Wednesday, August 13, 2003
In case you'd forgotten (I certainly had), here is a collection of statements made about the Saddam regime in Iraq and using military force against it--by folks who immediately began carping at President Bush when he began to do precisely that. Honorable Exception: Bill Clinton, who publicly expressed his approval of the war on Saddam.
Tuesday, August 12, 2003
A writer I like who doesn't seem to get much attention is Slate's media critic, Jack Shafer. I've linked to him before. This is a good solid Shafer column that shows a couple of different sides of the guy. If you like it, check out his archive.
There's a rather manufactured controversy going on regarding a supposed feud between Rush Limbaugh and the blogosphere. InstaPundit and several other bloggers have picked up on it.
My take is this: The radio audience is much bigger than the blogosphere will ever be. Rush Limbaugh is an excellent, professional talk show host, and he will continue to be an important influence on popular opinion as long as he keeps going. Rush's target audience is approximately high school graduate level, same as Time and Newsweek and the network news. Radio gets huge numbers of listeners, and if I am correct, Limbaugh has the single most popular talk show in America. There are few choices on the radio, though--there are not many information sources, 20 or 30 stations in a city of which two or three are news-talk, and a whole hell of a lot of information receivers, anyone with a radio.
The blogosphere is just the other way around. There are a tremendous amount of information sources and a much smaller number of information receivers. How many people, bloggers and blogreaders, are active in the political B-sphere? We're not counting kittybloggers or techheads, we're counting Reynolds and Den Beste and Quick and their ilk, and let's define active as reading at least one blog a week. I bet it's fewer than one million people all totaled. Limbaugh gets what, five million listeners a day?
Blogs are also generally aimed higher than mass-market radio; I figure most political blogs are written for a college-graduate audience. One thing this means is that blogs are only going to appeal to the top 30% socioeconomically, while Rush appeals to that big middle seventy percent. (There are overlaps, of course, but the bottom twenty percent are reachable only through the most basic TV programs.)
So I'm really not sure what the big deal is. Limbaugh and bloggers, I think, are aiming at different audiences and so there's not that much competition between them. Sure, some of the blogosphere also listens to Limbaugh, but I don't see that either is taking audience away from the other, unlike what the blogosphere and the net in general are doing to the daily newspapers (showing how much they suck) and the weekly newsmagazines (showing how out of date they are; it's a dying format).
Prediction: Limbaugh is a loudmouth but he is very far from being stupid. He might not have been too hip to blogs before this little contretemps, but I'll guarantee you he is now, and I would not be at all surprised to see him mention several of the more prominent conservative bloggers on an upcoming program. Why turn the bloggers into an enemy when he can so easily have them as an ally?
Comment: One of the shibboleths of the left is Rush Limbaugh. You have to hate his guts if you're a liberal. Well, I've actually listened to Limbaugh with some frequency, and he is the opposite of angry, mean, and rude, as his enemies paint him. He's actually one of the calmer and less obnoxious radio talk-show hosts. He's made several well-publicized errors, but that'd be hard not to do when you're on the radio 900 hours a year. I wouldn't put myself down as a big fan, but Rush is definitely the best radio guy in America now in his field.
My take is this: The radio audience is much bigger than the blogosphere will ever be. Rush Limbaugh is an excellent, professional talk show host, and he will continue to be an important influence on popular opinion as long as he keeps going. Rush's target audience is approximately high school graduate level, same as Time and Newsweek and the network news. Radio gets huge numbers of listeners, and if I am correct, Limbaugh has the single most popular talk show in America. There are few choices on the radio, though--there are not many information sources, 20 or 30 stations in a city of which two or three are news-talk, and a whole hell of a lot of information receivers, anyone with a radio.
The blogosphere is just the other way around. There are a tremendous amount of information sources and a much smaller number of information receivers. How many people, bloggers and blogreaders, are active in the political B-sphere? We're not counting kittybloggers or techheads, we're counting Reynolds and Den Beste and Quick and their ilk, and let's define active as reading at least one blog a week. I bet it's fewer than one million people all totaled. Limbaugh gets what, five million listeners a day?
Blogs are also generally aimed higher than mass-market radio; I figure most political blogs are written for a college-graduate audience. One thing this means is that blogs are only going to appeal to the top 30% socioeconomically, while Rush appeals to that big middle seventy percent. (There are overlaps, of course, but the bottom twenty percent are reachable only through the most basic TV programs.)
So I'm really not sure what the big deal is. Limbaugh and bloggers, I think, are aiming at different audiences and so there's not that much competition between them. Sure, some of the blogosphere also listens to Limbaugh, but I don't see that either is taking audience away from the other, unlike what the blogosphere and the net in general are doing to the daily newspapers (showing how much they suck) and the weekly newsmagazines (showing how out of date they are; it's a dying format).
Prediction: Limbaugh is a loudmouth but he is very far from being stupid. He might not have been too hip to blogs before this little contretemps, but I'll guarantee you he is now, and I would not be at all surprised to see him mention several of the more prominent conservative bloggers on an upcoming program. Why turn the bloggers into an enemy when he can so easily have them as an ally?
Comment: One of the shibboleths of the left is Rush Limbaugh. You have to hate his guts if you're a liberal. Well, I've actually listened to Limbaugh with some frequency, and he is the opposite of angry, mean, and rude, as his enemies paint him. He's actually one of the calmer and less obnoxious radio talk-show hosts. He's made several well-publicized errors, but that'd be hard not to do when you're on the radio 900 hours a year. I wouldn't put myself down as a big fan, but Rush is definitely the best radio guy in America now in his field.
Monday, August 11, 2003
Tragedy near Terrassa. Five people were killed--asphyxiated--in Sant Llorenc Savall. There is a major fire up there that is still burning out of control; several hundred people have been evacuated from the area. Portugal, Spain, and France are burning; square miles of forest are going up and people are dying. High temperatures are ranging from about 95 to 110 F over southwestern Europe; Barcelona, where the highs are around 95, is getting off comparatively easy because of our seacoast location, though the surface temperature of the seawater is around 78-82 F, extremely warm. There are no signs of a break this week.
I've seen a few American bloggers calling the Europeans a bunch of wimps because it's a big deal that it hit 100 F in London, which has never happened before. See, you Yanks over there don't understand that we don't have air conditioning. Everybody in KC has air conditioning. 98 percent, anyway. It's a necessity of life when it's 90 F every day for two months like it is there. That never happens here in Europe. Nobody in Britain has A/C--hell, it gets hot enough to use it maybe three days a year. I don't have A/C because 85 F or so is as hot as it ever gets in Barcelona--but this year we've had 52 consecutive days with temps above 90 and there's no sign of any letup. They don't have A/C in a lot of hospitals, which is causing hundreds of deaths. Only fifty have been reported in Paris, but there'll be hundreds more all around Europe.
As usual the loonies are shouting that it's global warming. Folks, the whole point of global warning is that it's a gradual increase in temperatures caused by the buildup in carbon dioxide, right? It's supposed to be something we will see in the years to come, according to the theory. This here we're experiencing isn't a change in climate, it's a weather phenomenon caused by two enormous high-pressure systems. It is nasty hot weather, all right, but it is neither proof of nor a symptom of climate change.
Record-breaking temperatures, you say? Well, there are 365 days in a year, which means one record high temp and one record low temp for each of them 365 dates. In Barcelona records have been kept since about 1860, about 140 years. You do the math, but it looks to me like you ought to have an average, every year, of two record-breaking high temp days and two record-breaking low temps. Some years you'll have zero. Most years you'll have a couple. Every twenty or fifty or whatever years you'll have a big year and 20 or 30 new records. This is a big year for record high temps.
I've seen a few American bloggers calling the Europeans a bunch of wimps because it's a big deal that it hit 100 F in London, which has never happened before. See, you Yanks over there don't understand that we don't have air conditioning. Everybody in KC has air conditioning. 98 percent, anyway. It's a necessity of life when it's 90 F every day for two months like it is there. That never happens here in Europe. Nobody in Britain has A/C--hell, it gets hot enough to use it maybe three days a year. I don't have A/C because 85 F or so is as hot as it ever gets in Barcelona--but this year we've had 52 consecutive days with temps above 90 and there's no sign of any letup. They don't have A/C in a lot of hospitals, which is causing hundreds of deaths. Only fifty have been reported in Paris, but there'll be hundreds more all around Europe.
As usual the loonies are shouting that it's global warming. Folks, the whole point of global warning is that it's a gradual increase in temperatures caused by the buildup in carbon dioxide, right? It's supposed to be something we will see in the years to come, according to the theory. This here we're experiencing isn't a change in climate, it's a weather phenomenon caused by two enormous high-pressure systems. It is nasty hot weather, all right, but it is neither proof of nor a symptom of climate change.
Record-breaking temperatures, you say? Well, there are 365 days in a year, which means one record high temp and one record low temp for each of them 365 dates. In Barcelona records have been kept since about 1860, about 140 years. You do the math, but it looks to me like you ought to have an average, every year, of two record-breaking high temp days and two record-breaking low temps. Some years you'll have zero. Most years you'll have a couple. Every twenty or fifty or whatever years you'll have a big year and 20 or 30 new records. This is a big year for record high temps.
There hasn't been a good wild one from La Vangua recently; Baltobrain Porcel is on vacation, and someone's told Chemical Lali Sole to go back to howling about gender discrimination rather than to continue howling about the intrinsic evil of the United States. But Jose Ignacio Gonzalez Faus is still in business. Mr. Gonzalez Faus is a Jesuit priest, billed as the "academic director" of Cristianisme i Justicia. Our pal Jose Manuel, who knows a lot about Church matters, says that Gonzalez Faus is "for a Jesuit, a pretty good Marxist." We'll call him Nacho, the nickname for Ignacio, which is especially appropriate because Mr. Gonzalez is about half-flaky and about half-soggy, just like ballpark nachos. He's also pretty indigestible and just generally hard to stomach.
