Check this one out. Franco Aleman and Golan from HispaLibertas have put together a damn good fisking of an article from Wired about weblogs in Spain. (Their piece and the original article are both in English.) The Wired article portrays blogging in Spain as more significant than it really is (hey, everybody knows I love blogs, but they're not influential yet over here and I'm not going to pretend they are) and depicts Spanish blogging as a left-wing movement out to tell the truth about the right-wing media. The Wired author couldn't have got the story more wrong. Go read this one.
Read this one too. Trevor from Kaleboel has lots of good stuff, as always, and this one is a piece demonstrating that the repression of the Catalan language under Franco has been massively exaggerated by Catalanist victimists. He's got, like, evidence and statistics and even a graph. Highly recommended.
Monday, January 12, 2004
Sunday, January 11, 2004
There's lots of fun stuff out there today. La Vanguardia ran a survey on the upcoming general elections on March 14. According to said survey Mariano Rajoy and the People's Party will score 174 of 350 deputies in the Parliament, just two away from an absolute majority. Zap and the Socialists will pull 137, the Communist United Left would pull 11, Convergence and Union 10, the Basque Nationalists 9, the Canaries Coalition 4, the Republican Left of Catalonia 3, and other parties 2.
Now, let's figure that Mr. Rajoy runs a good campaign, which he knows how to do, and Zap runs a poor campaign, which he shows every sign of doing. Let's also figure that there's still a concealed vote for the PP; that is, the PP invariably scores three or four percentage points more than the surveys say it will, since it is politically incorrect in some circles to admit that one is a PP voter. This happened again, as usual, in the Catalan elections, where the PP gained three seats after the surveys said they would just break even.
If he's this far ahead at this stage in the campaign, Rajoy is going to breeze to an easy victory by absolute majority, drawing at least 180 seats. What he has to do is get out his sympathizers' vote and simultaneously not do anything to piss off the center--or even ostentatiously do a couple of things that will appeal to the center.
Like President Bush. I must say that President Bush's timing on the prescription-drug benefit, the middle-class tax cut's kicking in, and the proposed legalization of illegal immigrants show that there is to some degree political calculation behind them. Nothing wrong with that, and that's precisely what La Vanguardia was accusing him of when they said a couple of days ago that Bush was pandering to the Hispanics. I don't think Bush is doing that, with one possible exception: he'll win Texas and Florida anyway and he'll lose New York no matter what. California is the one place where chipping into the Hispanic vote might be helpful. I really think Bush is appealing not so much directly to Hispanics as he is appealing to--or pandering to--the center, to Middle America, trying to show moderates that he's not a fire-breathing dragon like the media says he is.
Back to the survey. La Vanguardia makes a horrendous error both on the front page and on the front page of their political section, labeling a graph on the percentage of each party's vote as "in Catalonia" when it should obviously be "in Spain". At least, that's the only way it makes sense. The PP will draw 42.6% of the vote, the Socialists 36.5%, the Communists 7.2%, CiU 3.0%, the PNV 2.1%, the Republican Left 1.4%, and the Canaries Coalition 1.0%. I wouldn't be too surprised if what we get is the PP with about 45% and the Socialists at about 35%.
Judged on an approval scale of 1 to 10, Rajoy ranks at 6.0, with Zap at 4.9, Mara Gall (because he has a hell of a lot of gall) at 4.7, Duran Lerida at 4.5, and Flaming Gas at 4.0. That's a damned big difference of opinion. 75% of Spaniards think the economy is doing average or better. 55% say that they think Aznar's performance has been more positive than negative. Only 43% approve of Aznar and the PP's foreign policy.
Note the difference between Catalonia and the whole of Spain on that last one. It you took that poll in Catalonia only, you'd get 80% disapproving of the PP's foreign policy. Also note that the 43% who approve of the PP's foreign policy is eerily similar to that 42.6% who stated they would vote for Rajoy in the March 14 elections.
47% of Spaniards would prefer Rajoy to Zap as Prime Minister, and 79% believe that Rajoy will actually be that next PM. 51% said they thought Rajoy trustworthy, while only 35% said the same about Zap. Zap's "distrust" rating is a whopping 64%.
Zap is gonna get zapped. It's too late for powerbrokers Bono and Ibarra to throw him overboard. He is the candidate the Socialists are stuck with for these elections. Damn, I hate to see the Socialists reduced to such a pathetic level. What they need to do is throw out the whole bunch of party hacks running things right now and start over. Of course, that's not going to happen, which is too bad for Spain because if the Socialists keep going down the road they're on we'll be reduced to a state with only one serious political party pretty soon, like right after Rajoy whips up on Jose Bono in 2008.
There's a really good bit of intrigue going on here. It seems that a gentleman named Joan Cogul was the director of the Catalonia Tourism Consortion between 1992 and 1995. What Mr. Cogul and some friends did was take the tax money dedicated to tourism research (i.e. marketing and the like, you know, "What do visitors to Catalonia want?", actually a useful idea in a region that lives and dies by the tourism euro) and for job training in the tourist industry (i.e. teaching unskilled yoofs to be waiters, actually a defensible idea in a place where you have a good few otherwise unemployable dumbass teenagers and a lot of sunburned Germans demanding more beer RIGHT NOW) and spend it on, well, probably whiskey and cocaine, I dunno. Whatever, the money never turned up, though Mr. Cogul did turn up in the Philippines.
He turned up dead. There was a warrant out for his ass on charges of abuse of trust, embezzlement, fraud, and conspiracy, for which he was gonna get twelve years upon conviction. And Mr. Cogul was gonna get convicted, all right. His wife, Carmen Fargas, and eleven other people will face similar charges. Many of those involved are connected to the center-right Catalan nationalist party, Democratic Union, the junior partner in the Convergence and Union coalition.
Juicy scandal stuff, huh? Anyway, Cogul apparently shot himself with a .45 in the bathroom of his Manila apartment between 7:30 and 8:00 on December 17. One gunshot had been fired into the ceiling. The second went into Cogul's mouth. The family did not notify the police until 1:15. They then had the body cremated after the autopsy; according to Spanish custom funerals are held as soon after death as possible, unlike in the US. Photographs of the scene apparently demonstrate that the dead man was Cogul. Cogul left two notes behind; the Philippine police have determined it to be a suicide.
Still, you never know...
FC Barcelona royally sucks. The Blue and Crimson couldn't score in a Bangkok whorehouse and the Catalan team's defense is more full of holes than a John Pilger article. Frank Rijkaard's boys got beat 1-0 by a Second Division team, Levante, in the Spanish Cup (a competition open to clubs outside the First Division). Pathetic. Laughable. Can they possibly do worse? Yes! They're going to sign Edgar Davids! If the team from Les Corts continues wasting its money on over-the-hill cast-offs that good teams like Juventus want to get rid of, it will continue to suck.
You'll notice that I put several synonyms for FC Barcelona in boldface to emphasize a point about Spanish writing style. Supposedly, it's good not to repeat words, but rather to use a synonym. Now, we do this in English, too, to some extent, but nowhere near as much. In Spain, though, they'll go to lengths to find something they can sub for a word in order not to use it again.
This is a major problem when the Vanguardia decides it needs a synonym for the proper adjective "Israeli". They use two: "Jewish" and "Hebrew". Now, these words are not exact synonyms; "Jewish" refers to anyone of the Jewish ethnicity or religion, "Israeli" refers to a citizen of the state of Israel, and "Hebrew" refers to the language spoken by many Israeli Jews. Many Jews take umbrage at the confusion of the three terms, justifiably so, I think. I mean, the Vangua refers frequently to the Israeli Defensive Forces as the "Jewish army", which is to say the least not exact. Seems to me that as sensitive as Spaniards are capable of being about using the proper terms referring to their country, they could do the Israelis and the Jews a bit of a favor and get their own terminology right.
Some guy sent in five letters to the Vangua's less-than-useless ombudsman, Josep Maria Casasus, complaining about this and pointing out that such misuse of terminology goes against the EFE (Spain's press agency) stylebook. Casasus told him to fuck off, saying that although the words in question aren't exact synonyms, they're "partial synonyms" and that's close enough for him, and Spanish style demands the extensive use of synonyms. Besides, adds editor Magi Camps, "Would we be lying if we spoke about a "Jewish-Muslim" conflict?"
Yeah, you would, because most Jews are not Israelis, some Israelis are not Jews, most Muslims are not Palestinians, and not all Palestinians are Muslims.
From now on at Inside Europe: Iberian Notes, we will refer to the language spoken in the provinces of Gerona, Lerida, Barcelona, and Tarragona as "North Valencian" or "Mainland Mallorcan". That's close enough, isn't it, Mr. Casasus?
Now, let's figure that Mr. Rajoy runs a good campaign, which he knows how to do, and Zap runs a poor campaign, which he shows every sign of doing. Let's also figure that there's still a concealed vote for the PP; that is, the PP invariably scores three or four percentage points more than the surveys say it will, since it is politically incorrect in some circles to admit that one is a PP voter. This happened again, as usual, in the Catalan elections, where the PP gained three seats after the surveys said they would just break even.
If he's this far ahead at this stage in the campaign, Rajoy is going to breeze to an easy victory by absolute majority, drawing at least 180 seats. What he has to do is get out his sympathizers' vote and simultaneously not do anything to piss off the center--or even ostentatiously do a couple of things that will appeal to the center.
Like President Bush. I must say that President Bush's timing on the prescription-drug benefit, the middle-class tax cut's kicking in, and the proposed legalization of illegal immigrants show that there is to some degree political calculation behind them. Nothing wrong with that, and that's precisely what La Vanguardia was accusing him of when they said a couple of days ago that Bush was pandering to the Hispanics. I don't think Bush is doing that, with one possible exception: he'll win Texas and Florida anyway and he'll lose New York no matter what. California is the one place where chipping into the Hispanic vote might be helpful. I really think Bush is appealing not so much directly to Hispanics as he is appealing to--or pandering to--the center, to Middle America, trying to show moderates that he's not a fire-breathing dragon like the media says he is.
Back to the survey. La Vanguardia makes a horrendous error both on the front page and on the front page of their political section, labeling a graph on the percentage of each party's vote as "in Catalonia" when it should obviously be "in Spain". At least, that's the only way it makes sense. The PP will draw 42.6% of the vote, the Socialists 36.5%, the Communists 7.2%, CiU 3.0%, the PNV 2.1%, the Republican Left 1.4%, and the Canaries Coalition 1.0%. I wouldn't be too surprised if what we get is the PP with about 45% and the Socialists at about 35%.
Judged on an approval scale of 1 to 10, Rajoy ranks at 6.0, with Zap at 4.9, Mara Gall (because he has a hell of a lot of gall) at 4.7, Duran Lerida at 4.5, and Flaming Gas at 4.0. That's a damned big difference of opinion. 75% of Spaniards think the economy is doing average or better. 55% say that they think Aznar's performance has been more positive than negative. Only 43% approve of Aznar and the PP's foreign policy.
Note the difference between Catalonia and the whole of Spain on that last one. It you took that poll in Catalonia only, you'd get 80% disapproving of the PP's foreign policy. Also note that the 43% who approve of the PP's foreign policy is eerily similar to that 42.6% who stated they would vote for Rajoy in the March 14 elections.
47% of Spaniards would prefer Rajoy to Zap as Prime Minister, and 79% believe that Rajoy will actually be that next PM. 51% said they thought Rajoy trustworthy, while only 35% said the same about Zap. Zap's "distrust" rating is a whopping 64%.
Zap is gonna get zapped. It's too late for powerbrokers Bono and Ibarra to throw him overboard. He is the candidate the Socialists are stuck with for these elections. Damn, I hate to see the Socialists reduced to such a pathetic level. What they need to do is throw out the whole bunch of party hacks running things right now and start over. Of course, that's not going to happen, which is too bad for Spain because if the Socialists keep going down the road they're on we'll be reduced to a state with only one serious political party pretty soon, like right after Rajoy whips up on Jose Bono in 2008.
