Friends of Venezuela" group has been formed to try to assist in negotiating a bloodless solution to the Chávez problem. It consists of the US, Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. Sounds good, the Americans, the Iberian democracies, and the three most important relatively stable democracies in Latin America. Respectable folks, for the most part. Chávez wanted to add Russia, China, and Cuba to the group. Not even Lula would go along with that and the group has remained at six. Here's another one on Venezuela, originally from the Washington Times.
This one is from National Review; it's a review of the Almodóvar flick, "Hable con ella", which won the Golden Globe for best foreign movie. It's a fairly positive review, though it points out the weakness of all his flicks: they get stuck in the plot about halfway through and then either the story chugs along and peters out or something totally absurd that torpedoes the movie's believability happens. The Vangua said a couple of days ago that it was ridiculous that "Hable con ella" wasn't chosen as Spain's candidate for the Oscar for best foreign movie, and attributed this failure to the efforts of Almodóvar's enemies being small-minded and getting back at him through the Spanish Academy. It's going to look especially stupid if "Hable con ella" pulls an Oscar nomination in a regular (non-foreign) category, which it might in this very weak year for Hollywood. I repeat that I am no fan of Almodóvar, but I respect his competence, professionalism, and creativity. He certainly makes more interesting movies than almost anyone else in Spain. By the way, the Spanish film industry is yelling again for more subsidies from our tax money. They shouldn't be getting a duro, of course; it shouldn't be the government's job to finance movies. Well, they already get some, and they want more so they can "level the playing field" against the big American studios. Sorry, guys, the big American studios get zero government subsidies. The playing field is not only level, it's tilted toward the Spanish industry, and further subsidies would only serve to make more movies that nobody will ever see. No kidding. There are at least several movies completely financed by the Catalan government alone that are still in the can and have been for up to several years because they're so unwatchable that not even Catalan TV will show them. I don't think Almodóvar gets subsidies, and if he does, he doesn't need them.
Here's another review from NR, this one of "The Gangs of New York", and on the real history behind the movie. Scorsese apparently confuses his gangs. According to Luc Santé in Low Life, the first dangerous gangs in New York were Irish and sprung up in the 1820s and 30s in the Five Points, a rough part of the lower East Side. They included the Roach Guards, the Plug Uglies, and the Dead Rabbits. In response to them, other gangs sprang up in the poor Bowery area, especially the Bowery Boys and also the Atlantic Guards and the O'Connell Guards. The disputes between Five Points and Bowery gangs were more territorial and classist (the Bowery gangs were working poor, the Five Points gangs were underclass) than ethnic; though some of the Bowery gangs were Irish and others nativist Americans, they would join together to fight against the Five Pointers. By the 1840s the Dead Rabbits had become the undisputed leader of the Five Points gangs and faced off in conventional, planned, almost ritual battles with the Bowery Boys. Says Santé,
As vocational schools, the two gangs had their different specialties. The Dead Rabbits turned out numerous keepers of dives...and enforcers, shoulder-hitters, mayhem artists...The Bowery Boys, on the other hand, specialized in supplying votes for political entities, for poll fixing, poll guarding, repeat voting, and any number of other activities. The clash between Tammany and nativist factions constantly threatened the stability of the gang, which somehow always survived....Both gangs probably reached their apex in the summer of 1857. At the time the city had two competing police forces, the Municipal Force and the Metropolitan Force, as a result of political machinations...and as rival cops showed more interest in fighting each other than in curtailing crime, the city was virtually unpatrolled.
On the night of July 4th a large party of Dead Rabbits and Plug Uglies raided the clubhouse of the Bowery Boys and the Atlantic Guards at 42 Bowery. An all-night battle ensued during which the Bowery side seemed to prevail....The next day...the Roach Guards joined the Rabbits and the Uglies in an attack on a Broome Street dive called the Green Dragon, which they demolished with iron bars and paving stones while drinking up the entire stock of liquor. The Bowery gangs hastened to the scene...the riot swelled as reinforcements for both sides arrived from all over the city...The police of both forces would make sporadic arrests...Three National Guard regiments arrived late in the evening, and the fighting stopped. The toll was officially set at eight dead and over a hundred wounded, but these figures seemed absurdly low.
The following day the New York Times ran the following notice: "We are requested by the Dead Rabbits to state that the Dead Rabbit club members are not thieves, that they did not participate in the riot with the Bowery Boys, and that the fight in Mulberry street was between the Roach Guards of Mulberry Street and the Atlantic Guards of the Bowery. The Dead Rabbits are sensitive on points of honor, we are assured, and wouldn't allow a thief to live on their beat, let alone be a member of their club."
The other significant New York gangs at that time were out-and-out criminal organizations of muggers, thieves, and robbers operating on the waterfront, of whom the Daybreak Boys were the most famous. Their specialty was robbing ships at anchor at all hours. Their two leaders were hanged in 1852 and then "Slobbery Jim and Patsy the Barber had an epochal fight over the division of twelve cents from the pockets of a German immigrant they had killed, in the course of which Jim murdered Patsy; he was never seen again." The police reported killing twelve of them in the single year 1858. These dirtbags were obviously treated quite differently by the authorities from the mostly non-habitually criminal Dead Rabbits and Bowery Boys.
In 1863, spurred on by their unwillingness to be drafted to fight in the Civil War, the New York mob rose in the most serious civil disturbance in America, the Draft Riots. The targets of the rioting were blacks, many of whom were lynched, and wealthy Republicans. There may have been as many as 100,000 rioters and nobody knows how many people were killed, though I'd be willing to believe up to several hundred in the several days of violence. It took troops hustled from the Gettysburg battlefield to put down the rioters. They were most likely led by the Five Points gangs, but it's not fair to simplify matters and say that the rioters were all Irish and that their only motive, if anybody had a motive, was racism. Nor is it fair to go on and on about the discrimination that the Irish faced when they came to America; most of those Irish had it rough in the first generation, not too bad in the second, and up to an approximation of the average in society in the third. I don't think they had it much worse than anybody other group of immigrants.
Anyway, the Scorsese movie conflates the Dead Rabbits-Bowery Boys gang wars with the Draft Riots. The NR review explains all about that.
This one is from National Review; it's a review of the Almodóvar flick, "Hable con ella", which won the Golden Globe for best foreign movie. It's a fairly positive review, though it points out the weakness of all his flicks: they get stuck in the plot about halfway through and then either the story chugs along and peters out or something totally absurd that torpedoes the movie's believability happens. The Vangua said a couple of days ago that it was ridiculous that "Hable con ella" wasn't chosen as Spain's candidate for the Oscar for best foreign movie, and attributed this failure to the efforts of Almodóvar's enemies being small-minded and getting back at him through the Spanish Academy. It's going to look especially stupid if "Hable con ella" pulls an Oscar nomination in a regular (non-foreign) category, which it might in this very weak year for Hollywood. I repeat that I am no fan of Almodóvar, but I respect his competence, professionalism, and creativity. He certainly makes more interesting movies than almost anyone else in Spain. By the way, the Spanish film industry is yelling again for more subsidies from our tax money. They shouldn't be getting a duro, of course; it shouldn't be the government's job to finance movies. Well, they already get some, and they want more so they can "level the playing field" against the big American studios. Sorry, guys, the big American studios get zero government subsidies. The playing field is not only level, it's tilted toward the Spanish industry, and further subsidies would only serve to make more movies that nobody will ever see. No kidding. There are at least several movies completely financed by the Catalan government alone that are still in the can and have been for up to several years because they're so unwatchable that not even Catalan TV will show them. I don't think Almodóvar gets subsidies, and if he does, he doesn't need them.