Ten years ago I had already written about the danger that "we will end up selling our prized liberty for a mess of pottage" and that we were on the road to "a world-level Fascism, infinitely more difficult to escape from than when one is dealing with Fascism in one or two countries." It wasn't a fatalistic verdict; life has "surprising mechanisms of correction" and we can expect that we will function. But "perhaps one of these mechanisms is that somebody warn of the danger".
OK, Nacho, you're Cassandra. We are now warned. Shut up already.
Ten years later, my fear is growing. In its yearly report, Amnesty International is launching a similar warning. The situation of the world has gotten worse with the change from the old "balance of terror" to the current unbalanced terror, where only one country can arm itself to the teeth and with no control, while the rest, if they arm themselves, will be condemned to death as a terrorist threat.
Calm down, Nacho. Are you saying China and Russia and Taiwan and India and Pakistan and South Korea and Israel and Britain and France aren't "armed to the teeth"? And are you saying that the United States' defense policy should be under the control of others? What others? Are you saying that Afghanistan and Iraq weren't terrorist threats? Have you noticed those are the only two governments we've taken out? If what we were trying to do was silence criticism, we'd have taken out France, not the Taliban. And are you saying that the world was better BEFORE the fall of the Soviet Union?
The coming Fascism is a transvestite Fascism, dressed up as democracy. This is not negated but sterilized. The separation of powers is annulled in fact, though not by law: the "fourth estate" becomes the property of the executive (the Berlusconi case) and the judicial branch is nominated by the executive which puts it at the executive's service (the Cardenal case).
OK. Globalization is Fascism, huh? Of course, Nacho is using "Fascist" according to the standard leftist definition: "anybody who's smarter than I am." If you're saying the United States is not a democracy, sorry to inform you you're wrong; the government does not own any of the media of communication, and we conservatives like it that way. We don't want either Berlusconi or Red Ken to get hold of any state-controlled media. And, of course, in the US federal judges are nominated by the executive but must be confirmed by the legislative, and if Nacho had the slightest idea about American politics, he'd know that during all of President Bush's term he's been having problems getting judicial appointments confirmed by the Democrats in Congress. He'd also know that some big names, like Robert Bork, have been kept off the bench by the Congress.
A Guatemalan author once said that dictators are not a cause but an effect. Searching for the causes of this devalued democracy, we might point out the neoliberal separation between policics and the economy. Political life is becoming more and more controlled by the economy. Now look: capitalism is an excluding system, while democracy tends to be inclusive--votes for everyone, health and education for everyone. For a while democracy braked and partially held back capitalism. Now capitalism, free of political controls, is threatening to put and end to democracy.
What? Look, doofus, capitalism is not only an ECONOMIC system but the only effective one. Democracy is a POLITICAL system. You could have a (mostly) capitalist democracy (the US), a capitalist dictatorship (Pinochet), a Socialist democracy (Sweden, more or less), or a Socialist dictatorship (the USSR). The United States has plenty of brakes on unscrupulous people who misuse the capitalist system, like the Federal Reserve system, the IRS, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the insider-trading laws, the regulation of banks and insurance companies, the regulation of corporations, the antitrust laws, the laws allowing labor unions and collective bargaining, the Treasury Department, the contract-enforcing judicial system, and an extremely long etcetera.
As for votes for everyone, of course. That's democracy. Health care and education for everyone--that's not democracy, that's the welfare state. Don't confuse the two. Now, it is true that I support access for everyone to health care and education, and that's what we've got in the States--sure, a lot of the public schools suck, and only old people (Medicare) and poor people (Medicaid) get government-subsidized health care. You can't be turned away from an emergency room, though. The American welfare-state system could be improved and I yell and scream about it all the time, but it does exist. Most European countries have considerably more generous welfare-state systems than the US, but it's just a lie to imply that capitalism implies no government spending on welfare.
More fertile ground for the new Fascism would be this: human beings, at least today's Occidentals, can be defined as an "insecure animal" And the two great principles of modernity and democracy--the dignity and the liberty of man--imply a sizable dose of insecurity, risk, and trouble as part of human life. Maybe this insecurity is what puts the idea of preventive war, which is not new, into circulation: "We have the moral obligation, we have the obligation to our people, to kill those people who, with no doubt, will kill us." These are not the words of Bush or one of his idolators. They are from a speech by Himmler in 1943. But they coincide with Bush in two points: the "moral duty" to kill and the "no doubt" which justifies it--Saddam Hussein had, without a doubt, weapons of mass destruction.
Oh boy. Comparing Bush with Himmler, huh? That's a new low. It's really obscene, not to mention ignorant. The current War on Terrorism, of which Afghanistan was the first campaign and Iraq the second, is not a preventive war. It was started on September 11, 2001, in case you don't remember, and it's nowhere near finished yet. Second, Himmler was talking about the moral duty to massacre people because of their religion, which is of course sickening; Bush is talking about his sworn duty to defend the United States. Himmler wanted to kill as many Jews as he could; Bush wants to kill as few as possible of anybody who isn't actively fighting for the terrorists and the rogue states.
By the way, all animals are insecure. The rabbit never knows when the fox or hawk is going to get him. Humans today, at least outside Africa, are more secure than they have ever been. A Westerner today is about as safe as any animal has ever been in history; not too many rabbits or foxes or hawks die of old age. And Saddam did have weapons of mass destruction. He used them on the Iranians and the Kurds, and the Boston Globe is reporting that he ordered chemical weapons to be used against Allied troops in the March-April war.
Another factor could be the current "culture of demotivation" that the mass media broadcasts. The people sometimes intuits the danger and protests or goes out in the streets for a few days. But if time is allowed to pass, the people ends up getting tired. Then they can admit freely that they lied: that there was no solid evidence to attack Iraq, that the only solid thing was the desire to drop bombs. The lie will be admitted without anybody's feeling obligated to resign. And when lies become installed in public life, democracy is very threatened.
The fact is that issues like the Iraq war don't affect the people of Spain at all, except for making them somewhat safer in the long run, which they generally don't recognize. There are no immediate benefits or losses for the Spaniards relating to this issue, so a little bit of feel-good, we're-so-moral protesting went on. It was more of a fashion statement than compassion for the Iraqi or Afghani peoples; I still remember TV slut Yola Berrocal showing up on Tele 5 wearing only a bikini, with a "No War" sticker hanging off her tit. If something really affected the lives of Spaniards, like the ETA, you'd see mass demonstrations all over the place. Which you see. It's Maslow's hierarchy; if you've got enough to eat and a place to live and physical safety for yourself, then you can allow yourself to spend your energy demonstrating against the damn Yankees because it makes you feel good about yourself.
But what this people wants is not to struggle (the struggle for life is already tiring enough), but some idol to cheer for and some gadget to become idiotized by. It doesn't matter of they're Beckhams today or Butraguenos tomorrow; modern man needs to identify himself with some social legend in order to feel positive about himself and accept himself peacefully. But when a people has lost its sensitivity to measure the level of its own ridiculousness (the Beckham case), the immunological system of the society is threatened.
Well, sure, there's a lot of stress these days, but "struggle for life"? In Spain, where if you're hungry or homeless it's not the government's fault, life is less of a struggle than anywhere else in history. That's why people can afford to waste time going to public demonstrations instead of, say, digging up worms. And plenty of ridiculous ephemeral shit goes on all the time in any society that can afford it. Methinks that what Nacho is really complaining about is that the lumpenproletariat has plenty of money and spare time, two things that Western democracy and capitalism have provided them with, and they choose to spend their excess money buying tacky garbage they don't need and their excess time absorbed by bad television. Set up the re-education camps! Nacho's in town, and it's 24 hours straight of documentaries about Peruvian fishermen and Social Realist theater! He knows what's best for you!
Some symptoms of this Fascism might be the discredit of democracy, fallen into the hands of the BBA (I'm not referring to any bank but to the trio Bush, Berlusconi, Aznar) Or the different way in which the United States believes that justice should be administered whether we are dealing with alleged American criminals (the negative to the International Criminal Court) or those from other countries (the cases of Guantanamo and Iraq) Typical of all forms of fascism faw the practice of preventive prisons with no judicial process against those who are suspicious or opponents: and now the Department of Justice is justifying the admitted violations of human rights in Guantanamo as necessary to prevent new terrorist acts.
So the United States, Bush, Aznar, and Berlusconi are all Fascists? What the hell definition of Fascism is Nacho using? I thought it had something to do with absolute dictatorship and the (non-capitalist) corporative state, neither of which accurately describes the aovementioned four. (I will freely admit that I think Berlusconi's a crook, but he did get elected, and he's PM of Italy until their judicial system gets him.) As for human rights and Guantanamo, that's a red herring. Nobody's being mistreated there; the Russian citizens--probably mostly Chechens--imprisoned at Gitmo want to stay instead of being sent home to face the music there. What the Gitmo prisoners are is illegal bearers of arms caught in the act. In the old days they'd have been shot out of hand. Today we're not sure what to do with them, but we do know if we turn 'em loose they'll be back in business as fast as a Barcelona mugger.
Oh, yeah, the US problem with the ICC is that a bunch of jokers like you, Nacho, would immediately trump up charges against anyone ever involved with the US government and military. We prefer to try our own citizens, thank you. That's called national sovereignty, which you yourself, Nacho, are so fond of defending when it comes to Cuba or Iraq.
That's enough. If I translate any more of this shit I'll puke. Nacho is really spiteful and hateful, isn't he? I've never read anything angrier with less reason. My guess is he's a transferred nationalist and his base loyalty is to communism and the Soviet Union. The collapse of his dream, everything he spent his life working for, has left him with no God except the one up there he probably doesn't really believe in, and as a dialectical materialist he has a Manichean point of view about good and evil (good: the Party line, evil: everything else). His God's dead but his Satan, the United States, is stronger than ever.