There's a really good bit of intrigue going on here. It seems that a gentleman named Joan Cogul was the director of the Catalonia Tourism Consortion between 1992 and 1995. What Mr. Cogul and some friends did was take the tax money dedicated to tourism research (i.e. marketing and the like, you know, "What do visitors to Catalonia want?", actually a useful idea in a region that lives and dies by the tourism euro) and for job training in the tourist industry (i.e. teaching unskilled yoofs to be waiters, actually a defensible idea in a place where you have a good few otherwise unemployable dumbass teenagers and a lot of sunburned Germans demanding more beer RIGHT NOW) and spend it on, well, probably whiskey and cocaine, I dunno. Whatever, the money never turned up, though Mr. Cogul did turn up in the Philippines.
He turned up dead. There was a warrant out for his ass on charges of abuse of trust, embezzlement, fraud, and conspiracy, for which he was gonna get twelve years upon conviction. And Mr. Cogul was gonna get convicted, all right. His wife, Carmen Fargas, and eleven other people will face similar charges. Many of those involved are connected to the center-right Catalan nationalist party, Democratic Union, the junior partner in the Convergence and Union coalition.
Juicy scandal stuff, huh? Anyway, Cogul apparently shot himself with a .45 in the bathroom of his Manila apartment between 7:30 and 8:00 on December 17. One gunshot had been fired into the ceiling. The second went into Cogul's mouth. The family did not notify the police until 1:15. They then had the body cremated after the autopsy; according to Spanish custom funerals are held as soon after death as possible, unlike in the US. Photographs of the scene apparently demonstrate that the dead man was Cogul. Cogul left two notes behind; the Philippine police have determined it to be a suicide.
Still, you never know...
FC Barcelona royally sucks. The Blue and Crimson couldn't score in a Bangkok whorehouse and the Catalan team's defense is more full of holes than a John Pilger article. Frank Rijkaard's boys got beat 1-0 by a Second Division team, Levante, in the Spanish Cup (a competition open to clubs outside the First Division). Pathetic. Laughable. Can they possibly do worse? Yes! They're going to sign Edgar Davids! If the team from Les Corts continues wasting its money on over-the-hill cast-offs that good teams like Juventus want to get rid of, it will continue to suck.
You'll notice that I put several synonyms for FC Barcelona in boldface to emphasize a point about Spanish writing style. Supposedly, it's good not to repeat words, but rather to use a synonym. Now, we do this in English, too, to some extent, but nowhere near as much. In Spain, though, they'll go to lengths to find something they can sub for a word in order not to use it again.
This is a major problem when the Vanguardia decides it needs a synonym for the proper adjective "Israeli". They use two: "Jewish" and "Hebrew". Now, these words are not exact synonyms; "Jewish" refers to anyone of the Jewish ethnicity or religion, "Israeli" refers to a citizen of the state of Israel, and "Hebrew" refers to the language spoken by many Israeli Jews. Many Jews take umbrage at the confusion of the three terms, justifiably so, I think. I mean, the Vangua refers frequently to the Israeli Defensive Forces as the "Jewish army", which is to say the least not exact. Seems to me that as sensitive as Spaniards are capable of being about using the proper terms referring to their country, they could do the Israelis and the Jews a bit of a favor and get their own terminology right.
Some guy sent in five letters to the Vangua's less-than-useless ombudsman, Josep Maria Casasus, complaining about this and pointing out that such misuse of terminology goes against the EFE (Spain's press agency) stylebook. Casasus told him to fuck off, saying that although the words in question aren't exact synonyms, they're "partial synonyms" and that's close enough for him, and Spanish style demands the extensive use of synonyms. Besides, adds editor Magi Camps, "Would we be lying if we spoke about a "Jewish-Muslim" conflict?"
Yeah, you would, because most Jews are not Israelis, some Israelis are not Jews, most Muslims are not Palestinians, and not all Palestinians are Muslims.
From now on at Inside Europe: Iberian Notes, we will refer to the language spoken in the provinces of Gerona, Lerida, Barcelona, and Tarragona as "North Valencian" or "Mainland Mallorcan". That's close enough, isn't it, Mr. Casasus?
Friday, January 09, 2004
Just thought I'd provide a couple of local reactions from la Vangua's Letters to the Editor page so you'd know how local folks really think around here. In case you didn't know, el Dia de los Santos Inocentes (Day of the Innocent Saints) is celebrated here on December 28. There is a play on words involved; "inocente" in Spanish means both "not guilty", as in a court of law, and naive, in the sense of being the one who never gets the joke that is always played on him. It's the Spanish equivalent of April Fool's Day.
This one is called "Day of the Innocents".
To the detriment of English, Esperanto is taught in the schools and it spreads over the whole world as a universal language. All flags disappear and an improvement in society begins, making the differences between social classes smaller and smaller. The arms industries invest in irrigation in all the poor countries of the world and they distribute free vaccinations in those countries against the diseases that are now eradicated in the First World.
The ultranationalists, the religious fanatics, President Bush, and many others beat themselves over the head, damaging the part of their brains that makes them so pathetic, and they stop being tht way. Racist and xenophobic people, after a night of fever and convulsions. recover their memory and remember their origins and those of their ancestors, making them feel stupid and immediately stopping hate of foreigners and other races, and after that moment they will judge people on their behavior and not because of their physical characteristics.
Manu B. Rodriguez, Basauri, Vizcaya
I think it's interesting that the first thing Manu denounces is the use of English as the international language. The first thing you mention is normally the most important thing you have in mind, so Manu must be just pissed off as all hell at the facts that English is the language and America is the reason. He wants to replace it with Esperanto. Yeah, right. Manu is a naive idiot and guilty as charged of having written an extremely stupid attempt at satire and then having the utter nerve of forcing it upon the other residents of his community. I hereby sentence him to eight lashes with Ron Jeremy's wet noodle. Oh, yeah, what's this crappo about the arms manufacturers irrigating the world? My cat is smarter than that.
Here's another one titled "Disarmament for Everyone".
When will the US disarm itself? It is at the very least ridiculous that they demand that hundreds of countries disarm and they demand inspections to determine whether they possess arms of mass destruction. That is, by the way, something most of us do not know the meaning of. And the US? It has rarely used its power in a dissuasive way, but rather it has demonstrated an interest, almost surreal, in using its arsenal of weapons. And if it hasn't done it tiself, it has delegated to allied countries, without question, providing the weapons.
Now, with Japanese rearmament, advised by the US, we see monstrous reasoning: in order to defend ourselves form North Korea, the great military and economic power that is threatening the world?
Xavier Delgado, Sant Cugat del Valles, Barcelona
Yeah, right. Let's get India and Pakistan to fight so we can sell them arms. To the detriment of the 99.9% of our economy that has nothing to do with military weapons. In case anyone is interested, defense is 16% of the US federal budget and something around 3-4 percent in percentage of US GDP spent on defense. Spain, by the way, is pretty pathetic about defense spending, trusting the US and NATO so much that they cannot defend themselves against any significant threat.
By the way, the latter letter is so poorly written that I had to improve it so it would make sense, sort of.
This one is called "Day of the Innocents".
To the detriment of English, Esperanto is taught in the schools and it spreads over the whole world as a universal language. All flags disappear and an improvement in society begins, making the differences between social classes smaller and smaller. The arms industries invest in irrigation in all the poor countries of the world and they distribute free vaccinations in those countries against the diseases that are now eradicated in the First World.
The ultranationalists, the religious fanatics, President Bush, and many others beat themselves over the head, damaging the part of their brains that makes them so pathetic, and they stop being tht way. Racist and xenophobic people, after a night of fever and convulsions. recover their memory and remember their origins and those of their ancestors, making them feel stupid and immediately stopping hate of foreigners and other races, and after that moment they will judge people on their behavior and not because of their physical characteristics.
Manu B. Rodriguez, Basauri, Vizcaya
I think it's interesting that the first thing Manu denounces is the use of English as the international language. The first thing you mention is normally the most important thing you have in mind, so Manu must be just pissed off as all hell at the facts that English is the language and America is the reason. He wants to replace it with Esperanto. Yeah, right. Manu is a naive idiot and guilty as charged of having written an extremely stupid attempt at satire and then having the utter nerve of forcing it upon the other residents of his community. I hereby sentence him to eight lashes with Ron Jeremy's wet noodle. Oh, yeah, what's this crappo about the arms manufacturers irrigating the world? My cat is smarter than that.
Here's another one titled "Disarmament for Everyone".
When will the US disarm itself? It is at the very least ridiculous that they demand that hundreds of countries disarm and they demand inspections to determine whether they possess arms of mass destruction. That is, by the way, something most of us do not know the meaning of. And the US? It has rarely used its power in a dissuasive way, but rather it has demonstrated an interest, almost surreal, in using its arsenal of weapons. And if it hasn't done it tiself, it has delegated to allied countries, without question, providing the weapons.
Now, with Japanese rearmament, advised by the US, we see monstrous reasoning: in order to defend ourselves form North Korea, the great military and economic power that is threatening the world?
Xavier Delgado, Sant Cugat del Valles, Barcelona
Yeah, right. Let's get India and Pakistan to fight so we can sell them arms. To the detriment of the 99.9% of our economy that has nothing to do with military weapons. In case anyone is interested, defense is 16% of the US federal budget and something around 3-4 percent in percentage of US GDP spent on defense. Spain, by the way, is pretty pathetic about defense spending, trusting the US and NATO so much that they cannot defend themselves against any significant threat.
By the way, the latter letter is so poorly written that I had to improve it so it would make sense, sort of.
Thursday, January 08, 2004
The Vangua has some good ones today, for a change. I guess everyone has finally slept off his hangover and gotten over his two-week holiday break. The top international affairs story is President Bush's proposal to provide illegal aliens with guest worker status, allowing them to stay for a period of three years. Their permits will be renewable. Also, in the future, employers will be permitted to recruit employees overseas, who will receive guest worker permits. Finally, the number of "green cards"--permanent residence permits--that are issued will be increased.
Not even La Vangua can manage to spin this one completely negatively, as it points out that former illegals, besides all the other advantages of having legal status, will receive at least the minimum wage and will receive all the laboral rights that citizens have. It mentions that there is a security aspect to Bush's plan: that it'll give us a lot better idea of who's in the country. The Vanguardia says there are 8 million illegal immigrants in the States, a figure I find hard to believe--I'd guess there are maybe a million or two--but it is sort of dumb to fingerprint people coming with a visa and not to find out who's living here illegally. And it is pretty generous to offer legal guest worker status to those illegals in exchange for their identifying themselves. If Bush wanted to he could have La Migra kick down every restaurant kitchen door in California and run 'em all out on the next southbound train.
Naturally, though, instead of a generous offer to the poorest people in America, instead of a helping hand to the people who do the dirtiest work in our society, instead of a recognition that "the system isn't working", to quote Bush, instead of the fruit of the President's experience as governor of the number two state in illegals, instead of a logical and necessary security measure, instead of a plan with such leftist-loved effects as people (mostly of the poor brown variety) getting better working conditions and incomes and health care and education, not to mention the protection of the laws, the Vangua says that Bush made his proposal--for electoral purposes! Yep, that's right, Bush is trying to nail down the Hispanic vote. As if he had anything to worry about with a 59% approval rating and Howard Dean as the prospective Dem candidate.
Baltasar Porcel is back, and the dude be wack. Rather than translate all four paragraphs, we'll just do the first sentence:
I've seen the third "Lord of the Rings" movie, which might be fairly good with an hour less of battles, with its dark, spectacular backgrounds full of special effects.
And the last one:
Everything a religious black or white, with wholesale war: Bush.
You don't want to know how exactly he manages to get from the beginning to the end, though.
Plagiarist, thief, and liar Marius Serra would like you to know that he's happy about the Brazilian measure to fingerprint Yankees, to use his term, entering Brazil. See, Mr. Serra thinks that
if someone takes your hand and passes it over (a scanner) it is an intimate act, of an almost sexual nature, so without the required consent such a maneuver could be considered sexual abuse.