Here's another review from NR, this one of "The Gangs of New York", and on the real history behind the movie. Scorsese apparently confuses his gangs. According to Luc Santé in Low Life, the first dangerous gangs in New York were Irish and sprung up in the 1820s and 30s in the Five Points, a rough part of the lower East Side. They included the Roach Guards, the Plug Uglies, and the Dead Rabbits. In response to them, other gangs sprang up in the poor Bowery area, especially the Bowery Boys and also the Atlantic Guards and the O'Connell Guards. The disputes between Five Points and Bowery gangs were more territorial and classist (the Bowery gangs were working poor, the Five Points gangs were underclass) than ethnic; though some of the Bowery gangs were Irish and others nativist Americans, they would join together to fight against the Five Pointers. By the 1840s the Dead Rabbits had become the undisputed leader of the Five Points gangs and faced off in conventional, planned, almost ritual battles with the Bowery Boys. Says Santé,
As vocational schools, the two gangs had their different specialties. The Dead Rabbits turned out numerous keepers of dives...and enforcers, shoulder-hitters, mayhem artists...The Bowery Boys, on the other hand, specialized in supplying votes for political entities, for poll fixing, poll guarding, repeat voting, and any number of other activities. The clash between Tammany and nativist factions constantly threatened the stability of the gang, which somehow always survived....Both gangs probably reached their apex in the summer of 1857. At the time the city had two competing police forces, the Municipal Force and the Metropolitan Force, as a result of political machinations...and as rival cops showed more interest in fighting each other than in curtailing crime, the city was virtually unpatrolled.
On the night of July 4th a large party of Dead Rabbits and Plug Uglies raided the clubhouse of the Bowery Boys and the Atlantic Guards at 42 Bowery. An all-night battle ensued during which the Bowery side seemed to prevail....The next day...the Roach Guards joined the Rabbits and the Uglies in an attack on a Broome Street dive called the Green Dragon, which they demolished with iron bars and paving stones while drinking up the entire stock of liquor. The Bowery gangs hastened to the scene...the riot swelled as reinforcements for both sides arrived from all over the city...The police of both forces would make sporadic arrests...Three National Guard regiments arrived late in the evening, and the fighting stopped. The toll was officially set at eight dead and over a hundred wounded, but these figures seemed absurdly low.
The following day the New York Times ran the following notice: "We are requested by the Dead Rabbits to state that the Dead Rabbit club members are not thieves, that they did not participate in the riot with the Bowery Boys, and that the fight in Mulberry street was between the Roach Guards of Mulberry Street and the Atlantic Guards of the Bowery. The Dead Rabbits are sensitive on points of honor, we are assured, and wouldn't allow a thief to live on their beat, let alone be a member of their club."
The other significant New York gangs at that time were out-and-out criminal organizations of muggers, thieves, and robbers operating on the waterfront, of whom the Daybreak Boys were the most famous. Their specialty was robbing ships at anchor at all hours. Their two leaders were hanged in 1852 and then "Slobbery Jim and Patsy the Barber had an epochal fight over the division of twelve cents from the pockets of a German immigrant they had killed, in the course of which Jim murdered Patsy; he was never seen again." The police reported killing twelve of them in the single year 1858. These dirtbags were obviously treated quite differently by the authorities from the mostly non-habitually criminal Dead Rabbits and Bowery Boys.
In 1863, spurred on by their unwillingness to be drafted to fight in the Civil War, the New York mob rose in the most serious civil disturbance in America, the Draft Riots. The targets of the rioting were blacks, many of whom were lynched, and wealthy Republicans. There may have been as many as 100,000 rioters and nobody knows how many people were killed, though I'd be willing to believe up to several hundred in the several days of violence. It took troops hustled from the Gettysburg battlefield to put down the rioters. They were most likely led by the Five Points gangs, but it's not fair to simplify matters and say that the rioters were all Irish and that their only motive, if anybody had a motive, was racism. Nor is it fair to go on and on about the discrimination that the Irish faced when they came to America; most of those Irish had it rough in the first generation, not too bad in the second, and up to an approximation of the average in society in the third. I don't think they had it much worse than anybody other group of immigrants.
Anyway, the Scorsese movie conflates the Dead Rabbits-Bowery Boys gang wars with the Draft Riots. The NR review explains all about that.
The Cataloony Language Enforcement Squad is out on the loose again. Seems that five years ago they passed the Linguistic Policy Law, and that law came into effect at the beginning of the year. It obligates private business establishments to put all signs in Catalan, whether inside or outside the store, including the signs above the doors, all posted signs for products on sale, signs indicating the bathrooms, and restaurant menus. It will be permitted to use other languages in addition to Catalan, but Catalan will be required as the minimum. From now on, new businesses will have to observe this law, or they won't get a license to open. Also, the Generalitat, the Catalan government, has a program of subsidizing small businesses with a sum of between €3000 and €6000 to renovate their establishments. (I'd be in favor of this if it were guaranteed low-interest loans given by savings banks for mom-and-pop shops, say employing three people or fewer with less than €100,000 gross per year. Or something like that.) More than 1000 of these subsidies were given out last year, and to receive one from now on you will have to conform to the Linguistic Policy Law. And who's going to enforce this? Uh, we dunno, the municipal cops. And don't the municipal cops have anything better to do, like, say, give out parking tickets or harass people who look foreign? Besides, how many dumbass municipal cops can read Catalan anyway? (Real cops are the National Police and the Guardia Civil. Municipal cops here are overpaid glorified traffic wardens who mostly drink carajillos and watch TV in bars.)
The following is one reason why I hate squatters. Judge Baltasar Garzón has indicted Laura Riera, a nice Catalan young girl from a middle-class Terrassa family who is in her young twenties, for murder. Riera, who worked in the Terrassa City Hall, passed information about possible victims to the ETA. She put the finger on Francisco Cano, a PP City Councilman in Viladecavalls, who was murdered on December 14, 2000; Fernando García Jodra, already convicted for two ETA murders (those of Socialist politician and useful idiot Ernest Lluch and Barcelona municipal cop--poor bastard--Juan Miguel Gervilla, who accidentally interrupted an ETA squad on their way to kill radio host Luis del Olmo) blew Cano up in his car with a bomb under the front seat of his van.
So what's the connection with the squatters? Riera was hanging around with the Terrassa squatter crowd and one of them, Zigor Larredonda, had connections with the ETA. Riera passed her information (Cano's license number) to Larredonda, who passed it on to García Jodra, the hitman. The exalted atmosphere that exists in the squats, which is plainly visible in the violent graffiti they paint on every wall in town, the gang fights they get into with the local skinheads, and the unpunished vandalism and destruction that the squatters get away with infected Riera. A constant diet of "Smash capitalism," "Gora ETA," "You fascists are the real terrorists", "Police=Murderers", "Die Aznar", "ETA Kill Them All", romantic stories about Che and Durruti and Rosa Luxemburg and Lenin at the Finland Station, Big Lie bullshit put about by irresponsible leftist partisans, and youthful stupidity combined to make this "just like you and me" girl from next door into a murderer. I blame the squatters.
You may remember that this blog was one of the few that was openly skeptical about Pim Fortuyn and whether he signified anything in the grand scheme of things, even before he was murdered. Fortuyn's party will be wiped out in the upcoming Dutch election, and was more a symptom than a cause of feeling against immigration in Holland.
The Bush Administration wants to know what happened to some 30,000 warheads and several tons of anthrax, VX nerve gas, sarin, and other chemical and biological weapons that Saddam is known to have had in his possession. It does not believe Saddam when he says "Who, me?" It is therefore going to kick the crap out of Iraq sometime very soon. We're sending the Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt to the area. That ought to take a couple of weeks. We sort of hope the war starts on February 8, because that's the anniversary of our blog. We'd love to have a big story for that day; we just hope as few people as possible, especially on our side, get killed.
According to a Vangua story, some twenty German intellectuals led by the indefatigable idiotarian Günter Grass and including Christa Wolf--wasn't she the "official author" of the old East Germany? Wasn't she a spy for the Stasi who reported on her acquaintances? Or do I have the completely wrong person?--and a bunch of other people whom I have never heard of before and have no desire to hear of again have signed a petition saying that Bush is a big poophead.