He does mention, toward the end of the article, that Martin Niemoller said, "When they came for the Communists, I wasn't a Communist, so they said nothing. When they came for the union men, I wasn't a union man, so I said nothing. When they came for me there was nobody left to say anything." Well, actually, if I remember correctly, Niemoller mentioned those damn Jews at the top of his list. Nacho has intentionally falsified a quote.
Ten years ago I had already written about the danger that "we will end up selling our prized liberty for a mess of pottage" and that we were on the road to "a world-level Fascism, infinitely more difficult to escape from than when one is dealing with Fascism in one or two countries." It wasn't a fatalistic verdict; life has "surprising mechanisms of correction" and we can expect that we will function. But "perhaps one of these mechanisms is that somebody warn of the danger".
OK, Nacho, you're Cassandra. We are now warned. Shut up already.
Ten years later, my fear is growing. In its yearly report, Amnesty International is launching a similar warning. The situation of the world has gotten worse with the change from the old "balance of terror" to the current unbalanced terror, where only one country can arm itself to the teeth and with no control, while the rest, if they arm themselves, will be condemned to death as a terrorist threat.
Calm down, Nacho. Are you saying China and Russia and Taiwan and India and Pakistan and South Korea and Israel and Britain and France aren't "armed to the teeth"? And are you saying that the United States' defense policy should be under the control of others? What others? Are you saying that Afghanistan and Iraq weren't terrorist threats? Have you noticed those are the only two governments we've taken out? If what we were trying to do was silence criticism, we'd have taken out France, not the Taliban. And are you saying that the world was better BEFORE the fall of the Soviet Union?
The coming Fascism is a transvestite Fascism, dressed up as democracy. This is not negated but sterilized. The separation of powers is annulled in fact, though not by law: the "fourth estate" becomes the property of the executive (the Berlusconi case) and the judicial branch is nominated by the executive which puts it at the executive's service (the Cardenal case).
OK. Globalization is Fascism, huh? Of course, Nacho is using "Fascist" according to the standard leftist definition: "anybody who's smarter than I am." If you're saying the United States is not a democracy, sorry to inform you you're wrong; the government does not own any of the media of communication, and we conservatives like it that way. We don't want either Berlusconi or Red Ken to get hold of any state-controlled media. And, of course, in the US federal judges are nominated by the executive but must be confirmed by the legislative, and if Nacho had the slightest idea about American politics, he'd know that during all of President Bush's term he's been having problems getting judicial appointments confirmed by the Democrats in Congress. He'd also know that some big names, like Robert Bork, have been kept off the bench by the Congress.
A Guatemalan author once said that dictators are not a cause but an effect. Searching for the causes of this devalued democracy, we might point out the neoliberal separation between policics and the economy. Political life is becoming more and more controlled by the economy. Now look: capitalism is an excluding system, while democracy tends to be inclusive--votes for everyone, health and education for everyone. For a while democracy braked and partially held back capitalism. Now capitalism, free of political controls, is threatening to put and end to democracy.
What? Look, doofus, capitalism is not only an ECONOMIC system but the only effective one. Democracy is a POLITICAL system. You could have a (mostly) capitalist democracy (the US), a capitalist dictatorship (Pinochet), a Socialist democracy (Sweden, more or less), or a Socialist dictatorship (the USSR). The United States has plenty of brakes on unscrupulous people who misuse the capitalist system, like the Federal Reserve system, the IRS, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the insider-trading laws, the regulation of banks and insurance companies, the regulation of corporations, the antitrust laws, the laws allowing labor unions and collective bargaining, the Treasury Department, the contract-enforcing judicial system, and an extremely long etcetera.
As for votes for everyone, of course. That's democracy. Health care and education for everyone--that's not democracy, that's the welfare state. Don't confuse the two. Now, it is true that I support access for everyone to health care and education, and that's what we've got in the States--sure, a lot of the public schools suck, and only old people (Medicare) and poor people (Medicaid) get government-subsidized health care. You can't be turned away from an emergency room, though. The American welfare-state system could be improved and I yell and scream about it all the time, but it does exist. Most European countries have considerably more generous welfare-state systems than the US, but it's just a lie to imply that capitalism implies no government spending on welfare.
More fertile ground for the new Fascism would be this: human beings, at least today's Occidentals, can be defined as an "insecure animal" And the two great principles of modernity and democracy--the dignity and the liberty of man--imply a sizable dose of insecurity, risk, and trouble as part of human life. Maybe this insecurity is what puts the idea of preventive war, which is not new, into circulation: "We have the moral obligation, we have the obligation to our people, to kill those people who, with no doubt, will kill us." These are not the words of Bush or one of his idolators. They are from a speech by Himmler in 1943. But they coincide with Bush in two points: the "moral duty" to kill and the "no doubt" which justifies it--Saddam Hussein had, without a doubt, weapons of mass destruction.
Oh boy. Comparing Bush with Himmler, huh? That's a new low. It's really obscene, not to mention ignorant. The current War on Terrorism, of which Afghanistan was the first campaign and Iraq the second, is not a preventive war. It was started on September 11, 2001, in case you don't remember, and it's nowhere near finished yet. Second, Himmler was talking about the moral duty to massacre people because of their religion, which is of course sickening; Bush is talking about his sworn duty to defend the United States. Himmler wanted to kill as many Jews as he could; Bush wants to kill as few as possible of anybody who isn't actively fighting for the terrorists and the rogue states.
By the way, all animals are insecure. The rabbit never knows when the fox or hawk is going to get him. Humans today, at least outside Africa, are more secure than they have ever been. A Westerner today is about as safe as any animal has ever been in history; not too many rabbits or foxes or hawks die of old age. And Saddam did have weapons of mass destruction. He used them on the Iranians and the Kurds, and the Boston Globe is reporting that he ordered chemical weapons to be used against Allied troops in the March-April war.
Another factor could be the current "culture of demotivation" that the mass media broadcasts. The people sometimes intuits the danger and protests or goes out in the streets for a few days. But if time is allowed to pass, the people ends up getting tired. Then they can admit freely that they lied: that there was no solid evidence to attack Iraq, that the only solid thing was the desire to drop bombs. The lie will be admitted without anybody's feeling obligated to resign. And when lies become installed in public life, democracy is very threatened.
The fact is that issues like the Iraq war don't affect the people of Spain at all, except for making them somewhat safer in the long run, which they generally don't recognize. There are no immediate benefits or losses for the Spaniards relating to this issue, so a little bit of feel-good, we're-so-moral protesting went on. It was more of a fashion statement than compassion for the Iraqi or Afghani peoples; I still remember TV slut Yola Berrocal showing up on Tele 5 wearing only a bikini, with a "No War" sticker hanging off her tit. If something really affected the lives of Spaniards, like the ETA, you'd see mass demonstrations all over the place. Which you see. It's Maslow's hierarchy; if you've got enough to eat and a place to live and physical safety for yourself, then you can allow yourself to spend your energy demonstrating against the damn Yankees because it makes you feel good about yourself.
But what this people wants is not to struggle (the struggle for life is already tiring enough), but some idol to cheer for and some gadget to become idiotized by. It doesn't matter of they're Beckhams today or Butraguenos tomorrow; modern man needs to identify himself with some social legend in order to feel positive about himself and accept himself peacefully. But when a people has lost its sensitivity to measure the level of its own ridiculousness (the Beckham case), the immunological system of the society is threatened.
Well, sure, there's a lot of stress these days, but "struggle for life"? In Spain, where if you're hungry or homeless it's not the government's fault, life is less of a struggle than anywhere else in history. That's why people can afford to waste time going to public demonstrations instead of, say, digging up worms. And plenty of ridiculous ephemeral shit goes on all the time in any society that can afford it. Methinks that what Nacho is really complaining about is that the lumpenproletariat has plenty of money and spare time, two things that Western democracy and capitalism have provided them with, and they choose to spend their excess money buying tacky garbage they don't need and their excess time absorbed by bad television. Set up the re-education camps! Nacho's in town, and it's 24 hours straight of documentaries about Peruvian fishermen and Social Realist theater! He knows what's best for you!
Some symptoms of this Fascism might be the discredit of democracy, fallen into the hands of the BBA (I'm not referring to any bank but to the trio Bush, Berlusconi, Aznar) Or the different way in which the United States believes that justice should be administered whether we are dealing with alleged American criminals (the negative to the International Criminal Court) or those from other countries (the cases of Guantanamo and Iraq) Typical of all forms of fascism faw the practice of preventive prisons with no judicial process against those who are suspicious or opponents: and now the Department of Justice is justifying the admitted violations of human rights in Guantanamo as necessary to prevent new terrorist acts.
So the United States, Bush, Aznar, and Berlusconi are all Fascists? What the hell definition of Fascism is Nacho using? I thought it had something to do with absolute dictatorship and the (non-capitalist) corporative state, neither of which accurately describes the aovementioned four. (I will freely admit that I think Berlusconi's a crook, but he did get elected, and he's PM of Italy until their judicial system gets him.) As for human rights and Guantanamo, that's a red herring. Nobody's being mistreated there; the Russian citizens--probably mostly Chechens--imprisoned at Gitmo want to stay instead of being sent home to face the music there. What the Gitmo prisoners are is illegal bearers of arms caught in the act. In the old days they'd have been shot out of hand. Today we're not sure what to do with them, but we do know if we turn 'em loose they'll be back in business as fast as a Barcelona mugger.
Oh, yeah, the US problem with the ICC is that a bunch of jokers like you, Nacho, would immediately trump up charges against anyone ever involved with the US government and military. We prefer to try our own citizens, thank you. That's called national sovereignty, which you yourself, Nacho, are so fond of defending when it comes to Cuba or Iraq.
That's enough. If I translate any more of this shit I'll puke. Nacho is really spiteful and hateful, isn't he? I've never read anything angrier with less reason. My guess is he's a transferred nationalist and his base loyalty is to communism and the Soviet Union. The collapse of his dream, everything he spent his life working for, has left him with no God except the one up there he probably doesn't really believe in, and as a dialectical materialist he has a Manichean point of view about good and evil (good: the Party line, evil: everything else). His God's dead but his Satan, the United States, is stronger than ever.