He doesn't mention that if you show up at US Immigration and ask to be permitted to pass through, you are giving your consent to being photographed or fingerprinted, and to having your baggage or self searched. If you do not wish to give such consent, don't show up at US Immigration asking to get in. And, come on, sexual abuse? Porcel be wack, but this dude be smokin crack.
...the always envious Jones of Connecticut will decide to...visit Mexico entering the Aztec nation illegally, where so many wetbacks escaped from the Migra. They will survive and their experience will cause other intrepid couples to enjoy the pleasures of reciprocity. How about Cuba?
And, if we're going to be reciprocal, the Americans have so many countries to choose from! Not just on their continent. Also in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Oceania, a progressive American citizen can find many nations to visit in order to be abused. All he needs is a small desire to experience for himself the adventures that his successive governments have gone on here, there, and everywhere.
Now, if I get this straight, Mr. Liar and Thief is getting all moral and saying the United States is bad and so are its citizens, Mr. and Mrs. Jones from Connecticut, and so they ought to be treated badly as individuals so that the Poor and Abused of This World, among whom rich, fortunate Mr. Serra certainly counts himself, can get some revenge. I guess that'll make Mr. Serra feel better about himself and his own powerless power unit.
That's infantile and stupid. I expect no less from Mr. Serra.
Not even La Vangua can manage to spin this one completely negatively, as it points out that former illegals, besides all the other advantages of having legal status, will receive at least the minimum wage and will receive all the laboral rights that citizens have. It mentions that there is a security aspect to Bush's plan: that it'll give us a lot better idea of who's in the country. The Vanguardia says there are 8 million illegal immigrants in the States, a figure I find hard to believe--I'd guess there are maybe a million or two--but it is sort of dumb to fingerprint people coming with a visa and not to find out who's living here illegally. And it is pretty generous to offer legal guest worker status to those illegals in exchange for their identifying themselves. If Bush wanted to he could have La Migra kick down every restaurant kitchen door in California and run 'em all out on the next southbound train.
Naturally, though, instead of a generous offer to the poorest people in America, instead of a helping hand to the people who do the dirtiest work in our society, instead of a recognition that "the system isn't working", to quote Bush, instead of the fruit of the President's experience as governor of the number two state in illegals, instead of a logical and necessary security measure, instead of a plan with such leftist-loved effects as people (mostly of the poor brown variety) getting better working conditions and incomes and health care and education, not to mention the protection of the laws, the Vangua says that Bush made his proposal--for electoral purposes! Yep, that's right, Bush is trying to nail down the Hispanic vote. As if he had anything to worry about with a 59% approval rating and Howard Dean as the prospective Dem candidate.
Baltasar Porcel is back, and the dude be wack. Rather than translate all four paragraphs, we'll just do the first sentence:
I've seen the third "Lord of the Rings" movie, which might be fairly good with an hour less of battles, with its dark, spectacular backgrounds full of special effects.
And the last one:
Everything a religious black or white, with wholesale war: Bush.
You don't want to know how exactly he manages to get from the beginning to the end, though.
Plagiarist, thief, and liar Marius Serra would like you to know that he's happy about the Brazilian measure to fingerprint Yankees, to use his term, entering Brazil. See, Mr. Serra thinks that
if someone takes your hand and passes it over (a scanner) it is an intimate act, of an almost sexual nature, so without the required consent such a maneuver could be considered sexual abuse.
He doesn't mention that if you show up at US Immigration and ask to be permitted to pass through, you are giving your consent to being photographed or fingerprinted, and to having your baggage or self searched. If you do not wish to give such consent, don't show up at US Immigration asking to get in. And, come on, sexual abuse? Porcel be wack, but this dude be smokin crack.
...the always envious Jones of Connecticut will decide to...visit Mexico entering the Aztec nation illegally, where so many wetbacks escaped from the Migra. They will survive and their experience will cause other intrepid couples to enjoy the pleasures of reciprocity. How about Cuba?
And, if we're going to be reciprocal, the Americans have so many countries to choose from! Not just on their continent. Also in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Oceania, a progressive American citizen can find many nations to visit in order to be abused. All he needs is a small desire to experience for himself the adventures that his successive governments have gone on here, there, and everywhere.
Now, if I get this straight, Mr. Liar and Thief is getting all moral and saying the United States is bad and so are its citizens, Mr. and Mrs. Jones from Connecticut, and so they ought to be treated badly as individuals so that the Poor and Abused of This World, among whom rich, fortunate Mr. Serra certainly counts himself, can get some revenge. I guess that'll make Mr. Serra feel better about himself and his own powerless power unit.
That's infantile and stupid. I expect no less from Mr. Serra.
After a long dry spell, there's bloggable stuff today! La Vanguardia is reporting that outgoing Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar will call general elections for March 14. His People's Party, led by his successor Mariano Rajoy, is expected to march to an easy victory, most likely scoring the PP's second straight absolute majority. Just in case Rajoy can't pull it off, Convergence and Union has been driven into the PP's arms by its exclusion from the Catalan regional government and would likely vote with the PP on most issues, though it probably wouldn't join a coalition--unless the rewards offered were very high.
Rumor has it that Aznar's future plans--he's still quite young and apparently in excellent health--include either the presidency of the European Union, a post I would be greatly relieved to see him in, or the secretary-generalship of the UN. Whatever, he is leaving the party and turning it over completely to Rajoy. This is something that Socialist former prime minister Felipe Gonzalez failed to do with his own party; after he was defeated for reelection by Aznar in 1996, Felipe held onto his parliamentary seat in the Congress of Deputies. This meant that Felipe was still, if not actually running the party, a very important figure within it, and none of his successors (Almunia, Borrell, Almunia again, and Zapatero) has been able to build themselves up publicly as undisputed party leader; also, much of the real power in the party, who got appointed to what job, remained in the hands of Felipe rather than his successors. Felipe is finally going away this year; he will not run for Parliament again. During the last four years' term he's set an all-time record for absenteeism. He doesn't give a damn anymore and let's hope he's gone for good.
I say "let's hope" because I really believe that a two-party system is the healthiest kind for a country to have, and in order for it to work properly both of the leading parties have to be strong and capable and responsible. Right now Spain does not have a responsible opposition party. The Socialists are a disorganized joke with nothing positive to contribute to the political discussion, and they're seen that way even by people who dislike the (personally quite dislikeable) Aznar. This is good for the PP in the short run, and I'm happy about it since it means that we'll have competent leadership over the next four years. But it's bad for the health of democracy in the long run to have a weak second party over the long term.
I actually see the political situation in the US and Spain as being quite similar. In both countries you have a popular conservative leader (let's telescope Aznar and Rajoy into the same person, since Rajoy is going to run a "you've never had it so good as with the PP" campaign) who is hated by the hard left. Said hard left is moving for control of the opposition party, and a few "right-wing" members of the opposition have switched over to the governmental party. The followers of the hard left are all very intense, but there just aren't that many of them, and they'll never be able to beat the majority, who are pretty content in both countries. But the hard left's absolute hatred for the conservative leader is their real motivation in opposing him so strongly. Prediction: A conservative win in Spain in March and a conservative win in America in October, with the leftist party sunk in mutual recrimination at least until 2008. Prediction number two: If Howard Dean wins the Democrat nomination, Joe Lieberman will vote for Bush. He won't say anything about it, and it's a secret ballot so we'll never really know, but Mr. Lieberman and possibly Mr. Gephardt know in their hearts that this guy is dangerous both for the party and the country.
Rumor has it that Aznar's future plans--he's still quite young and apparently in excellent health--include either the presidency of the European Union, a post I would be greatly relieved to see him in, or the secretary-generalship of the UN. Whatever, he is leaving the party and turning it over completely to Rajoy. This is something that Socialist former prime minister Felipe Gonzalez failed to do with his own party; after he was defeated for reelection by Aznar in 1996, Felipe held onto his parliamentary seat in the Congress of Deputies. This meant that Felipe was still, if not actually running the party, a very important figure within it, and none of his successors (Almunia, Borrell, Almunia again, and Zapatero) has been able to build themselves up publicly as undisputed party leader; also, much of the real power in the party, who got appointed to what job, remained in the hands of Felipe rather than his successors. Felipe is finally going away this year; he will not run for Parliament again. During the last four years' term he's set an all-time record for absenteeism. He doesn't give a damn anymore and let's hope he's gone for good.
I say "let's hope" because I really believe that a two-party system is the healthiest kind for a country to have, and in order for it to work properly both of the leading parties have to be strong and capable and responsible. Right now Spain does not have a responsible opposition party. The Socialists are a disorganized joke with nothing positive to contribute to the political discussion, and they're seen that way even by people who dislike the (personally quite dislikeable) Aznar. This is good for the PP in the short run, and I'm happy about it since it means that we'll have competent leadership over the next four years. But it's bad for the health of democracy in the long run to have a weak second party over the long term.
I actually see the political situation in the US and Spain as being quite similar. In both countries you have a popular conservative leader (let's telescope Aznar and Rajoy into the same person, since Rajoy is going to run a "you've never had it so good as with the PP" campaign) who is hated by the hard left. Said hard left is moving for control of the opposition party, and a few "right-wing" members of the opposition have switched over to the governmental party. The followers of the hard left are all very intense, but there just aren't that many of them, and they'll never be able to beat the majority, who are pretty content in both countries. But the hard left's absolute hatred for the conservative leader is their real motivation in opposing him so strongly. Prediction: A conservative win in Spain in March and a conservative win in America in October, with the leftist party sunk in mutual recrimination at least until 2008. Prediction number two: If Howard Dean wins the Democrat nomination, Joe Lieberman will vote for Bush. He won't say anything about it, and it's a secret ballot so we'll never really know, but Mr. Lieberman and possibly Mr. Gephardt know in their hearts that this guy is dangerous both for the party and the country.
This is kind of interesting. There's this guy named Robert Garside, who bills himself as "The Runningman", and who claims to be the first person to have run around the world. Mr. Garside certainly seems to thrive on publicity and to enjoy basking in the loor of multitudes, and he has said some pretty mushy-headed politically correct stuff about diversity and ecology. He's received a lot of coverage from local progressive-minded media outlets around the world.
Two things are true. Mr. Garside has been a lot of places, though a lot of his yarns ring false. And he can run; he was able to run 72 miles in one outing before witnesses. Now, the fact that this is the most he can do means something, as we will see, but it's still pretty impressive.
However, there are also some people who are convinced that Mr. Garside is a fraudster. There is one guy who seems to devote his life to proving that Mr. Garside is a fake. His site, Ultramarathon World, certainly seems to demonstrate that most of the things Mr. Garside claims to have done are impossible for anyone. And Sports Illustrated, the reliable American sports weekly, pretty much puts Mr. Garside's claims to rest (and portrays him as a megalomaniac paranoid to boot). Just another pious-mouthed phony, more concerned with his own image than anything else.
And another beautiful romantic dream comes to an end...No! Wait! There's more! Mr Garside is now billing himself as "The Swimmingman", and says that he is going to swim around the world, starting in June 2004. Well, I tell you what. I sure wish I'd known about this a couple of weeks before so I could have picked him for the Dead Pool.
Two things are true. Mr. Garside has been a lot of places, though a lot of his yarns ring false. And he can run; he was able to run 72 miles in one outing before witnesses. Now, the fact that this is the most he can do means something, as we will see, but it's still pretty impressive.
However, there are also some people who are convinced that Mr. Garside is a fraudster. There is one guy who seems to devote his life to proving that Mr. Garside is a fake. His site, Ultramarathon World, certainly seems to demonstrate that most of the things Mr. Garside claims to have done are impossible for anyone. And Sports Illustrated, the reliable American sports weekly, pretty much puts Mr. Garside's claims to rest (and portrays him as a megalomaniac paranoid to boot). Just another pious-mouthed phony, more concerned with his own image than anything else.
And another beautiful romantic dream comes to an end...No! Wait! There's more! Mr Garside is now billing himself as "The Swimmingman", and says that he is going to swim around the world, starting in June 2004. Well, I tell you what. I sure wish I'd known about this a couple of weeks before so I could have picked him for the Dead Pool.
