BLOGHUNT: Manipulació TV3.

This blog has never yet been accused of neutrality: I wear my libertarianism (in the TRUE sense of the word) proudly, like a parrot wears a pirate.

However, I recognise that others do not accept my point of view, and hence this blog is a forum of debate between old-fashioned centralist nationalists, ultra-conservatives, Socialist devolutionist nationalists, Neo-liberal devolutionist nationalists and whatever the fuck Alcinous is. All contributions are welcome, as long as they challenge my arguments with arguments of their own, rather than just with abuse.

Which brings me neatly to the target of the first ever BLOGHUNT: Manipulació TV3.



My attention was first drawn to this blog when its creator, the orwellian sounding "Truthdetector" (tacky,tacky,tacky) posted childish abuse on the comments section of one of my posts. MTV3 starts from the emminently sensible premise that TV3 news coverage is biased. It is fair to say that TV3 forms part of the Catalan language cultural subsidariat; it shares with most of this generalitat-sponsored culture certain basic values, being pro Catalan-language, pro-devolution and receptive to separatist tendencies at home and abroad. We should all buy the modestly titled Mr Detector a drink then, right?

Wrong.

In an irony of alanisesque proportions, this type of catalanist bias goes completely unnoticed by MTV3. In fact, from the Estelada that his blog sports, one could even speculate that he approved of this. No, what really ticks old Truthdetector off is the supposed left-wing/communist/anti-American/anti-Western civilisation slant in Catalan news coverage.

Now I do not deny that many Catalan commentators are (or think they are) left wing, and that the Catalan media often reports their opinions. But bias in reporting means the systematic conscious or unconscious misreporting of events in order to put forward a partisan view of the world, and it must be in news stories rather than in a comment piece. Unfortunately it would seem that friend-Truthdetector has found genuine examples of this "manipulation" devilishly difficult to pin down; he therefore seems intent on filling his blog with examples of commentary he disagrees with, and news stories LACKING the bias he feels should be included. The Glasgow Media Group, he is not.

I intend, over the coming days, to provide you with examples of MTV3's sheer ridiculousness, and the unintended humour of a man completely unable to see any point of view but his own angrily calling everybody else in the world biased. Even if you agree with his beliefs, I'm sure you'll be able to laugh along at his idiocy.

Sadly neglected classic tracks, No. 2. La danse des Mardi Gras, The Balfa Brothers

Here is a song that sent shivers down my spine the first time I heard it. The violin sounds like a warning, the baseline like a threat and the backing vocals like angry lost souls trying in vain to call out to their living kin. Fucking spooky.

The lyrics, when I learnt enough French to work them out, were a little disapointing, seemingly regarding a medieval French Mardi Gras tradition of visiting the houses of richer neighbours and nobles to ask for charity.

But as it nowhere explicitly states that the singer is not creeping from an unquiet grave, nor does it mention what he will do if he does not receive the charity he requested, I reserve the right to interpret the song as a sinister supernatural tale concerning reanimated corpses wandering the bayou.

Sadly neglected classic tracks, No 1. Bankrobber, Audioweb

At the time of the great Britpop rock 'n' roll swindle, the Liverpool University student newspaper published a league table of British bands (obviously only British bands could be included, it was called BRITpop after all). It is a testament to the vibrancy of the British music scene at the time, and the all-pervasiveness of the football boom after England's hosting of the 96 European championships, that the extensive list was divided into 2 divisions of 18 bands.

If I remember correctly, division one was headed by Oasis, Blur and then Pulp, before descending through lower lights like Space, Elastica, Cast, and the Bluetones. Division two was headed by the over-hyped media darlings Menswear, and the too-punky-to-be-proper-Britpop Skunk Anansie. Just outside of the automatic promotion places, in 3rd, was tragically under-rated Manchester band Audioweb, ahead of the soon to be massive Catatonia.

Here is a classic tune from them, an anthemic dancefloor-filling cover of Bankrobber by that covers-band extraordinaire, The Clash.

Call me a one-trick pony if you want, but I reckon they never reached the Britpop Premier League because indie music at that time was supposed to be about floppy-haired white boys playing guitars, and one of their faces blatantly didn't fit.

Free Franki - Being a dickhead isn't a crime.

The anti-system/nationalist/ethno-anarchist community of Barcelona (or at least of Sant Cugat) is currently up in arms in attempt to achieve freedom for Francesc Argemi (now ubiquitously known as "Franki"). Indeed, there seems to be nothing the kheffiyah-sporting weekend freedom-fighters from good Convergencia families won't hang banners from in order to secure his freedom.

