This town is talking about only two things: Mr. Piece of Shit Skinhead, whose attack on the Ecuadorian girl has been televised around the world, and the disastrous commuter train situation.
Interestingly, there hasn't been a bunch of soul-searching and meditation on institutional racism around here, the way there always is in the States when something like this happens. For example, look at the "Jena 6" case: six black teenagers in Assboink, Louisiana stomp a white kid half to death, for whatever reason, they get charged with attempted murder, and garments are rent among the illustrated and enlightened. Here there's been a great deal of condemnation of Mr. Scumbag Skinhead, but no self-questioning by society.
Meanwhile, the State Development Ministry has admitted that the AVE to Barcelona won't be in service until at least January, if not February.
La Vanguardia blames it on a combination of the inefficiency of the state, regional, and municipal governments: "Negotiations about this section of the AVE go back to the end of the Nineties, with the PP governing in Madrid, CiU (governing the Generalitat), and the Socialists, Communists, and later also ERC (governing the city). The three sides negotiated from different perspectives. Those in Madrid planned a line in the straightest line possible. Others wanted to go toward France, and the others wanted to develop the city. Some wanted the line to go through Cornellà, others through the Vallés, and the third to the airport and La Sagrera. The solution was to take the choice in the middle, to Sants, for many the worst possible solution."
Those responsible seem to have: underestimated the difficulty of tunneling through the soft soil of the Llobregat delta; rejected the possibility of using an underground tunneling machine, choosing instead to dig a trench to be later covered; set an unrealistic target date for the AVE's completion for electoral reasons; underestimated the possible consequences of working too hastily; and not planned for the possible transportation problems the construction would cause.
So La Vanguardia editorializes today on the fires in Southern California: "In any case, the management of emergencies and internal security in the United States is not sufficient. The policy of reducing the structures of the states leads to situations that make them ineffective, as is happening now in California."
Huh? I thought part of the story of these fires is that the government's crisis management HAS been effective this time, especially at the state and local level--precisely the opposite of New Orleans, where state and local government performance was truly lousy. And what does all of this have to do with "reducing the structures of the states," which I think means cutting the budget? Besides that, California HASN'T cut its emergency management budget, and neither has any other administration.
Says Eusebio Val: "Exactly as happens in Florida with hurricanes, in California massive urbanization has invaded formerly protected areas. If you defy nature, it will take revenge...More and more construction is happening in frontier areas between what is urban and what is natural; this increases the dangers."
Seems to me that whenever any city anywhere in the world expands, it grows into areas that were once "natural" and non-urban, no? So why is this particularly problematic in San Diego and not, say, Barcelona?
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
News from these here parts: Pepelu Carod-Rovira is now everybody's favorite TV show guest because of the probability that he will say something outrageous. He's already been on Monica Terribas's TV3 show, and he's supposed to appear on Buenafuente and Jordi Gonzalez later this week. My guess is that he'll make a lot more enemies than converts, and all those enemies will be fired up to vote for the PP. All Rajoy has to do is say, "A vote for Zap is a vote for Pepelu," which is true, since the Socialists have been allied with Pepelu's party both in the Catalan regional and Barcelona municipal governments.
The cops busted an alleged Islamist North African pro-terrorist cell in Burgos, of all places, making six arrests. They were recruiting jihadi volunteers, raising money for the terrorist cause, and spreading pro-terrorist propaganda, and they'll be charged with conspiracy and belonging to a terrorist gang as well. The story I want to see is Iraqi Baath Party spokesman and agent "Abu Mohamed" behind bars, as well as his Spanish contacts who helped him raise money to kill his fellow Iraqis.
Scandal on a Barcelona commuter train: A Catalan skinhead (his name is Sergi Xavier Martin, not Sergio Javier, as Pepelu would say) was caught on a security camera harassing a young Ecuadorian girl, using racist slurs and grabbing her breasts. Then he hauled off and karate-kicked her right in the face, and followed it up with a few punches. There were other people in the train car, but no one did anything, and the skinhead just got off the train at the next stop. The girl was so afraid she didn't even report it to the police.
Shocking racism and violence. What a piece of shit. If you want to fight, pick on someone your own size. Typical skinhead courage. I hate those assholes.
This story is being played up big in the European media as an example of Spanish racism, and Al Jazira is playing it up; I don't think Spain's more racist than anywhere else in Europe. Wherever you go, there are a few assholes; this appalling scene is neither common nor typical around here.
So get this. Mr. Asswipe Skinhead had an arrest record for, get this, armed robbery, but he was walking around free and clear. When the cops busted him for attacking the girl, he was arraigned, and they TURNED HIM LOOSE on bail. There was a public outcry, and now they say they're going to arrest him again and jail him without bail sometime later this week.
The US criminal justice system is sometimes harsh, but I guarantee you this would not have happened in the US, because Mr. Piece of Shit Skinhead would have been serving five to ten for the armed mugging he committed, and he would be looking at five to ten more for this assault and battery charge, aggravated by the violation of the hate crime law. We'll see how much time he actually does.
Also, on the subway in, say, Chicago, you never know who might have a gun, so it's smart not to go around kicking people in the face. Never knowing who might have a gun has its negative side, of course, but an armed society tends to be a polite society.
The Al Gore Traveling Patent Medicine Show was back in town this week, as Reverend Al flew into town on his private jet and picked up another €200,000 for giving his stump speech. Supposedly the two hundred grand goes to Al's foundation, which I think is a synonym for his campaign fund. I don't think he's running for 2008, though, because he'd be on the trail in New Hampshire and Iowa right now if he were. Unless he's planning on a "Draft Al" movement at the convention.
It's Day 3 of Operation Traffic Disaster in Barcelona, with the commuter trains still down and huge traffic jams on the highways leading into the city. The Socialist Generalitat is blaming the Socialist central government, and the central government is blaming the allegedly pro-PP contractors, while the Cataloonies as usual blame some kind of sinister Madrid conspiracy to keep Catalonia down.
The cops busted an alleged Islamist North African pro-terrorist cell in Burgos, of all places, making six arrests. They were recruiting jihadi volunteers, raising money for the terrorist cause, and spreading pro-terrorist propaganda, and they'll be charged with conspiracy and belonging to a terrorist gang as well. The story I want to see is Iraqi Baath Party spokesman and agent "Abu Mohamed" behind bars, as well as his Spanish contacts who helped him raise money to kill his fellow Iraqis.
Scandal on a Barcelona commuter train: A Catalan skinhead (his name is Sergi Xavier Martin, not Sergio Javier, as Pepelu would say) was caught on a security camera harassing a young Ecuadorian girl, using racist slurs and grabbing her breasts. Then he hauled off and karate-kicked her right in the face, and followed it up with a few punches. There were other people in the train car, but no one did anything, and the skinhead just got off the train at the next stop. The girl was so afraid she didn't even report it to the police.
Shocking racism and violence. What a piece of shit. If you want to fight, pick on someone your own size. Typical skinhead courage. I hate those assholes.
This story is being played up big in the European media as an example of Spanish racism, and Al Jazira is playing it up; I don't think Spain's more racist than anywhere else in Europe. Wherever you go, there are a few assholes; this appalling scene is neither common nor typical around here.
So get this. Mr. Asswipe Skinhead had an arrest record for, get this, armed robbery, but he was walking around free and clear. When the cops busted him for attacking the girl, he was arraigned, and they TURNED HIM LOOSE on bail. There was a public outcry, and now they say they're going to arrest him again and jail him without bail sometime later this week.
The US criminal justice system is sometimes harsh, but I guarantee you this would not have happened in the US, because Mr. Piece of Shit Skinhead would have been serving five to ten for the armed mugging he committed, and he would be looking at five to ten more for this assault and battery charge, aggravated by the violation of the hate crime law. We'll see how much time he actually does.
Also, on the subway in, say, Chicago, you never know who might have a gun, so it's smart not to go around kicking people in the face. Never knowing who might have a gun has its negative side, of course, but an armed society tends to be a polite society.
The Al Gore Traveling Patent Medicine Show was back in town this week, as Reverend Al flew into town on his private jet and picked up another €200,000 for giving his stump speech. Supposedly the two hundred grand goes to Al's foundation, which I think is a synonym for his campaign fund. I don't think he's running for 2008, though, because he'd be on the trail in New Hampshire and Iowa right now if he were. Unless he's planning on a "Draft Al" movement at the convention.
It's Day 3 of Operation Traffic Disaster in Barcelona, with the commuter trains still down and huge traffic jams on the highways leading into the city. The Socialist Generalitat is blaming the Socialist central government, and the central government is blaming the allegedly pro-PP contractors, while the Cataloonies as usual blame some kind of sinister Madrid conspiracy to keep Catalonia down.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Transportation chaos continues today in the Barcelona metro area. Everything is snarled up. Three RENFE (State-owned) and one FGC (region-owned) commuter lines (serving the southern and western suburbs from Sants central station) are cut off because of complications from construction on the parallel AVE (high-speed) line which is to connect Madrid and Barcelona. Vice-prime minister De la Vega admitted the RENFE lines would be down for two weeks, and the FGC line is going to be down for two months. At least. Those train lines transported 160,000 passengers a day, which I assume means 80,000 people daily on round-trips. The fleet of buses that was hastily improvised to cover the transit gap is not doing the job, and city street traffic is up more than 10%, which the system can not handle without massive traffic jams. And the AVE will definitely not have been completed in time for Christmas.
So get this. De la Vega blamed the contractors doing the work for delaying construction, presumably for political reasons. SER Radio, which belongs to pro-Socialist media conglomerate PRISA, specifically accused a company named OHL, which belongs to a well-known PP supporter, of creating intentional delays.
As usual in Spain, the best defense is a good offense. We, the Socialists, look bad because a major transportation screwup is happening on our watch? Let's just blame the PP and other assorted conspirators who care about nothing but damaging us politically.
So get this. De la Vega blamed the contractors doing the work for delaying construction, presumably for political reasons. SER Radio, which belongs to pro-Socialist media conglomerate PRISA, specifically accused a company named OHL, which belongs to a well-known PP supporter, of creating intentional delays.
As usual in Spain, the best defense is a good offense. We, the Socialists, look bad because a major transportation screwup is happening on our watch? Let's just blame the PP and other assorted conspirators who care about nothing but damaging us politically.
Let this be a warning to all of you. Do not put off going to the dentist for seven years, no matter how much you hate it, or you too will have what seems like eighteen cavities to be filled. Then you will have to spend a very long, uncomfortable time in the chair and your whole mouth will be sore for several days.
The quality of medical, dental, etc. care in Spain is very high, but it's done a little differently than it is in the States. Americans expect to be pampered by their health care personnel. They expect to be treated as a personal, special case, which the system can handle as long as it's private.
It doesn't work that way in Spain. The National Health is overworked, you wait in line, and they get you in and get you out as fast as they can. Dental care (except for extractions) is all private in Spain, but they've learned their style from the National Health. You open up, they shoot you full of a lot of anaesthetic that keeps your mouth numb for the rest of the day, they drill out every tooth you need work on, and then fill them up. That's it. No pampering. No special treatment. You're just a mouth, not a person.
I actually think I prefer it the Spanish way. Less hassle, and it's over and done with fast. None of this "we'll do it one tooth at a time and come back next week" stuff. And it's a good bit cheaper than it is in the US, where most people's health insurance covers dental care and dentists charge whatever they want to. In Spain, where few people have such an insurance policy, dentists can't charge exorbitant prices because patients can't afford it.