Wednesday, January 07, 2004
Normally we'd have plenty to say about the news and all the other fascinating stuff happening around here. However, there's not much news, not even any America-bashing of note. I guess the Vanguardia's staff is still working off their New Year's Eve hangovers.
Over the last few days big headlines in the Spanish press were given mostly to the increased security on flights between Europe and the US. Apparently several flights were canceled, many were delayed, and a couple were escorted by military planes. Interestingly, the fact that the Spanish air traffic controllers went out on strike one day, causing 40% of Spanish flights to be canceled, got very little press comparatively.
Also, the Vangua has made a little stink about the photographing and fingerprinting of people coming to the United States on visas. Now, it seems to me that the US can establish whatever requirements for people entering its territory that it wants. Getting a photo and a fingerprint taken is not precisely an onerous requirement for visitors; in fact, smart travelers welcome security on the grounds that it's less likely they'll get blown up with it than without it. It seems that although Spaniards do not need a tourist visa to enter the US (if they're going to stay, they need a work or a student visa) and so the great majority of Spanish travelers face no additional hurdles to entrance, the Vanguardia still thinks the whole thing is "humiliating". The Brazilians have retaliated by photographing and fingerpringing Americans entering Brazil, exclusively for harassment purposes. If they want to behave like third graders, we can't stop 'em. So silly, putting empty pride before safety.
My guess is that something was really up over the Christmas season and that the added security measures at airports were a response to that. We'll find out someday.
There is no political news from over here. The usual suspects are blowing hot air but nothing of any substance is actually going on, fortunately. Next time somebody does something interesting we'll let you know.
The Barca sucks. They got creamed last weekend by Racing of Santander 3-0. This team isn't good enough to even come in sixth in the League and make the UEFA competition. The forwards are so bad that the coach, Frank Rijkaard, tried youth teamer Sergio Garcia as the starter against Racing. The move was not effective. Luis Enrique got hurt in practice, broke his cheekbone. This at least means we will not see him louse up any more plays this season. FC Barcelona simply isn't any good. Of the "big" European teams--Man U, Liverpool, Juventus, Milan, Inter, Bayern, Ajax, Real Madrid, a couple of others--Barcelona is by far the worst. I wanted to see them punished by the karma of soccer for their atrocious behavior last season, what with the antiwar demo and the Serbofascist coach and the game against Qaddafi's son's team and the pig-throwing incident and their refusal to obey League authority, but this is worse than even I'd hoped for.
Over the last few days big headlines in the Spanish press were given mostly to the increased security on flights between Europe and the US. Apparently several flights were canceled, many were delayed, and a couple were escorted by military planes. Interestingly, the fact that the Spanish air traffic controllers went out on strike one day, causing 40% of Spanish flights to be canceled, got very little press comparatively.
Also, the Vangua has made a little stink about the photographing and fingerprinting of people coming to the United States on visas. Now, it seems to me that the US can establish whatever requirements for people entering its territory that it wants. Getting a photo and a fingerprint taken is not precisely an onerous requirement for visitors; in fact, smart travelers welcome security on the grounds that it's less likely they'll get blown up with it than without it. It seems that although Spaniards do not need a tourist visa to enter the US (if they're going to stay, they need a work or a student visa) and so the great majority of Spanish travelers face no additional hurdles to entrance, the Vanguardia still thinks the whole thing is "humiliating". The Brazilians have retaliated by photographing and fingerpringing Americans entering Brazil, exclusively for harassment purposes. If they want to behave like third graders, we can't stop 'em. So silly, putting empty pride before safety.
My guess is that something was really up over the Christmas season and that the added security measures at airports were a response to that. We'll find out someday.
There is no political news from over here. The usual suspects are blowing hot air but nothing of any substance is actually going on, fortunately. Next time somebody does something interesting we'll let you know.
The Barca sucks. They got creamed last weekend by Racing of Santander 3-0. This team isn't good enough to even come in sixth in the League and make the UEFA competition. The forwards are so bad that the coach, Frank Rijkaard, tried youth teamer Sergio Garcia as the starter against Racing. The move was not effective. Luis Enrique got hurt in practice, broke his cheekbone. This at least means we will not see him louse up any more plays this season. FC Barcelona simply isn't any good. Of the "big" European teams--Man U, Liverpool, Juventus, Milan, Inter, Bayern, Ajax, Real Madrid, a couple of others--Barcelona is by far the worst. I wanted to see them punished by the karma of soccer for their atrocious behavior last season, what with the antiwar demo and the Serbofascist coach and the game against Qaddafi's son's team and the pig-throwing incident and their refusal to obey League authority, but this is worse than even I'd hoped for.
Blogging will continue to be rather light from now until I finish this project I'm working on. Don't worry, we're not going away, not at all; we'll be here at least two or three times a week. If there's a pickup in the news, of course blogging will be heavier, but over the last couple of weeks there's been a welcome hiatus in the Department of Bad News for us to comment on.
With absolutely no inside knowledge of the subject, but after reading in a variety of sources, I predict that the fighting in Iraq will basically end by next summer. I think the capture of Saddam gutted them, I really do, I think the Coalition is winning a lot of hearts and minds, and I think that Bush and Blair have decided they're not going to lose this one, no matter what the French say. (That is Iberian Notes's only prediction for the New Year. We are going to do a retrospective piece on our predictions for 2003 sometime pretty soon.)
I'm going to make one more prediction. As meat consumption increases a great deal in the Third World since those areas are almost all getting richer, it will drop in the wealthy West. I think Great Britain, where according to polls over 10% of people claim to be vegetarians, is showing the lead on this issue. We rich Westerners can afford whatever we want to eat, and it's arugula and radiccio salad with chevre! Seriously, we've done so much making conditions for poor people better (of course I know they're nowhere near perfect) that the next objective of Those People Who Are Better than You's main campaign is going to be the expansion of vegetarianism and increased attention toward animal rights. I'm no Food Fascist, I criticize no one for eating big steaks. People are naturally omnivores, that's the way evolution came out, and I am not denying that fact. But as we begin to see that mammals are capable of reason and fear and affection and contentment and anger and just about every other human quality except language, I believe that more and more people will decide to be vegetarians in theFirst World.
With absolutely no inside knowledge of the subject, but after reading in a variety of sources, I predict that the fighting in Iraq will basically end by next summer. I think the capture of Saddam gutted them, I really do, I think the Coalition is winning a lot of hearts and minds, and I think that Bush and Blair have decided they're not going to lose this one, no matter what the French say. (That is Iberian Notes's only prediction for the New Year. We are going to do a retrospective piece on our predictions for 2003 sometime pretty soon.)
I'm going to make one more prediction. As meat consumption increases a great deal in the Third World since those areas are almost all getting richer, it will drop in the wealthy West. I think Great Britain, where according to polls over 10% of people claim to be vegetarians, is showing the lead on this issue. We rich Westerners can afford whatever we want to eat, and it's arugula and radiccio salad with chevre! Seriously, we've done so much making conditions for poor people better (of course I know they're nowhere near perfect) that the next objective of Those People Who Are Better than You's main campaign is going to be the expansion of vegetarianism and increased attention toward animal rights. I'm no Food Fascist, I criticize no one for eating big steaks. People are naturally omnivores, that's the way evolution came out, and I am not denying that fact. But as we begin to see that mammals are capable of reason and fear and affection and contentment and anger and just about every other human quality except language, I believe that more and more people will decide to be vegetarians in theFirst World.
Sunday, January 04, 2004
Here's some more La Vanguardia (from Monday, December 29) red meat for all you right-thinking folks out there. The author is Lorenzo Gomis and the title is "Imitating Bush". I think it's supposed to be satirical, although it's hard to tell sometimes.
I don't know whether to confess. I, sometimes, imitate Bush. I don't do it secretly, behind closed doors. I do it in the street whenever I remember to. I don't know whether anyone notices, but I must admit it gives me a certain satisfaction. Then I can look at the horizon without fear. I feel optimistic. I advance with no fright, convinced that what I'm going to do is right, that it's good for the world, although maybe not everyone recognizes it.
My imitation, I must say quickly, is not political. I don't like Bush's politics. And this isn't new. I went out on the street with many neighbors, probably with many readers too, in order to say that we didn't think it was right to go to war against Saddam Hussein without even a majority on the UN Security Council. There were many of us of all kinds saying no to that war. I even saw a couple of professor friends of mine floating among the crowd, each one on his own.
We managed to get Bush the elder to speak about Barcelona. The Bush family didn't miss the fact that there was a lot of skepticism here about what they said about Saddam having arms of mass destruction and that in three quarters of an hour they could blast us with them if we didn't get thim first. He was able to convince such important statesmen as Blair and Aznar and tell them anecdotes in the Azores, but he didn't convince thousands and thousands of us Barcelonese. Me among them.
So I am anything but a fan. I don't like it, either, that he doesn't want to sign the Kyoto protocol, or that ke keeps world trade so unbalanced on his side, demanding that others open their markets and maintaining barriers on his own part.
Why do I imitate him, then? I discovered Bush's secret when he reappeared after September 11th. He wasn't in the White House. He wasn't at his ranch in Texas. No one really knew where he was. Maybe in a barracks or in a camp, well-protected and looking at maps. And, suddenly, he reappeared.
I watched him on the screen to see if his face said anything to me. And I saw him marching gracefully, elegantly, confidently. He stuck his chest out. As he stuck his chest out, he pulled his rump in. He breathed. He looked up discreetly. And above all he walked. He set his pace solemnly, feet straight forward, not too slow, moving his arms firmly, his elbows a little out from his torso. He saw some admirers off to the right and waved to them with his arm, moving his fingers happily. Lifting his arm allowed to stick his chest even farther out, looking at the cameras. Maybe it was the cameras, or the cameramen, who he was waving at. He smiled at the world that watched him in fear. Bush's gait gave out so much confidence!
Since then, every time I see him on the screen, and he's on it a lot, I observe him. He sticks his chest out. He walks martially. He waves at the people whom he always sees, looking off to the right. He smiles, almost grins. As he smiled, not long ago, on Thanksgiving Day, at Baghdad airport, when he said he was looking for some hot food. Then he held up, like a flag, a plastic turkey, and he handed out personally a little real meat to two or three trusted soldiers who were near him, admiring the apparition.
His politics might be bad, but his gait inspires confidence. It fills you with security in him. And I, hearing people say I am beginning to walk bent over*, with my back inclined and my head a little bent, thought: What if I imitate Bush? I haven't achieved anything in particular, I fear. I can't stick out my chest like him, but I come close, I stand up taller, move my arms, mark a pace. And with such small results, I already note that I breathe better, I see that the world is an agreeable place, I feel optimistic, I think I will do something to benefit other people very soon.
I owe all of this, you see, to the president of the United States, who, although his policies are bad and dangerous and scorns world authority and the smaller countries, knows how to advance, walking around the world in an optimistic manner. There is nobody who you can't learn something useful from. It's a question of observing and finding the good side, as photographers do.
I, like millions and millions of human beings without an American passport, would like to have a vote in the United States when it's time to elect the President. It is a democratic principle that those who are affected by the decisions of an authority should have a voice and a vote at the time it is elected. Even though it were a few tenths or hundreds of the vote. Then I promise I will not vote for Bush. But that doesn't mean that walking is not stimulating, awakening, imitable. Check out those who are told they walk bent over, shrunken, indecisively. This makes them much older. Then I murmur the mantra. The mantra is Bush. And I stand up taller. You can learn something from everybody.
Just a few comments: 1) I don't think anyone in the Bush family particularly cares what a bunch of political illiterates do on the streets of Barcelona. 2) We had a 14-0 majority on the Security Council, and, anyway, who cares what the Security Council thinks? The only times we ever had their approval for anything we did were Korea, Gulf War I, and the Balkans. I don't think anybody else ever bothered to get UN authorization before invading his neighbors. 3) In 1997 the US Senate voted 95-0 not to ratify the Kyoto treaty. (Thank God.) That's what pretty much put the kibosh on that one, not anything Bush ever did. 4) I agree with Mr. Gomis on the American hypocrisy regarding both free trade and government subsidies to producers. I just read somewhere that the US, EU, and Japan spend $230 billion of taxpayers' and consumers' money per year on ag subsidies. That's repulsive. I do commend Bush on ending the "Steel War". Which he himself started. 5) Note that Mr. Gomis perpetuates the plastic turkey meme yet again.