Franki's terrible crime was to take down the Spanish flag from Terrassa town hall and burn it in full view of various policemen. One has to admire the dreadlocked goon's initiative, it is very difficult to find a Spanish flag to burn in Catalonia nowadays, he must have been searching for hours, poor lamb.

However, much as I despise bourgeois-vegan-ethno-nationalists-que-van-de-progre, I'm going to have to add my voice to the catala-cacophony calling for his liberation. While, I have no objection to Franki's prosecution for criminal damage, the flag was not his, and it's unfair that the tax-payers of Terrassa should have to pay for another one, this is not the reason Franki is in prison. Franki is in prison for offending the dignity of Spain's national symbols. This is a gross breach of his right to free-expression, and a sinister abuse of state power; if a man wants to wipe his arse on the flag then piss on a picture of the king (whether for political or sexual reasons) then surely that is his own business and nobody else's. End of story.

That doesn't mean I don't think he's a twat. He was ceremonially burning a symbol of an identity that he didn't share, and therefore implicitly stating that people who did share that identity had no place in his territory, or at the very least, were not equals there.

Paradoxically, if he had considered himself Spanish, I would support his actions. The burning of your own flag can be a powerful expression of rejection of the state, or of what you perceive as the corruption of your country. Burning somebody elses's flag is a different matter; an American burning the stars and stripes could be making a powerful call for renewal, a Canadian doing the same thing is a prejudiced wanker.

Let's get this straight, burning the Spanish flag and leaving the Catalan flag inviolate is not the gesture of a socialist or of anarchist (as some have described him) it is merely rank nationalism. Franki's stupid little performance was a profoundly negative gesture of cultural chauvinism, which I despise.

I demand his immediate unconditional release.

Credit-card Keynesianism - Oooooh! What a carve up!

The more avid readers amongst you may have seen in the papers that the world is undergoing a massive financial crisis, alliteratively titled the credit crunch (in Spain this title is secondary to the more easily pronounced “sub primay”). It is still discussed largely in terms of its effects on house prices (i.e. prices have dropped, but you still can’t buy a house because nobody will give you a mortgage) but this is merely the symptom of a larger malaise.

30 years ago, the UK, along with all developed countries, had an economy based on the production of goods which were then sold abroad or consumed domestically. It was recognised that the creation of physical objects was the foundation of the nation’s wealth. Today the UK economy is based on the financial sector, and it is believed that the country can survive without making anything. This change has its roots in the friedmanite economics of the New Right, it was argued that the UK should abandon policies protecting its industries, privatise steel, telecom, gas and railways, and move towards a post-industrial future. Part of this future was the massive deregulation of the City and the banks, the market was the venerated Idol of this new world; the banks and finance houses were logical actors, they would maximise their profit and the wealth they created would trickle down to the masses. Here was where it all started to go wrong.

The newly unbound promethei of The City had a marked aversion to investment in industry, it was such a dirty smelly northern thing, and they really didn’t understand it. So the bulk of their investment went into the service industries, industries abroad, or into arcane financial investments that were essentially shuffling cash from one place to another. This change appeared to work, it was luckily timed to coincide with the end of the worldwide recession of the early 80s and it led to a service boom that gave the nation the impression of great prosperity. But all the while, the country’s industrial base was being eroded. In 1997, Aneuirin Bevan’s “Island built on coal and surrounded by fish” was importing its fish and its coal. The latter could be dug much cheaper by child workers in Colombia than by grown men in the Rhondda or in my home town, Wakefield.

So the profits of this consumer boom did not trickle down as much as they should have done, if your country produces no goods, the profits from boomtime consumption do not remain in the country, they are repatriated. In this case they were repatriated to the far east, and they were used , notably, to develop the economies of Malaysia and China. Both these countries sensibly protected their national markets by insisting that foreigners wishing to set up industry there could only do so in conjunction with local partners, ensuring the cash stuck there.

So if it wasn’t coming from profits, how were we paying for our consumption? The answer is that we weren’t. The last 10 years have seen British consumers take on a massively increased level of debt, this borrowing has been used to buy imported goods. Government policy has sought to keep interest rates low in order to facilitate lending, which has taken the place of wage increases which can’t be given because of the profit flowing back to China and out of the system . This credit-card Keynesianism was based on the country’s citizens taking on ever increasing levels of debt, and continuing to do so forever. £10 (which used to actually be fucking worth something) to the person who can spot the flaw in the plan.