Rafael Poch, official Vanguardia geopolitical conspiracy theory reporter and mouthpiece for the Russians, is plumping a Russian trial balloon that would "denuclearize the Korean peninsula". The North Koreans would give up their nukes and the Americans would pull their nukes out of South Korea. Russia would just love that. It's not gonna happen, so you can quit playing with yourself, Mr. Poch. First, does the US really have nukes in South Korea? I will google this and report back later. Second, we're not the ones threatened by a nuclear North Korea. That's Vladivostok, Peking, Seoul, and Tokyo, not us, though of course we do have tens of thousands of troops there who must be considered. Third, North Korea is sword-rattling because they're weak, not strong. This is not the time to make concessions of any kind that would artificially lengthen the life of the rapidly dying North Korean regime. Fourth, though the consequences of losing the bet would be so catastrophic that it cannot realistically be placed, I bet the North Koreans really don't have nukes. If they do have one or two, I bet they can't rely on their delivery systems. Fifth, if we bend over now and become a North Korean butt-boy again like we were under Clinton, the rest of the world will take note and behave accordingly, figuring that if we put out for Kim we'll put out for them. I think the most appropriate metaphor for the world is a maximum-security prison; you'd better be ready to fight because you sure don't want to be turned out.
Jimmy Carter is attempting to mediate in Venezuela. May God help the Venezuelan people. We Americans wish you Venezuelans no ill will and wholeheartedly apologize for Mr. Peanut's actions, nay, mere presence, mere existence. Iberian Notes would like to point out that you have the sovereign right to deport him and suggests respectfully that you do so.
The following is one reason why I hate squatters. Judge Baltasar Garzón has indicted Laura Riera, a nice Catalan young girl from a middle-class Terrassa family who is in her young twenties, for murder. Riera, who worked in the Terrassa City Hall, passed information about possible victims to the ETA. She put the finger on Francisco Cano, a PP City Councilman in Viladecavalls, who was murdered on December 14, 2000; Fernando García Jodra, already convicted for two ETA murders (those of Socialist politician and useful idiot Ernest Lluch and Barcelona municipal cop--poor bastard--Juan Miguel Gervilla, who accidentally interrupted an ETA squad on their way to kill radio host Luis del Olmo) blew Cano up in his car with a bomb under the front seat of his van.
So what's the connection with the squatters? Riera was hanging around with the Terrassa squatter crowd and one of them, Zigor Larredonda, had connections with the ETA. Riera passed her information (Cano's license number) to Larredonda, who passed it on to García Jodra, the hitman. The exalted atmosphere that exists in the squats, which is plainly visible in the violent graffiti they paint on every wall in town, the gang fights they get into with the local skinheads, and the unpunished vandalism and destruction that the squatters get away with infected Riera. A constant diet of "Smash capitalism," "Gora ETA," "You fascists are the real terrorists", "Police=Murderers", "Die Aznar", "ETA Kill Them All", romantic stories about Che and Durruti and Rosa Luxemburg and Lenin at the Finland Station, Big Lie bullshit put about by irresponsible leftist partisans, and youthful stupidity combined to make this "just like you and me" girl from next door into a murderer. I blame the squatters.
You may remember that this blog was one of the few that was openly skeptical about Pim Fortuyn and whether he signified anything in the grand scheme of things, even before he was murdered. Fortuyn's party will be wiped out in the upcoming Dutch election, and was more a symptom than a cause of feeling against immigration in Holland.
The Bush Administration wants to know what happened to some 30,000 warheads and several tons of anthrax, VX nerve gas, sarin, and other chemical and biological weapons that Saddam is known to have had in his possession. It does not believe Saddam when he says "Who, me?" It is therefore going to kick the crap out of Iraq sometime very soon. We're sending the Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt to the area. That ought to take a couple of weeks. We sort of hope the war starts on February 8, because that's the anniversary of our blog. We'd love to have a big story for that day; we just hope as few people as possible, especially on our side, get killed.
According to a Vangua story, some twenty German intellectuals led by the indefatigable idiotarian Günter Grass and including Christa Wolf--wasn't she the "official author" of the old East Germany? Wasn't she a spy for the Stasi who reported on her acquaintances? Or do I have the completely wrong person?--and a bunch of other people whom I have never heard of before and have no desire to hear of again have signed a petition saying that Bush is a big poophead.
Rafael Poch, official Vanguardia geopolitical conspiracy theory reporter and mouthpiece for the Russians, is plumping a Russian trial balloon that would "denuclearize the Korean peninsula". The North Koreans would give up their nukes and the Americans would pull their nukes out of South Korea. Russia would just love that. It's not gonna happen, so you can quit playing with yourself, Mr. Poch. First, does the US really have nukes in South Korea? I will google this and report back later. Second, we're not the ones threatened by a nuclear North Korea. That's Vladivostok, Peking, Seoul, and Tokyo, not us, though of course we do have tens of thousands of troops there who must be considered. Third, North Korea is sword-rattling because they're weak, not strong. This is not the time to make concessions of any kind that would artificially lengthen the life of the rapidly dying North Korean regime. Fourth, though the consequences of losing the bet would be so catastrophic that it cannot realistically be placed, I bet the North Koreans really don't have nukes. If they do have one or two, I bet they can't rely on their delivery systems. Fifth, if we bend over now and become a North Korean butt-boy again like we were under Clinton, the rest of the world will take note and behave accordingly, figuring that if we put out for Kim we'll put out for them. I think the most appropriate metaphor for the world is a maximum-security prison; you'd better be ready to fight because you sure don't want to be turned out.
Jimmy Carter is attempting to mediate in Venezuela. May God help the Venezuelan people. We Americans wish you Venezuelans no ill will and wholeheartedly apologize for Mr. Peanut's actions, nay, mere presence, mere existence. Iberian Notes would like to point out that you have the sovereign right to deport him and suggests respectfully that you do so.
It seems like a weird day today, at least according to the Vanguardia. The lead story is that the president of the Constitutional Court, Manuel Jiménez de Parga, shot off his mouth about Spanish nationalisms. Remember, there are three "historical nationalities", as they're called in Spain: the Catalans, here in Catalonia, the Basques in the Basque Country, and the Galicians in Galicia, where regional languages are used as well as Spanish and where many inhabitants identify themselves as, say, Catalan, before or in place of Spanish. Spain is divided into seventeen "autonomous communities" which normally correspond with generally accepted regions--Aragon, Castile-Leon, Andalusia, Extremadura, and so on; Catalonia, the Basque Country, Galicia, and Andalusia have more autonomy than the others, except for Navarra, which has a special status going back to its medieval laws, the fueros. Valencia and the Balearic Islands are largely Catalan-speaking but their inhabitants overwhelmingly identify with Spain rather than "the Catalan Countries", as the Cataloonies call it, or "Greater Catalonia", as I call it. Valencia and the Canary Islands do have a couple of privileges that other communities lack; the Balearics don't. They have the same degree of autonomy as most of the rest of Spain. To clear up confusion right now, the seventeen autonomous communities each consist of one or more of the fifty-two provinces, so the autonomous community of Aragon is made up by the provinces of Huesca, Zaragoza, and Teruel, for example.
Recap: Historical Communities: Catalonia, Basque Country, Galicia, Andalusia. Weird Medieval Status: Navarra. A Couple of Extra Privileges: Valencia, Canaries. Just Like Everybody Else: Asturias, Cantabria, La Rioja, Aragon, Castile-Leon, Madrid, Castile-La Mancha, Balearics, Murcia, Extremadura.
Jiménez de Parga said, at a conference in Madrid, "A thousand years ago those historical communities didn't even know what bathing every weekend was, while in Andalusia we had various dozens of baths of all different flavors and smells...An organization of nationalities like Spain, full of history from north to south, cannot see itself reduced to second-rank regarding three communities which say they are different...The concept of historical nationalities began to be used during the Transition (to democracy) and this appellation has endured as what's politically correct. This is, with all due respect, a grave error."
Jiménez de Parga has done a Trent Lott. It is politically not acceptable in today's Spain to even criticize the three historical nationalities, much less to assert that political power should be taken away from their autonomous communities. Some people talk in places like Toledo and Salamanca about how the Catalans need to be cut down to size, but those people have no national political potential. (Example #1: Rodríguez Ibarra, loudmouth Catalan-bashing Socialist Prime minister of Extremadura.) All the political parties except the conservative PP have blasted Jiménez de Parga and called for his resignation. I add my voice.