Also note the underriding themes: Bush has style but no substance. He is foolishly optimistic. These are common European ideas about Americans in general: poorly educated, ignorant, arrogant, naive, innocent, superficial, blindly Christian. Useful stereotype for Americans to use regarding leftist Europeans: poorly educated, ignorant, arrogant, corrupt, cynical, paranoid, blindly Gnostic. Not to mention dishonest. And lousy writers, especially if they're Spanish. Or, for that matter, Catalan.
The comment about voting in American elections made by Mr. Gomis is a common European braincramp. Most of what is decided in American elections are, of course, domestic matters. What Europeans might know about that is nothing. And why should anyone who holds no loyalty--and pays no taxes--to the US be able to vote in a US election? Also, if we let you vote in our elections, does that mean we get to vote in yours? Finally, of course, the "democratic principle" cited by Mr. Gomis is a principle that operates WITHIN independent states, not AMONG them. I don't recall the Athenians giving the vote to the Spartans.
*According to my Larousse Spanish-English dictionary, a pretty good paperback edition, the verb "to bend over" is "encorvarse". Mr. Gomis spells the past participle "encorbado". This is a major spelling error. Mr. Gomis is an idjit.
Interestingly, in US high schools, if I remember correctly, misspelled words were penalized but didn't mean instant death from a teacher. Punctuation, however, was major, and if you had a run-on sentence it was all over. I think this is because English spelling is damnably difficult, while punctuation follows a set of rules that can be memorized. Even English teachers occasionally make spelling mistakes, but they had their punctuation rules down. In Spain the emphasis seems to be the other way around; Spanish spelling is very regular (what some erroneously call "phonetic") with only a few exceptions, so if you make a mistake like Mr. Gomis did, it means you're ign'rant. Native Spanish teachers kill their students for spelling errors, but don't do so for punctuation mistakes. This is why every goddamn Spanish kid insists on putting a comma after the subject of a semi-longish sentence because he doesn't know the difference between a defining clause and a hole in the ground.
I don't know whether to confess. I, sometimes, imitate Bush. I don't do it secretly, behind closed doors. I do it in the street whenever I remember to. I don't know whether anyone notices, but I must admit it gives me a certain satisfaction. Then I can look at the horizon without fear. I feel optimistic. I advance with no fright, convinced that what I'm going to do is right, that it's good for the world, although maybe not everyone recognizes it.
My imitation, I must say quickly, is not political. I don't like Bush's politics. And this isn't new. I went out on the street with many neighbors, probably with many readers too, in order to say that we didn't think it was right to go to war against Saddam Hussein without even a majority on the UN Security Council. There were many of us of all kinds saying no to that war. I even saw a couple of professor friends of mine floating among the crowd, each one on his own.
We managed to get Bush the elder to speak about Barcelona. The Bush family didn't miss the fact that there was a lot of skepticism here about what they said about Saddam having arms of mass destruction and that in three quarters of an hour they could blast us with them if we didn't get thim first. He was able to convince such important statesmen as Blair and Aznar and tell them anecdotes in the Azores, but he didn't convince thousands and thousands of us Barcelonese. Me among them.
So I am anything but a fan. I don't like it, either, that he doesn't want to sign the Kyoto protocol, or that ke keeps world trade so unbalanced on his side, demanding that others open their markets and maintaining barriers on his own part.
Why do I imitate him, then? I discovered Bush's secret when he reappeared after September 11th. He wasn't in the White House. He wasn't at his ranch in Texas. No one really knew where he was. Maybe in a barracks or in a camp, well-protected and looking at maps. And, suddenly, he reappeared.
I watched him on the screen to see if his face said anything to me. And I saw him marching gracefully, elegantly, confidently. He stuck his chest out. As he stuck his chest out, he pulled his rump in. He breathed. He looked up discreetly. And above all he walked. He set his pace solemnly, feet straight forward, not too slow, moving his arms firmly, his elbows a little out from his torso. He saw some admirers off to the right and waved to them with his arm, moving his fingers happily. Lifting his arm allowed to stick his chest even farther out, looking at the cameras. Maybe it was the cameras, or the cameramen, who he was waving at. He smiled at the world that watched him in fear. Bush's gait gave out so much confidence!
Since then, every time I see him on the screen, and he's on it a lot, I observe him. He sticks his chest out. He walks martially. He waves at the people whom he always sees, looking off to the right. He smiles, almost grins. As he smiled, not long ago, on Thanksgiving Day, at Baghdad airport, when he said he was looking for some hot food. Then he held up, like a flag, a plastic turkey, and he handed out personally a little real meat to two or three trusted soldiers who were near him, admiring the apparition.
His politics might be bad, but his gait inspires confidence. It fills you with security in him. And I, hearing people say I am beginning to walk bent over*, with my back inclined and my head a little bent, thought: What if I imitate Bush? I haven't achieved anything in particular, I fear. I can't stick out my chest like him, but I come close, I stand up taller, move my arms, mark a pace. And with such small results, I already note that I breathe better, I see that the world is an agreeable place, I feel optimistic, I think I will do something to benefit other people very soon.
I owe all of this, you see, to the president of the United States, who, although his policies are bad and dangerous and scorns world authority and the smaller countries, knows how to advance, walking around the world in an optimistic manner. There is nobody who you can't learn something useful from. It's a question of observing and finding the good side, as photographers do.
I, like millions and millions of human beings without an American passport, would like to have a vote in the United States when it's time to elect the President. It is a democratic principle that those who are affected by the decisions of an authority should have a voice and a vote at the time it is elected. Even though it were a few tenths or hundreds of the vote. Then I promise I will not vote for Bush. But that doesn't mean that walking is not stimulating, awakening, imitable. Check out those who are told they walk bent over, shrunken, indecisively. This makes them much older. Then I murmur the mantra. The mantra is Bush. And I stand up taller. You can learn something from everybody.
Just a few comments: 1) I don't think anyone in the Bush family particularly cares what a bunch of political illiterates do on the streets of Barcelona. 2) We had a 14-0 majority on the Security Council, and, anyway, who cares what the Security Council thinks? The only times we ever had their approval for anything we did were Korea, Gulf War I, and the Balkans. I don't think anybody else ever bothered to get UN authorization before invading his neighbors. 3) In 1997 the US Senate voted 95-0 not to ratify the Kyoto treaty. (Thank God.) That's what pretty much put the kibosh on that one, not anything Bush ever did. 4) I agree with Mr. Gomis on the American hypocrisy regarding both free trade and government subsidies to producers. I just read somewhere that the US, EU, and Japan spend $230 billion of taxpayers' and consumers' money per year on ag subsidies. That's repulsive. I do commend Bush on ending the "Steel War". Which he himself started. 5) Note that Mr. Gomis perpetuates the plastic turkey meme yet again.
Also note the underriding themes: Bush has style but no substance. He is foolishly optimistic. These are common European ideas about Americans in general: poorly educated, ignorant, arrogant, naive, innocent, superficial, blindly Christian. Useful stereotype for Americans to use regarding leftist Europeans: poorly educated, ignorant, arrogant, corrupt, cynical, paranoid, blindly Gnostic. Not to mention dishonest. And lousy writers, especially if they're Spanish. Or, for that matter, Catalan.
The comment about voting in American elections made by Mr. Gomis is a common European braincramp. Most of what is decided in American elections are, of course, domestic matters. What Europeans might know about that is nothing. And why should anyone who holds no loyalty--and pays no taxes--to the US be able to vote in a US election? Also, if we let you vote in our elections, does that mean we get to vote in yours? Finally, of course, the "democratic principle" cited by Mr. Gomis is a principle that operates WITHIN independent states, not AMONG them. I don't recall the Athenians giving the vote to the Spartans.
*According to my Larousse Spanish-English dictionary, a pretty good paperback edition, the verb "to bend over" is "encorvarse". Mr. Gomis spells the past participle "encorbado". This is a major spelling error. Mr. Gomis is an idjit.
Interestingly, in US high schools, if I remember correctly, misspelled words were penalized but didn't mean instant death from a teacher. Punctuation, however, was major, and if you had a run-on sentence it was all over. I think this is because English spelling is damnably difficult, while punctuation follows a set of rules that can be memorized. Even English teachers occasionally make spelling mistakes, but they had their punctuation rules down. In Spain the emphasis seems to be the other way around; Spanish spelling is very regular (what some erroneously call "phonetic") with only a few exceptions, so if you make a mistake like Mr. Gomis did, it means you're ign'rant. Native Spanish teachers kill their students for spelling errors, but don't do so for punctuation mistakes. This is why every goddamn Spanish kid insists on putting a comma after the subject of a semi-longish sentence because he doesn't know the difference between a defining clause and a hole in the ground.
Friday, January 02, 2004
The Jedman has something to say. Y'all had better listen. Some underestimate the Jedman. They do so at their own peril. Those who think the Jedman is stupid are by definition less intelligent than he is.
We should be back to regular blogging very soon. I put my folks on the airplane this morning; we were happy to see them again, as always. One thing we did was visit the new Caixa Forum building, an art thingie that la Caixa's foundation has set up. (It's really an old building, some sort of industrial complex that they've redone very impressively.) They had a huge exhibition of photos by Cartier-Bresson and another one of Flemish Renaissance paintings from thge Hermitage in St. Petersburg; I particularly liked the portraits and the interior scenes. I don't do too well with cherubim and putti and the like. They had a bunch of paintings by Rubens, but I only liked the portraits. My art history prof once said that Rubens was extraordinarily prolific, and that the reason why is that--from about mid-career--he'd plot out the composition and then his extensive corps of students would do most of the work on the painting themselves. Rubens himself would do the faces and the hands.
What with the temporary exhibits at the Caixa Forum and the others at La Pedrera (which belongs to the Caixa de Catalunya, la Caixa's closest competitor and also a nonprofit, like all Spanish savings banks), we've usually got something worth going to see. In addition, the Picasso often has good temporary exhibits; I remember one on Steinlen and another on Derain which included some stuff by Cezanne. For a city with a lot of pretty good museums--the Picasso, the Miro, the Museum of Modern Art (Casas, Rusinyol, Llimona, etc. in the Parque Ciudadela), and the MNAC, the Catalan National Museum of Art, up on Montjuic, with a good Gothic collection and a spectacular Romanesque collection--Barcelona is lacking in big-time permanent collections like, say, in the Prado, the Rijksmuseum, or the Chicago Institute of Art.
You could argue that both medieval and fin-de-siecle Barcelona are themselves damn good permanent collections, and you'd be right, but I must say that Barcelona gets at least five traveling exhibits per year that are worth a visit. That almost makes up for not having a big permanent collection. Well, not really, but you know what I mean.
What with the temporary exhibits at the Caixa Forum and the others at La Pedrera (which belongs to the Caixa de Catalunya, la Caixa's closest competitor and also a nonprofit, like all Spanish savings banks), we've usually got something worth going to see. In addition, the Picasso often has good temporary exhibits; I remember one on Steinlen and another on Derain which included some stuff by Cezanne. For a city with a lot of pretty good museums--the Picasso, the Miro, the Museum of Modern Art (Casas, Rusinyol, Llimona, etc. in the Parque Ciudadela), and the MNAC, the Catalan National Museum of Art, up on Montjuic, with a good Gothic collection and a spectacular Romanesque collection--Barcelona is lacking in big-time permanent collections like, say, in the Prado, the Rijksmuseum, or the Chicago Institute of Art.
You could argue that both medieval and fin-de-siecle Barcelona are themselves damn good permanent collections, and you'd be right, but I must say that Barcelona gets at least five traveling exhibits per year that are worth a visit. That almost makes up for not having a big permanent collection. Well, not really, but you know what I mean.