Yes, if you continue taking on higher and higher levels of debt, you eventually run out of money for food. But what if there was a magical asset that always increased in value, and against which money could always be lent? Yes, rising house prices were the key to it all, as long as the price of houses magically continued to rise, the banks would continue to lend, and it wouldn’t matter that you were £80k in debt because your house was worth £160k. The good returns brought by mortgages, and the amount of money sloshing around in the city with no productive place to go (because of the already credit dependent economy), meant that banks loosened their lending criteria, so people could be lent ever greater multiples of their salaries over ever greater periods of time. This in turn fuelled an increase in houseprices, feeding the perception that prices would rise forever.

So what we had was modern day version of 17th century Spain. Goods were produced in China and sold at a profit in the UK, the profit is then lent back to the UK where it is used to buy imported goods. Our system was leaking capital, so we were taking on ever more debts. In Spain there were the hidalgos and religiosos (see here) who were producing nothing, in England we had the bloated service sector who slaved everyday to actively facilitate the transfer of the nation’s wealth out of the country.

Eventually the whole structure came tumbling down because of houseprices. The US, which like Spain had undergone a similar process, realised that some of the more outrageous mortgages would never be repaid, this triggered a credit drought and a moment of sanity in which the markets realised that they had made a terrible mistake, and that housing was vastly overpriced. The magic asset had lost its mojo, and without it securing lending, the UK, Spain and US are heading to a recession. The experiment in running service based import economies has failed, if we want to keep buying., we are going to need to find something to sell.

Might I be the first to suggest cocaine?

Five for silver, Six for gold.... Could somebody tell me where all my fucking money's gone please?

("Yes Cardinal, this truly is an intelligent use of the riches that have given us a head start on the path to a modern technological economy! Would you like me to kill some Jews now?")

A wise man once said that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Another wise man corrected him; history repeats itself, he said, the first time as tragedy, the second time as tragedy.

In the centuries following the discovery of South America by the intrepid Catalan explorer Joan Colom (joke), Spain became the nexus for the world trade in silver and gold. Gold and silver from Mexico, and later silver from Bolivia flowed into Spain, where it was converted into musket-balls, mercenaries and manufactured and luxury goods produced elsewhere. It was also used to fund not one, but TWO classes of workshy idlers, the religiosos (priests, nuns, monks and other undesirables), and the hidalgos (people whose noble standing prevented them from partaking in any economically productive activity whatsoever) .Of these two groups, the clergy’s influence was the more damaging; the hidalgos were useless mouths, but the clergy ably drove out and hunted down the country’s most skilled administrators, the Jews and conversos (Jewish converts to Christianity, of varying degrees of sincerity). As if that wasn’t enough, the regime also persecuted and eventually expelled the Moriscos, experienced small farmers and peasants of Muslim descent, leaving vast productive areas of Murcia and Valencia suffering from acute skilled labour shortages.

So the precious metals left Spain and passed through Amsterdam, Lyon and London on their way to China, goods moved westwards along the chain, and silver moved eastwards. The merchants of Holland, England and Germany used their profits from this trade to invest in production of goods which could be exported to the Spanish empire (legally or illegally) in exchange for silver which could be traded eastwards for luxuries that could once again be traded to Spain, or sold in the domestic market.

The Spanish paid more in silver for less return than anybody else in the chain, and had to run an empire on the proceeds. Spain’s late 17th century decline was built on this economic problem, its social system prevented it from remedying the problem through trading or more extensive manufacture. South America was awash with silver, but the state was constantly bankrupt. It was a country that produced nothing and ate up imports, it was not just a case of a government living beyond its means, it was a closed social system that sucked in little more that it could repay over a long period of time until its economy was destroyed. While Spain’s Dutch and English creditors squeezed her dry, they used their profits to trade further afield, and begin to industrialise their countries. Eventually , Spain’s status as a great power disappeared, by the time of the Treaty of Utrecht , Spain, despite its vast empire, was an also-ran in European power games. Spain became an underdeveloped cultural and economic backwater.

This is the situation the US, UK and Spanish economies are facing today: they have reached this point in an analogous process, but much faster. Spain continued functioning as an economic basket-case for 300 years, it has taken only 30 years of financial deregulation to bankrupt us. We even have the vast unproductive classes, but in a hilarious twist, they are working harder than ever before.

But how did this crazy situation come about? Stay tuned to the blog that reckons it has all the answers.....

Next.... Credit Card Keynesianism- Oooooh, what a carve up!

Best second bookshop in Barcelona

There is a half-arsed filler piece in the Guardian today by a man who doesn't like second-hand books. His main complaint is that second-hand books are tatty and somehow impure.

He could open up a second hand bookstore in Barcelona, where the same attitude prevails. I was attempting to sell a stack of books before leaving the city, mostly well-known quality authors, and no bugger wanted to buy them, because their condition wasn't perfect.