He does mention, toward the end of the article, that Martin Niemoller said, "When they came for the Communists, I wasn't a Communist, so they said nothing. When they came for the union men, I wasn't a union man, so I said nothing. When they came for me there was nobody left to say anything." Well, actually, if I remember correctly, Niemoller mentioned those damn Jews at the top of his list. Nacho has intentionally falsified a quote.
Big stink in San Sebastian. The pro-ETA psychopaths ("la izquierda abertzale") had a demo yesterday. The Basque Interior Department (law enforcement) tried to ban the demo on the grounds that it might provoke violence or rioting. The Basque Supreme Court overruled Interior on Saturday on the grounds that there was no evidence that the demo was organized by Batasuna, ETA's political branch; the permit to demonstrate was applied for by a private citizen. The Mayor of San Sebastian, the Socialist Odon Elorza, says the Basque Supremes are nuts.
So the psychopaths had themselves a lovely time, shouting "Gora ETA!" over and over in the public streets. Arnaldo Otegi, ETA-Batasuna's spokesman, the most hated person in Spain, gave a fiery speech in which he said there would have been no deaths or bombs if "ETA's proposal to advance toward a national, democratic space for the Basque people had been accepted". Sounds to me like he's speaking in the name of ETA. I'd arrest him and charge him with apology for terrorism, which is illegal here, and then lock his ass up. (Note: in this context "apology" doesn't mean saying sorry, it means arguing in favor of.) Three psychopaths with their faces covered, which is also against the law here, came out on stage and torched a Spanish flag, which is also illegal. Otegi's comment was "Wow, the Spanish flag sure stinks".
Now, I'm not big on symbols. I think burning the American flag or any other national symbol (as long as you bought your own flag to burn) ought to be legal, and I do not think that a secular society ought to protect religious symbols. Of course, if you knock down some church's cross because you hate Christians, for example, then we bust you for vandalism and property destruction and anything else we can throw at you, but we don't bust you for desecration, because that shouldn't be a crime if you're torching your own Star of David or whatever. We consider you a bigot and an asshole, but that symbol is your property and you can do whatever you want with it.
I do think that burning the Spanish flag, though, shows hate for both Spain and the Spanish people. Sure, it ought to be legal. It's also despicable and shows exactly what kind of people we're dealing with here.
So the psychopaths had themselves a lovely time, shouting "Gora ETA!" over and over in the public streets. Arnaldo Otegi, ETA-Batasuna's spokesman, the most hated person in Spain, gave a fiery speech in which he said there would have been no deaths or bombs if "ETA's proposal to advance toward a national, democratic space for the Basque people had been accepted". Sounds to me like he's speaking in the name of ETA. I'd arrest him and charge him with apology for terrorism, which is illegal here, and then lock his ass up. (Note: in this context "apology" doesn't mean saying sorry, it means arguing in favor of.) Three psychopaths with their faces covered, which is also against the law here, came out on stage and torched a Spanish flag, which is also illegal. Otegi's comment was "Wow, the Spanish flag sure stinks".
Now, I'm not big on symbols. I think burning the American flag or any other national symbol (as long as you bought your own flag to burn) ought to be legal, and I do not think that a secular society ought to protect religious symbols. Of course, if you knock down some church's cross because you hate Christians, for example, then we bust you for vandalism and property destruction and anything else we can throw at you, but we don't bust you for desecration, because that shouldn't be a crime if you're torching your own Star of David or whatever. We consider you a bigot and an asshole, but that symbol is your property and you can do whatever you want with it.
I do think that burning the Spanish flag, though, shows hate for both Spain and the Spanish people. Sure, it ought to be legal. It's also despicable and shows exactly what kind of people we're dealing with here.
I think recall, initiative, and referendum elections are absolutely ridiculous, a system of procedures thought up during the Progressive / Populist era that should have been tossed out with all that other lefty World War One-era crap like the laws which restricted banks to only one state or the various laws against chain stores or, for God's sake, Prohibition.
My major problem with this system is that it smacks of too much democracy. Yep, you heard me right, too much direct democracy. We are a representative democracy, which means you vote for the people who make the laws; you don't make the laws yourself.
The purpose of representation is that one person is elected to be the voice of everybody in an area, and then all the people's elected representatives get together and make laws, restricted by the Constitution. What this does is eliminate the "Let's kill Socrates" danger of mobocracy.
It is also supposed to allow the elected representatives a certain amount of time to make policies work; you're elected for two or four or six years and one of the consequences of this is political stability rather than the indecisiveness of a government that can be thrown out on a whim. Recall elections make it impossible for political leaders to implement unpopular but necessary policies.
Recall, initiative, and referendum are all procedures that interfere with the functioning of representative democracy. Initiative and referendum takes the right to legislate away from the legislature and puts it in direct popular hands. Recall allows an unpopular elected official (not one who has behaved criminally--crooks shouldn't be removed by recall, they should be removed by impeachment and prosecution) to be removed before the end of his term.
The only thing I ever learned in philosophy class was Immanuel Kant's Categorical Imperative. It says, more or less, that any action you do that you wouldn't be willing for anybody else to do is immoral. Would you be willing to live in a society where everybody pissed in the street? No, you wouldn't, so your pissing in the street is unethical.
Would we be willing to have the President subjected to recall elections? Are you nuts? Of course not. Adams, Madison, and JQA would all have been recalled. Lincoln would have been recalled in 1862. Truman would have been recalled in 1951. The Seventies would have been a series of recall elections. Reagan might very well have been recalled in 1982 and 1987, and Clinton might have been in 1994 and certainly would have been in 1998. Right now there would be plenty of leftists willing to sign a Recall Bush petition. Boy, that'd give the world confidence in steady, responsible American leadership. What it would do is require the President to follow the polls slavishly, much more so than they do now.
Since we don't want recall elections for President, we don't want them for any other post, either. If you still don't like your elected representative when regular election time comes around, that's when you speak out against him and support some other candidate.
The Europeans are having a lovely time making fun of this California circus, which is what they're calling it and what it is. For once the Vanguardia is right when it bashes America. I don't care how much you hate Gray Davis, he did get elected governor, he is not a crook so you can't impeach him, and he gets to serve out his term. That's the way it ought to work, anyway.
My major problem with this system is that it smacks of too much democracy. Yep, you heard me right, too much direct democracy. We are a representative democracy, which means you vote for the people who make the laws; you don't make the laws yourself.
The purpose of representation is that one person is elected to be the voice of everybody in an area, and then all the people's elected representatives get together and make laws, restricted by the Constitution. What this does is eliminate the "Let's kill Socrates" danger of mobocracy.
It is also supposed to allow the elected representatives a certain amount of time to make policies work; you're elected for two or four or six years and one of the consequences of this is political stability rather than the indecisiveness of a government that can be thrown out on a whim. Recall elections make it impossible for political leaders to implement unpopular but necessary policies.
Recall, initiative, and referendum are all procedures that interfere with the functioning of representative democracy. Initiative and referendum takes the right to legislate away from the legislature and puts it in direct popular hands. Recall allows an unpopular elected official (not one who has behaved criminally--crooks shouldn't be removed by recall, they should be removed by impeachment and prosecution) to be removed before the end of his term.
The only thing I ever learned in philosophy class was Immanuel Kant's Categorical Imperative. It says, more or less, that any action you do that you wouldn't be willing for anybody else to do is immoral. Would you be willing to live in a society where everybody pissed in the street? No, you wouldn't, so your pissing in the street is unethical.
Would we be willing to have the President subjected to recall elections? Are you nuts? Of course not. Adams, Madison, and JQA would all have been recalled. Lincoln would have been recalled in 1862. Truman would have been recalled in 1951. The Seventies would have been a series of recall elections. Reagan might very well have been recalled in 1982 and 1987, and Clinton might have been in 1994 and certainly would have been in 1998. Right now there would be plenty of leftists willing to sign a Recall Bush petition. Boy, that'd give the world confidence in steady, responsible American leadership. What it would do is require the President to follow the polls slavishly, much more so than they do now.
Since we don't want recall elections for President, we don't want them for any other post, either. If you still don't like your elected representative when regular election time comes around, that's when you speak out against him and support some other candidate.
The Europeans are having a lovely time making fun of this California circus, which is what they're calling it and what it is. For once the Vanguardia is right when it bashes America. I don't care how much you hate Gray Davis, he did get elected governor, he is not a crook so you can't impeach him, and he gets to serve out his term. That's the way it ought to work, anyway.
Sunday, August 10, 2003
Here are a couple of pieces from the Weekly Standard on the oil business and the Saudis. Check 'em out.
Saturday, August 09, 2003
Hey, guess what? We're twice as popular as Howard Dean! That's right, according to N.Z. Bear's Blogosphere Ecosystem, we have 59 incoming links while Howard Dean's 2004 Call to Action, or whatever it is, only has 30. Twice as many bloggers think we're worth reading as think Governor Mean is!
So why are all the damn journalists following him around instead of me?
Remember: Vermont has what, around 400,000 people? That means managing that state is about as hard as being mayor of Kansas City--no, actually, much easier, since the KC mayor has to deal with a rotten school system, a high crime rate, several significant and difficult-to-deal-with interest groups, and keeping General Motors, US Sprint, and the GSA happy so they won't move away and take all our jobs.
In Vermont they can waste the State Lege's time debating about gay marriage. In KC the City Council has to deal with things that are much more basic, like what are we doing to reduce the murder rate on the east side or how in the hell can we get some more money without raising taxes again?
So why are all the damn journalists following him around instead of me?
Remember: Vermont has what, around 400,000 people? That means managing that state is about as hard as being mayor of Kansas City--no, actually, much easier, since the KC mayor has to deal with a rotten school system, a high crime rate, several significant and difficult-to-deal-with interest groups, and keeping General Motors, US Sprint, and the GSA happy so they won't move away and take all our jobs.