The quality of medical, dental, etc. care in Spain is very high, but it's done a little differently than it is in the States. Americans expect to be pampered by their health care personnel. They expect to be treated as a personal, special case, which the system can handle as long as it's private.
It doesn't work that way in Spain. The National Health is overworked, you wait in line, and they get you in and get you out as fast as they can. Dental care (except for extractions) is all private in Spain, but they've learned their style from the National Health. You open up, they shoot you full of a lot of anaesthetic that keeps your mouth numb for the rest of the day, they drill out every tooth you need work on, and then fill them up. That's it. No pampering. No special treatment. You're just a mouth, not a person.
I actually think I prefer it the Spanish way. Less hassle, and it's over and done with fast. None of this "we'll do it one tooth at a time and come back next week" stuff. And it's a good bit cheaper than it is in the US, where most people's health insurance covers dental care and dentists charge whatever they want to. In Spain, where few people have such an insurance policy, dentists can't charge exorbitant prices because patients can't afford it.
Monday, October 22, 2007
The Cataloonies came out in force last night with a big old wingding hoo-haw at the Palau Sant Jordi, Barcelona's arena, demanding the return of the "Salamanca papers." We've discussed this many times already; after the Spanish Civil War, enormous quantities of files and papers were stored at the Civil War Archive in Salamanca. A few years ago, the Cataloonies, looking for a divisive issue, demanded that all documents that originally belonged to Catalan organizations (the Generalitat, the CNT, the PSUC, and all that lot) be turned over to the current Catalan government.
Of course, this is a big "Who cares?" It's a bunch of old historical papers from seventy years ago of interest to nobody but a few historians. Besides, the Zap government has already agreed to send them to Catalonia anyway. The big old wingding hoo-haw was held, get this, in order to demand that they be turned over RIGHT NOW.
They managed to get 12,000 people with absolutely no sense of proportion to show up at the Palau Sant Jordi for this. I've never seen 12,000 Barcelonese turn out against, say, the Castro dictatorship or the Burmese junta or Saddam Hussein, but the Cataloonies among them will yell and scream for hours over some files from seventy years ago. The justification repeated over and over at the wingding hoo-haw was, "The papers were stolen from us and we want them because it's a question of national dignity." National dignity is something you earn, not something you demand, and whining en masse is not dignified, but instead rather pathetic.
Pepelu Carod-Rovira was of course the star of the show, with Communist Joan Saura and CiU leader Artur Mas there as well. Of course there was some opening up of old wounds: some descendents of Lluís Companys, the wartime Catalan premier shot after the war (with some justification--he was in charge while 8000 alleged fascists were murdered between 1936 and 1939 in Catalonia), and relatives of wannabe anarchist terrorist Salvador Puig Antich, garroted in 1974 (with some justification--he shot two cops, killing one), were there in order to whip up some anger and indignation.
Naturally, the real function of this wingding hoo-haw was to serve as a political rally, since the general election is coming up in March. The whole thing is really very cynical, as nobody with any sense cares about these damn papers; they might as well stay in Salamanca or be transferred to Barcelona, it really doesn't matter as long as historians have access to them. Besides, somebody should have microfilmed them all long ago, and if they're so important, they could be posted on the Internet to make them accessible to anyone anywhere.
Of course, the highlight of the show was when Sixties leftovers Raimon, earth's worst folk singer, and Maria del Mar Bonet, earth's biggest Joan Baez copycat, sang all the old revolutionary nationalist hit songs, only slightly relevant now that the Franco regime has been dead for thirty-two years.
What I really want to know is: Who paid for this? It must cost a couple of hundred thousand euros to rent out the Palau Sant Jordi for a night. Did this come from the taxpayers' pocket or from the pockets of the political parties represented? If from the political parties, how much of the cash did they get from illegal kickbacks?
Meanwhile, Barcelona's metropolitan area is completely snarled up, since they've closed down the Barna Sants-Bellvitge-Airport commuter train line because of the construction on the parallel high-speed train line, which most certainly won't be finished by Christmas as it was supposed to be. They kept having cave-ins on the commuter train line, and so it will be closed down for, officially, one week. I bet it doesn't reopen for a lot longer than that. They're substituting a fleet of buses for the train, but it's not working very well, and the streets are flooded with cars since people who normally use the train drove into town today.
My old boss, Federico Jiménez Losantos, who is right on some issues and very wrong on others, has dragged King Juan Carlos into his partisan struggle against Zap and the Socialists. I don't like Zap and the Socialists at all, and I heartily hope that they lose the election, but Jimenez Losantos has a big conspiracy theory set up in his brain about a plot between the Zapsters and ETA and Pepelu Carod and those guys to break up Spain and establish a Masonic-Bolshevik regime. Absurd on the face of it, and besides Zap's not that smart anyway. Losantos claims that the Zapsters are somehow using the King as a tool as part of this great conspiracy, and he wants Juan Carlos to abdicate in favor of Prince Felipe. How dumb.
Note: If you thought some items in the old Spain Herald were pretty crazy, you should have seen them before I translated them to English. Once, during a long string of daily attacks on Socialist party hack Gregorio Peces Barba, I sent back a story with the note, "Is this the Spain Herald or the Peces Barba News?" We laid off that subject for a while.
Of course, this is a big "Who cares?" It's a bunch of old historical papers from seventy years ago of interest to nobody but a few historians. Besides, the Zap government has already agreed to send them to Catalonia anyway. The big old wingding hoo-haw was held, get this, in order to demand that they be turned over RIGHT NOW.
They managed to get 12,000 people with absolutely no sense of proportion to show up at the Palau Sant Jordi for this. I've never seen 12,000 Barcelonese turn out against, say, the Castro dictatorship or the Burmese junta or Saddam Hussein, but the Cataloonies among them will yell and scream for hours over some files from seventy years ago. The justification repeated over and over at the wingding hoo-haw was, "The papers were stolen from us and we want them because it's a question of national dignity." National dignity is something you earn, not something you demand, and whining en masse is not dignified, but instead rather pathetic.
Pepelu Carod-Rovira was of course the star of the show, with Communist Joan Saura and CiU leader Artur Mas there as well. Of course there was some opening up of old wounds: some descendents of Lluís Companys, the wartime Catalan premier shot after the war (with some justification--he was in charge while 8000 alleged fascists were murdered between 1936 and 1939 in Catalonia), and relatives of wannabe anarchist terrorist Salvador Puig Antich, garroted in 1974 (with some justification--he shot two cops, killing one), were there in order to whip up some anger and indignation.
Naturally, the real function of this wingding hoo-haw was to serve as a political rally, since the general election is coming up in March. The whole thing is really very cynical, as nobody with any sense cares about these damn papers; they might as well stay in Salamanca or be transferred to Barcelona, it really doesn't matter as long as historians have access to them. Besides, somebody should have microfilmed them all long ago, and if they're so important, they could be posted on the Internet to make them accessible to anyone anywhere.
Of course, the highlight of the show was when Sixties leftovers Raimon, earth's worst folk singer, and Maria del Mar Bonet, earth's biggest Joan Baez copycat, sang all the old revolutionary nationalist hit songs, only slightly relevant now that the Franco regime has been dead for thirty-two years.
What I really want to know is: Who paid for this? It must cost a couple of hundred thousand euros to rent out the Palau Sant Jordi for a night. Did this come from the taxpayers' pocket or from the pockets of the political parties represented? If from the political parties, how much of the cash did they get from illegal kickbacks?
Meanwhile, Barcelona's metropolitan area is completely snarled up, since they've closed down the Barna Sants-Bellvitge-Airport commuter train line because of the construction on the parallel high-speed train line, which most certainly won't be finished by Christmas as it was supposed to be. They kept having cave-ins on the commuter train line, and so it will be closed down for, officially, one week. I bet it doesn't reopen for a lot longer than that. They're substituting a fleet of buses for the train, but it's not working very well, and the streets are flooded with cars since people who normally use the train drove into town today.
My old boss, Federico Jiménez Losantos, who is right on some issues and very wrong on others, has dragged King Juan Carlos into his partisan struggle against Zap and the Socialists. I don't like Zap and the Socialists at all, and I heartily hope that they lose the election, but Jimenez Losantos has a big conspiracy theory set up in his brain about a plot between the Zapsters and ETA and Pepelu Carod and those guys to break up Spain and establish a Masonic-Bolshevik regime. Absurd on the face of it, and besides Zap's not that smart anyway. Losantos claims that the Zapsters are somehow using the King as a tool as part of this great conspiracy, and he wants Juan Carlos to abdicate in favor of Prince Felipe. How dumb.
Note: If you thought some items in the old Spain Herald were pretty crazy, you should have seen them before I translated them to English. Once, during a long string of daily attacks on Socialist party hack Gregorio Peces Barba, I sent back a story with the note, "Is this the Spain Herald or the Peces Barba News?" We laid off that subject for a while.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
We reported several years ago that Bill Clinton's black Labrador retriever Buddy, which he got during the dark days of the impeachment in order to make him look cuddly, was hit by a car and killed not long after Clinton's presidential term ended.
Now it's being reported that Socks the cat, supposedly Chelsea's pet, was dumped on long-suffering secretary Betty Currie when Bill and Hillary moved out of the White House.
Poor Buddy and Socks. They thought they were loved and cherished parts of a family's life, but they were just public relations props that made the hungrily ambitious Clintons seem like real people with human feelings.
And the children of America, deceived by Hillary's mendacious "book" about Buddy and Socks's bucolic, idyllic lives with the Clinton family in the White House. The poor animals were cynically used in order to steal our children's innocence.
Those of us who love our animal friends must stop heartless Hillary now, before she becomes President again and exploits more dogs and cats to burnish her image for her sinister political purposes.
So I'm organizing a political action committee called AnimaL Lovers Against Hillary (ALLAH), in order to publicize Hillary Clinton's manipulation of our emotions and feelings.
We need volunteers and contributions for our struggle against America's Number One hypocritical pet exploiter! My cat Oscar has already volunteered to scratch Hillary if she ever gets within five feet of him. Let's see some humans show the same spirit!
Now it's being reported that Socks the cat, supposedly Chelsea's pet, was dumped on long-suffering secretary Betty Currie when Bill and Hillary moved out of the White House.
Poor Buddy and Socks. They thought they were loved and cherished parts of a family's life, but they were just public relations props that made the hungrily ambitious Clintons seem like real people with human feelings.
And the children of America, deceived by Hillary's mendacious "book" about Buddy and Socks's bucolic, idyllic lives with the Clinton family in the White House. The poor animals were cynically used in order to steal our children's innocence.
Those of us who love our animal friends must stop heartless Hillary now, before she becomes President again and exploits more dogs and cats to burnish her image for her sinister political purposes.
So I'm organizing a political action committee called AnimaL Lovers Against Hillary (ALLAH), in order to publicize Hillary Clinton's manipulation of our emotions and feelings.
We need volunteers and contributions for our struggle against America's Number One hypocritical pet exploiter! My cat Oscar has already volunteered to scratch Hillary if she ever gets within five feet of him. Let's see some humans show the same spirit!
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Former Barcelona mayor and Catalan premier Pasqual Maragall of the Catalan Socialist Party announced this morning that he has Alzheimer's disease. This might explain a few things that have happened in recent years.
I've never had a positive opinion of Maragall as a politician, and I think he was a lousy premier. However, he seems to be a decent person, and I'm sorry this happened to him. Let's hope modern medical treatment can do its best for him and other Alzheimer's sufferers--and yes, that includes stem cell research.