First, the system is working. Spain is a reasonably prosperous and successful country whose citizens enjoy a high quality of life and who are generally pretty happy. It ain't broke. Don't fix it. Don't monkey around with it. It's working just fine now and don't risk screwing it up. It's irresponsible on the part of both the Catalanists and the centralist dinosaurs to whip up popular emotion on this subject, and Jiménez de Parga certainly behaved irresponsibly. Second, there was absolutely no reason for him to go off at the mouth like that. There was no direct provocation that he was answering. He was just talking off the top of his head. If you do that, like Trent Lott did, you yourself are responsible for the consequences. Third, how can a Constitutional Court judge fairly deliberate on constitutional questions regarding the powers of the autonomous communities, which are not extremely unusual, after showing himself to be a public partisan of one of the two extremist positions on the issue? Fourth, Jiménez de Parga is from Andalusia himself but doesn't seem to know that his own autonomous community enjoys the same level of autonomy as Catalonia and Galicia.
Recap: Historical Communities: Catalonia, Basque Country, Galicia, Andalusia. Weird Medieval Status: Navarra. A Couple of Extra Privileges: Valencia, Canaries. Just Like Everybody Else: Asturias, Cantabria, La Rioja, Aragon, Castile-Leon, Madrid, Castile-La Mancha, Balearics, Murcia, Extremadura.
Jiménez de Parga said, at a conference in Madrid, "A thousand years ago those historical communities didn't even know what bathing every weekend was, while in Andalusia we had various dozens of baths of all different flavors and smells...An organization of nationalities like Spain, full of history from north to south, cannot see itself reduced to second-rank regarding three communities which say they are different...The concept of historical nationalities began to be used during the Transition (to democracy) and this appellation has endured as what's politically correct. This is, with all due respect, a grave error."
Jiménez de Parga has done a Trent Lott. It is politically not acceptable in today's Spain to even criticize the three historical nationalities, much less to assert that political power should be taken away from their autonomous communities. Some people talk in places like Toledo and Salamanca about how the Catalans need to be cut down to size, but those people have no national political potential. (Example #1: Rodríguez Ibarra, loudmouth Catalan-bashing Socialist Prime minister of Extremadura.) All the political parties except the conservative PP have blasted Jiménez de Parga and called for his resignation. I add my voice.
First, the system is working. Spain is a reasonably prosperous and successful country whose citizens enjoy a high quality of life and who are generally pretty happy. It ain't broke. Don't fix it. Don't monkey around with it. It's working just fine now and don't risk screwing it up. It's irresponsible on the part of both the Catalanists and the centralist dinosaurs to whip up popular emotion on this subject, and Jiménez de Parga certainly behaved irresponsibly. Second, there was absolutely no reason for him to go off at the mouth like that. There was no direct provocation that he was answering. He was just talking off the top of his head. If you do that, like Trent Lott did, you yourself are responsible for the consequences. Third, how can a Constitutional Court judge fairly deliberate on constitutional questions regarding the powers of the autonomous communities, which are not extremely unusual, after showing himself to be a public partisan of one of the two extremist positions on the issue? Fourth, Jiménez de Parga is from Andalusia himself but doesn't seem to know that his own autonomous community enjoys the same level of autonomy as Catalonia and Galicia.
Ibidem, formerly known as Atlético Rules, at least to us, has changed URLs, to www.ibidem.blogmosis.com. So go check it out. He's got a really nice-looking new site. Change your bookmarks.
You know, blog-naming is still inexact. Most blogrolls we're on list us as "Iberian Notes"; that's what InstaPundit does, and he's by far our biggest referrer. Some use "Inside Europe: Iberian Notes". A couple use "John and Antonio". We don't really care what blogname you use to link to us with; we're just happy to be linked to. I kind of like the "Inside Europe" part; it's a tribute to journalist John Gunther's first book. He wrote a whole series titled things like Inside Asia and Inside Latin America, and his most famous book is Inside U.S.A., a late-40s look at America which is still often considered the best book written on the 48-state United States. Gunther said that the only books whose titles he liked were Inside U.S.A. and Inside Europe, because those were places he felt he was an insider (he was a longtime foreign correspondent in Europe). He wanted to call the other books, for example, Outside Asia, since he considered himself "an outsider looking in" regarding the rest of the world. The book by Gunther that you're most likely to have seen is Death Be Not Proud, the story of his son who died of cancer.
Back to blognames. I still like "Atlético Rules" better than "Ibidem", but I will finally bow to the fact that Jesús Gil doesn't, since he's eliminated all reference to "Atlético Rules" except for a prominent link to Atlético's homepage in English. See, a blog is generally referred to either by its title, the name of its owner, or its URL, and "Atlético Rules" is no longer part of his URL, so I have no excuse to use it any longer.
By the way, in case you're wondering about Antonio, he hasn't contributed much since about mid-November. His mother's been in poor health and that takes up a lot of his free time. I see him once a week or so; last time was yesterday. He doesn't even read the blog except when he comes over here, since he doesn't have a computer at home. He's so reactionary on some aspects of modern life. He does have a cell phone, though, which is something I'm still holding out against. I suppose I'm cheating, since my wife Remei has a cell phone and we carry it whenever we go out of town in the car in case we break down or have an accident. I'd feel rather less secure without it, so I'm glad we have it for that purpose. Oh, yeah, for Jessica from Chloe and Pete, Antonio's very excited about the nickname, "The Sexy Scourgers." He says he can die happy now that an American girl has called him "sexy", but he regretfully points out that he just turned forty-nine. I personally think he looks rather distinguished; he's Mr. Clean, Neat, and Well-Dressed.
You know, blog-naming is still inexact. Most blogrolls we're on list us as "Iberian Notes"; that's what InstaPundit does, and he's by far our biggest referrer. Some use "Inside Europe: Iberian Notes". A couple use "John and Antonio". We don't really care what blogname you use to link to us with; we're just happy to be linked to. I kind of like the "Inside Europe" part; it's a tribute to journalist John Gunther's first book. He wrote a whole series titled things like Inside Asia and Inside Latin America, and his most famous book is Inside U.S.A., a late-40s look at America which is still often considered the best book written on the 48-state United States. Gunther said that the only books whose titles he liked were Inside U.S.A. and Inside Europe, because those were places he felt he was an insider (he was a longtime foreign correspondent in Europe). He wanted to call the other books, for example, Outside Asia, since he considered himself "an outsider looking in" regarding the rest of the world. The book by Gunther that you're most likely to have seen is Death Be Not Proud, the story of his son who died of cancer.
Back to blognames. I still like "Atlético Rules" better than "Ibidem", but I will finally bow to the fact that Jesús Gil doesn't, since he's eliminated all reference to "Atlético Rules" except for a prominent link to Atlético's homepage in English. See, a blog is generally referred to either by its title, the name of its owner, or its URL, and "Atlético Rules" is no longer part of his URL, so I have no excuse to use it any longer.
By the way, in case you're wondering about Antonio, he hasn't contributed much since about mid-November. His mother's been in poor health and that takes up a lot of his free time. I see him once a week or so; last time was yesterday. He doesn't even read the blog except when he comes over here, since he doesn't have a computer at home. He's so reactionary on some aspects of modern life. He does have a cell phone, though, which is something I'm still holding out against. I suppose I'm cheating, since my wife Remei has a cell phone and we carry it whenever we go out of town in the car in case we break down or have an accident. I'd feel rather less secure without it, so I'm glad we have it for that purpose. Oh, yeah, for Jessica from Chloe and Pete, Antonio's very excited about the nickname, "The Sexy Scourgers." He says he can die happy now that an American girl has called him "sexy", but he regretfully points out that he just turned forty-nine. I personally think he looks rather distinguished; he's Mr. Clean, Neat, and Well-Dressed.
Here's an article from FrontPage on gypsies in Europe. It is rather harsh. Gypsies are, as I have said repeatedly, not especially beloved in Spain, and some of the reasons are their own fault. The author's surname is obviously Romanian in origin, which may or may not bias his viewpoint; gypsies are even less beloved in Romania than in Spain.