In Vermont they can waste the State Lege's time debating about gay marriage. In KC the City Council has to deal with things that are much more basic, like what are we doing to reduce the murder rate on the east side or how in the hell can we get some more money without raising taxes again?
Friday, August 08, 2003
The Vangua's big front-page headline today refers to the "Iraqi resistance". There is no Iraqi resistance. There are a bunch of Fedayeen / Baath / Saddamites running around commiting crimes and terrorist acts within a small parcel of land to the west of Baghdad. These people are not patriots. Tikrit Tommy Alcoverro keeps going on about the humiliation of the millenarian Iraqi people. The smart ones consider themselves liberated from a bloody dictator. And if I were Iraqi, what I'd feel humiliated about is that such a scumball had been governing my country for so long and that the native opposition to said scumball hadn't managed to get rid of him. Besides, what Iraqi people? Iraq is three old Ottoman provinces stuck together artificially after World War I as part of the worst peace settlement of all time. Would Tikrit Tommy have written a bunch of stories about the supposed humiliation of the Germans and the Japanese in 1945?
The Vangua is also trying to split the alliance by praising the British troops around Basra for being culturally sensitive while blasting the Yanks for being arrogant and imperialistic for driving around Baghdad and Tikrit and Fallujah with guns. There is a reason for that: as I said before, all of the violence is in a small area near Baghdad where the people are from Saddam's clan and served as his power base. There is no violence in the British occupation area in the south or in the American occupation zone of Kurdistan in the north, because all those people are thrilled beyond relief to be rid of Saddam. It's only the hardcore Saddamites, who were just as bad as he was, who are shooting at the Americans.
First major fire of the year in Catalonia; they had to evacuate a couple of thousand people up in Massanet. It's well under control now. This is going to be a very bad summer for forest fires, since we're still under the heat wave; in interior Spain it's well over 38ºC (100ºF) every day, and it's around 45º in interior Andalusia and Extremadura. There are no signs of a break in the heat for another week. The forests are dry and ready to burn. About the only good thing, speaking aguaficially, is that there's no threat of a water shortage except in the southeast, since the reservoirs got nice and filled up during the wet winter and spring.
Media feeding frenzy news story: two miners got trapped by a collapse in a coal mine in El Bierzo, a mining region of Leon. It took them more than two days to dig these guys out, but they made it and the two miners survived.
Everybody's blaming the bombing of the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad on Ansar-el-Islam, a terrorist group with connections both to Saddam and Al Qaeda. Come on, people, it is NOT a wacko conspiracy theory to say that there is a loose alliance between Islamic terrorist gangs and Islamic rogue states.
The Vangua printed some crap that they got directly from the French Consulate on how the Americans are going into Liberia in order to get a stranglehold on West African oil. Uh, MM. les Grenouilles, that's like saying we went into Kosovo in order to corner the market on goulash. Liberia is an awful long way away from where there's any oil. That's Nigeria you're thinking of, the country with all the oil there.
There are also a couple of nuts from the Vangua, one of whom is the X-man, who say they see some weird shadowy shapes on the fuselage of one of the airplanes that crashed into the World Trade Center. They demand an explanation. How about this one: Those shapes are an optical illusion. You guys are crazy. Get a real life. I know there's August and not much real news but don't just make stuff up.
The Vangua is also trying to split the alliance by praising the British troops around Basra for being culturally sensitive while blasting the Yanks for being arrogant and imperialistic for driving around Baghdad and Tikrit and Fallujah with guns. There is a reason for that: as I said before, all of the violence is in a small area near Baghdad where the people are from Saddam's clan and served as his power base. There is no violence in the British occupation area in the south or in the American occupation zone of Kurdistan in the north, because all those people are thrilled beyond relief to be rid of Saddam. It's only the hardcore Saddamites, who were just as bad as he was, who are shooting at the Americans.
First major fire of the year in Catalonia; they had to evacuate a couple of thousand people up in Massanet. It's well under control now. This is going to be a very bad summer for forest fires, since we're still under the heat wave; in interior Spain it's well over 38ºC (100ºF) every day, and it's around 45º in interior Andalusia and Extremadura. There are no signs of a break in the heat for another week. The forests are dry and ready to burn. About the only good thing, speaking aguaficially, is that there's no threat of a water shortage except in the southeast, since the reservoirs got nice and filled up during the wet winter and spring.
Media feeding frenzy news story: two miners got trapped by a collapse in a coal mine in El Bierzo, a mining region of Leon. It took them more than two days to dig these guys out, but they made it and the two miners survived.
Everybody's blaming the bombing of the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad on Ansar-el-Islam, a terrorist group with connections both to Saddam and Al Qaeda. Come on, people, it is NOT a wacko conspiracy theory to say that there is a loose alliance between Islamic terrorist gangs and Islamic rogue states.
The Vangua printed some crap that they got directly from the French Consulate on how the Americans are going into Liberia in order to get a stranglehold on West African oil. Uh, MM. les Grenouilles, that's like saying we went into Kosovo in order to corner the market on goulash. Liberia is an awful long way away from where there's any oil. That's Nigeria you're thinking of, the country with all the oil there.
There are also a couple of nuts from the Vangua, one of whom is the X-man, who say they see some weird shadowy shapes on the fuselage of one of the airplanes that crashed into the World Trade Center. They demand an explanation. How about this one: Those shapes are an optical illusion. You guys are crazy. Get a real life. I know there's August and not much real news but don't just make stuff up.
Here's an article from Fox News on fat pussycats. All of ours are in pretty good shape (Oscar's doing much better. By the way, the Hill's Prescription didn't acidify his pee so we changed brands to Royal Canin and it did) although they're indoor cats, of course. The article suggests taking your cat for a walk on a leash. Yeah, right, in Barcelona that's sure a great idea.
The fat cat is my mother-in-law's, Fidel. (I named him Fidel Cat-tro.) He's huge. He just wandered into her town, Vallfogona, looking pretty skinny and beat-up, and she took him in. He very quickly caught on to the concept "I been poor and I been rich, and honey, rich is better." He has vowed that he will never go hungry again and so he eats everything he can find and demands more. He's probably about a twenty-pounder, maybe a little more. Boy, is he a tub of goo. When he sits down you can't see his back feet, only his Friskies gut bulging out.
The fat cat is my mother-in-law's, Fidel. (I named him Fidel Cat-tro.) He's huge. He just wandered into her town, Vallfogona, looking pretty skinny and beat-up, and she took him in. He very quickly caught on to the concept "I been poor and I been rich, and honey, rich is better." He has vowed that he will never go hungry again and so he eats everything he can find and demands more. He's probably about a twenty-pounder, maybe a little more. Boy, is he a tub of goo. When he sits down you can't see his back feet, only his Friskies gut bulging out.
Thursday, August 07, 2003
This is La Vanguardia's page two signed editorial from yesterday. Now, in Spanish and Catalan politics, the Vangua is a tolerably good and not overly prejudiced source. They really are pretty moderate; if you're a non-extremist CiU or PSC voter, they're up your alley. They don't much like the PP, though they respect Aznar, and they're not big fans of the Republican Left or the Communists, either.
When the Vanguardia turns on a Socialist leader, it's all over. Zap has been getting slammed by the standard right-wing papers, ABC, El Mundo, and La Razon, and that's understandable, but the Vangua doesn't slam a Socialist until it's pretty clear he's a loser.
Historical note: Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile completed the Reconquest of the Iberian Penuinsula in 1492, conquering the Nazari kingdom of Boabdil with its capital in Granada.
Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is spending a few days of rest with his family in Granada. There he'll have the meditate about the devastating effects that the lack of leadership, the internal "family" struggles between the Muslims themselves, and, above all, the implacable efficiency and military discipline of the Castilian-Aragonese troops had on the Nazari Muslim kingdom. Boabdil, as we know, had to sign the surrender before the Catholic Monarchs and turn over the keys of the Alhambra before the scorn of the last sultan's own mother: "Don't cry like a woman over what you couldn't defend as a man," they say she snarled at her own son. In his vacation refuge in the Granadan town Almunecar, Zapatero must meditate over whether he has confronted the terrible crisis of credibility that having so many public officials whose real job is that of a property-development agent is causing the Socialist Party. Far from grabbing hold of the tiller, the Socialist leader seems to have opted to wait, probably because he is desperate. But he should not forget that inaction is lethal when you are facing Jose Maria Aznar, whose political discourse--despite his manners--and propaganda machine are just as effective as Ferdinand the Catholic's troops against the indecisive and defenseless Nazari sovereign.
Zap is toast. I mean, getting compared with Boabdil around here is like, I dunno, who's the biggest loser in American history? Jefferson Davis? Cornwallis? Walter Mondale? The '62 Mets?
When the Vanguardia turns on a Socialist leader, it's all over. Zap has been getting slammed by the standard right-wing papers, ABC, El Mundo, and La Razon, and that's understandable, but the Vangua doesn't slam a Socialist until it's pretty clear he's a loser.
Historical note: Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile completed the Reconquest of the Iberian Penuinsula in 1492, conquering the Nazari kingdom of Boabdil with its capital in Granada.
Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is spending a few days of rest with his family in Granada. There he'll have the meditate about the devastating effects that the lack of leadership, the internal "family" struggles between the Muslims themselves, and, above all, the implacable efficiency and military discipline of the Castilian-Aragonese troops had on the Nazari Muslim kingdom. Boabdil, as we know, had to sign the surrender before the Catholic Monarchs and turn over the keys of the Alhambra before the scorn of the last sultan's own mother: "Don't cry like a woman over what you couldn't defend as a man," they say she snarled at her own son. In his vacation refuge in the Granadan town Almunecar, Zapatero must meditate over whether he has confronted the terrible crisis of credibility that having so many public officials whose real job is that of a property-development agent is causing the Socialist Party. Far from grabbing hold of the tiller, the Socialist leader seems to have opted to wait, probably because he is desperate. But he should not forget that inaction is lethal when you are facing Jose Maria Aznar, whose political discourse--despite his manners--and propaganda machine are just as effective as Ferdinand the Catholic's troops against the indecisive and defenseless Nazari sovereign.