I've never had a positive opinion of Maragall as a politician, and I think he was a lousy premier. However, he seems to be a decent person, and I'm sorry this happened to him. Let's hope modern medical treatment can do its best for him and other Alzheimer's sufferers--and yes, that includes stem cell research.
Friday, October 19, 2007
Just to show you how much Pepelu Carod-Rovira's performance brought out the radicals on both sides of the Catalan nationalism issue: La Vanguardia's story (video link included) has received 1566 comments so far, which is an all-time record. Most of the comments are pro-Pepelu: his little tantrum has really brought his supporters out in force, so the tantrum was successful. He's distracted his grass-roots base from the pathetic show he and his henchman Bargalló put on in Frankfurt.
Not to mention the scene with Maragall and the crown of thorns in Jerusalem, the most disrespectful public behavior I've ever seen--Pepelu and Maragall managed to offend Jews, Muslims, and Christians simultaneously by clowning around at their holy place. And, of course, Pepelu's worst-ever error, or act of high treason, depending on how you look at it: meeting with ETA representatives in Perpignan, France, and negotiating a "truce" in Catalonia.
By the way, Maragall has resigned from the Catalan Socialist Party. There's talk about a new party in Italy called the Democratic Party, which is supposed to be similar to the US Democratic Party, and Maragall has been mentioned several times as a possible founding member of a Catalan and / or Spanish branch.
Other news: The construction of the high-speed train (AVE) to Sants station in Barcelona is being done in a tremendous hurry, since it's supposed to be ready for Christmas. There have been five cave-ins within the last week on the commuter-train line next to the AVE line, and the commuter system is snarled up every day, leaving hundreds of thousands of users stuck in tunnels or on platforms for hours. Sloppy work. Let's hope nobody gets killed.
The Cordoba-Antequera-Malaga AVE and the Madrid-Segovia-Valladolid AVE will also be ready for Christmas, and they've apparently done the work well in those two places.
I suppose everyone has heard that more than 130 people were killed and hundreds were wounded when a suicide bomber attacked Benazir Bhutto's motorcade in Karachi. I'll just bet that Al Qaeda had something to do with it.
There is a very confusing political-juridical mess going on right now in Madrid, and I'm not sure if I understand what's going on. The situation is that the ten-member Constitutional Court is divided 5-5 between a "progressive" faction linked with the PSOE and a "conservative" faction linked with the PP. In Spain the justice system is openly partisan.
The Constitutional Court is going to have to rule on appeals against the new Catalan statute of autonomy (US = state constitution) filed by the PP; the PP says that the Catalan statute violates the Constitution because its provisions interfere with the rights of other autonomous regions. They're probably right, as far as this non-lawyer can tell.
So what happened is the conservatives of the court voted to disqualify two of the progressives on the ground that they were not neutral, since they had worked for the Generalitat, the Catalan regional government. Don't ask me how they got away with this.
Now, for the first time ever, the Zap administration has filed a motion to disqualify two of the Court's conservatives on grounds I can't figure out. We'll see what happens, but no matter what, the Catalan statute is not going to make it through the courts; too many people in both big political parties are against it, as are the great majority of Spaniards.
Comments from lawyers would be welcome.
Not to mention the scene with Maragall and the crown of thorns in Jerusalem, the most disrespectful public behavior I've ever seen--Pepelu and Maragall managed to offend Jews, Muslims, and Christians simultaneously by clowning around at their holy place. And, of course, Pepelu's worst-ever error, or act of high treason, depending on how you look at it: meeting with ETA representatives in Perpignan, France, and negotiating a "truce" in Catalonia.
By the way, Maragall has resigned from the Catalan Socialist Party. There's talk about a new party in Italy called the Democratic Party, which is supposed to be similar to the US Democratic Party, and Maragall has been mentioned several times as a possible founding member of a Catalan and / or Spanish branch.
Other news: The construction of the high-speed train (AVE) to Sants station in Barcelona is being done in a tremendous hurry, since it's supposed to be ready for Christmas. There have been five cave-ins within the last week on the commuter-train line next to the AVE line, and the commuter system is snarled up every day, leaving hundreds of thousands of users stuck in tunnels or on platforms for hours. Sloppy work. Let's hope nobody gets killed.
The Cordoba-Antequera-Malaga AVE and the Madrid-Segovia-Valladolid AVE will also be ready for Christmas, and they've apparently done the work well in those two places.
I suppose everyone has heard that more than 130 people were killed and hundreds were wounded when a suicide bomber attacked Benazir Bhutto's motorcade in Karachi. I'll just bet that Al Qaeda had something to do with it.
There is a very confusing political-juridical mess going on right now in Madrid, and I'm not sure if I understand what's going on. The situation is that the ten-member Constitutional Court is divided 5-5 between a "progressive" faction linked with the PSOE and a "conservative" faction linked with the PP. In Spain the justice system is openly partisan.
The Constitutional Court is going to have to rule on appeals against the new Catalan statute of autonomy (US = state constitution) filed by the PP; the PP says that the Catalan statute violates the Constitution because its provisions interfere with the rights of other autonomous regions. They're probably right, as far as this non-lawyer can tell.
So what happened is the conservatives of the court voted to disqualify two of the progressives on the ground that they were not neutral, since they had worked for the Generalitat, the Catalan regional government. Don't ask me how they got away with this.
Now, for the first time ever, the Zap administration has filed a motion to disqualify two of the Court's conservatives on grounds I can't figure out. We'll see what happens, but no matter what, the Catalan statute is not going to make it through the courts; too many people in both big political parties are against it, as are the great majority of Spaniards.
Comments from lawyers would be welcome.
In case anyone is interested, the last 100 readers of Iberian Notes logged in from the following countries:
Spain 51
United States 28
France, United Kingdom 3
Japan, Germany, South Africa 2
Switzerland, Australia, Philippines, Costa Rica, Canada, Mexico, Norway, Portugal, Netherlands, "Europe," "Satellite Provider" 1
Spain 51
United States 28
France, United Kingdom 3
Japan, Germany, South Africa 2
Switzerland, Australia, Philippines, Costa Rica, Canada, Mexico, Norway, Portugal, Netherlands, "Europe," "Satellite Provider" 1
Here's the piece that was posted at Pajamas Media on Monday. I've only included the two most important links here.
Barcelona daily newspaper La Vanguardia, which has been published since 1881, likes to consider itself the reasonable and moderate voice of the Catalan middle class. What passes for responsibility in the conspiracy-theorizing Spanish press is a long way from the ideal, though. Today they’ve set a new record for journalistic irresponsibility and amorality.
La Vanguardia has actually become a mouthpiece for terrorists. This morning they’ve given the two lead pages of their International section to a spokesman for the Iraqi Baath Party.
Reporter Carla Fibla interviews one “Abu Mohamed” in Madrid; Abu Mohamed is billed as “The spokesman for the Baath Party and the armed resistance.” There’s a photo of him, taken from behind. Fibla says he is a university professor and that he has been in Madrid for the past week making contact with “organizations opposed to the American occupation in Iraq in order to explain the resistance’s projects and objectives.”
The Spanish government should track down Abu Mohamed and arrest him and his contacts immediately. He is the spokesman for a terrorist organization, and apology for terrorism is strictly illegal in Spain. Twenty-two leaders of Batasuna, the ETA-front political party in Spain, were arrested just last week on orders from Judge Baltasar Garzón on charges of membership in a terrorist organization and apology for terrorism. Abu Mohamed is no different from Arnaldo Otegi, the Batasuna spokesman who is right now facing a prison term here in Spain. And anybody Abu Mohamed meets with is guilty of collaboration with a terrorist gang.
If the Spanish government doesn’t arrest him, the CIA ought to grab him and send him off to a torture camp in the Ukraine. (Assuming they do such things, that is.) If he knows what the Baath Party terrorists’ plans and goals are, he is a legitimate target.
One thing Abu Mohamed says is that his “resistance,” which he claims includes 80% of anti-Iraqi-democracy terrorists, is also “fighting” Al Qaeda and the Iranians.
Sure, the national-socialist Baath Party probably doesn’t like either of them any better than it likes the elected Iraqi government or the Americans and British. But somehow I doubt they’re actually “fighting” either of them.
Abu Mohamed told his interviewer:
Iran’s interest in Al Qaeda is the creation of a sectarian confrontation in Iraq. Something they are fueling because Al Qaeda is supported by the Mossad.
Yeah, right.
We, the Baath and the resistance, believe that this is not a government, but a gang of collaborators and spies who have created something they call the Government and Parliament, and have organized fraudulent elections in order to impose their plans on Iraq. The Government will fall before the occupation.
So he brags that they are trying to overthrow the elected Iraqi government. When somebody tries to overthrow the elected Spanish government, like ETA, we call them terrorists and put them in jail. Spain should do no less with Abu Mohamed and his homegrown Spanish collabos.
Iraq is living under occupation, subjugated by external elements who collaborate with them: political parties, militias, and death squads that murder in the name of the occupation.
If I remember correctly, the Iraqi government was elected by the Iraqi people, and if anybody’s murdering anybody, it’s the “armed resistance.”
Most of the people support the resistance.
That’s not what the election results said.
Terrorism is an American product. There has been terrorism in Iraq since the invasion; before Al Qaeda did not exist for us, there were no militias, no death squads, nor murders, nor kidnappings.
Except the ones Saddam and the Baath Party committed, of course.
The current destruction of infrastructure, theft of the money and wealth of the country, sectarian confrontations, it’s all a product of the occupation.
The Socialist Baath Party has … become a party of resistance. We want to expel the occupation, put an end to the invasion, and establish a pluralist democratic regime based on alternating powers … In my party we have always aspired to democratic functioning, even during the time of the regime of the martyr Saddam Hussein democracy was practiced at an internal level.
“The martyr Saddam Hussein”?
At the beginning of October we will unite with other nationalist and Islamic factions to form a supreme command, the High Command of the Jihad and Liberation, led by Aezt al Duri (the ex-vice-president of Iraq during the Saddam Hussein regime.) It includes 22 factions in the whole country that represent 80% of armed resistance.
Yep. This guy says straight out that his party “represents armed resistance” — which of course means killing all Iraqis who don’t agree with them, not to mention the occasional American soldier.
What the combatants need are weapons, and there are Iraqi army technicians in the resistance making them, above all mines.
Mines are the kind of weapon that kills the most American soldiers.
As the resistance and as the Iraqi people, we value the withdrawal of Spanish troops, as well as the support of the Spanish people against the war. This brave decision will have a positive reaction in the future relations of free Iraq with Spain.
“The support of the Spanish people against the war”? So Abu Mohamed says that Spanish public opinion has aided the terrorists. That’ll make many Spanish very happy.
The US must recognize and accept our patriotic national rights. They are the following: the unconditional and total withdrawal from Iraq, accepting the consequences of the invasion and occupation, paying indemnizations to Iraq as a state and a people, overturning all the illegal laws that are the fruit of the political process, freeing all Iraqi prisoners, annulling trials under the illegal occupation and the Security Council resolutions based on article 7 from 1991 until now, based on lies; and ceasing incursions into the houses of Iraqis with the excuse that they belong to the resistance. Also, the collaborationists who have committed high treason against the country and the people must be turned over to the government.
Abu Mohamed is a supporter of Saddam who wants the UN to revoke all their resolutions against that thug. And La Vanguardia gives him two full pages.
If (the UN) again serves as an instrument to carry out the US’s project, as occurred in the destruction of Iraq, killing in its name more than two million Iraqis and legitimizing the occupation, then the resistance and the Baath will reject any UN intervention. The resistance will decide the future of Iraq.