There is an inherent phillistinism in Spanish culture regarding books; many people have shelves of leather bound tomes that I'd bet good money never get taken down, whereas rows of tatty paperbacks, the hallmark of a literate house, are rarely on display. In Spain, books are often items of decoration rather than convenient devices for the transmission and storage of ideas. Personally, I don't care if my second hand books have coffee, snot or blood stains on them (and it's surprising how many do), as long as the words are in tact, the immortal soul of the book survives.

If you have a similar attitude, try the book stall in the guinel between Carmen and the Plaça San Galdric near the Boqueria. Some of her books are in bad nick but she's usually got some quality stuff in various languages, it's a refreshing change from the sterile, cultureless second-hand bookshops of Muntaner.

The French and their crazy ways

(The Academie Française Christmas drugs party, 1901)

The French are different, often wilfully so.

One of the recent expressions of this difference is the constitutional ammendment passed this month, which declares France's regional languages "patrimonie nationale". Unlike in Spain, where regional languages are lavishly cared for at the tax payers expense, no matter how few speakers they have, France had, up till recently, refused any recognition to these linguistic children of a lesser God.

The Guardian reckons 75 languages are covered by this ammendment, a surprisingly precise number. I would have thought that to get this figure they would have to classify Picard, Norman and Gallo (for example) as separate languages. Given the fact these dialects blend into each other (far Western Norman is more similar to Eastern Gallo than it is to Eastern Norman) the Guardian's total is more than a little arbitrary.

Whatever the numbers, the Catalano-Occitan dialects of southern France now enjoy legal recognition, and not everybody is happy about it . The Academie Française believes that, while the various patois of France are admirable, the constitution is not the place to recognise them. Its argument is that the constitution "pledges" (engager) rather than "describes". Its argument is rather weakened by the fact that the same paragraph describes the Republic as "social".

The Academie's critics discern in this an attempt to stifle the growing regional language movements (strangely, these movements are increasing their power and influence, at a time when the number of minority-language speakers is decreasing, I blame the internet).

As for my two cents, if we are going to have "La langue de la republique est le français", why not have the clause recognising the existance of other languages?

Much better to have neither.

Post Script

...and of course, we will have BLOGHUNT.

A new section where we demolish those blogs which have displeased us. Stay safe kids.

Forthcoming attractions....

We appear to be living through one of those periodical moments of history when everybody remembers why capitalism is a bad idea. These moments often coincide with the moment in which everybody notices that, while they themselves have nothing to eat, a small self-selecting elite is drinking champagne out of shoes, eating unlikely parts of sturgeon, and acting up in pubs they should know to stay out of.

The credit-crunch (or if you prefer, the spectacular failure of the free-market to deliver its promises) has put social-democracy and (whisper it) Marxism back on the political map. I, for one, welcome this development, and intend to celebrate with a few themed artices:

The political economy of Jericho, Kansas - A neo-marxist perspective

Credit Card Keynesianiasm - How the west was lost

I will also be slagging off Billy Bragg, one of the great cultural icons of the modern British left.

So, stay tuned to "I shot the mosso", the blog that alienates EVERYBODY.

Does your Berlusconi lose its flavour on the lamp-post overnight?

As my wife told me the other day "Italia està mal". Italy's gypsy population is currently being hounded out, and immigrants, both legal and illegal, are having a terrible time of it; the victims of beatings, burnings and municipal discrimination.

Having told her that it was a waste of money to go back and vote for the shower of shit headed by Veltroni, and getting a night on the sofa for my troubles, I feel suitably chastened.

Berlusconi and his allies are dangerous. They are populists who blame all of Italy's problems on immigrants (rather than their own corruption and mismanagement), ruling at the start of an economic crisis. Things could get very bad.

The most infuriating thing is that 20 years ago Italy was a nation of emmigrants, exporting its poor, dispossessed and ambitious to the 4 corners of the globe. You'd have thought a bit of understanding was in order.... but no, people are shit.

Racists. Dropped on their heads, or just born that way?

If it comes to civil war, I feel confident we can take them.

Skinhead moonstomp!

The Specials are one of the greatest bands ever to come out of England, and were apparently quite something live. In the now forgotten climate of civil strife which gripped Britain between 1975-1984, their gigs were often flashpoints, setting off brawls between right wing thugs and brave SWP/Anarchist/Red Action/Labour (yes, honestly) squadist resistance fighters (not biased much me).

We have here , for your delectation, a clip form 1979. I'm fucked if I know how they were playing their instruments at the end.