Zap is toast. I mean, getting compared with Boabdil around here is like, I dunno, who's the biggest loser in American history? Jefferson Davis? Cornwallis? Walter Mondale? The '62 Mets?
Here's Mark Steyn on New York's new public Gay High School. This is a terrible idea. The last thing we need are more barriers keeping people apart.
The pro-segregationists' argument is that gay kids are bullied in normal high schools, so they'll be better off if they're only exposed to other gay kids. This is, of course, not precisely the best way to help people get along better with one another. Also, it's reminiscent of real-estate agents' arguments for promoting de facto residential segregation: "Oh, black people will be more comfortable around other black people anyway, so it's in their interest if we steer them toward black neighborhoods."
Here's Steyn's comeback:
...If it's unrealistic to expect Mayor Bloomberg's schools to crack down on bullying, wouldn't it be more cost-effective just to move all the bullies into Bully High School?
There they can bully each other to their hearts' content--or, as the educators would say, celebrate their identity in a purpose-built mutually threatening learning environment.
He's absolutely right. The main reason why public schools don't work any more is that they're full of kids who don't want to be there. Get them out of there. At age 14, eighth grade, you're old enough to get a job. If you don't give a crap about school, leave.
It's those students who don't care about learning who wreck the whole system. They're the ones who disrupt classes, the ones who attack and curse at teachers, the ones who bring their gang fights inside school walls, the ones who pick on anyone weaker than they are, the ones who make the "too cool for school" attitude de rigueur, and the ones who make it hard for the people who want to be there to learn anything in a regular high school, much less a high school in a tough neighborhood.
Get the bullies and the toughs and the punks out of the schools at age fourteen. If they can't read, that's their problem. (As a society, of course, we must provide adult education for those who somehow fell behind as children; I'll bet at least a few of our bullies will sign up for that around age 17 or 18 after three years working at Mickey D's.) They don't want to be in school, so give 'em job training if they want it and if not, turn 'em loose.
Note on Steyn: I like him a lot, but he has a real fixation on continuously reminding us of his heterosexuality. This is probably because everyone just assumes all theater critics are gay, but it seems to really bother him big time.
Seems there have been quite a few gay issues in the news recently, what with the Episcopalians' gay bishop (hey, it's their business, they're a private religious organization, if they want to make Saddam Hussein a bishop they can, and if you don't like it go join the Catholics); the gay marriage hoo-haw (I'm for it as long as they have to go through the same divorce crap straights do when they break up, including the high court costs. That'll cut way back on the number of gays who want to get married and make sure it's limited to people with real commitments instead of people who just want to get married as a political statement); and the Vatican's recent pronouncement (it's a private religious organization, the Pope can say whatever he wants and that's the deal. That's been official policy for a couple thousand years. If you don't like it, go join the Episcopalians.)
One final note on Gay High: I can't help but think that a few homosexuals are in favor of the public gay high school because of clannishness. I know several gay people--as an English teacher, I couldn't avoid it even if I wanted to--who do not like to be around straights unless they are in a position of control. There are two guys at my old school who refuse to treat straight male colleagues courteously. Fair enough, if they want to be bigots it's their problem, but I do not think this attitude is extremely rare, and I do not like gay separatists any more than I like any other kind of bigot. I also don't think it's any coincidence that these two guys are extreme left-wingers politically.
The pro-segregationists' argument is that gay kids are bullied in normal high schools, so they'll be better off if they're only exposed to other gay kids. This is, of course, not precisely the best way to help people get along better with one another. Also, it's reminiscent of real-estate agents' arguments for promoting de facto residential segregation: "Oh, black people will be more comfortable around other black people anyway, so it's in their interest if we steer them toward black neighborhoods."
Here's Steyn's comeback:
...If it's unrealistic to expect Mayor Bloomberg's schools to crack down on bullying, wouldn't it be more cost-effective just to move all the bullies into Bully High School?
There they can bully each other to their hearts' content--or, as the educators would say, celebrate their identity in a purpose-built mutually threatening learning environment.
He's absolutely right. The main reason why public schools don't work any more is that they're full of kids who don't want to be there. Get them out of there. At age 14, eighth grade, you're old enough to get a job. If you don't give a crap about school, leave.
It's those students who don't care about learning who wreck the whole system. They're the ones who disrupt classes, the ones who attack and curse at teachers, the ones who bring their gang fights inside school walls, the ones who pick on anyone weaker than they are, the ones who make the "too cool for school" attitude de rigueur, and the ones who make it hard for the people who want to be there to learn anything in a regular high school, much less a high school in a tough neighborhood.
Get the bullies and the toughs and the punks out of the schools at age fourteen. If they can't read, that's their problem. (As a society, of course, we must provide adult education for those who somehow fell behind as children; I'll bet at least a few of our bullies will sign up for that around age 17 or 18 after three years working at Mickey D's.) They don't want to be in school, so give 'em job training if they want it and if not, turn 'em loose.
Note on Steyn: I like him a lot, but he has a real fixation on continuously reminding us of his heterosexuality. This is probably because everyone just assumes all theater critics are gay, but it seems to really bother him big time.
Seems there have been quite a few gay issues in the news recently, what with the Episcopalians' gay bishop (hey, it's their business, they're a private religious organization, if they want to make Saddam Hussein a bishop they can, and if you don't like it go join the Catholics); the gay marriage hoo-haw (I'm for it as long as they have to go through the same divorce crap straights do when they break up, including the high court costs. That'll cut way back on the number of gays who want to get married and make sure it's limited to people with real commitments instead of people who just want to get married as a political statement); and the Vatican's recent pronouncement (it's a private religious organization, the Pope can say whatever he wants and that's the deal. That's been official policy for a couple thousand years. If you don't like it, go join the Episcopalians.)
One final note on Gay High: I can't help but think that a few homosexuals are in favor of the public gay high school because of clannishness. I know several gay people--as an English teacher, I couldn't avoid it even if I wanted to--who do not like to be around straights unless they are in a position of control. There are two guys at my old school who refuse to treat straight male colleagues courteously. Fair enough, if they want to be bigots it's their problem, but I do not think this attitude is extremely rare, and I do not like gay separatists any more than I like any other kind of bigot. I also don't think it's any coincidence that these two guys are extreme left-wingers politically.
Wednesday, August 06, 2003
Check out this article from today's El Periodico, Barcelona's working-class paper. It's titled "Three million innocents", and it's about the Parque Guell, the park designed by Antoni Gaudi up the hill above Gracia, half a mile or so from our place. The Parque Guell is a major tourist attraction, and well it should be.
Something strange is happening at the Parque Guell, comments Carlos, one of the regulars at Gaudi's oasis. His opinion counts, he says, because he's been coming here every day for years, above all in the morning. He stays here until about three in the afternoon, he says, because that's when the tourists begin to disappear. It would be better not to reveal why he loves strolling through the park, spending so much time among the mosaics, with the sun beating down on the central plaza where there are no trees. We can't take a photo, either, in order to conserve his anonymity, his secret, and his business.
That is, Carlos is a thief. There are plenty up there.
He doesn't believe in plots or conspiracies, but he knows all about what's happening in the park, where three million visitors came last year during the Gaudi Year. Some days more Japanese come, some days more Europeans, and there are a few days when there is suddenly an American invasion. He doesn't know whether it's because a cruise ship just docked in the port, or whether there is a convention that attracts a lot of Yanquis (sic).
And then, the days that the Americans are wandering around among the magic of Gaudi, the clothing of the policemen in the park changes. The Municipal Police (who are good for nothing except giving out parking tickets) practically disappear and in their place members of the National Police (real cops) multiply.
That is, says Carlos, some Big Brother is watching, though there are barely a few police videocameras in the Parque Guell. It angers him, this is true, that apparently George Bush's citizens deserve more protection than the rest. But protection against what?
The pickpockets and other unscrupulous crooks aren't afraid of uniforms, whether they belong to the National Police or the Municipal Police. To them, those three million visitors are an appetizing market, because they mean a million bags and backpacks, two million cameras, almost three million wallets, and several million tons of innocence and absent-mindedness.
Their favorite places to work are among the crowds around the interminable mosaic bench and at the few outdoor cafes selling drinks and food that the park has. But the worst place, for tourists, is around the back gate, where those who have chosen the Metro arrive. (Those who use the Bus Turistic go in through the front gate and tour buses park near a side gate at the Carretera del Carmel.) Those who use the metro get off at Lesseps or Vallcarca and, after climbing the Bajada de La Gloria, what they find is the misery of a threatening knife.
Something strange is happening at the Parque Guell, comments Carlos, one of the regulars at Gaudi's oasis. His opinion counts, he says, because he's been coming here every day for years, above all in the morning. He stays here until about three in the afternoon, he says, because that's when the tourists begin to disappear. It would be better not to reveal why he loves strolling through the park, spending so much time among the mosaics, with the sun beating down on the central plaza where there are no trees. We can't take a photo, either, in order to conserve his anonymity, his secret, and his business.
That is, Carlos is a thief. There are plenty up there.
He doesn't believe in plots or conspiracies, but he knows all about what's happening in the park, where three million visitors came last year during the Gaudi Year. Some days more Japanese come, some days more Europeans, and there are a few days when there is suddenly an American invasion. He doesn't know whether it's because a cruise ship just docked in the port, or whether there is a convention that attracts a lot of Yanquis (sic).
And then, the days that the Americans are wandering around among the magic of Gaudi, the clothing of the policemen in the park changes. The Municipal Police (who are good for nothing except giving out parking tickets) practically disappear and in their place members of the National Police (real cops) multiply.
That is, says Carlos, some Big Brother is watching, though there are barely a few police videocameras in the Parque Guell. It angers him, this is true, that apparently George Bush's citizens deserve more protection than the rest. But protection against what?