Tuesday, January 21, 2003
Jordi Solé Tura, an ex-Commie who went over to the Socialists and is currently a senator, which doesn't really mean anything, has an op-ed in today's El País. Its title is "United States: from the old to the new winning of the West." Here goes. I've taken the liberty of editing it down a little.
dirty and disgusting bla bla bla papier-mache soldiers yak yak yak our government a bunch of second-rate butlers woof woof woof american government does whatever it wants yap yap yap brain spasm duh duh duh our prime minister says yes yes ok ok burp burp burp treat us like messenger boys doink doink doink head is spinning can't focus ralph ralph ralph who will grab the world's oil jaw jaw jaw the world is in the hands of a few whine whine whine iraq iran oil yip yip yip iraq world's second biggest oil well drool drool drool what's that hammering in my skull slurp slurp slurp the feared condoleeza rice yada yada yada a puppet government in baghdad nyah nyah nyah oil in the hands of american multinationals yip yip yip turn the country into tribal warfare waah waah waah lights in my head go off and on gab gab gab american penetration of former soviet zone snif snif snif russians control drug market america controls oil market division of labor yak yak yak slap in spain's face bla bla bla i'll call my dad he's bigger than yours duh duh duh humiliation for spain jaw jaw jaw american weapons of mass destruction nah nah nah america only boss of world yap yap yap economic social cultural waah waah waah europe a factor of sensibility against rudimentary american thinking bawk bawk bawk china and other countries can put on the brakes yada yada yada insane american pressure honk honk honk i'll show you mine if you show me yours dorf dorf dorf new ferocious conquest of old and new west.
dirty and disgusting bla bla bla papier-mache soldiers yak yak yak our government a bunch of second-rate butlers woof woof woof american government does whatever it wants yap yap yap brain spasm duh duh duh our prime minister says yes yes ok ok burp burp burp treat us like messenger boys doink doink doink head is spinning can't focus ralph ralph ralph who will grab the world's oil jaw jaw jaw the world is in the hands of a few whine whine whine iraq iran oil yip yip yip iraq world's second biggest oil well drool drool drool what's that hammering in my skull slurp slurp slurp the feared condoleeza rice yada yada yada a puppet government in baghdad nyah nyah nyah oil in the hands of american multinationals yip yip yip turn the country into tribal warfare waah waah waah lights in my head go off and on gab gab gab american penetration of former soviet zone snif snif snif russians control drug market america controls oil market division of labor yak yak yak slap in spain's face bla bla bla i'll call my dad he's bigger than yours duh duh duh humiliation for spain jaw jaw jaw american weapons of mass destruction nah nah nah america only boss of world yap yap yap economic social cultural waah waah waah europe a factor of sensibility against rudimentary american thinking bawk bawk bawk china and other countries can put on the brakes yada yada yada insane american pressure honk honk honk i'll show you mine if you show me yours dorf dorf dorf new ferocious conquest of old and new west.
The front-page headline on today's El País is "France and Germany declare at UN that nothing now justifies attack on Iraq." Well, as for the Germans, this is just them missing their chance to take part in the first morally justified German military action ever, and as for the French, I think we ought to stop calling them "Frogs". Frogs are green. I think we ought to choose a more appropriately colored animal. How about if we call them "Sapsuckers"? Or maybe we can call them "Tweety Birds", since Tweety is an obnoxious little yellow bastard who gets himself into trouble and then has to scream to Granny and her umbrella ("Big Stick") to come save his worthless ass. See any coincidences here? I vote we let Sylvester eat Tweety next time.
By the way, Spain's government is backing the United States and Great Britain. "We cannot categorically exclude the use of force as a last resort. The 27th is an important day. We'll have to listen to Blix's report and make our decisions from there. I don't think it would be good to prejudge the discussions. The center of the problem is the noncompliance of Saddam Hussein. Now we have to analyze its extent (that is, of Saddam's noncompliance)," said Spain's Foreign Minister, Ana de Palacio. Spain, by the way, has just begun its two-year term on the UN Security Council. That means we can count on three votes, Britain's, Spain's, and our own. I vote when this is all over we remember who our friends were when it counted. The Aznar government has solidly backed the United States since Aznar became prime minister in 1996. Every single time. Even when Spanish public opinion has been anti-American, as it is now; the basic rule of thumb is that PP supporters are mostly pro-American and pretty much everybody else is anti.
By the way, Spain's government is backing the United States and Great Britain. "We cannot categorically exclude the use of force as a last resort. The 27th is an important day. We'll have to listen to Blix's report and make our decisions from there. I don't think it would be good to prejudge the discussions. The center of the problem is the noncompliance of Saddam Hussein. Now we have to analyze its extent (that is, of Saddam's noncompliance)," said Spain's Foreign Minister, Ana de Palacio. Spain, by the way, has just begun its two-year term on the UN Security Council. That means we can count on three votes, Britain's, Spain's, and our own. I vote when this is all over we remember who our friends were when it counted. The Aznar government has solidly backed the United States since Aznar became prime minister in 1996. Every single time. Even when Spanish public opinion has been anti-American, as it is now; the basic rule of thumb is that PP supporters are mostly pro-American and pretty much everybody else is anti.
Monday, January 20, 2003
We Scoop Taranto!
In his groovy Best of the Web daily column on the Opinion (Wall Street) Journal, which is a must-read for everybody, James Taranto mentions today that Gerhard Schröder is all mad about his sex life being dragged into public by the sensationalistic press. We commented on that back on January 9, eleven days ago! Iberian Notes really is your one-stop source for dirt from the vile European gutter press.
In his groovy Best of the Web daily column on the Opinion (Wall Street) Journal, which is a must-read for everybody, James Taranto mentions today that Gerhard Schröder is all mad about his sex life being dragged into public by the sensationalistic press. We commented on that back on January 9, eleven days ago! Iberian Notes really is your one-stop source for dirt from the vile European gutter press.
Here's today's Oscar (named after my cat. He's just over a year old, is slim and lithe, friendly, curious, and playful, very demanding and rather spoiled. He's jet-black with a tiny white "bowtie". His hobby is licking his nads) for America-bashing. Today it goes to nad-licker Oriol Pi de Cabanyes for his article, "Amen", in today's Vanguardia. I've only translated the first paragraph, since it's by far the best.
Some consider that Amen, the excellent Costa-Gavras film, is an attack against the Catholic Church. It isn't one. But the fact that there is a crusade against its prestige is evident. Above all, in the United States, where day after day the media continue their scandal-hyping regarding the alleged pederasty of some clerics. Who benefits? we should ask ourselves, in the old Roman style. In whose interest is it that the Catholic Church lose its capacity to influence in the world? In that of the most bellicose sectors of the American administration, that of the very influential Jewish business sector, that of the hard core of monopoly capitalism which, after the fall of the Wall, has been left with no real alternative in the world. And now that the Catholic Church is now almost the only hope of counterbalancing the voracity of unleashed capitalism, the solid alliance between Washington and the Vatican, formed in those not-so-long-ago times in which Lech Walesa and general Wojciech Jaruzelski played cat-and-mouse in Poland, goes and gets broken up.
It's in the interest of the very influential Jewish business sector in the United States to calumniate the Catholic Church? Someone call Simon Weisenthal or Elie Weisel to perform an emergency anti-Semitismectomy on this guy. And alleged, my ass. There have been some convictions in court, not to mention a public apology by and the resignation of Cardinal Law. There is a problem right now with boy-buggering priests in the American Church, and he who tries to cover it up or who declares that the problem does not exist is no friend of the Church. He who admits there is a problem and works to solve it is the truly faithful and loyal Catholic.