No, he really doesn’t care what the UN thinks.
There are international leaders who have been elected democratically but who direct dictatorial and criminal governments, like for example Bush. Nonetheless, there are leaders who were not elected democratically, and practice policies of human rights and freedom. It is related to a moral vision, the relation between the ruler and the people has to be human. Not to defend the previous regime, but, the relationship between the leaders and the people was moral and human.
So he’s anti-democratic, but supports dictators who are “moral and human.” How can anyone who believes in democracy and the rule of law support this man and what he stands for?
(American) soldiers cry in the streets of Baghdad and many refuse to follow orders.
Interviewer: There have been dozens of American deserters. Do you help them leave the country?
Yes, in many cases. I call on American soldiers, because we are still willing to help them leave Iraq.
The American soldiers are refusing to follow orders and are deserting by the dozen, and the Baath Party is hiding them? First I’d heard of that.
Our political project is very clear. All Iraqis, parties, movements, currents, and persons, no matter their names, except for traitors to Iraq, will be part of the agreement when they recognize the rights of Iraq. The traitors know who they are, all of those who have helped the occupier in the invasion and who collaborate with the American project. They are lackeys.
That sounds like everyone who voted in the elections is a traitor and will be treated as one if the Baath somehow manages to take over again.
We have been invited (to Spain) by the State Campaign against the Occupation and for the Sovereignty of Iraq (CEOSI), a movement that supports the rights and welfare of the Iraqis. We represent the Iraqi people and give thanks for the opportunity to tell what is happening in our country. This allows us to transmit our message to the occupier from outside.
He fulsomely thanks La Vanguardia for allowing him to spread propaganda.
The CEOSI needs to have its headquarters raided right now to find out how much of its money (which it claims is for “medical aid”) has gone into the hands of the Baath Party terrorists, with whom they are openly in contact. I would expect a long string of arrests to follow. Googling “CEOSI” leads you to an enormous long string of links that clearly show it’s a front for the Communists and those to their left.
The CEOSI is mixed up with Ramsey Clark’s International Action Center, and we all know who those guys are: a front for the Workers World Party, a bunch of Trotskyist-Maoists.
They’re still fighting the Cold War, they’re the Vanguard of the Revolution, and the Baath Party is their proxy now.
La Vanguardia allows readers to comment on all stories on their website, something few newspapers in Spain do. I counted 15 comments in favor of the Baath Party, and 13 against; pro-terrorist, anti-American feeling is unfortunately widespread in Barcelona. Check out some of these pro-terrorist comments from La Vanguardia’s readership.
Pepe (Miami): Send this interview to the New York Times and let’s see if they figure it out in the US, here the media only tells lies.
dax (L’Ametlla del Vallés): You can’t call people who defend their fatherland invaded by the Westerners terrorists. The only terrorist is Bhus (sic) who for economic interests has no doubts about turning Iraq into a second Vietnam. The same thing that happened there will happen to him.
MonsieurTon: Very, very interesting. Let’s hope this leader gets more chances to explain his message, and that our media listen to him. Bravo LV!
Teresa (Barcelona): I don’t understand how anyone can say the US has killed few Iraqis (How dare we!) And a question: Aren’t the invaders and occupiers responsible for security, especially among the civilian population? Yes, for every one of the deaths, which are several hundred thousand…
ahaverus: Well, I think it’s normal that an invaded people organizes itself against the occupying army. Everything else is secondary. I suppose we would do the same in a similar case, independently of our sympathies with Zapatero or the PP.
Mar (Buenos Aires): The media must give a voice to those who do not have one so that it can reach the ears of those the warlike empires are trying to disinform. Excellent report … American imperialism is hurting us directly. It is not just a war for oil, but to extend terrorism and justify international bellicism.
Pathetic. Fortunately there are a few sensible people in Spain who disagree with these idiots.
Barcelona daily newspaper La Vanguardia, which has been published since 1881, likes to consider itself the reasonable and moderate voice of the Catalan middle class. What passes for responsibility in the conspiracy-theorizing Spanish press is a long way from the ideal, though. Today they’ve set a new record for journalistic irresponsibility and amorality.
La Vanguardia has actually become a mouthpiece for terrorists. This morning they’ve given the two lead pages of their International section to a spokesman for the Iraqi Baath Party.
Reporter Carla Fibla interviews one “Abu Mohamed” in Madrid; Abu Mohamed is billed as “The spokesman for the Baath Party and the armed resistance.” There’s a photo of him, taken from behind. Fibla says he is a university professor and that he has been in Madrid for the past week making contact with “organizations opposed to the American occupation in Iraq in order to explain the resistance’s projects and objectives.”
The Spanish government should track down Abu Mohamed and arrest him and his contacts immediately. He is the spokesman for a terrorist organization, and apology for terrorism is strictly illegal in Spain. Twenty-two leaders of Batasuna, the ETA-front political party in Spain, were arrested just last week on orders from Judge Baltasar Garzón on charges of membership in a terrorist organization and apology for terrorism. Abu Mohamed is no different from Arnaldo Otegi, the Batasuna spokesman who is right now facing a prison term here in Spain. And anybody Abu Mohamed meets with is guilty of collaboration with a terrorist gang.
If the Spanish government doesn’t arrest him, the CIA ought to grab him and send him off to a torture camp in the Ukraine. (Assuming they do such things, that is.) If he knows what the Baath Party terrorists’ plans and goals are, he is a legitimate target.
One thing Abu Mohamed says is that his “resistance,” which he claims includes 80% of anti-Iraqi-democracy terrorists, is also “fighting” Al Qaeda and the Iranians.
Sure, the national-socialist Baath Party probably doesn’t like either of them any better than it likes the elected Iraqi government or the Americans and British. But somehow I doubt they’re actually “fighting” either of them.
Abu Mohamed told his interviewer:
Iran’s interest in Al Qaeda is the creation of a sectarian confrontation in Iraq. Something they are fueling because Al Qaeda is supported by the Mossad.
Yeah, right.
We, the Baath and the resistance, believe that this is not a government, but a gang of collaborators and spies who have created something they call the Government and Parliament, and have organized fraudulent elections in order to impose their plans on Iraq. The Government will fall before the occupation.
So he brags that they are trying to overthrow the elected Iraqi government. When somebody tries to overthrow the elected Spanish government, like ETA, we call them terrorists and put them in jail. Spain should do no less with Abu Mohamed and his homegrown Spanish collabos.
Iraq is living under occupation, subjugated by external elements who collaborate with them: political parties, militias, and death squads that murder in the name of the occupation.
If I remember correctly, the Iraqi government was elected by the Iraqi people, and if anybody’s murdering anybody, it’s the “armed resistance.”
Most of the people support the resistance.
That’s not what the election results said.
Terrorism is an American product. There has been terrorism in Iraq since the invasion; before Al Qaeda did not exist for us, there were no militias, no death squads, nor murders, nor kidnappings.
Except the ones Saddam and the Baath Party committed, of course.
The current destruction of infrastructure, theft of the money and wealth of the country, sectarian confrontations, it’s all a product of the occupation.
The Socialist Baath Party has … become a party of resistance. We want to expel the occupation, put an end to the invasion, and establish a pluralist democratic regime based on alternating powers … In my party we have always aspired to democratic functioning, even during the time of the regime of the martyr Saddam Hussein democracy was practiced at an internal level.
“The martyr Saddam Hussein”?
At the beginning of October we will unite with other nationalist and Islamic factions to form a supreme command, the High Command of the Jihad and Liberation, led by Aezt al Duri (the ex-vice-president of Iraq during the Saddam Hussein regime.) It includes 22 factions in the whole country that represent 80% of armed resistance.
Yep. This guy says straight out that his party “represents armed resistance” — which of course means killing all Iraqis who don’t agree with them, not to mention the occasional American soldier.
What the combatants need are weapons, and there are Iraqi army technicians in the resistance making them, above all mines.
Mines are the kind of weapon that kills the most American soldiers.
As the resistance and as the Iraqi people, we value the withdrawal of Spanish troops, as well as the support of the Spanish people against the war. This brave decision will have a positive reaction in the future relations of free Iraq with Spain.
“The support of the Spanish people against the war”? So Abu Mohamed says that Spanish public opinion has aided the terrorists. That’ll make many Spanish very happy.
The US must recognize and accept our patriotic national rights. They are the following: the unconditional and total withdrawal from Iraq, accepting the consequences of the invasion and occupation, paying indemnizations to Iraq as a state and a people, overturning all the illegal laws that are the fruit of the political process, freeing all Iraqi prisoners, annulling trials under the illegal occupation and the Security Council resolutions based on article 7 from 1991 until now, based on lies; and ceasing incursions into the houses of Iraqis with the excuse that they belong to the resistance. Also, the collaborationists who have committed high treason against the country and the people must be turned over to the government.
Abu Mohamed is a supporter of Saddam who wants the UN to revoke all their resolutions against that thug. And La Vanguardia gives him two full pages.
If (the UN) again serves as an instrument to carry out the US’s project, as occurred in the destruction of Iraq, killing in its name more than two million Iraqis and legitimizing the occupation, then the resistance and the Baath will reject any UN intervention. The resistance will decide the future of Iraq.
No, he really doesn’t care what the UN thinks.
There are international leaders who have been elected democratically but who direct dictatorial and criminal governments, like for example Bush. Nonetheless, there are leaders who were not elected democratically, and practice policies of human rights and freedom. It is related to a moral vision, the relation between the ruler and the people has to be human. Not to defend the previous regime, but, the relationship between the leaders and the people was moral and human.
So he’s anti-democratic, but supports dictators who are “moral and human.” How can anyone who believes in democracy and the rule of law support this man and what he stands for?
(American) soldiers cry in the streets of Baghdad and many refuse to follow orders.
Interviewer: There have been dozens of American deserters. Do you help them leave the country?
Yes, in many cases. I call on American soldiers, because we are still willing to help them leave Iraq.
The American soldiers are refusing to follow orders and are deserting by the dozen, and the Baath Party is hiding them? First I’d heard of that.
Our political project is very clear. All Iraqis, parties, movements, currents, and persons, no matter their names, except for traitors to Iraq, will be part of the agreement when they recognize the rights of Iraq. The traitors know who they are, all of those who have helped the occupier in the invasion and who collaborate with the American project. They are lackeys.
That sounds like everyone who voted in the elections is a traitor and will be treated as one if the Baath somehow manages to take over again.
We have been invited (to Spain) by the State Campaign against the Occupation and for the Sovereignty of Iraq (CEOSI), a movement that supports the rights and welfare of the Iraqis. We represent the Iraqi people and give thanks for the opportunity to tell what is happening in our country. This allows us to transmit our message to the occupier from outside.
He fulsomely thanks La Vanguardia for allowing him to spread propaganda.
The CEOSI needs to have its headquarters raided right now to find out how much of its money (which it claims is for “medical aid”) has gone into the hands of the Baath Party terrorists, with whom they are openly in contact. I would expect a long string of arrests to follow. Googling “CEOSI” leads you to an enormous long string of links that clearly show it’s a front for the Communists and those to their left.
The CEOSI is mixed up with Ramsey Clark’s International Action Center, and we all know who those guys are: a front for the Workers World Party, a bunch of Trotskyist-Maoists.
They’re still fighting the Cold War, they’re the Vanguard of the Revolution, and the Baath Party is their proxy now.