Thursday, January 01, 2004
Well, it's January 1 and Amish Tech Support's Dead Pool is closed to entries, so I can now post my list. Here it is:
1. Jacques Derrida, philosopher, 7/15/1930
2. Noam Chomsky, linguist, 12/7/1928
3. Fidel Castro, statesman, 8/13/1926
4. Yasser Arafat, statesman, 8/24/1929
5. Jesse Helms, statesman, 10/18/1921
6. Jack Kevorkian, physician, 3/6/1928
7. Norman Lear, television executive, 7/27/1922
8. Norman Mailer, author, 1/31/1923
9. Augusto Pinochet, statesman, 11/25/1915
10. Harold Pinter, playwright, 10/10/1930
11. Arthur Miller, playwright, 10/17/1915
12. Oral Roberts, religious leader, 1/24/1918
13. Andy Rooney, commentator, 1/14/1919
14. Pete Seeger, folksinger, 5/3/1919
15. Gore Vidal, author, 10/3/1925
1. Jacques Derrida, philosopher, 7/15/1930
2. Noam Chomsky, linguist, 12/7/1928
3. Fidel Castro, statesman, 8/13/1926
4. Yasser Arafat, statesman, 8/24/1929
5. Jesse Helms, statesman, 10/18/1921
6. Jack Kevorkian, physician, 3/6/1928
7. Norman Lear, television executive, 7/27/1922
8. Norman Mailer, author, 1/31/1923
9. Augusto Pinochet, statesman, 11/25/1915
10. Harold Pinter, playwright, 10/10/1930
11. Arthur Miller, playwright, 10/17/1915
12. Oral Roberts, religious leader, 1/24/1918
13. Andy Rooney, commentator, 1/14/1919
14. Pete Seeger, folksinger, 5/3/1919
15. Gore Vidal, author, 10/3/1925
Here's an article from La Vanguardia's Lack of Culture section on Wednesday. It's by Eduardo Martin de Pozuelo and the X-man, Xavier Mas de Xaxas, and is titled: "9-11: the conspiracy." These geniuses are the ones who floated a conspiracy theory in the Vangua a few months ago about supposed bulges in a photo of one of the planes that hit the WTC.
A conspiracy fever has taken hold in Europe and America. Thousands of citizens on both continents devour as much information as they can find about the possibility that the terrorist attacks committed in the United States on September 11, 2001, were not the work of Islamic extremism but part of an unprecedented internal conspiracy.
Books by a wide variety of authors have sold millions in Germany, France, and Spain, dealing with different aspects of an alleged plot, and fed by the lack of a solid official version. Books and dozens of websites analyze the attack against the WTC in New York or on the Pentagon to the smallest detail, and tell us that what we were shocked to see on television in September two years ago was the greatest plot of all time, which is already known as Operation Pearl.
"Have the Germans entered into a state of acute paranoia?" asked Le Monde upon discovering that their neighbor has succumbed before the thesis of a conspiracy and that Andreas von Bulow--ex-Secretary of State for Defense, es-minister of Research and Technology in Helmut Schmidt's cabinet, and an Social Democrat MP for 25 years--is now better-known for his book about the CIA and 9-11 than for his time in the front ranks of German politicians.
Even the German newsweeklies could not resist polling their compatriots. A surprising result: 31% of Germans under 30 years old do not exclude the possibility that the American government itself was behind those dramatic events. The figure "drops" to 19% when the whole German population is considered, without age classifications.
Von Bulow--who does not hide that since his time as a MP he has thought the worst of the secret services--has sold more than 100,000 copies of a book in which he analyzes from a very personal perspective the "non-credible" aspects, in his eyes, of 9-11, in order to conclude that it would have been impossible for the CIA not to have known about Al Qaeda's plans. His thesis connects with the fact, admitted by the Bush administration, that the CIA and FBI did not share all the information that they had about the danger of a major terrorist attack. Nevertheless, Von Bulow goes a little farther and implicates the Mossad in the conspiracy and speculates about the possibility that the airplanes that crashed were piloted by remote control.
Other authors who have sold well more than 100,000 copies who have ridden the great conspiracy wave. They include Matthias Brockers and Gerhard Wisnewski: the first, an old journalist from the Berlin daily Der Taz, and the second, a regular contributer on ZDF, the second-largest German television channel. Brockers claims that the suicide pilots on those planes are still alive, while Wisnewski, who enjoys greater credibility, questions the entire event of 9-11 and develops the theory that the WTC buildings were demolished with explosives placed in their interiors. Every time the subject comes up, the video of the collapse of building number 7--the second tower to collapse--is considered an undeniable proof of a controlled demolition by fans of intrigue.
Although Germany contains a potent squad of official unbelievers, France is the source of the books with the greatest world impact. The mentor is Thierry Meyssan, the founder of a virtual organization called the Voltaire Web which includes journalists, politicians, and professionals from various fields who are firm believers in the conspiracy and in the author of "The Great Imposture" and "Pentagate", in which he denies that a civilian airplane piloted by a suicide terrorist crashed into the Pentagon, in favor of the thesis of a missile. In Spain, Pilar Urbano in her book "Chief Atta" also shows incredulity at this aspect.
An analysis of the conspiracy theories shows that a substantial part of the matter is related to the airplanes hijacked by the Al Qaeda commandoes. Basically, either they deny that the airplanes that crashed were the same as those that were hijacked that morning--that is, there was a substitution of airplanes--or they affirm that there were explosives and military missiles involved.
Regarding the first plane that crashed, of which there are only two known films, both from a distance and imprecise, the authors question whether it was a Boeing and raise the idea of a missile or a smaller airplane. Regarding the second plane--the one that crashed into the south tower--a series of reports published in La Vanguardia has increased the doubts. On the Internet web sites that deal with the subject, it is already being called the "pregnant plane", in reference to the strange protuberances that appear on its fuselage and which this newspaper revealed.
The conspiracy theories reach their peak when they deal with the attack on the Pentagon and the case of the airplane that disintegrated in Pennsylvania. American Airlines flight 77 took off in Washington at 8:20 AM, destination Los Angeles. Half an hour later the air traffic controllers lost track of it, and almost forty minutes later the Air Force received orders to search for it. Half an hour ago the WTC had already been hit. At 9:38 AM on September 11, 2001, two minutes before the fighters arrived, AA 77 crashed into the Pentagon, opening a small hole, similar to one which could have been produced by a missile. The security cameras did not film the airplane and at that very moment incredulity began, the conspiracy theory was born, and the questions that Thierry Meyssan answers according to his own criteria flowered: If the pilots weren't experts, how could they have achieved such a tight turn? Why is there no wreckage of the Boeing in the photos? Why didn't the Pentagon's security cameras catch the airplane? Why is the damage so limited?...
The lack of a solid official version that can answer so many questions--there is a website that, playing with the date of the attack, poses 911 doubts--feeds conspiracy theories. Many of the unanswered questions asked by the cited authors may be the fruits of opportunism or the--possibly in good faith--imagination of the friends of the strange. However, the federal commission of investigation has criticized the secretism that the Bush Administration practices. The possibility exists that the American government may not have the answers that it is being asked for and also that some of the answers it knows are not being publicized in order not to make the memories of that day more painful. It is more than probable that this is the truth regarding the airplane that crashed in Pennsylvania, that Boeing from which several passengers managed to telephone their families before, according to the official story, in a heroic action, overpowering the hijackers and preventing the plane from crashing into the Capitol or the White House itself. However, diplomats from the United States and the European Union believe that the plane was really shot down in order to prevent it from crashing into the president's residence.
Perhaps the explanation for this publishing and media boom is that of Rudolf Stoiber, professor of communications at the German university of Bamberg, who considers 9-11 a totally irrational deed while we humans need a rational explanation and look for one for everything.
Oh boy. That was a good one. First, it's appalling how many "cultured and well-educated" Europeans are willing to believe this crap. That is the truly irrational. What's so hard to believe? Osama Bin Laden financed a group of Islamic fanatics who hijacked four airplanes and crashed three of them into significant buildings in the United States. Most of it's on film and the rest of the "official version" is backed up by thousands of pages of documentation. The case is airtight. Bin Laden himself proudly claimed responsibility.
What I imagine is that these Illustrated and Enlightened Europeans are incapable of believing that the evil nasty United States could ever possibly be in the right, so they have to make up imbecilic far-fetched wild guesses in order to convince themselves that the USA is really still bad and evil and that the poor Taliban and Al Qaeda are the innocent victims of another Yankee frameup which is backed by the Jews for the purpose of stealing the Arab nation's oil and humiliating the proud Muslims (and the French into the bargain) again.
Also, the Europeans tend to be Gnostics by nature, believing that there is some secret powerful person or organization that really controls everything like a puppetmaster. The United States, Israel, and the Jews (and their evil stooges like the CIA and the Mossad) fit perfectly into their Gnostic scheme as the secret powerful pullers of the strings. And the Europeans are not nearly as bad as the Middle Easterners can be.
Finally, let me point out that the authors of this article are responsible for floating two conspiracy theories, the one about the mysterious bulges appearing on the outside of the second plane that hit the WTC (this one they proudly brag about starting) and the one about the military shooting down the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania and then inventing the story about the passengers retaking the plane from the hijackers.
A conspiracy fever has taken hold in Europe and America. Thousands of citizens on both continents devour as much information as they can find about the possibility that the terrorist attacks committed in the United States on September 11, 2001, were not the work of Islamic extremism but part of an unprecedented internal conspiracy.
Books by a wide variety of authors have sold millions in Germany, France, and Spain, dealing with different aspects of an alleged plot, and fed by the lack of a solid official version. Books and dozens of websites analyze the attack against the WTC in New York or on the Pentagon to the smallest detail, and tell us that what we were shocked to see on television in September two years ago was the greatest plot of all time, which is already known as Operation Pearl.
"Have the Germans entered into a state of acute paranoia?" asked Le Monde upon discovering that their neighbor has succumbed before the thesis of a conspiracy and that Andreas von Bulow--ex-Secretary of State for Defense, es-minister of Research and Technology in Helmut Schmidt's cabinet, and an Social Democrat MP for 25 years--is now better-known for his book about the CIA and 9-11 than for his time in the front ranks of German politicians.
Even the German newsweeklies could not resist polling their compatriots. A surprising result: 31% of Germans under 30 years old do not exclude the possibility that the American government itself was behind those dramatic events. The figure "drops" to 19% when the whole German population is considered, without age classifications.
Von Bulow--who does not hide that since his time as a MP he has thought the worst of the secret services--has sold more than 100,000 copies of a book in which he analyzes from a very personal perspective the "non-credible" aspects, in his eyes, of 9-11, in order to conclude that it would have been impossible for the CIA not to have known about Al Qaeda's plans. His thesis connects with the fact, admitted by the Bush administration, that the CIA and FBI did not share all the information that they had about the danger of a major terrorist attack. Nevertheless, Von Bulow goes a little farther and implicates the Mossad in the conspiracy and speculates about the possibility that the airplanes that crashed were piloted by remote control.
Other authors who have sold well more than 100,000 copies who have ridden the great conspiracy wave. They include Matthias Brockers and Gerhard Wisnewski: the first, an old journalist from the Berlin daily Der Taz, and the second, a regular contributer on ZDF, the second-largest German television channel. Brockers claims that the suicide pilots on those planes are still alive, while Wisnewski, who enjoys greater credibility, questions the entire event of 9-11 and develops the theory that the WTC buildings were demolished with explosives placed in their interiors. Every time the subject comes up, the video of the collapse of building number 7--the second tower to collapse--is considered an undeniable proof of a controlled demolition by fans of intrigue.
Although Germany contains a potent squad of official unbelievers, France is the source of the books with the greatest world impact. The mentor is Thierry Meyssan, the founder of a virtual organization called the Voltaire Web which includes journalists, politicians, and professionals from various fields who are firm believers in the conspiracy and in the author of "The Great Imposture" and "Pentagate", in which he denies that a civilian airplane piloted by a suicide terrorist crashed into the Pentagon, in favor of the thesis of a missile. In Spain, Pilar Urbano in her book "Chief Atta" also shows incredulity at this aspect.