Some consider that Amen, the excellent Costa-Gavras film, is an attack against the Catholic Church. It isn't one. But the fact that there is a crusade against its prestige is evident. Above all, in the United States, where day after day the media continue their scandal-hyping regarding the alleged pederasty of some clerics. Who benefits? we should ask ourselves, in the old Roman style. In whose interest is it that the Catholic Church lose its capacity to influence in the world? In that of the most bellicose sectors of the American administration, that of the very influential Jewish business sector, that of the hard core of monopoly capitalism which, after the fall of the Wall, has been left with no real alternative in the world. And now that the Catholic Church is now almost the only hope of counterbalancing the voracity of unleashed capitalism, the solid alliance between Washington and the Vatican, formed in those not-so-long-ago times in which Lech Walesa and general Wojciech Jaruzelski played cat-and-mouse in Poland, goes and gets broken up.
It's in the interest of the very influential Jewish business sector in the United States to calumniate the Catholic Church? Someone call Simon Weisenthal or Elie Weisel to perform an emergency anti-Semitismectomy on this guy. And alleged, my ass. There have been some convictions in court, not to mention a public apology by and the resignation of Cardinal Law. There is a problem right now with boy-buggering priests in the American Church, and he who tries to cover it up or who declares that the problem does not exist is no friend of the Church. He who admits there is a problem and works to solve it is the truly faithful and loyal Catholic.
Here's a problem that we have over here that y'all don't really have to deal with in America: buildings falling down. It's not incredibly unusual for a building, normally old, cheaply-made, and run-down, to at least partially collapse. It's also not unusual for a stone or tile or whatever to fall off the façade of a building. There were a couple of well-known cases of that fairly recently, a German tourist walking down the Paseo de Gracia when a rock fell on her head from the building she was passing in front of, and a young adult who was leaning against the rail of a balcony (from the inside) when the rail collapsed.
Well, here we go again: an Art Nouveau (modernista) building on the Ronda Sant Pau here in Barcelona is in the news. Two years ago it was torched; the fire started in a clothing warehouse on the ground floor. It was arson though I don't know whether anyone was convicted. Anyway, the back half of the building collapsed then though no one was hurt. The building was, of course, condemned and abandoned. It's still there, with the front in a lamentable state and no back at all. A bunch of squatters have moved in and are all pissed off because the building is finally going to be torn down. Get this, they're going to preserve the façade because it has artistic value. Looks to me like one of many hundreds of buildings in Barcelona of which I would say, "Look, it's a nice old building, leave it standing and fix it up if it's in decent shape, but for God's sake tear it down and screw the façade if it's a safety hazard, which it is."
Well, here we go again: an Art Nouveau (modernista) building on the Ronda Sant Pau here in Barcelona is in the news. Two years ago it was torched; the fire started in a clothing warehouse on the ground floor. It was arson though I don't know whether anyone was convicted. Anyway, the back half of the building collapsed then though no one was hurt. The building was, of course, condemned and abandoned. It's still there, with the front in a lamentable state and no back at all. A bunch of squatters have moved in and are all pissed off because the building is finally going to be torn down. Get this, they're going to preserve the façade because it has artistic value. Looks to me like one of many hundreds of buildings in Barcelona of which I would say, "Look, it's a nice old building, leave it standing and fix it up if it's in decent shape, but for God's sake tear it down and screw the façade if it's a safety hazard, which it is."
Well, there are a few things from the Vanguardia over the last couple of days that are worth writing about. They did a survey of Barcelona voters about the mayoral election that is coming up, probably in May since the last one was in June 1999 and the term is a maximum of four years. Currently the mayor is Socialist Joan Clos, whose party is by far the biggest of the three in his governing coalition; the others are the Communist Initiative for Catalonia and the Catalan-independentista Republican Left. The candidates for the five parties that have a chance of getting on the City Council are, in order of their poll results: Socialist Clos with 45.0% of the vote, down from 45.2% in 1999; Catalan nationalist CiU's Xavier Trias with 26.1%, up from 21.7%; the conservative PP's Alberto Fernández Díaz with 10.6%, down from 14.9%, the Republican Left's Jordi Portabella with 10.4%, up from 6.5%, and the Communist-wacko Initiative for Catalonia-Green-United and Alternative Left coalition's Imma Mayol--she lives on my street but I sure the hell ain't voting for her--with 7.6%, up from 5.8% for Initiative only in 1999.
The breakdown for Council seats would be 19-20 for the Socialists, 11-12 for CiU, 4 for the PP, 4 for the Republican Left, and 2 for Initiative. A Socialist-Republican Left coalition would be sufficient to govern Barcelona for four more years should the election turn out like this, but I imagine they'd invite Initiative in anyway. Pas d'ennemis à gauche.
To the question "What's the biggest problem in Barcelona today?", 27% said crime, 17% said housing, 13% said immigration, 8% said unemployment, 8% said the cost of living, and 5% said traffic. 22% said "other". Allow me to pontificate: the 8% who said unemployment are those who are actually unemployed or underemployed, and the 8% who said cost of living and the 17% who said housing are lower-middle- / middle-class people who are not rolling in wealth. This adds up to 33% who are almost certainly going to vote for the Socialists or the Commies. The 5% who said traffic are taxi drivers and truck drivers, small-businessmen who are conservative by nature and will go with the PP or CiU. The 27% who said crime are likely to be conservative (middle-class, professionals, and small businessmen) and will go CiU or PP. The 13% who said immigration are nativists who will go with CiU or the Republican Left. And, of course, the whole point of the election is winning those 22% of "other" voters, which is what will push one party or another over to victory.
The caveat here, and I'm not just saying this because I sympathize with them, is that it is not socially acceptable in many circles in Barcelona to support the PP. The other four parties are OK because it's virtuous to be leftist and/or Catalan nationalist. The PP is the only one that is neither. So the estimate of the PP vote is a "hard" estimate; those are the people who are not ashamed to say they'll vote PP. They're already solidly committed voters and unlikely to change their minds between now and the election. Polls always undercount the PP vote. I'd estimate it at somewhere between 13 and 17% of the total on election night in Barcelona. I remember in 2000 when Aznar won reelection in a landslide; all the polls had been giving him a bare majority and predicted that he'd be forced into another coalition. A significant number of people wouldn't admit they were going to vote PP. The estimates for the other parties are "soft"; the Republican Left and Initiative, the two most radical alternatives, tend to do better in the pre-election polling than in the election itself, when people faced with the ballot box decide to go for the useful vote and give it to the Socialists.
The breakdown for Council seats would be 19-20 for the Socialists, 11-12 for CiU, 4 for the PP, 4 for the Republican Left, and 2 for Initiative. A Socialist-Republican Left coalition would be sufficient to govern Barcelona for four more years should the election turn out like this, but I imagine they'd invite Initiative in anyway. Pas d'ennemis à gauche.
To the question "What's the biggest problem in Barcelona today?", 27% said crime, 17% said housing, 13% said immigration, 8% said unemployment, 8% said the cost of living, and 5% said traffic. 22% said "other". Allow me to pontificate: the 8% who said unemployment are those who are actually unemployed or underemployed, and the 8% who said cost of living and the 17% who said housing are lower-middle- / middle-class people who are not rolling in wealth. This adds up to 33% who are almost certainly going to vote for the Socialists or the Commies. The 5% who said traffic are taxi drivers and truck drivers, small-businessmen who are conservative by nature and will go with the PP or CiU. The 27% who said crime are likely to be conservative (middle-class, professionals, and small businessmen) and will go CiU or PP. The 13% who said immigration are nativists who will go with CiU or the Republican Left. And, of course, the whole point of the election is winning those 22% of "other" voters, which is what will push one party or another over to victory.
The caveat here, and I'm not just saying this because I sympathize with them, is that it is not socially acceptable in many circles in Barcelona to support the PP. The other four parties are OK because it's virtuous to be leftist and/or Catalan nationalist. The PP is the only one that is neither. So the estimate of the PP vote is a "hard" estimate; those are the people who are not ashamed to say they'll vote PP. They're already solidly committed voters and unlikely to change their minds between now and the election. Polls always undercount the PP vote. I'd estimate it at somewhere between 13 and 17% of the total on election night in Barcelona. I remember in 2000 when Aznar won reelection in a landslide; all the polls had been giving him a bare majority and predicted that he'd be forced into another coalition. A significant number of people wouldn't admit they were going to vote PP. The estimates for the other parties are "soft"; the Republican Left and Initiative, the two most radical alternatives, tend to do better in the pre-election polling than in the election itself, when people faced with the ballot box decide to go for the useful vote and give it to the Socialists.