La Vanguardia allows readers to comment on all stories on their website, something few newspapers in Spain do. I counted 15 comments in favor of the Baath Party, and 13 against; pro-terrorist, anti-American feeling is unfortunately widespread in Barcelona. Check out some of these pro-terrorist comments from La Vanguardia’s readership.
Pepe (Miami): Send this interview to the New York Times and let’s see if they figure it out in the US, here the media only tells lies.
dax (L’Ametlla del Vallés): You can’t call people who defend their fatherland invaded by the Westerners terrorists. The only terrorist is Bhus (sic) who for economic interests has no doubts about turning Iraq into a second Vietnam. The same thing that happened there will happen to him.
MonsieurTon: Very, very interesting. Let’s hope this leader gets more chances to explain his message, and that our media listen to him. Bravo LV!
Teresa (Barcelona): I don’t understand how anyone can say the US has killed few Iraqis (How dare we!) And a question: Aren’t the invaders and occupiers responsible for security, especially among the civilian population? Yes, for every one of the deaths, which are several hundred thousand…
ahaverus: Well, I think it’s normal that an invaded people organizes itself against the occupying army. Everything else is secondary. I suppose we would do the same in a similar case, independently of our sympathies with Zapatero or the PP.
Mar (Buenos Aires): The media must give a voice to those who do not have one so that it can reach the ears of those the warlike empires are trying to disinform. Excellent report … American imperialism is hurting us directly. It is not just a war for oil, but to extend terrorism and justify international bellicism.
Pathetic. Fortunately there are a few sensible people in Spain who disagree with these idiots.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
More corruption: The president of the Valencian Socialist Party, Joan Ignasi Pla, was forced to resign today. He got some land in Denia rezoned so that a contractor friend of his could build a new subdivision. Nobody is surprised. Political parties do that all the time.
Weirdness: They've been digging up the Plaza Lesseps just up the hill from my house for what seems like the last decade, and today they found two skeletons buried under it. The cops are investigating.
Get this: There is a shantytown on the western outskirts of Madrid (right next to the landfill) called the Cañada Real Galiana, with about 2000 buildings and 30,000 inhabitants, mostly gypsies, Moroccans, and Romanians. The cops were ordered to tear down a shack that had been built in the public right-of-way. The residents put up a fight, which ended up with 22 injured, including eleven cops and eleven Moroccans. Nine Moroccans were arrested. This shantytown is the area's largest center of drug dealing and crime. The administration plans to tear down all shacks in the right-of-way, which is apparently a lot of them. Sad situation. Hard to know what to do in cases like this. I suppose you have to deport the Moroccans who are here illegally and help the rest of them find temporary shelter of some kind. After arresting all those wanted by the police, which is probably a pretty high percentage.
Barcelona's 2007 budget: €2.35 billion. €875 million comes from municipal taxes and fees. I guess the rest comes from the central government in Madrid, of course from everyone's taxes.
Weirdness: They've been digging up the Plaza Lesseps just up the hill from my house for what seems like the last decade, and today they found two skeletons buried under it. The cops are investigating.
Get this: There is a shantytown on the western outskirts of Madrid (right next to the landfill) called the Cañada Real Galiana, with about 2000 buildings and 30,000 inhabitants, mostly gypsies, Moroccans, and Romanians. The cops were ordered to tear down a shack that had been built in the public right-of-way. The residents put up a fight, which ended up with 22 injured, including eleven cops and eleven Moroccans. Nine Moroccans were arrested. This shantytown is the area's largest center of drug dealing and crime. The administration plans to tear down all shacks in the right-of-way, which is apparently a lot of them. Sad situation. Hard to know what to do in cases like this. I suppose you have to deport the Moroccans who are here illegally and help the rest of them find temporary shelter of some kind. After arresting all those wanted by the police, which is probably a pretty high percentage.
Barcelona's 2007 budget: €2.35 billion. €875 million comes from municipal taxes and fees. I guess the rest comes from the central government in Madrid, of course from everyone's taxes.
One of the things about Catalan nationalism is that there are complete and total jerks on both sides of the issue. Case in point: Albert Boadella, a theatrical director and playwright, who is one of the founders of the Ciutadans anti-Catalan-nationalist political party. I generally agree with Ciutadans's view on nationalism, because it's on the right side of the issue in its campaign against anti-Spanish discrimination.
But Boadella is a self-righteous prick. He's disgruntled because the "cultureta"--that is, the Generalitat-subsidized official lower-middlebrow Tàpies-Porcel-Llach-Joel Joan-Els Pets TV3 Catalan-only exclusivist branch of Catalan culture, which just embarrassed itself before the whole world in Frankfurt--has ignored him and denied him subsidies ever since he began criticizing them. So of course he has to react immaturely. He's written a book, and he held the premiere on a boat offshore of Barcelona "in order not to do it on Catalan territory." How childish.
Of course, this doesn't mean he's going to pack up and leave, since "the climate is benign as long as the nationalists can't change it." Boadella claims that in the rest of Spain, his works fill theaters, while in Catalonia "the silent majority" does not. Well, Al, the market has spoken. People around here won't go see your stuff, for whatever reason. So you have two choices: Give the people what they want, or don't change what you're doing and accept that you're going to be poor and ignored.
But no, Boadella blames his lack of success on a Catalan-nationalist campaign against him, on the part of both Convergence and Union and the Catalan Socialist Party, which would be just about the first time those two lots ever agreed on anything. He claims that they unfairly criticized his work because of his politics; I'd respond that his politics are an integral part of his work, which is generally crappy anyway. Boadella added that he "cares less about Catalonia than Burma."
He's just as bad as Carod-Rovira, but on the other side.
Other notes: Iberia announced that starting in 2010 it will fly four regular nonstop routes from Barcelona El Prat to the US and Latin America. Hey, all you right-thinking perennially indignant Barcelonese, if America sucks so bad, why do you want direct flights there so desperately?
TV3 is gleefully chortling that Sarkozy will be brought down by the combination of the transport strike and his separation from his wife. Naturally, as good capital-S Socialists, they're playing up the marital-discord part, and playing down the fact that Sarkozy is going to stomp the unions on this one. Hispano-Catalan lefties, who are all Francophiles and Americaphobes, have been terribly disappointed at France's turn to the right; they feel abandoned by their parents.
Judge Garzón jailed two more Batasuna leaders, charging them with belonging to a terrorist organization. He added that he was going to lock up a whole bunch more of them. Good. ETA-fomented "kale borroka," street violence in the Basque country, is up massively over the last week. I don't understand why there aren't lots of plainclothes cops all over Basqueland ready to whack these jerks on the head as soon as they torch an ATM or a garbage skip.
The Guardia Civil finished its search of the Odyssey ship, and they didn't find anything or they would have announced it. The ship has been released and is free to go.
The IMF predicts a Spanish economic growth rate of 2.7% for 2008, and Spain's second-largest bank, BBVA, predicts 2.8%. The Zap government's prediction is 3.3%. We'll see who's right. I'm going with the BBVA, since they're the private institution whose income depends on getting such predictions correct. For 2007 the IMF and the Zap government agree that growth will be about 3.7%. The IMF warns that Spanish housing prices may decline because credit has become tighter, making the demand smaller, and it adds that the housing market is considerably more overvalued in such European countries as Britain, Ireland, and Spain than it is in the US. It estimates Eurozone growth for 2007 at 2.5% and for 2008 at 2.1%. The rise in the price of the euro--it hit $1.43 today--is hurting Spanish exports; Spain runs about a 10% trade deficit, which is made up by income from tourism.
But Boadella is a self-righteous prick. He's disgruntled because the "cultureta"--that is, the Generalitat-subsidized official lower-middlebrow Tàpies-Porcel-Llach-Joel Joan-Els Pets TV3 Catalan-only exclusivist branch of Catalan culture, which just embarrassed itself before the whole world in Frankfurt--has ignored him and denied him subsidies ever since he began criticizing them. So of course he has to react immaturely. He's written a book, and he held the premiere on a boat offshore of Barcelona "in order not to do it on Catalan territory." How childish.
Of course, this doesn't mean he's going to pack up and leave, since "the climate is benign as long as the nationalists can't change it." Boadella claims that in the rest of Spain, his works fill theaters, while in Catalonia "the silent majority" does not. Well, Al, the market has spoken. People around here won't go see your stuff, for whatever reason. So you have two choices: Give the people what they want, or don't change what you're doing and accept that you're going to be poor and ignored.
But no, Boadella blames his lack of success on a Catalan-nationalist campaign against him, on the part of both Convergence and Union and the Catalan Socialist Party, which would be just about the first time those two lots ever agreed on anything. He claims that they unfairly criticized his work because of his politics; I'd respond that his politics are an integral part of his work, which is generally crappy anyway. Boadella added that he "cares less about Catalonia than Burma."
He's just as bad as Carod-Rovira, but on the other side.
Other notes: Iberia announced that starting in 2010 it will fly four regular nonstop routes from Barcelona El Prat to the US and Latin America. Hey, all you right-thinking perennially indignant Barcelonese, if America sucks so bad, why do you want direct flights there so desperately?
TV3 is gleefully chortling that Sarkozy will be brought down by the combination of the transport strike and his separation from his wife. Naturally, as good capital-S Socialists, they're playing up the marital-discord part, and playing down the fact that Sarkozy is going to stomp the unions on this one. Hispano-Catalan lefties, who are all Francophiles and Americaphobes, have been terribly disappointed at France's turn to the right; they feel abandoned by their parents.
Judge Garzón jailed two more Batasuna leaders, charging them with belonging to a terrorist organization. He added that he was going to lock up a whole bunch more of them. Good. ETA-fomented "kale borroka," street violence in the Basque country, is up massively over the last week. I don't understand why there aren't lots of plainclothes cops all over Basqueland ready to whack these jerks on the head as soon as they torch an ATM or a garbage skip.
The Guardia Civil finished its search of the Odyssey ship, and they didn't find anything or they would have announced it. The ship has been released and is free to go.
The IMF predicts a Spanish economic growth rate of 2.7% for 2008, and Spain's second-largest bank, BBVA, predicts 2.8%. The Zap government's prediction is 3.3%. We'll see who's right. I'm going with the BBVA, since they're the private institution whose income depends on getting such predictions correct. For 2007 the IMF and the Zap government agree that growth will be about 3.7%. The IMF warns that Spanish housing prices may decline because credit has become tighter, making the demand smaller, and it adds that the housing market is considerably more overvalued in such European countries as Britain, Ireland, and Spain than it is in the US. It estimates Eurozone growth for 2007 at 2.5% and for 2008 at 2.1%. The rise in the price of the euro--it hit $1.43 today--is hurting Spanish exports; Spain runs about a 10% trade deficit, which is made up by income from tourism.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Pepelu Carod-Rovira, president of the pro-Catalan-independence Izquierda Republicana de Cataluña (ERC) political party and Vice-Premier of the Catalan Generalidad, has decided that the best defense is a good offense.
Don Pepelu and his henchman, Pepe Bargalló, just made incredible fools of themselves by bragging before the TV cameras that they had scored a nonexistent invitation for Cataluña to host a pavilion at the 2009 Venice Biennial art fair. The Venice Biennial immediately responded that Pepelu and Pepe were full of poop. In feigned embarrassment, Pepe Bargalló turned in his resignation as Head President Number One Nabob of the Instituto Ramón Llull, the government organization that is supposed to do for Catalan what the Instituto Cervantes does for Spanish. Pepelu refused to accept the resignation, of course, and everybody's still holding their lovely government positions.