An analysis of the conspiracy theories shows that a substantial part of the matter is related to the airplanes hijacked by the Al Qaeda commandoes. Basically, either they deny that the airplanes that crashed were the same as those that were hijacked that morning--that is, there was a substitution of airplanes--or they affirm that there were explosives and military missiles involved.
Regarding the first plane that crashed, of which there are only two known films, both from a distance and imprecise, the authors question whether it was a Boeing and raise the idea of a missile or a smaller airplane. Regarding the second plane--the one that crashed into the south tower--a series of reports published in La Vanguardia has increased the doubts. On the Internet web sites that deal with the subject, it is already being called the "pregnant plane", in reference to the strange protuberances that appear on its fuselage and which this newspaper revealed.
The conspiracy theories reach their peak when they deal with the attack on the Pentagon and the case of the airplane that disintegrated in Pennsylvania. American Airlines flight 77 took off in Washington at 8:20 AM, destination Los Angeles. Half an hour later the air traffic controllers lost track of it, and almost forty minutes later the Air Force received orders to search for it. Half an hour ago the WTC had already been hit. At 9:38 AM on September 11, 2001, two minutes before the fighters arrived, AA 77 crashed into the Pentagon, opening a small hole, similar to one which could have been produced by a missile. The security cameras did not film the airplane and at that very moment incredulity began, the conspiracy theory was born, and the questions that Thierry Meyssan answers according to his own criteria flowered: If the pilots weren't experts, how could they have achieved such a tight turn? Why is there no wreckage of the Boeing in the photos? Why didn't the Pentagon's security cameras catch the airplane? Why is the damage so limited?...
The lack of a solid official version that can answer so many questions--there is a website that, playing with the date of the attack, poses 911 doubts--feeds conspiracy theories. Many of the unanswered questions asked by the cited authors may be the fruits of opportunism or the--possibly in good faith--imagination of the friends of the strange. However, the federal commission of investigation has criticized the secretism that the Bush Administration practices. The possibility exists that the American government may not have the answers that it is being asked for and also that some of the answers it knows are not being publicized in order not to make the memories of that day more painful. It is more than probable that this is the truth regarding the airplane that crashed in Pennsylvania, that Boeing from which several passengers managed to telephone their families before, according to the official story, in a heroic action, overpowering the hijackers and preventing the plane from crashing into the Capitol or the White House itself. However, diplomats from the United States and the European Union believe that the plane was really shot down in order to prevent it from crashing into the president's residence.
Perhaps the explanation for this publishing and media boom is that of Rudolf Stoiber, professor of communications at the German university of Bamberg, who considers 9-11 a totally irrational deed while we humans need a rational explanation and look for one for everything.
Oh boy. That was a good one. First, it's appalling how many "cultured and well-educated" Europeans are willing to believe this crap. That is the truly irrational. What's so hard to believe? Osama Bin Laden financed a group of Islamic fanatics who hijacked four airplanes and crashed three of them into significant buildings in the United States. Most of it's on film and the rest of the "official version" is backed up by thousands of pages of documentation. The case is airtight. Bin Laden himself proudly claimed responsibility.
What I imagine is that these Illustrated and Enlightened Europeans are incapable of believing that the evil nasty United States could ever possibly be in the right, so they have to make up imbecilic far-fetched wild guesses in order to convince themselves that the USA is really still bad and evil and that the poor Taliban and Al Qaeda are the innocent victims of another Yankee frameup which is backed by the Jews for the purpose of stealing the Arab nation's oil and humiliating the proud Muslims (and the French into the bargain) again.
Also, the Europeans tend to be Gnostics by nature, believing that there is some secret powerful person or organization that really controls everything like a puppetmaster. The United States, Israel, and the Jews (and their evil stooges like the CIA and the Mossad) fit perfectly into their Gnostic scheme as the secret powerful pullers of the strings. And the Europeans are not nearly as bad as the Middle Easterners can be.
Finally, let me point out that the authors of this article are responsible for floating two conspiracy theories, the one about the mysterious bulges appearing on the outside of the second plane that hit the WTC (this one they proudly brag about starting) and the one about the military shooting down the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania and then inventing the story about the passengers retaking the plane from the hijackers.
Tuesday, December 30, 2003
Happy goddamn holidays. I haven't been blogging much because my folks are in town and so sightseeing and hanging out has been taking up most of my time. It's nice to see them; they haven't been over here in a while. We took a couple of daytrips: to Montserrat, to Tarragona and Santes Creus, and to Ampurias. They're all worth a trip. I don't know why Tarragona is so little-known as a tourist destination, since it's full of both Roman and medieval stuff, including a first-class history and archaeology museum, and isn't too far from decent beaches. If you're not real picky, Tarragona itself has a beach across the train tracks from the amphitheater. Some of the old city is pretty run-down, the train tracks make an ugly gash along the seaside, and there's nothing worth seeing in the new city except for a stroll along the pleasant Rambla Vella and a Modernista building or two. I've also never had a decent meal there. But it's still definitely worth a trip.
There's always an art exhibition in La Pedrera worth seeing; I don't usually miss them. They usually run about three months or so; I particularly remember one on Giacometti and another of Durer engravings. This one was of 16th and 17th century drawings from the French national library; they had a nice set of Durers, again, and some extremely good portraits of the French royal family, mostly by a guy I'd never heard of before named Francois Clouet. Travel tip: They charge a hefty fee for a tour of La Pedrera, and it is a complete tour; if that's what you want, then pay the fee. If you just want to get inside the building, though, tell them you're going to see the art exhibit. You'll be able to skip the long line at the ticket office, look around inside one of the patios, and see the exhibition.
There's always an art exhibition in La Pedrera worth seeing; I don't usually miss them. They usually run about three months or so; I particularly remember one on Giacometti and another of Durer engravings. This one was of 16th and 17th century drawings from the French national library; they had a nice set of Durers, again, and some extremely good portraits of the French royal family, mostly by a guy I'd never heard of before named Francois Clouet. Travel tip: They charge a hefty fee for a tour of La Pedrera, and it is a complete tour; if that's what you want, then pay the fee. If you just want to get inside the building, though, tell them you're going to see the art exhibit. You'll be able to skip the long line at the ticket office, look around inside one of the patios, and see the exhibition.
I have never been much of a fan of politician, columnist, and TV chat-show guest Pilar Rahola, as readers of Iberian Notes undoubtedly know, but she's one of the few leading Catalans (Catalans? Europeans) who has taken a stand and spoken up against European anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism. For this she is to be congratulated despite her general obnoxiousness. Here's an interview with her that was picked up by FrontPage magazine. She doesn't say anything particularly original; it is a sign of the deep anti-Semitism in Europe that Pilar Rahola is about the most distinguished person we can find saying such morally obvious things.
Friday, December 26, 2003
Check out Trevor at Kaleboel. He's on a trilingual roll, as usual. The boys at HispaLibertas have lots of good stuff for Spanish-speakers, also as usual. And Puerta del Sol has plenty of good cultural stuff on Spain, if you need a little break from us aggressive polemicists.
Check out this article on military contracts in Iraq coming Spain's way. Good move by the Administration, demonstrating to the pro-Americans that America and the Administration appreciate Spain's role on the international scene as America's stalwart ally. It demonstrates to the neutrals that there are at the very least pragmatic advantages to siding with the Americans, and that the Americans are trustworthy allies who keep their promises. And it's just another slap in the face for the anti-Americans. They're going to be so pissed off. (Link from USS Clueless.)
In the same vein, here's a paragraph from Den Beste at USS Clueless (he's one of the best commentators on foreign affairs I know of):
In looking for international allies to try to restrain America and protect himself against invasion, Saddam bet the farm on the French, Germans and Russians and the UN. He bet on the idea that it was somehow possible to force America to act in certain ways against its will, that it was possible for diplomacy in the UN to block American military action. After Bush and Blair and Aznar publicly made their announcement last March that they had given up on the UN and would attack anyway, Saddam lost that bet. And his ignominious capture a week ago made clear just how poor of a bet it had really been, and just how badly he had lost.
It's a pretty good paragraph that's part of a typically very good piece, but I reproduced it because of the name I put in italics. Right up there with George Bush and Tony Blair. (The world always forgets gutsy Prime Minister Durao Barroso of Portugal, the guy who actually hosted the summit meeting in the Azores.) A regular American guy with a good deal of knowledge and good sense, Steven den Beste, ranks Aznar and Spain right up there among the leaders and countries that count. If he thinks that way, then I'll bet a lot of people in positions of power are thinking something similar. Just another reason for us to consider Jose Maria Aznar the best Spanish leader since Philip the Second; he's raised Spain to a level of international influence it hadn't had since about Felipe Segundo's reign.
It's a damn shame that Aznar is stepping down, but he made a promise eight years ago (that he'd only serve two four-year terms), and he's living up to it. I have a good deal of confidence in Mariano Rajoy, Aznar's successor. And I think we would be a bunch of total and complete fools if we did not vote for Rajoy and the People's Party, the PP, the center-right party, in the upcoming March general election. Spain counts internationally. Let's keep it that way.
In the same vein, here's a paragraph from Den Beste at USS Clueless (he's one of the best commentators on foreign affairs I know of):
In looking for international allies to try to restrain America and protect himself against invasion, Saddam bet the farm on the French, Germans and Russians and the UN. He bet on the idea that it was somehow possible to force America to act in certain ways against its will, that it was possible for diplomacy in the UN to block American military action. After Bush and Blair and Aznar publicly made their announcement last March that they had given up on the UN and would attack anyway, Saddam lost that bet. And his ignominious capture a week ago made clear just how poor of a bet it had really been, and just how badly he had lost.
It's a pretty good paragraph that's part of a typically very good piece, but I reproduced it because of the name I put in italics. Right up there with George Bush and Tony Blair. (The world always forgets gutsy Prime Minister Durao Barroso of Portugal, the guy who actually hosted the summit meeting in the Azores.) A regular American guy with a good deal of knowledge and good sense, Steven den Beste, ranks Aznar and Spain right up there among the leaders and countries that count. If he thinks that way, then I'll bet a lot of people in positions of power are thinking something similar. Just another reason for us to consider Jose Maria Aznar the best Spanish leader since Philip the Second; he's raised Spain to a level of international influence it hadn't had since about Felipe Segundo's reign.
It's a damn shame that Aznar is stepping down, but he made a promise eight years ago (that he'd only serve two four-year terms), and he's living up to it. I have a good deal of confidence in Mariano Rajoy, Aznar's successor. And I think we would be a bunch of total and complete fools if we did not vote for Rajoy and the People's Party, the PP, the center-right party, in the upcoming March general election. Spain counts internationally. Let's keep it that way.
Thursday, December 25, 2003
Our friends the ETA just can't get their Christmas message across. They had the lovely idea that they'd contribute to the holiday spirit with an impressive fireworks display in Madrid's Chamartin Station. They attempted to plant two suitcase bombs containing twenty kilos of dynamite each on the Irun-Madrid Talgo, the first-class fast train, which were to go off when the train arrived at its destination in the middle of Madrid's bustling main railway station. If they'd gone off hundreds of people would have been killed or injured.
Fortunately, what with all the police successes against the ETA, they're down to a bunch of amateurs as operatives. One of the two terrorists was caught looking suspicious in Irun. He was detained and his baggage was checked and, whaddya know, it was filled with dynamite. This made everybody real suspicious. They stopped the Talgo at Burgos and evacuated it, and there they found the other bomb, which had been planted on the train by the other terrorist involved.
Congratulations to the police for saving us from a tragedy that might even have reached 9-11 scale.
Spaniards aren't bigots and racists. Naah. Only Americans would stoop so low as to be prejudiced against someone because of his national origin, as some leftist Spaniards never tire of reminding us.