Just about the stupidest thing I've ever seen

Do you see what they've done here? They've added the swastika, symbol of fascism, tyrrany and oppression, to the logo of a German budget airline. What have the dastardly teutonic flyboys been up to? Did they invade Poland? Did they attempt to reduce speakers of Slavic languages to a position of slavery due to insane pseudoscience? Did they harness the technological brilliance of a modern industrial nation and use it to exterminate 6 million people to further their mad dreams?

No. They want to use Spanish in their adverising and flight annuncements when flying to Barcelona and Valencia. Yep, that's what the nazis did alright. Well here's my answer:

Let's not forget that the Nazis were nationalists too....

(Thanks to Kalebeul for the tip off)

Fossil rabbits in the precambrian - the limits of Popper's science

The biologist J.S Halbane was once asked what evidence could falsify the theory of evolution, he famously answered "Fossil Rabbits in the pre-Cambrian". I first read this quotation in Stephen Jay Gould (pictured)'s collection of essays "The Panda's Thumb", and was impressed by its nonchalance, if not its logical consistency.


Gould occupies fourth place in my heroic pantheon (Behind Marx, Engels and Johnny Cash, but ahead of Bill Hicks. Note the preference for dead white guys.), so it feels a little inappropriate that the first time I mention him on my blog will be to slag him off, but here goes....

In another of his collections, "The Flamingo's Smile", appears a snappily titled essay called "Sex, drugs, disasters and the extinction of the dinosaurs". In this essay Gould relates three theories explaining the mass extinction that marks the end of the Mesozoic era, and in which the last dinosaurs perished. The theories are briefly;


1. The dinosaurs died out because a rise in temperatures rendered their testicles useless (a bit of zoophilia for Alcinous there). A theory based on extrapolations from reproduction in modern reptiles.


2. The dinosaurs died out because newly evolved flowering plants contained alkaloids which dinosaurs could neither taste nor process in their livers. This theory offers no evidence, except for the rough correlation between the appearance of these plants, and the demise of the thunderlizards.


3. The mass extinction event (not just the extinction of the dinosaurs) was triggered by an asteroid/comet impact which raised a massive dust cloud, impeding photosyntesis, destroying eco-systems and generally wrecking the gaff.

Gould rightly concludes that third theory is very probably true, as there is a great deal of evidence to support it, and the other two are very probably a load of old tosh, given they search for a dinosaur specific explanation for an event which affected a range of species. So far so God-like.

But my problem comes when Gould discusses the second theory, and the first of his reasons for rejecting it. Before ennumerating several (valid) logical failings of this theory (flowering plants were around 10 million years before the dinosaurs died out, how did land plants kill sea animals ? etc.) Gould states:

"It is impossible to prove, how can we know what dinosaurs could taste, or what their livers were capable of doing?" (I only have a Spanish edition of the book, so these were perhaps not Gould's exact words)

This objection has no bearing on whether or not the theory is true. There must be thousands of mysteries in the scientific realm of evolutionary biology (And I suspect physics, but that is another post) that are essentially unknowable, given that lack of soft tissue preserved through the depths of time. A great deal of modern research on long-extinct animals is essentially unfalsifiable guesswork based on the scraps of organic material which have survived, fleshed out through our increased knowledge of structural biology, eco-sytems, genetics and bio-mechanics.

But the quality and falsifiability of modern paleontology is by-the-by, many things happened in history (human and animal) that we will never be able to prove for lack of evidence. But they happened and were real, should we neglect to speculate about them? Should we reject any theory that can't be falsified?

The answer is no. Let's imagine the plants had actually killed the dinosaurs. It would still be "impossible to prove" and we still wouldn't know "what their livers were capable of doing". Of course, the circumstantial evidence would be better, there would have been a sudden Chelsea flower show coinciding with a dinosaur specific extinction, but nothing that according to Gould's statement would constitute proof. But we could infer from these two pieces of evidence that the events were connected, and I suspect we would have three competing theories of extinction; one based on poisoning, one based on climate/environmental change, and another based on new insects. Scientists would have the duty to deduct from the evidence available to them what the most rational probability was. None of these theories would be easily falsifiable, but they would be perfectly respectable science.

Which brings me back to Halbane's joke. Evolution is incredibly difficult to falsify because it simply happens. It is difficult to conceive of a situation in which it doesn't, because evolution is what life is; the inheritance and modification of characteristics from one generation to another. Where this doesn't happen there is no life. The difficulty of justifying this theory according to a Popperian model of falsifiability is not a flaw in the theory, it is a flaw in Popper's model of science.

And the twat tried to start with Marx....