So Pepelu went to TV1 in Madrid for a program called "I Have a Question for You," in which ordinary citizens ask questions to politicians. Zap and Rajoy have both been on, and last night they invited Pepelu, Llamazares the Communist, and Unión Democrática leader Durán y Lérida.
Four million people were watching throughout Spain.
And Pepelu got all indignant. Very indignant. His dignity was injured. More than that, Holy Cataluña and the Sacred Catalan Language were desecrated.
Some people from Valladolid had the nerve to address him as "Don José Luis."
Here's the video; Pepelu comes on. He's the short bald guy with the combover and the brushy mustache who looks like your 11th grade geometry teacher--you remember that guy, the one with BO who wore a maroon polyester blazer and stared at all the girls' chests.
(Note: Non-Catalan Spaniards do not like the fact that bilingual Catalans can leave Catalonia and pass a government job exam in Spanish, but monolingual Spaniards cannot come to Catalonia and pass a job exam in Catalan.)
Transcription:
Young man: Good evening, don José Luis.
Pepelu: Excuse me. My name is Josep Lluís.
YM: I don't understand Catalan.
Pepelu: You don't have to understand Catalan. My name is my name just as much here as in China. You have no right to change my name.
YM: Señor Carod-Rovira, or whatever you prefer...
Pepelu: No, not what I prefer, what my name is.
YM: My question is simple. Don't you think it's unfair that a Castilian-Leonese, which I am, shouldn't be able to go to Catalonia to take a civil service exam because Catalan is demanded, but it can be done the other way around? Don't you think since both Catalan and Spanish are co-official languages in Catalonia, people should be judged by their knowledge and skills before the language?
Pepelu: You're right, people should be judged by their skills, and in Cataluña there are two official languages. Those who know both languages have more skills than those who only know one. If you went to work as a doctor in Paris would you claim to feel rejected because you didn't know the language of Paris?
YM: But we're talking about Spain.
Pepelu: That's where I wanted to go. Well, this Spain that you love is a Spain that is only in Spanish.
Old Woman: Good evening, don José Luis. I'm from Castilla y León, and I'm sorry I don't know Catalan.
Pepelu: Allow me to repeat something to you. Don't bother. My name is not José Luis. If you haven't learned in the three centuries between 1714 and today to say Josep Lluís, but you know how to say Schwarzenegger and Shevardnadze, you have a problem, not me.
OW: I have no interest in learning Catalan, thank you.
Pepelu: If you have no interest in learning Catalan, how is it that you want people in Catalonia to feel comfortable in a state (Spain) that expresses the scorn for the language that you just showed.
What a self-righteous prick.
Well, he got what he wanted. All the Cataloonies, who only live in Cataluña, have an excuse to forget all about Pepelu's little faux pas about the Biennial, and get all indignantly up in arms because people from León can't pronounce "Josep Lluís" and feel embarrassed about doing it in public. The other result of his tantrum, of course, will be even more support in the rest of Spain for the extreme anti-Catalan wing of the PP. He stirred up his homeboys and antagonized everybody else, which is just what he wanted.
This contretemps was the big story on the TV3 news this afternoon, and the afternoon talk show devoted its roundtable to the subject. All the panelists were righteously indignant at the insult to Holy Sacred Catalanity, and almost all the dorks who send SMSs to the show had their blood stirred up and were ready to raise the barricades.
Get this. La Vanguardia's Web article has attracted more than 1150 comments already. That's more than I've ever seen for any story. Naturally, all the commenters are thoughtful and educated gentlemen and ladies making reasoned and logical arguments.
Meanwhile, the following LV story from page 20 in this morning's paper has received zero reader comments:
The Catalan Socialist Party (PSC) yesterday accused Convergence and Union (CiU) of charging illegal kickbacks, after a Barcelona judge ruled that in the year 2003 a contractor paid a 20% kickback when working for Adigsa, a public company belonging to the Generalidad...The investigation began when Pasqual Maragall in February 2005 accused CiU, on the floor of Parliament, of collecting kickbacks of 3% of all public works contracts...The judge ruled that there was evidence of embezzlement of public funds, fraud, influence-peddling, abuse of power, and forgery...The judge wrote that Adigsa's plan to build housing for young people "was created with the goal of winning votes for the party in power in the region, CiU." He mentioned the 20% kickbacks, but could not specify the final destination of the money..."All parties finance themselves in the same way, said Pasqual Maragall yesterday in Valladolid...The ex-premier expressed his surprise at the size of the kickbacks. "I didn't know the commissions were 20%."
All Spanish and Catalan political parties, see, run patronage machines. When your buddies are in power, you get a share of the jobs and the contracts, and you have to pay somebody between 3% and 20%. And everybody gets a share, it's all neatly divided up; the Socialists get the biggest piece, but their partners ERC and the Communists have their own little domains as well. CiU, of course, got the biggest piece back when they were running the regional government; now they're out of power, and desperate to get some back, because they have sagging bank accounts. Pepelu Carod-Rovira's ERC openly levies contributions on holders of patronage (not civil-service) government jobs in the departments they control. This, by the way, is actually at least semi-legal.
Don Pepelu and his henchman, Pepe Bargalló, just made incredible fools of themselves by bragging before the TV cameras that they had scored a nonexistent invitation for Cataluña to host a pavilion at the 2009 Venice Biennial art fair. The Venice Biennial immediately responded that Pepelu and Pepe were full of poop. In feigned embarrassment, Pepe Bargalló turned in his resignation as Head President Number One Nabob of the Instituto Ramón Llull, the government organization that is supposed to do for Catalan what the Instituto Cervantes does for Spanish. Pepelu refused to accept the resignation, of course, and everybody's still holding their lovely government positions.
So Pepelu went to TV1 in Madrid for a program called "I Have a Question for You," in which ordinary citizens ask questions to politicians. Zap and Rajoy have both been on, and last night they invited Pepelu, Llamazares the Communist, and Unión Democrática leader Durán y Lérida.
Four million people were watching throughout Spain.
And Pepelu got all indignant. Very indignant. His dignity was injured. More than that, Holy Cataluña and the Sacred Catalan Language were desecrated.
Some people from Valladolid had the nerve to address him as "Don José Luis."
Here's the video; Pepelu comes on. He's the short bald guy with the combover and the brushy mustache who looks like your 11th grade geometry teacher--you remember that guy, the one with BO who wore a maroon polyester blazer and stared at all the girls' chests.
(Note: Non-Catalan Spaniards do not like the fact that bilingual Catalans can leave Catalonia and pass a government job exam in Spanish, but monolingual Spaniards cannot come to Catalonia and pass a job exam in Catalan.)
Transcription:
Young man: Good evening, don José Luis.
Pepelu: Excuse me. My name is Josep Lluís.
YM: I don't understand Catalan.
Pepelu: You don't have to understand Catalan. My name is my name just as much here as in China. You have no right to change my name.
YM: Señor Carod-Rovira, or whatever you prefer...
Pepelu: No, not what I prefer, what my name is.
YM: My question is simple. Don't you think it's unfair that a Castilian-Leonese, which I am, shouldn't be able to go to Catalonia to take a civil service exam because Catalan is demanded, but it can be done the other way around? Don't you think since both Catalan and Spanish are co-official languages in Catalonia, people should be judged by their knowledge and skills before the language?
Pepelu: You're right, people should be judged by their skills, and in Cataluña there are two official languages. Those who know both languages have more skills than those who only know one. If you went to work as a doctor in Paris would you claim to feel rejected because you didn't know the language of Paris?
YM: But we're talking about Spain.
Pepelu: That's where I wanted to go. Well, this Spain that you love is a Spain that is only in Spanish.
Old Woman: Good evening, don José Luis. I'm from Castilla y León, and I'm sorry I don't know Catalan.
Pepelu: Allow me to repeat something to you. Don't bother. My name is not José Luis. If you haven't learned in the three centuries between 1714 and today to say Josep Lluís, but you know how to say Schwarzenegger and Shevardnadze, you have a problem, not me.
OW: I have no interest in learning Catalan, thank you.
Pepelu: If you have no interest in learning Catalan, how is it that you want people in Catalonia to feel comfortable in a state (Spain) that expresses the scorn for the language that you just showed.
What a self-righteous prick.
Well, he got what he wanted. All the Cataloonies, who only live in Cataluña, have an excuse to forget all about Pepelu's little faux pas about the Biennial, and get all indignantly up in arms because people from León can't pronounce "Josep Lluís" and feel embarrassed about doing it in public. The other result of his tantrum, of course, will be even more support in the rest of Spain for the extreme anti-Catalan wing of the PP. He stirred up his homeboys and antagonized everybody else, which is just what he wanted.
This contretemps was the big story on the TV3 news this afternoon, and the afternoon talk show devoted its roundtable to the subject. All the panelists were righteously indignant at the insult to Holy Sacred Catalanity, and almost all the dorks who send SMSs to the show had their blood stirred up and were ready to raise the barricades.
Get this. La Vanguardia's Web article has attracted more than 1150 comments already. That's more than I've ever seen for any story. Naturally, all the commenters are thoughtful and educated gentlemen and ladies making reasoned and logical arguments.
Meanwhile, the following LV story from page 20 in this morning's paper has received zero reader comments:
The Catalan Socialist Party (PSC) yesterday accused Convergence and Union (CiU) of charging illegal kickbacks, after a Barcelona judge ruled that in the year 2003 a contractor paid a 20% kickback when working for Adigsa, a public company belonging to the Generalidad...The investigation began when Pasqual Maragall in February 2005 accused CiU, on the floor of Parliament, of collecting kickbacks of 3% of all public works contracts...The judge ruled that there was evidence of embezzlement of public funds, fraud, influence-peddling, abuse of power, and forgery...The judge wrote that Adigsa's plan to build housing for young people "was created with the goal of winning votes for the party in power in the region, CiU." He mentioned the 20% kickbacks, but could not specify the final destination of the money..."All parties finance themselves in the same way, said Pasqual Maragall yesterday in Valladolid...The ex-premier expressed his surprise at the size of the kickbacks. "I didn't know the commissions were 20%."
All Spanish and Catalan political parties, see, run patronage machines. When your buddies are in power, you get a share of the jobs and the contracts, and you have to pay somebody between 3% and 20%. And everybody gets a share, it's all neatly divided up; the Socialists get the biggest piece, but their partners ERC and the Communists have their own little domains as well. CiU, of course, got the biggest piece back when they were running the regional government; now they're out of power, and desperate to get some back, because they have sagging bank accounts. Pepelu Carod-Rovira's ERC openly levies contributions on holders of patronage (not civil-service) government jobs in the departments they control. This, by the way, is actually at least semi-legal.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Breaking news: The Spanish Navy and Guardia Civil have seized the American ship "Odyssey Explorer" in Spanish territorial waters, and brought it to the port of Algeciras. A Spanish court ordered the seizure on the grounds that it is investigating whether Odyssey, a US company that searches for undersea treasure, stole its most recently discovered trove, worth €370 million, from Spanish waters. Odyssey, of course, denies it. Spain has also filed suit in American court. My guess is that this is not going to do wonders for bilateral relations. Guess number two is that Spain is never going to get its hands on this stuff because there's no way they can prove it was found in Spanish waters.
Slate's running an interesting series by Tim Wu on American laws that the government does not enforce. So far they've dealt with prescription drugs, copyright, and porn. I thought the following was worth noting:
What all of these changes reflect are several major shifts in how the U.S. legal system views depictions of sex. The first reveal an acceptance of the libertarian idea that private consumption of nearly any material is not a public harm. That view excepts children and animals as victims, but not consenting women and men who have sex before cameras. In that view, the U.S. legal system has effectively and informally reached the same conclusion as the 1970 commission: Whether you like it or not, private consumption of pornography is just not harmful enough to merit public enforcement.