According to La Vanguardia, the central government's Center of Sociological Research did a poll in which they asked "Which country's citizens do you trust least and for which country's citizens do you feel the least sympathy?"
Results:
1. Moroccans: 27.4% distrust, 23.7% unsympathetic
2. Americans: 17.1% distrust, 16.1% unsympathetic
3. Colombians: 14.9% distrust, 10.6% unsympathetic
This puts the lie to the standard Spanish assertion that it's not the American people they dislike, it's the government. This survey torpedoes that common canard. Also, it indicates the climate of pure racism that Moroccans and other Arabs encounter in Spain.
Fortunately, what with all the police successes against the ETA, they're down to a bunch of amateurs as operatives. One of the two terrorists was caught looking suspicious in Irun. He was detained and his baggage was checked and, whaddya know, it was filled with dynamite. This made everybody real suspicious. They stopped the Talgo at Burgos and evacuated it, and there they found the other bomb, which had been planted on the train by the other terrorist involved.
Congratulations to the police for saving us from a tragedy that might even have reached 9-11 scale.
Spaniards aren't bigots and racists. Naah. Only Americans would stoop so low as to be prejudiced against someone because of his national origin, as some leftist Spaniards never tire of reminding us.
According to La Vanguardia, the central government's Center of Sociological Research did a poll in which they asked "Which country's citizens do you trust least and for which country's citizens do you feel the least sympathy?"
Results:
1. Moroccans: 27.4% distrust, 23.7% unsympathetic
2. Americans: 17.1% distrust, 16.1% unsympathetic
3. Colombians: 14.9% distrust, 10.6% unsympathetic
This puts the lie to the standard Spanish assertion that it's not the American people they dislike, it's the government. This survey torpedoes that common canard. Also, it indicates the climate of pure racism that Moroccans and other Arabs encounter in Spain.
Sunday, December 21, 2003
Hurry up and post your lists over at Amish Tech Support's Dead Pool. I've got mine in and it's a doozy. You'll want to read the rules first, of course, so that's what I linked to. Then you can make your picks right there.
Here are some free suggestions for your Dead Pool draft choices (for Iberian Notes readers only, of course) that I didn't use.
Arthur C. Clarke 12/16/1917
Walter Cronkite 11/4/1916
Olivia de Havilland 7/1/1916
Kirk Douglas 12/9/1916
Saul Bellow 6/10/1915
Milton Berle 7/12/1908
Marlon Brando 4/3/1924
Sid Caesar 9/8/1922
Woody Harrelson 7/23/1961
I think all these people are still alive.
Here are some free suggestions for your Dead Pool draft choices (for Iberian Notes readers only, of course) that I didn't use.
Arthur C. Clarke 12/16/1917
Walter Cronkite 11/4/1916
Olivia de Havilland 7/1/1916
Kirk Douglas 12/9/1916
Saul Bellow 6/10/1915
Milton Berle 7/12/1908
Marlon Brando 4/3/1924
Sid Caesar 9/8/1922
Woody Harrelson 7/23/1961
I think all these people are still alive.
Back to politics. Socialist Pasqual Maragall has assumed office as prime minister of the Generalitat, the Catalan autonomous regional government. He had to pay a price, of course: his allies the Republican Left got the Cabinet posts of "chief of staff" and three others, and Communists Initiative for Catalonia got two Cabinet seats. Now we'll see what happens.
First, nothing much is going to change, I don't think. I doubt that after four years of Maragall in the Generalitat our lives will be very different. Now, Maragall's priorities ought to be more or less balancing the Generalitat's budget (with some large cuts in the Department of Culture, preferably), improving the efficiency of Generalitat relations with the central government and the various local mayors in order to get things done faster and more efficiently, administrating the end of the educational "reforma" and the changeover to something more like the old system (they adopted dumb American ed school ideas. It failed. Aznar and the PP shot it down), and investigating several prominent members of Convergence and Union to find out where the skeletons are buried.
His priorities should not be wasting everybody's time jabbering about unnecessary and dangerous constitutional reform, taking the part of one extreme wing or the other in the Catalan culture wars, spending jillions of euros on poorly planned megaprojects, dissing the Americans, trying to imitate the Basques, or complaining about Catalonia's "fiscal deficit".
(Note: this is one of the most common themes of Catalan nationalists. It seems that some people have determined that Catalonia as a whole pays a lot more money in taxes than it receives in the form of government spending, though none of their figures have ever convinced me. The reason is obvious: Catalonia is one of the two or three richest regions in Spain, and so many people with high incomes pay high income taxes. Also, many companies are based here, and they pay big money in taxes, too. Finally, since Catalonia is richer than average, consumption is higher than average, too, and so the state gets more money per capita in VAT in Catalonia than it does in the rest of the country.
My opinion is that the Catalanists are guilty of a fallacy. They are confusing Catalonia as an entity with Catalans as individuals. You can make the argument that, per capita, individual Catalans tend to pay more in taxes than they get back in government services, but that's because as individuals they are high-income and a lot of government spending goes to lower-income areas. If Catalans lived anywhere else in Spain, assuming their income was the same, they'd pay the same amount of taxes. So individual Catalans are not discriminated against, taxistically, for being Catalans. They are discriminated against for being richer than average. I thought that's what a nice solidarious leftist welfare state is supposed to do. It's called progressive taxation. As for government services, according to Mariano Rajoy in La Vanguardia, the PP central government has raised spending in Catalonia to 16% of government spending in Spain. That's about the percentage of Catalans in the population of Spain, so I don't see how anyone can deny that the central government divides up its spending fairly.)
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar flew to Iraq on Saturday to visit the troops there. The left is accusing him of imitating Bush and is making wisecracks about the new European media meme of the alleged plastic turkey. Says Socialist heavy hitter Jose Blanco,
(Aznar's) American-style visit to Iraq shows that he is following Bush's and his interests' style of conduct, which is bad and shameful. (This model) of imitating Bush has led us to an illegitimate war without the permission of the United Nations and which was declared on the basis of false arguments...The world today is more unsafe and there are thousands of innocent lives who are victims of this decision; it is unacceptable for Azanar to follow step by step the instructions of the President of the United States.
Blanco is an idiot, obviously, but an awful lot of people around here believe him.
I had an unpleasant incident in one of the local bars, the Barracuina on Joan Blanques, last night, in which I was harassed for being American. One gentleman kindly informed me that he hated all Yankees and another taunted me with shouts of "Heil Hitler!" and Nazi salutes. I did not punch anybody. Most people around here are pretty decent. These guys were jerks.
The other media meme going around is that, of course, Saddam's capture was some kind of dirty trick. See, nothing can be as it appears because Bush and the Americans are bad people who always lie. So, obviously, Saddam's capture was a setup in order to help Bush in the polls. Exactly how or why it was a setup is still something I'm not very clear about, but we'll let that ride. There's a cartoon in the Vanguardia today showing Bush dressed like a cowboy playing golf and talking on his cell-phone, in which Bush says, "Hold off on capturing Bin Laden until a month before the elections."
Well, the defeat and capture of Saddam has had one positive effect at least; the Libyans are giving up their WMD. The Brits are saying that Qaddafi was close to an atomic bomb. Libya had been recently busted by the Americans for trying to import missiles from, you guessed it, North Korea.
The Vangua runs some interesting stats on Catalonia. One-fourth of our education spending goes to subsidizing private schools. Unemployment in the third quarter of 2003 was 9.2%. Per capita monthly income is 1620 euros. Housing costs double the Spanish average in Barcelona. 5.1% of Catalans are immigrants from foreign countries. Catalonia produces 18.4% of Spain's GDP. Our GDP per capita is 101% of the European Union average.
So far the Vangua has published a total of zero letters to the editor on the capture of Saddam.
First, nothing much is going to change, I don't think. I doubt that after four years of Maragall in the Generalitat our lives will be very different. Now, Maragall's priorities ought to be more or less balancing the Generalitat's budget (with some large cuts in the Department of Culture, preferably), improving the efficiency of Generalitat relations with the central government and the various local mayors in order to get things done faster and more efficiently, administrating the end of the educational "reforma" and the changeover to something more like the old system (they adopted dumb American ed school ideas. It failed. Aznar and the PP shot it down), and investigating several prominent members of Convergence and Union to find out where the skeletons are buried.
His priorities should not be wasting everybody's time jabbering about unnecessary and dangerous constitutional reform, taking the part of one extreme wing or the other in the Catalan culture wars, spending jillions of euros on poorly planned megaprojects, dissing the Americans, trying to imitate the Basques, or complaining about Catalonia's "fiscal deficit".
(Note: this is one of the most common themes of Catalan nationalists. It seems that some people have determined that Catalonia as a whole pays a lot more money in taxes than it receives in the form of government spending, though none of their figures have ever convinced me. The reason is obvious: Catalonia is one of the two or three richest regions in Spain, and so many people with high incomes pay high income taxes. Also, many companies are based here, and they pay big money in taxes, too. Finally, since Catalonia is richer than average, consumption is higher than average, too, and so the state gets more money per capita in VAT in Catalonia than it does in the rest of the country.
My opinion is that the Catalanists are guilty of a fallacy. They are confusing Catalonia as an entity with Catalans as individuals. You can make the argument that, per capita, individual Catalans tend to pay more in taxes than they get back in government services, but that's because as individuals they are high-income and a lot of government spending goes to lower-income areas. If Catalans lived anywhere else in Spain, assuming their income was the same, they'd pay the same amount of taxes. So individual Catalans are not discriminated against, taxistically, for being Catalans. They are discriminated against for being richer than average. I thought that's what a nice solidarious leftist welfare state is supposed to do. It's called progressive taxation. As for government services, according to Mariano Rajoy in La Vanguardia, the PP central government has raised spending in Catalonia to 16% of government spending in Spain. That's about the percentage of Catalans in the population of Spain, so I don't see how anyone can deny that the central government divides up its spending fairly.)
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar flew to Iraq on Saturday to visit the troops there. The left is accusing him of imitating Bush and is making wisecracks about the new European media meme of the alleged plastic turkey. Says Socialist heavy hitter Jose Blanco,
(Aznar's) American-style visit to Iraq shows that he is following Bush's and his interests' style of conduct, which is bad and shameful. (This model) of imitating Bush has led us to an illegitimate war without the permission of the United Nations and which was declared on the basis of false arguments...The world today is more unsafe and there are thousands of innocent lives who are victims of this decision; it is unacceptable for Azanar to follow step by step the instructions of the President of the United States.
Blanco is an idiot, obviously, but an awful lot of people around here believe him.
I had an unpleasant incident in one of the local bars, the Barracuina on Joan Blanques, last night, in which I was harassed for being American. One gentleman kindly informed me that he hated all Yankees and another taunted me with shouts of "Heil Hitler!" and Nazi salutes. I did not punch anybody. Most people around here are pretty decent. These guys were jerks.
The other media meme going around is that, of course, Saddam's capture was some kind of dirty trick. See, nothing can be as it appears because Bush and the Americans are bad people who always lie. So, obviously, Saddam's capture was a setup in order to help Bush in the polls. Exactly how or why it was a setup is still something I'm not very clear about, but we'll let that ride. There's a cartoon in the Vanguardia today showing Bush dressed like a cowboy playing golf and talking on his cell-phone, in which Bush says, "Hold off on capturing Bin Laden until a month before the elections."
Well, the defeat and capture of Saddam has had one positive effect at least; the Libyans are giving up their WMD. The Brits are saying that Qaddafi was close to an atomic bomb. Libya had been recently busted by the Americans for trying to import missiles from, you guessed it, North Korea.
The Vangua runs some interesting stats on Catalonia. One-fourth of our education spending goes to subsidizing private schools. Unemployment in the third quarter of 2003 was 9.2%. Per capita monthly income is 1620 euros. Housing costs double the Spanish average in Barcelona. 5.1% of Catalans are immigrants from foreign countries. Catalonia produces 18.4% of Spain's GDP. Our GDP per capita is 101% of the European Union average.
So far the Vangua has published a total of zero letters to the editor on the capture of Saddam.
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