Check out this article from the Washington Times. Seems as though Canadians, most of whom when visiting Europe wear a Canadian flag baseball cap, a Canadian flag T-shirt, and have sewn a Canadian flag patch on their backpacks just so no one will think they're Americans, have been warned that they'd better not because Canadians may be targets for Islamic terrorists. I'm splitting my sides laughing at the irony. The Wash Times article mentions that some chickenshit Americans try to pass themselves off as Canadians while overseas, which I have run across and find repulsive.
I remember that back around Gulf War I, the State Department sent out guidelines for Americans to follow while in Europe. We were supposed to avoid wearing baseball caps, avoid chewing gum, avoid wearing American sports-team or university clothes, avoid wearing jeans and sneakers, avoid listening to Walkmans, avoid going to American chain restaurants, avoid being seen with American newspapers, and avoid talking loudly in English in order to disguise our Americanness. Someone commented to me at the time that except for the last two, the list of Amerikanisch things to avoid could perfectly well have described any Spanish college kid.
By the way, the once-ubiquitous Walkman, which everyone in Spain used to carry around and listen to while on public transport, has been completely replaced by the mobile phone, which everyone in Spain now carries around and fools with on public transport.
I remember that back around Gulf War I, the State Department sent out guidelines for Americans to follow while in Europe. We were supposed to avoid wearing baseball caps, avoid chewing gum, avoid wearing American sports-team or university clothes, avoid wearing jeans and sneakers, avoid listening to Walkmans, avoid going to American chain restaurants, avoid being seen with American newspapers, and avoid talking loudly in English in order to disguise our Americanness. Someone commented to me at the time that except for the last two, the list of Amerikanisch things to avoid could perfectly well have described any Spanish college kid.
By the way, the once-ubiquitous Walkman, which everyone in Spain used to carry around and listen to while on public transport, has been completely replaced by the mobile phone, which everyone in Spain now carries around and fools with on public transport.
I've been thinking about health care and what is sometimes called "socialized medicine". Here in Spain we have socialized medicine, what they call here Social Security and what I call the National Health to avoid confusion. (In America, for you foreigners out there, Social Security refers to the government pension plan.) My experience with the Spanish National Health has been very positive. They unblocked my vas deferens (invasive surgery, four days in the hospital), they fixed my leg the time I cracked my fibula, they send me to a psychiatrist and pay for the expensive pills I take, and I can go in for a checkup anytime I want to which includes a complete blood test. Any emergency I might have, no matter how catastrophic, is covered all the way. In addition, they're going to pull an impacted wisdom tooth I've got--it's inconvenient, I had to go in first for an exam and another time for an x-ray and next time I go in the damn tooth will finally get pulled. So I don't buy the horror stories that occasionally show up in the American conservative press about public health care systems.
I will agree that a Western European-style National Health system would not work in the United States, but what I would be willing to pay for out of our tax money is a national preventative health care system. You could go in, say, a maximum of once every six months--or nine, or five, or whatever--for a general checkup which would include things like a blood test, a mammogram, and whatever other tests are predictive of illness. (Then you'd go to your insurance company and your private doctor to cure any problems discovered.) The National Preventative Health would also take care of such public-health matters as VD and contagious-disease control, vaccinations, flu shots, and the like. Antidotes to common chemical or biological weapons could also be stored in case of emergency. All of this wouldn't cost too much and would be the way to stop trouble before it happens, which is always much cheaper and better in the long run than fixing it after it's happened. I would include this condition that would really keep costs under control: you can't sue the National Health for malpractice. If you take advantage of its services, which you as a citizen have the right to, the risk is on your head. You can always choose to transfer the risk to a private doctor that you or your insurance company pay for and can sue. Using the National Preventative Health would be an option, not an obligation, but I would like it to be an attractive option for basic health maintenance that most people would choose.
I would get my doctors like this: we'd require, as now, a bachelor's degree in a hard science and then the standard four years in med school for an M.D. With a doctorate in medicine, you'd do a one-year internship with the National Preventative Health at full pay, and if your work was satisfactory, you'd become a regular staff physician. The NPH would give prospective doctors low-interest loans in exchange for five years' work after graduation (maybe three years' should they choose to serve as military doctors). Your income would be, say, between fifty and a hundred grand a year, enough to be solidly upper-middle class and comfortable. Nurses and staff would be well-paid, at market rates. Unionization and strikes by NPH personnel would be prohibited--that's the trade-off they would make in exchange for not being liable to lawsuit.
No, this isn't a part of a big-spending plan; I'm all in favor of reducing government spending as much as possible, which could be easily done in all kinds of ways that would allow us to pay for this. In addition, we'll quickly begin to see savings on both Medicare and Medicaid, which right now cost us more (together) per year than what we spend on defense. It's not part of a big-government plan, either; I would like to see the federal government's power to be considerably more limited than it is now. I do think, though, that there are several things that are so important to the functioning of a society that the government (whether federal, state or local), which is supposed to represent all of us, needs to take charge of them. National defense, police protection, the laws and courts, and foreign relations are among the most obvious. I would personally add education, which need not be provided by government but needs to be guaranteed by the government, the most basic food, clothing, and shelter for those who cannot take care of themselves, and, yes, preventative health care. It could be provided by private companies contracted by the government through open bidding, sure, I wouldn't mind that, but preventative health care is something that I see that people in America need and people in Spain have.
I will agree that a Western European-style National Health system would not work in the United States, but what I would be willing to pay for out of our tax money is a national preventative health care system. You could go in, say, a maximum of once every six months--or nine, or five, or whatever--for a general checkup which would include things like a blood test, a mammogram, and whatever other tests are predictive of illness. (Then you'd go to your insurance company and your private doctor to cure any problems discovered.) The National Preventative Health would also take care of such public-health matters as VD and contagious-disease control, vaccinations, flu shots, and the like. Antidotes to common chemical or biological weapons could also be stored in case of emergency. All of this wouldn't cost too much and would be the way to stop trouble before it happens, which is always much cheaper and better in the long run than fixing it after it's happened. I would include this condition that would really keep costs under control: you can't sue the National Health for malpractice. If you take advantage of its services, which you as a citizen have the right to, the risk is on your head. You can always choose to transfer the risk to a private doctor that you or your insurance company pay for and can sue. Using the National Preventative Health would be an option, not an obligation, but I would like it to be an attractive option for basic health maintenance that most people would choose.
I would get my doctors like this: we'd require, as now, a bachelor's degree in a hard science and then the standard four years in med school for an M.D. With a doctorate in medicine, you'd do a one-year internship with the National Preventative Health at full pay, and if your work was satisfactory, you'd become a regular staff physician. The NPH would give prospective doctors low-interest loans in exchange for five years' work after graduation (maybe three years' should they choose to serve as military doctors). Your income would be, say, between fifty and a hundred grand a year, enough to be solidly upper-middle class and comfortable. Nurses and staff would be well-paid, at market rates. Unionization and strikes by NPH personnel would be prohibited--that's the trade-off they would make in exchange for not being liable to lawsuit.
No, this isn't a part of a big-spending plan; I'm all in favor of reducing government spending as much as possible, which could be easily done in all kinds of ways that would allow us to pay for this. In addition, we'll quickly begin to see savings on both Medicare and Medicaid, which right now cost us more (together) per year than what we spend on defense. It's not part of a big-government plan, either; I would like to see the federal government's power to be considerably more limited than it is now. I do think, though, that there are several things that are so important to the functioning of a society that the government (whether federal, state or local), which is supposed to represent all of us, needs to take charge of them. National defense, police protection, the laws and courts, and foreign relations are among the most obvious. I would personally add education, which need not be provided by government but needs to be guaranteed by the government, the most basic food, clothing, and shelter for those who cannot take care of themselves, and, yes, preventative health care. It could be provided by private companies contracted by the government through open bidding, sure, I wouldn't mind that, but preventative health care is something that I see that people in America need and people in Spain have.