Yet at the same time, the United States has concluded that it will not be a place, like Europe, where bared breasts grace bus-stop billboards or soft-porn films can be found on regular late-night television. Americans love zoning—compartmentalizing behavior to designated times or places. It's how a diverse nation manages to live together. And so our obscenity system—much of which takes the legal form of an outright ban—is often in practice being used to move erotic content away from public places.
What all of these changes reflect are several major shifts in how the U.S. legal system views depictions of sex. The first reveal an acceptance of the libertarian idea that private consumption of nearly any material is not a public harm. That view excepts children and animals as victims, but not consenting women and men who have sex before cameras. In that view, the U.S. legal system has effectively and informally reached the same conclusion as the 1970 commission: Whether you like it or not, private consumption of pornography is just not harmful enough to merit public enforcement.
Yet at the same time, the United States has concluded that it will not be a place, like Europe, where bared breasts grace bus-stop billboards or soft-porn films can be found on regular late-night television. Americans love zoning—compartmentalizing behavior to designated times or places. It's how a diverse nation manages to live together. And so our obscenity system—much of which takes the legal form of an outright ban—is often in practice being used to move erotic content away from public places.
The funniest fallout from the Frankfurt book fair is that, at the closing ceremony, wacky independentista Carod-Rovira of ERC bragged that Catalonia had been invited to the Venice Biennial art fair, with its own pavilion, in 2009, and that he had confirmation from the mayor of Venice.
Of course he was bullshitting. The Venice Biennial does not invite anybody. Independent countries PAY (Spain's participation is subsidized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) for their pavilion in the Biennial's official building. Non-independent regions or countries or pieces of land or whatever are allowed to apply to the Biennial for the privilege of setting up a pavilion in some other building; only Scotland and Wales have ever done so. Paying for it, of course, and outside the official program. The president of the Biennial said he hadn't even received an application from Catalonia, and that no decisions of the sort would be made until February 2008 anyway. Finally, get this, the mayor of Venice has nothing at all to do with the Biennial art fair.
Says author Llátzer Moix in La Vanguardia: "How is it possible that Bargalló (boss of the Ramon Llull foundation and ERC blabbermouth) and Carod acted in such a precipitous way? What caused their modus operandi, which does not concord with the reputation for seriousness and trustworthiness that we Catalans have worked for? Maybe one answer is enough: For these politicians, culture has a mere instrumental and propagandistic value, and it's more important to shoot first rather than take aim."
Of course he was bullshitting. The Venice Biennial does not invite anybody. Independent countries PAY (Spain's participation is subsidized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) for their pavilion in the Biennial's official building. Non-independent regions or countries or pieces of land or whatever are allowed to apply to the Biennial for the privilege of setting up a pavilion in some other building; only Scotland and Wales have ever done so. Paying for it, of course, and outside the official program. The president of the Biennial said he hadn't even received an application from Catalonia, and that no decisions of the sort would be made until February 2008 anyway. Finally, get this, the mayor of Venice has nothing at all to do with the Biennial art fair.
Says author Llátzer Moix in La Vanguardia: "How is it possible that Bargalló (boss of the Ramon Llull foundation and ERC blabbermouth) and Carod acted in such a precipitous way? What caused their modus operandi, which does not concord with the reputation for seriousness and trustworthiness that we Catalans have worked for? Maybe one answer is enough: For these politicians, culture has a mere instrumental and propagandistic value, and it's more important to shoot first rather than take aim."
Plenty of news from Baja Andorra today. The story that's picked up international attention is the beginning of the trial of 30 Islamists who allegedly conspired to blow up the National Court building in 2004. The plan was to crash a truck loaded with 500 kilos of explosives into the courthouse. Irony: They're being tried in that same building.
Most of the evidence consists of "incriminatory messages" exchanged between the conspirators, which leads to the question of: how did the authorities get hold of them? Obviously they were monitoring these guys' telephone and Internet use. So why is this a threat to democracy when the Americans do it, and good security and intelligence work when Spain does it?
The first guy to be questioned by the court claimed that he was a junkie and didn't remember anything, which is a fairly original defense.
Meanwhile, the Lebanese intelligence service arrested seven persons allegedly implicated in the attack that killed six Spanish peacekeepers in Lebanon on July 24. Spain has 1100 peacekeeping troops in Lebanon as part of the UN force.
A gunman shot an Army sergeant in the back in San Sebastián last night; he is not seriously injured. Nobody's claimed responsibility, but it's most likely ETA or ETA sympathizers, of course. Meanwhile, Zap and Basque PM Ibarretxe are supposed to meet today to discuss Ibarretxe's plan for an illegal referendum on Basque independence. Zap will tell him no dice.
And you thought America was racist: The inhabitants of a town in Galicia called Vilarchán voted to contribute a total of €250,000 to buy a vacant house in order to preempt a gypsy family from buying it. That'll cost them 16 euros each per month over the next 35 years; a high price for keeping your town Gypsyrein.
According to a government survey, 36% of Spanish teenagers between ages 14 to 18 have tried cannabis; 30% have consumed it during the last year; and 20% have consumed it during the last month.
Get this. The Environmental Ministry is going to pay €580,000 in order to distribute 30,000 copies of the Al Gore pseudoscientific documentary to Spanish schools.
And maybe the biggest news of all: The National Competition Committee, something like the FTC or the ICC, has accused Spain's three largest mobile-phone companies, Telefónica, Vodafone, and Orange, of conspiring to fix prices. The three companies are accused of "increasing their income in an abusive manner" to the tune of €1.2 billion during 2005. When the operators were prohibited from rounding up per-minute charges, they all raised the basic price of making a call by 25%, from 12 to 15 cents. Spanish mobile-phone prices are 20% higher than the European average. The companies may be fined as much as 10% of their income for that year.
Most of the evidence consists of "incriminatory messages" exchanged between the conspirators, which leads to the question of: how did the authorities get hold of them? Obviously they were monitoring these guys' telephone and Internet use. So why is this a threat to democracy when the Americans do it, and good security and intelligence work when Spain does it?
The first guy to be questioned by the court claimed that he was a junkie and didn't remember anything, which is a fairly original defense.
Meanwhile, the Lebanese intelligence service arrested seven persons allegedly implicated in the attack that killed six Spanish peacekeepers in Lebanon on July 24. Spain has 1100 peacekeeping troops in Lebanon as part of the UN force.
A gunman shot an Army sergeant in the back in San Sebastián last night; he is not seriously injured. Nobody's claimed responsibility, but it's most likely ETA or ETA sympathizers, of course. Meanwhile, Zap and Basque PM Ibarretxe are supposed to meet today to discuss Ibarretxe's plan for an illegal referendum on Basque independence. Zap will tell him no dice.
And you thought America was racist: The inhabitants of a town in Galicia called Vilarchán voted to contribute a total of €250,000 to buy a vacant house in order to preempt a gypsy family from buying it. That'll cost them 16 euros each per month over the next 35 years; a high price for keeping your town Gypsyrein.
According to a government survey, 36% of Spanish teenagers between ages 14 to 18 have tried cannabis; 30% have consumed it during the last year; and 20% have consumed it during the last month.
Get this. The Environmental Ministry is going to pay €580,000 in order to distribute 30,000 copies of the Al Gore pseudoscientific documentary to Spanish schools.
And maybe the biggest news of all: The National Competition Committee, something like the FTC or the ICC, has accused Spain's three largest mobile-phone companies, Telefónica, Vodafone, and Orange, of conspiring to fix prices. The three companies are accused of "increasing their income in an abusive manner" to the tune of €1.2 billion during 2005. When the operators were prohibited from rounding up per-minute charges, they all raised the basic price of making a call by 25%, from 12 to 15 cents. Spanish mobile-phone prices are 20% higher than the European average. The companies may be fined as much as 10% of their income for that year.
Monday, October 15, 2007
La Vanguardia ran a two-page interview this morning at the beginning of their international section. With a spokesman for the Iraqi Baath Party. Disgusting. Sickening. Terrorist-loving. I wrote a piece for Pajamas Media. Go read it.
Quote from the interview:
We have been invited (to Spain) by the State Campaign against the Occupation and for the Sovereignty of Iraq (CEOSI), a movement that supports the rights and welfare of the Iraqis. We represent the Iraqi people and give thanks for the opportunity to tell what is happening in our country. This allows us to transmit our message to the occupier from outside.
My reaction:
He fulsomely thanks La Vanguardia for allowing him to spread propaganda.
The CEOSI needs to have its headquarters raided right now to find out how much of its money (which it claims is for “medical aid”) has gone into the hands of the Baath Party terrorists, with whom they are openly in contact. I would expect a long string of arrests to follow. Googling “CEOSI” leads you to an enormous long string of links that clearly show it’s a front for the Communists and those to their left.
The CEOSI is mixed up with Ramsey Clark’s International Action Center, and we all know who those guys are: a front for the Workers World Party, a bunch of Trotskyist-Maoists.
They’re still fighting the Cold War, they’re the Vanguard of the Revolution, and the Baath Party is their proxy now.
Quote from the interview:
We have been invited (to Spain) by the State Campaign against the Occupation and for the Sovereignty of Iraq (CEOSI), a movement that supports the rights and welfare of the Iraqis. We represent the Iraqi people and give thanks for the opportunity to tell what is happening in our country. This allows us to transmit our message to the occupier from outside.
My reaction:
He fulsomely thanks La Vanguardia for allowing him to spread propaganda.
The CEOSI needs to have its headquarters raided right now to find out how much of its money (which it claims is for “medical aid”) has gone into the hands of the Baath Party terrorists, with whom they are openly in contact. I would expect a long string of arrests to follow. Googling “CEOSI” leads you to an enormous long string of links that clearly show it’s a front for the Communists and those to their left.
The CEOSI is mixed up with Ramsey Clark’s International Action Center, and we all know who those guys are: a front for the Workers World Party, a bunch of Trotskyist-Maoists.
They’re still fighting the Cold War, they’re the Vanguard of the Revolution, and the Baath Party is their proxy now.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
La Vanguardia devotes four pages and the lead editorial today to the presence of "Catalan culture" as the guest of honor at the recent Frankfurt Book Fair. One article mentions that the whole thing cost the Institute Ramon Llull €12 million, of which €4 million came from the Ministry of Industry in Madrid. The Ministry of Industry spent a total of €12 million in 2006 and 2007 subsidizing Catalan publishing houses for the occasion.
Absolutely disgraceful. The government should not be subsidizing private companies, period. And next time I hear any whining about how the central government in Madrid cares about nothing but putting everything Catalan in its place, I'll point out that this is by far the most money spent on the behalf of any "guest of honor" culture at the Frankfurt fair. For example, when Russian culture was guest of honor last year, they spent about €5 million.
La Vangua is falling all over itself praising this great success, but they let slip that only 2500 people, total, attended any of the speeches or readings or whatever. El Periodico reported last week that the majority of those in attendance were Catalans, and that one of the events attracted zero non-Catalans.
I think this whole expensive wingding was a huge failure. Basically, nobody gives a crap about the whole thing except for the Catalan cultural establishment--and the Catalan cultural establishment got a huge black eye.
Probably the nastiest comment was from the Frankfurter Allegemeine, which said, "Catalan cultural patriotism is becoming impossible to put up with." (Frequent comment I hear around here: "Americans are too patriotic." My standard response: "Am I in Catalonia or am I not?")