The pickpockets and other unscrupulous crooks aren't afraid of uniforms, whether they belong to the National Police or the Municipal Police. To them, those three million visitors are an appetizing market, because they mean a million bags and backpacks, two million cameras, almost three million wallets, and several million tons of innocence and absent-mindedness.
Their favorite places to work are among the crowds around the interminable mosaic bench and at the few outdoor cafes selling drinks and food that the park has. But the worst place, for tourists, is around the back gate, where those who have chosen the Metro arrive. (Those who use the Bus Turistic go in through the front gate and tour buses park near a side gate at the Carretera del Carmel.) Those who use the metro get off at Lesseps or Vallcarca and, after climbing the Bajada de La Gloria, what they find is the misery of a threatening knife.
Tuesday, August 05, 2003
Check out this "diversity"-related atrocity from the Wall Street Journal. At a university? Some government bureau? Nope, it's the NFL.
Here's the CNN report on the wave of fires in Southern Europe. Fortunately none of them are happening anywhere near here, but Portugal's on fire and Prime Minister Durao Barroso has declared the whole country a disaster area. Fires are also burning out of control in southwestern Spain, in Huelva and Extremadura and Salamanca. People have died, at least 11 in Portugal and at least three in Spain. And the weather is going to be just as hot and dry as it already has been. No changes this week, anyway.
It looks like the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta is serious, that the death toll is going to be high. I'll bet ten-to-one it's an Al Qaeda job, showing how their reach has been reduced; they can't attack in Europe or North America, so they strike in places like Indonesia where security is much weaker. I'm advocating more of the same security policies that seem to be working, with one exception: I don't see anything wrong with ethnic profiling. My appearance fits the profile for someone who smokes dope and I often get checked when traveling. Doesn't bother me. I like security on airplanes.
It looks like the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta is serious, that the death toll is going to be high. I'll bet ten-to-one it's an Al Qaeda job, showing how their reach has been reduced; they can't attack in Europe or North America, so they strike in places like Indonesia where security is much weaker. I'm advocating more of the same security policies that seem to be working, with one exception: I don't see anything wrong with ethnic profiling. My appearance fits the profile for someone who smokes dope and I often get checked when traveling. Doesn't bother me. I like security on airplanes.
FC Barcelona has announced that its losses over the last season added up to €150 million, which is just a hell of a lot of money for a sports team. Barca's total debt is about €220 million; a typical yearly budget for the club is between €125 and €150m. They owe a lot of money to the taxman and they're writing off all the loser players they spent too much money on, so that's a major depreciation hit. €36 million for Marc Overmars! And that's not including his big fat salary. Dani, Alfonso, Bonano, and Enke are all going to go, too, and De Boer, Geovanni, Rochemback, and Christianval are all gone. Remember just a couple of weeks ago they unconditionally released Christianval and ate the €16 million he cost. He'll catch on in the Swiss league or something major like that.
The team so far looks like this: Rustu in goal; Puyol, Marquez, Cocu, and Oscar Lopez on defense; Quaresma, Xavi, and Gerard in midfield; and Kluivert, Ronaldinho, and Saviola at forward. Luis Enrique is finally going out of the starting lineup; about time. That guy can only play about 30-45 minutes a game before he breaks. He should be the first sub coming off the bench rather than a regular starter. Overmars is going to ride the pine a good bit, too. They're still trying to sign someone to play left defense; Fernando Navarro is still injured from last season, and Lopez is even younger and more inexperienced than he is. They'd like to sign Gabriel Heinze from Paris St-Germain to play there. Meanwhile, they're trying to get rid of Riquelme, who has said he'll only play loaned out to Boca Juniors. Boca won't pay his full salary, though, which is a problem.
Two well-known Spanish cycling teams, ONCE and Banesto, are going out of business. This is an opportunity for some American company to set up a team around Tyler Hamilton. A good-sized budget for a cycling team is about five million bucks. For ten million they could sign Hamilton and Levi Leipheimer, and they could pick up Spaniards Joseba Beloki, Igor Galdeano, and Ibon Mayo, and then fill out the team with a couple of tough Americans and two or three very good Spaniards. You'd win some stages with that team and you'd be really competitive in the team standings. Maybe you couldn't beat Lance, but you could beat everyone else.
And, the thing is, an American major league sports team would cost you hundreds of millions of dollars to buy. But you could set up a competitive cycling team for five million bucks a year. And for ten million, you'd have the best team out there. This would be a good investment for a company like Coca-Cola, which wants to push its image in Europe. At the same time, cycling is becoming more popular in America, what with the fitness trend and Armstrong's publicity. I think it would be ad money well spent, since you'd get your name on the front pages of all Europe's sports papers every single day.
The team so far looks like this: Rustu in goal; Puyol, Marquez, Cocu, and Oscar Lopez on defense; Quaresma, Xavi, and Gerard in midfield; and Kluivert, Ronaldinho, and Saviola at forward. Luis Enrique is finally going out of the starting lineup; about time. That guy can only play about 30-45 minutes a game before he breaks. He should be the first sub coming off the bench rather than a regular starter. Overmars is going to ride the pine a good bit, too. They're still trying to sign someone to play left defense; Fernando Navarro is still injured from last season, and Lopez is even younger and more inexperienced than he is. They'd like to sign Gabriel Heinze from Paris St-Germain to play there. Meanwhile, they're trying to get rid of Riquelme, who has said he'll only play loaned out to Boca Juniors. Boca won't pay his full salary, though, which is a problem.
Two well-known Spanish cycling teams, ONCE and Banesto, are going out of business. This is an opportunity for some American company to set up a team around Tyler Hamilton. A good-sized budget for a cycling team is about five million bucks. For ten million they could sign Hamilton and Levi Leipheimer, and they could pick up Spaniards Joseba Beloki, Igor Galdeano, and Ibon Mayo, and then fill out the team with a couple of tough Americans and two or three very good Spaniards. You'd win some stages with that team and you'd be really competitive in the team standings. Maybe you couldn't beat Lance, but you could beat everyone else.
And, the thing is, an American major league sports team would cost you hundreds of millions of dollars to buy. But you could set up a competitive cycling team for five million bucks a year. And for ten million, you'd have the best team out there. This would be a good investment for a company like Coca-Cola, which wants to push its image in Europe. At the same time, cycling is becoming more popular in America, what with the fitness trend and Armstrong's publicity. I think it would be ad money well spent, since you'd get your name on the front pages of all Europe's sports papers every single day.
I posted this in the Comments section and I actually did some research for it, so I thought I'd post it up here too.
I'm assuming that the more money that is spent on books in a language is an indicator of the strength and influence of that language's culture(s)--that is, the bigger the market, the more competition there is, and the more competition there is, the higher the average quality of works in that language is going to be. Thus many works are translated from English and few are translated from Cambodian.
It makes sense that since many more quality works originally in English are available than in any other language, there's not that big a market for foreign books in translation in English-speaking countries, and only the very best get translated to English.
However, in a country like Finland, which produces many fewer original works in its own language, there's going to be a much bigger market for translated books, and I bet at least half of them are translated from English.
According to El Pais Anuario, of the ten biggest bestsellers in Spain in 2002, six were by English-language authors (Tolkien, Ken Follett, Katherine Neville, Arthur Golden, J.K. Rowling, Noah Gordon). They also have a list called "Most Read Authors". I have no idea how they calculate that, but Stephen King and Frank McCourt are on that one, too.
That is, the English language produces many very professional high-quality books aimed at the lowbrow-middlebrow audience that are translated to languages around the world, just like it does in cinema. No other language does that. Middlebrow-lowbrow works written in other languages are not translated to English. Why should we read foreign crap? Our own crap is better. We only translate the very best foreign stuff.
Note that none of the abovementioned authors exactly form part of the Western canon. The more prestigious American authors--Don DeLillo, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, John Updike, Thomas Pynchon, Richard Ford, T.C. Boyle, Cormac McCarthy, and the like--are not bestsellers in translation in Spain any more than they are in the States.
Miguel de Cervantes is also on El Pais's "Most Read" list, which is why I take said list with several pounds of salt.
I'm assuming that the more money that is spent on books in a language is an indicator of the strength and influence of that language's culture(s)--that is, the bigger the market, the more competition there is, and the more competition there is, the higher the average quality of works in that language is going to be. Thus many works are translated from English and few are translated from Cambodian.
It makes sense that since many more quality works originally in English are available than in any other language, there's not that big a market for foreign books in translation in English-speaking countries, and only the very best get translated to English.
However, in a country like Finland, which produces many fewer original works in its own language, there's going to be a much bigger market for translated books, and I bet at least half of them are translated from English.
According to El Pais Anuario, of the ten biggest bestsellers in Spain in 2002, six were by English-language authors (Tolkien, Ken Follett, Katherine Neville, Arthur Golden, J.K. Rowling, Noah Gordon). They also have a list called "Most Read Authors". I have no idea how they calculate that, but Stephen King and Frank McCourt are on that one, too.
That is, the English language produces many very professional high-quality books aimed at the lowbrow-middlebrow audience that are translated to languages around the world, just like it does in cinema. No other language does that. Middlebrow-lowbrow works written in other languages are not translated to English. Why should we read foreign crap? Our own crap is better. We only translate the very best foreign stuff.
Note that none of the abovementioned authors exactly form part of the Western canon. The more prestigious American authors--Don DeLillo, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, John Updike, Thomas Pynchon, Richard Ford, T.C. Boyle, Cormac McCarthy, and the like--are not bestsellers in translation in Spain any more than they are in the States.
Miguel de Cervantes is also on El Pais's "Most Read" list, which is why I take said list with several pounds of salt.
Kaleboel links to this excellent webpage called "Street Scams in Barcelona". I've never seen it before, but it's been around for seven years and is full of first-person testimonials.