Here's Christopher Hitchens, the gutsiest leftist there is, on the demos and the peaceniks. If you haven't already read it, read it now.
Sunday, January 19, 2003
Belligerent Bunny Blog has an excellent photo-essay on the demo in Washington. According to BBB's photos, pretty much everybody at the Washington demo was a fellow-traveler out for a festive morning of protesting and donuts while listening to aboriginal didgeredoo music. (Should you be interested in the Washington Times's take on the story, click here.)
The lead story in today's Vanguardia international section is headlined, "Pacifists defy Bush". Eusebio Val, who replaced the X-man as the Vangua's American correspondent, says, "Dozens of thousands of activists from across the country participated in the march in the federal capital." Sebi interviews idiotarian protester Brenda Bayne, "a fifty-year-old music teacher who spent 13 hours on the road from Gainesville, Florida. 'Although I recognize that the Iraqi regime is a problem, we think it is immoral to strike first,' she declared to this newspaper. 'The US has more weapons of mass destruction than any other country in the world and it has used them most often. George Bush's Administration is a gang of hypocrites. None of them has been in the army or has children in the army. If there's a war, most of those who die will be blacks or Hispanics. What makes me most indignant is that our press silences these protests and to find out things I have to listen to the BBC or read the French press by Internet.'"
Time out for cogent analysis. 1) Note the conspiracy theory mentality. The press is silencing the truth so she has to go to the BBC and Le Fuckin' Monde Diplomatique to learn it. This nimrod must never have heard of, oh, the New York Times or CNN, among other major news outlets not notorious for their sympathies toward the Bush Administration. 2) Look, let's be quite frank here and lay off all the hero-worshipping-of-our-soldiers shit. These folks took the King's shilling. They volunteered, most of them because the Army provides a means to get the education necessary to be successful in America. They are what used to be called "regulars". They can be sent off to whatever war we want to send them off to; that's their job and they understand it that way. Who cares whether any of the Administration (Colin Powell, for example) has ever been in the army? That's wholly immaterial. (I am not impugning servicepeople's patriotism. I'm sure almost all of them are very patriotic. I'm also sure that almost all of them are ready to cheerfully fight in the service of their country, no matter what their race is.) And what does it matter whether there are proportionately more blacks and Hispanics in the army than in the general population? The main reason for that is that the army is the least racist important institution in the US, or the world. They really don't care what your color is if you can do the stuff you're supposed to do. Another big reason is that the Army provides vocational training, money to go to the university, something solid to put on your resumé ("Sergeant, US Army" looks a lot better than "Assistant manager, Hardee's"), and room, board, and a salary. This looks awfully good to working-class folks, like many ambitious blacks and Hispanics who know a university degree is the ticket to the white-collar world and that with a skilled trade you can write your own ticket. Also, it's not like we're going to suffer major losses in this war, anyway. 3) If it's immoral to strike first, exactly what has Saddam been doing over the years to Iran, Kuwait, the Kurds, and everyone in range of the terrorist gangs he supports? And wasn't 9-11 a first strike against us by the International Dirtbag Alliance that Saddam is part of? Isn't 9-11 supposed to be what we're trying to prevent from ever happening again? And isn't the best way to do that to eliminate those we suspect might want to see another 9-11? Anybody out there remember 9-11?
Enough cogent analysis. Sebi has found somebody who's in favor of a war against Saddam. Among the several dozen counterdemonstrators was Scott Shumen, a 32-year-old computer programmer, who said, "I don't think there's any other alternative. Saddam spends his money on dozens of palaces and hundreds of statues of himself while he is repressing the Shiites and the Kurds. We're here to support our troops."
There's a sidebar with the headline, "The world shouts out against war". Naturally, they're talking about the war in Ivory Coast, where French troops have unilaterally intervened in an internal civil war without asking anyone's permission. Oops, no, it's those rascally Americans again. They got 6000 grenouilles rouges out in Paris, which seems to be the biggest turnout anywhere in Europe. A few hundred people showed up at the Madrid demo, mostly carrying red flags. In Damascus they had a demo requesting Saddam Hussein to attack Israel. Yeah, the world sure shouted loud: there were several hundred demonstrators in Cologne, Bonn, London, Geneva, Naples, and Istanbul. My ears are still ringing.
The lead story in today's Vanguardia international section is headlined, "Pacifists defy Bush". Eusebio Val, who replaced the X-man as the Vangua's American correspondent, says, "Dozens of thousands of activists from across the country participated in the march in the federal capital." Sebi interviews idiotarian protester Brenda Bayne, "a fifty-year-old music teacher who spent 13 hours on the road from Gainesville, Florida. 'Although I recognize that the Iraqi regime is a problem, we think it is immoral to strike first,' she declared to this newspaper. 'The US has more weapons of mass destruction than any other country in the world and it has used them most often. George Bush's Administration is a gang of hypocrites. None of them has been in the army or has children in the army. If there's a war, most of those who die will be blacks or Hispanics. What makes me most indignant is that our press silences these protests and to find out things I have to listen to the BBC or read the French press by Internet.'"
Time out for cogent analysis. 1) Note the conspiracy theory mentality. The press is silencing the truth so she has to go to the BBC and Le Fuckin' Monde Diplomatique to learn it. This nimrod must never have heard of, oh, the New York Times or CNN, among other major news outlets not notorious for their sympathies toward the Bush Administration. 2) Look, let's be quite frank here and lay off all the hero-worshipping-of-our-soldiers shit. These folks took the King's shilling. They volunteered, most of them because the Army provides a means to get the education necessary to be successful in America. They are what used to be called "regulars". They can be sent off to whatever war we want to send them off to; that's their job and they understand it that way. Who cares whether any of the Administration (Colin Powell, for example) has ever been in the army? That's wholly immaterial. (I am not impugning servicepeople's patriotism. I'm sure almost all of them are very patriotic. I'm also sure that almost all of them are ready to cheerfully fight in the service of their country, no matter what their race is.) And what does it matter whether there are proportionately more blacks and Hispanics in the army than in the general population? The main reason for that is that the army is the least racist important institution in the US, or the world. They really don't care what your color is if you can do the stuff you're supposed to do. Another big reason is that the Army provides vocational training, money to go to the university, something solid to put on your resumé ("Sergeant, US Army" looks a lot better than "Assistant manager, Hardee's"), and room, board, and a salary. This looks awfully good to working-class folks, like many ambitious blacks and Hispanics who know a university degree is the ticket to the white-collar world and that with a skilled trade you can write your own ticket. Also, it's not like we're going to suffer major losses in this war, anyway. 3) If it's immoral to strike first, exactly what has Saddam been doing over the years to Iran, Kuwait, the Kurds, and everyone in range of the terrorist gangs he supports? And wasn't 9-11 a first strike against us by the International Dirtbag Alliance that Saddam is part of? Isn't 9-11 supposed to be what we're trying to prevent from ever happening again? And isn't the best way to do that to eliminate those we suspect might want to see another 9-11? Anybody out there remember 9-11?
Enough cogent analysis. Sebi has found somebody who's in favor of a war against Saddam. Among the several dozen counterdemonstrators was Scott Shumen, a 32-year-old computer programmer, who said, "I don't think there's any other alternative. Saddam spends his money on dozens of palaces and hundreds of statues of himself while he is repressing the Shiites and the Kurds. We're here to support our troops."
There's a sidebar with the headline, "The world shouts out against war". Naturally, they're talking about the war in Ivory Coast, where French troops have unilaterally intervened in an internal civil war without asking anyone's permission. Oops, no, it's those rascally Americans again. They got 6000 grenouilles rouges out in Paris, which seems to be the biggest turnout anywhere in Europe. A few hundred people showed up at the Madrid demo, mostly carrying red flags. In Damascus they had a demo requesting Saddam Hussein to attack Israel. Yeah, the world sure shouted loud: there were several hundred demonstrators in Cologne, Bonn, London, Geneva, Naples, and Istanbul. My ears are still ringing.
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