From the Times: Appointing Catalonia as Guest of Honour for the Frankfurt Book Fair has caused no end of controversy: the regional government in Barcelona – fiercely protective of its autonomy – decided to invite only authors writing in Catalan, thereby excluding a whole group of popular Spanish-language writers from the region, such as Carlos Ruiz Zafón (The Shadow of the Wind). After a lot of pressure, the government relented, only to have the angry Spanish authors turn their invitations down. The director of the fair, Juergen Boos, said, “We made some calls last week, but nothing happened. It’s very disappointing that the Spanish authors didn’t come, and it’s a pity that this political dispute is overshadowing the Catalan Culture part of the fair.”
From the International Herald Tribune: One of the Spanish-language writers boycotting the fair is Barcelona-born Carlos Ruiz-Zafon, author of the international best-seller "The Shadow of the Wind." He blamed "political commissars who eagerly took over and handled this affair and who decided what kind of image of Catalonia they wanted to project, mostly to their own Catalan constituents, who are the real audience of this whole sideshow, not those attending the fair or the international media."... Ruiz-Zafon told The Associated Press that Catalonia's handling of the fair was "an unfortunate mixture of ignorance about the very nature of the fair and its purpose. Misguided political ambition and bigotry coming from all sides has provoked this discussion."
Another writer who will not be attending is Javier Cercas, author of "Soldiers of Salamis," a hugely successful novel which has been made into a film. Cercas told the Spanish daily La Vanguardia he saw no point in going unless "the politicians responsible make it clear that in the Catalan culture includes two languages" — Spanish and Catalan. Ildefonso Falcones, author of "The Cathedral of the Sea," last year's No. 1 best-seller in Spain, said authorities had decided what the 'official' Catalan culture consisted of without consulting others. The Spanish government and regional authorities have spent €12 million ($16.5 million) promoting the Catalan section — the biggest budget ever spent by any country at the book fair.
From Der Spiegel: The Catalan regional government has hired the Ramon Llull Institute, a cultural organization similar to Germany's Goethe Institute, to stage the exhibit ... But the institute has retained little of its namesake's cosmopolitan approach ... Rivalries within Spain led to heated discussions in the run-up to the book fair. Sergi Pámies, one of the best authors writing in Catalan, declined an invitation to attend the Frankfurt fair, saying that he preferred not to be exploited for nationalist purposes ... It was Volker Neumann, the former head of the Frankfurt Book Fair (from 2002 to 2005), who invited Catalonia, apparently without considering the problematic nature of inviting a linguistic region in which regional nationalism is thriving, more so than in most other parts of Europe.
From Agence France-Presse: Nationalist tensions, never trailing far behind questions of identity in Spain, emerged after the regional capital Barcelona decided that only those who write in the Catalan language may come. Under fire for playing politics, Barcelona -- which is a stronghold of Spain's publishing industry -- changed its mind in June and said all writers who hail from the region were welcome to represent it at the fair.
The U-turn rang hollow for Catalan authors like Carlos Ruiz Zafon, who writes in Spanish and scored an international hit with "The Shadow of the Wind", a whimsical mystery set in his native Barcelona. He is boycotting the Frankfurt fair, along with Javier Cercas of "Soldiers of Salamis" fame and Eduardo Mendoza -- known to English audiences mainly for "The Year of the Flood", a heart-rending story of a nun who falls obsessively in love with a landowner ... But Ruiz Zafon has said the writers' polite stance masked their anger at politicians for trying to hijack the event and show the literary world a selective picture of the region that fits their separatist agenda. Albert Sanchez Pinol, the author of the hit thriller "Cold Skin", was initially in the protest camp though he writes in Catalan, but now plans to attend. "It is true that I considered not going but thinking about it I had the feeling that many people would be disappointed and perhaps it would harm Catalan culture," he said recently.
Looks to me like all they gained out of this is criticism from the British, American, German, and French media. Note that the only American story I could find was from the IHT, the European version of the New York Times, and not from any American papers themselves.
You'll also note, if you look at the stories I linked to, that all of them claimed that Catalan was banned under Franco's regime. This is the standard nationalist lie which we have already been through. Use of Catalan was restricted, but not banned. Publication of books in Catalan resumed in 1940, Catalan-language literary prizes were introduced in the 1950s, and by 1962 censorship had been reduced a great deal, and publishing houses that used only Catalan had been established. So maybe the nationalists won something after all, since they managed to spread their version of history in the world press.
However, I don't think anyone who's not in the book business ever read any of these articles anyway.
Bonus: Which blogger and occasional commenter here said the following on Barcelona Reporter's comments page?
As to whether it's right that Spanish language writers are excluded from the invite, I don't have much of an opinion on that. I find it difficult to think of one Spanish or Catalan writer who I've enjoyed reading so as far as I'm concerned, they can invite whoever they like: it'll still be full of fatuous bumpkins.
What utter contempt. And they accuse me of being unfair to Spain and Catalonia! I have said more than once that there are several writers in Spanish and Catalan who I don't like at all, starting with Balto Porcel and going all the way down to Maria de la Pau Janer. But Mendoza, Monzó, Ruiz Zafón, Sergi Pàmies, and Cercas are all worth reading, as are many others. Do any of these folks match the best writing in English? I would say that Mendoza does, and there are at least twenty-five more authors from Spain / Catalonia who are very good.
Absolutely disgraceful. The government should not be subsidizing private companies, period. And next time I hear any whining about how the central government in Madrid cares about nothing but putting everything Catalan in its place, I'll point out that this is by far the most money spent on the behalf of any "guest of honor" culture at the Frankfurt fair. For example, when Russian culture was guest of honor last year, they spent about €5 million.
La Vangua is falling all over itself praising this great success, but they let slip that only 2500 people, total, attended any of the speeches or readings or whatever. El Periodico reported last week that the majority of those in attendance were Catalans, and that one of the events attracted zero non-Catalans.
I think this whole expensive wingding was a huge failure. Basically, nobody gives a crap about the whole thing except for the Catalan cultural establishment--and the Catalan cultural establishment got a huge black eye.
Probably the nastiest comment was from the Frankfurter Allegemeine, which said, "Catalan cultural patriotism is becoming impossible to put up with." (Frequent comment I hear around here: "Americans are too patriotic." My standard response: "Am I in Catalonia or am I not?")
From the Times: Appointing Catalonia as Guest of Honour for the Frankfurt Book Fair has caused no end of controversy: the regional government in Barcelona – fiercely protective of its autonomy – decided to invite only authors writing in Catalan, thereby excluding a whole group of popular Spanish-language writers from the region, such as Carlos Ruiz Zafón (The Shadow of the Wind). After a lot of pressure, the government relented, only to have the angry Spanish authors turn their invitations down. The director of the fair, Juergen Boos, said, “We made some calls last week, but nothing happened. It’s very disappointing that the Spanish authors didn’t come, and it’s a pity that this political dispute is overshadowing the Catalan Culture part of the fair.”
From the International Herald Tribune: One of the Spanish-language writers boycotting the fair is Barcelona-born Carlos Ruiz-Zafon, author of the international best-seller "The Shadow of the Wind." He blamed "political commissars who eagerly took over and handled this affair and who decided what kind of image of Catalonia they wanted to project, mostly to their own Catalan constituents, who are the real audience of this whole sideshow, not those attending the fair or the international media."... Ruiz-Zafon told The Associated Press that Catalonia's handling of the fair was "an unfortunate mixture of ignorance about the very nature of the fair and its purpose. Misguided political ambition and bigotry coming from all sides has provoked this discussion."
Another writer who will not be attending is Javier Cercas, author of "Soldiers of Salamis," a hugely successful novel which has been made into a film. Cercas told the Spanish daily La Vanguardia he saw no point in going unless "the politicians responsible make it clear that in the Catalan culture includes two languages" — Spanish and Catalan. Ildefonso Falcones, author of "The Cathedral of the Sea," last year's No. 1 best-seller in Spain, said authorities had decided what the 'official' Catalan culture consisted of without consulting others. The Spanish government and regional authorities have spent €12 million ($16.5 million) promoting the Catalan section — the biggest budget ever spent by any country at the book fair.
From Der Spiegel: The Catalan regional government has hired the Ramon Llull Institute, a cultural organization similar to Germany's Goethe Institute, to stage the exhibit ... But the institute has retained little of its namesake's cosmopolitan approach ... Rivalries within Spain led to heated discussions in the run-up to the book fair. Sergi Pámies, one of the best authors writing in Catalan, declined an invitation to attend the Frankfurt fair, saying that he preferred not to be exploited for nationalist purposes ... It was Volker Neumann, the former head of the Frankfurt Book Fair (from 2002 to 2005), who invited Catalonia, apparently without considering the problematic nature of inviting a linguistic region in which regional nationalism is thriving, more so than in most other parts of Europe.
From Agence France-Presse: Nationalist tensions, never trailing far behind questions of identity in Spain, emerged after the regional capital Barcelona decided that only those who write in the Catalan language may come. Under fire for playing politics, Barcelona -- which is a stronghold of Spain's publishing industry -- changed its mind in June and said all writers who hail from the region were welcome to represent it at the fair.
The U-turn rang hollow for Catalan authors like Carlos Ruiz Zafon, who writes in Spanish and scored an international hit with "The Shadow of the Wind", a whimsical mystery set in his native Barcelona. He is boycotting the Frankfurt fair, along with Javier Cercas of "Soldiers of Salamis" fame and Eduardo Mendoza -- known to English audiences mainly for "The Year of the Flood", a heart-rending story of a nun who falls obsessively in love with a landowner ... But Ruiz Zafon has said the writers' polite stance masked their anger at politicians for trying to hijack the event and show the literary world a selective picture of the region that fits their separatist agenda. Albert Sanchez Pinol, the author of the hit thriller "Cold Skin", was initially in the protest camp though he writes in Catalan, but now plans to attend. "It is true that I considered not going but thinking about it I had the feeling that many people would be disappointed and perhaps it would harm Catalan culture," he said recently.
Looks to me like all they gained out of this is criticism from the British, American, German, and French media. Note that the only American story I could find was from the IHT, the European version of the New York Times, and not from any American papers themselves.
You'll also note, if you look at the stories I linked to, that all of them claimed that Catalan was banned under Franco's regime. This is the standard nationalist lie which we have already been through. Use of Catalan was restricted, but not banned. Publication of books in Catalan resumed in 1940, Catalan-language literary prizes were introduced in the 1950s, and by 1962 censorship had been reduced a great deal, and publishing houses that used only Catalan had been established. So maybe the nationalists won something after all, since they managed to spread their version of history in the world press.
However, I don't think anyone who's not in the book business ever read any of these articles anyway.
Bonus: Which blogger and occasional commenter here said the following on Barcelona Reporter's comments page?
As to whether it's right that Spanish language writers are excluded from the invite, I don't have much of an opinion on that. I find it difficult to think of one Spanish or Catalan writer who I've enjoyed reading so as far as I'm concerned, they can invite whoever they like: it'll still be full of fatuous bumpkins.
What utter contempt. And they accuse me of being unfair to Spain and Catalonia! I have said more than once that there are several writers in Spanish and Catalan who I don't like at all, starting with Balto Porcel and going all the way down to Maria de la Pau Janer. But Mendoza, Monzó, Ruiz Zafón, Sergi Pàmies, and Cercas are all worth reading, as are many others. Do any of these folks match the best writing in English? I would say that Mendoza does, and there are at least twenty-five more authors from Spain / Catalonia who are very good.
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