Petty street crime in Barcelona has always been bad, but it's gotten worse over about the last three or four years now. Violence, now rare, has become common. You will not be murdered--I have never heard of a tourist being murdered in Barcelona, a city with only 40-50 murders a year, almost all domestic violence. You WILL, however be a target of Barcelona street criminals while here. Somebody WILL try to take you off, no matter how cautious you think you're being or how travel-savvy you think you are.
Some British guy (his name is Terrence, so he ain't from, say, Indiana) on the Street Scams thread suggests that one should avoid dressing like an American tourist. Doesn't matter. They'll pick you out as a tourist anyway, no matter if you're wearing the Official Grayish-Black Barcelona Uniform or not. He also suggests that one should not talk to strangers in Barcelona, just as one would not talk to strangers in Atlanta or Chicago. Terrence has it just the wrong way around: Americans WOULD talk to strangers in Atlanta or Chicago, because anywhere travelers go--the downtown streets, the tourist attractions, the shopping areas, attractive restaurants and bars, airports--in the United States is safe. Bad things in America happen in places far away from where tourists or business travelers go. The problem is that bad things in Barcelona happen exactly where tourists go.
Most of the city is very safe from petty crime. But the tourist areas are definitely not. All of the Old City, inside the Rondas south of Pl. Catalunya between Paralelo and the Parque Ciudadela, is dangerous; so are the areas around the Parque Guell and the Sagrada Familia.
Remember that ninety-seven percent of Spaniards are wonderful folks, but the Spaniards who earn their livings dealing with moron-tourists are not. They deal with so many morons that they assume all foreign tourists are morons. Even if you're not, you will be treated like one. The locals will give you no sympathy if you get taken off on the Ramblas. If you somehow get in trouble away from the Old City, though, the people you'll deal with aren't used to dealing with moron-tourists and so will consider you to be a real person.
How to Avoid Being a Victim
1. Stay in a hotel and eat in restaurants outside the Old City. The Eixample, Sarria, St. Gervasi, and Gracia are all very nice and outside the high-crime areas. Sure it's more expensive. It's cheaper in the long run. And the food's better because real locals eat in those places up there.
2. When going touristing in the Old City, leave everything in the hotel safe. Bring a twenty-euro note and a disposable camera. No passport, no credit cards, no fancy equipment, just enough for a sandwich and a cup of coffee.
3. Watch your ass when arriving with your bags and leaving with them. That's when you are most vulnerable. By the way, travel light.
4. Avoid gypsies and Arabs. Assume they are thieves until proven otherwise. And don't stay around them long enough to give them a chance to prove anything. Damn right I'm prejudiced.
5. Avoid anyone who stops you and tries to get your attention, especially if you are in a car anywhere or on foot in the Old City. Let 'em get the time or a light or directions from someone else. Just shrug and move on. If the person becomes insistent, move on really fast.
6. Don't give any money to street performers, and don't stop and watch them. That's when your pocket gets picked.
Scams and Robbery Techniques They've Tried on Me
1. Mustard-on-your-shirt scam
2. Gypsy-women with carnations scam (dozens of times--just get away)
3. Asking-for-directions scam
4. Asking you the time scam
5. Asking for a cigarette scam
6. That American woman who begs near the Plaza del Pi
7. Asking for a few euros for a train ticket (maybe 200 times)
8. Trying to grab your card at an ATM
9. Offering to "give" you a cigarette lighter
10. Trying to pick your pocket in the subway (uncountable times)
11. Begging with doped dogs as alms bait (uncountable times)
12. The "football scam"--one kid shows you Ronaldo's moves while another robs you
13. Surrounding you and overpowering you (four or five times--never got me but two friends, yes. One guy whacked me with a metal bar while I was getting away.)
14. Taking you down with a stranglehold from behind (twice. It worked once.)
Two that I haven't seen mentioned yet:
1. They say they're from a school for the deaf and show you some phony ID. Then they sell you some fifty-cent piece of leather crap for five euros. I have seen this scam in both Madrid and Barcelona.
2. They set up a "petition drive" and ask people to sign against drugs or against AIDS or something else that everybody's against. While you are signing and your attention is distracted, your pocket will be picked.
Petty street crime in Barcelona has always been bad, but it's gotten worse over about the last three or four years now. Violence, now rare, has become common. You will not be murdered--I have never heard of a tourist being murdered in Barcelona, a city with only 40-50 murders a year, almost all domestic violence. You WILL, however be a target of Barcelona street criminals while here. Somebody WILL try to take you off, no matter how cautious you think you're being or how travel-savvy you think you are.
Some British guy (his name is Terrence, so he ain't from, say, Indiana) on the Street Scams thread suggests that one should avoid dressing like an American tourist. Doesn't matter. They'll pick you out as a tourist anyway, no matter if you're wearing the Official Grayish-Black Barcelona Uniform or not. He also suggests that one should not talk to strangers in Barcelona, just as one would not talk to strangers in Atlanta or Chicago. Terrence has it just the wrong way around: Americans WOULD talk to strangers in Atlanta or Chicago, because anywhere travelers go--the downtown streets, the tourist attractions, the shopping areas, attractive restaurants and bars, airports--in the United States is safe. Bad things in America happen in places far away from where tourists or business travelers go. The problem is that bad things in Barcelona happen exactly where tourists go.
Most of the city is very safe from petty crime. But the tourist areas are definitely not. All of the Old City, inside the Rondas south of Pl. Catalunya between Paralelo and the Parque Ciudadela, is dangerous; so are the areas around the Parque Guell and the Sagrada Familia.
Remember that ninety-seven percent of Spaniards are wonderful folks, but the Spaniards who earn their livings dealing with moron-tourists are not. They deal with so many morons that they assume all foreign tourists are morons. Even if you're not, you will be treated like one. The locals will give you no sympathy if you get taken off on the Ramblas. If you somehow get in trouble away from the Old City, though, the people you'll deal with aren't used to dealing with moron-tourists and so will consider you to be a real person.
How to Avoid Being a Victim
1. Stay in a hotel and eat in restaurants outside the Old City. The Eixample, Sarria, St. Gervasi, and Gracia are all very nice and outside the high-crime areas. Sure it's more expensive. It's cheaper in the long run. And the food's better because real locals eat in those places up there.
2. When going touristing in the Old City, leave everything in the hotel safe. Bring a twenty-euro note and a disposable camera. No passport, no credit cards, no fancy equipment, just enough for a sandwich and a cup of coffee.
3. Watch your ass when arriving with your bags and leaving with them. That's when you are most vulnerable. By the way, travel light.
4. Avoid gypsies and Arabs. Assume they are thieves until proven otherwise. And don't stay around them long enough to give them a chance to prove anything. Damn right I'm prejudiced.
5. Avoid anyone who stops you and tries to get your attention, especially if you are in a car anywhere or on foot in the Old City. Let 'em get the time or a light or directions from someone else. Just shrug and move on. If the person becomes insistent, move on really fast.
6. Don't give any money to street performers, and don't stop and watch them. That's when your pocket gets picked.
Scams and Robbery Techniques They've Tried on Me
1. Mustard-on-your-shirt scam
2. Gypsy-women with carnations scam (dozens of times--just get away)
3. Asking-for-directions scam
4. Asking you the time scam
5. Asking for a cigarette scam
6. That American woman who begs near the Plaza del Pi
7. Asking for a few euros for a train ticket (maybe 200 times)
8. Trying to grab your card at an ATM
9. Offering to "give" you a cigarette lighter
10. Trying to pick your pocket in the subway (uncountable times)
11. Begging with doped dogs as alms bait (uncountable times)
12. The "football scam"--one kid shows you Ronaldo's moves while another robs you
13. Surrounding you and overpowering you (four or five times--never got me but two friends, yes. One guy whacked me with a metal bar while I was getting away.)
14. Taking you down with a stranglehold from behind (twice. It worked once.)
Two that I haven't seen mentioned yet:
1. They say they're from a school for the deaf and show you some phony ID. Then they sell you some fifty-cent piece of leather crap for five euros. I have seen this scam in both Madrid and Barcelona.
2. They set up a "petition drive" and ask people to sign against drugs or against AIDS or something else that everybody's against. While you are signing and your attention is distracted, your pocket will be picked.
Monday, August 04, 2003
The Seven Dwarves go to church and all sit down in the back pew. They're all nudging and winking at one another and whispering to Dopey, "Ask the priest, ask the priest." The priest, slightly irritated, says, "Now, please, you're interrupting the service. If you have any questions, ask me, and I will be happy to answer, and then we will return to prayer." So Dopey stands up and says, "Father, are there any midget nuns in the Church?"
The priest, mystified, says, "No, my son, there are no midget nuns. Now, let's return to our service."
After a few seconds, though, the nudging and winking and "Ask him again, ask him again" begins, and the priest is now really irritated. He stops and says, "Now, this is the last interruption I will tolerate. If you have any questions, please ask, and then please be silent." So Dopey stands up again and asked, "Father, are you sure there aren't any midget nuns in the Church?"
The priest is exasperated. He shouts, "NO! There never have been and there never will be any midget nuns in the Church! Now sit down and shut up!"
Sudden, total silence. Then six of the Seven Dwarves look at one another, nod conspiratorially, and break into a chant:
"Do-pey screwed a pen-guin! Do-pey screwed a pen-guin!"
The priest, mystified, says, "No, my son, there are no midget nuns. Now, let's return to our service."
After a few seconds, though, the nudging and winking and "Ask him again, ask him again" begins, and the priest is now really irritated. He stops and says, "Now, this is the last interruption I will tolerate. If you have any questions, please ask, and then please be silent." So Dopey stands up again and asked, "Father, are you sure there aren't any midget nuns in the Church?"
The priest is exasperated. He shouts, "NO! There never have been and there never will be any midget nuns in the Church! Now sit down and shut up!"
Sudden, total silence. Then six of the Seven Dwarves look at one another, nod conspiratorially, and break into a chant:
"Do-pey screwed a pen-guin! Do-pey screwed a pen-guin!"
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