I shot the mosso

Etymology of Poof (in the gay way).

2009-01-04T07:21:00.000-08:00

Hello Again loyal follower(s). Time for a bit of MacAlaister-style underworld etymology:

A Libyan friend recently told me about a trip to Malta he took a few years ago, here is his story verbatem (translation from the Italian, B.N Sue, Arabic words not translated, in Italics):

"Yeah, Maltese is very similar to Libi. One time I was there with my friend on holidays, and we were walking round and this guy kept following us, an old guy with a hat and smart clothes. So my friend says to me 'Why is that guy following us, is he a cop?'. So I say back to him, 'Don't worry, hada bufta.' Meaning he's homosexual, and the old guy smiles and goes 'Yes, yes, yes, ana bufta!'"

When I heard this I was immediately struck by the similarity to the English word "Poof" (offensive "gay"), and specifically it's variant "poofter", so I decided to look for the etymology of the English word. According to my Collins dictionary, and various on-line sources, the word derives from the French "pouffe" meaning, not illogically "puff", possibly via theatrical slang for a young actor (nowt like stereotypes is there?). The derivative "poofter" was first noted in 1911, in an Australian context.

How proud I was of my countrymen, sowing our deviant oats throughout the mediterranean, and all the way to Australia, buggering our way into the linguistic records of 3 continents. "Bufta" had entered (oo-er!) Maltese and Arabic through brave efforts of Her Majesty's sea-queens. The change in the first letter was easy to explain, Arabic has no "p", so Arabic speakers hear it as "b".

However, something didn't quite ring true. In my youth I was a big fan of Irvine Welsh, particularly his Edinburgh-smack-epic; Trainspotting. One of the most frequently used epithets in that insult-laden tome is "bufty" or its alliterative child "bufty-boy"... meaning, well, "bufta". Why should Scots have the word starting with a "b" if the original French was "p"? Perhaps I had got the direction of the borrowing the wrong way round.

Maybe English wasn't the active partner, but the passive.

I'm now certain that bufta was an Eastern Mediterranean Lingua Franca term, which could have originated from something like "puta" (Vulgar Latin "whore") or Levantine Arabic bufta ("flimsy", "shoddy"). From there it was transported to Britain through the Polari pipe-line (oo-err), where rhotic scots heard it as "bufty", but non-rhotic Cockneys heard the final vowel as schwa you find in "teacher".

So why did we English change the "b" to a "p"? Perhaps the influence of the theatrical slang word "puff", which merged into the new proto-polari "bufter" to form "poofter".

Just goes to show, there's nowt so queer as etymology.

Here's what I think h

Me voy......

2008-07-31T05:28:00.000-07:00

It's all going to go very quiet here, I'm on the way to my second patria "The United Bolivarian States Of Latin America" (my first, of course, is President Ansar's Republic of Spain, I find the imaginary countries so much less disappointing).

Normal service will be resumed after Ramadan, but in the meantime I can be contacted on ishotthemosso@gmail.com.

All the best everyone, and try not to break Je Joue Au Babyfoot while I'm away.

Free-market millenarians: Internet Sebastianists who want to sleep with their sisters

2008-07-23T14:41:00.000-07:00

One of my favourite books of all time is Mario Vargas Llosa’s Brazilian epic, The War of The End of The World. It is a fictionalised version of the true story of the ill-fated Sebastianist uprising of the early 20th century: a popular rebellion in the unforgiving deserts of the Brazilian north led by an unordained priest calling himself “O Conselheiro”, the messenger.

The uprising (about which Eric Hobsbawm, amongst others has written) was a response to an economic crisis caused by a 30 year drought combined with the transition from a slave economy to a wage earning system. What was interesting about this crisis was that, unlike the revolutionaries who would shortly overthrow (then reestablish) tyranny in Mexico and Russia, the peasants and bandits of the Brazilian Sertao believed that the Kingdom of God was imminent and that, upon its arrival, their dead would be restored to life. Even more bizarrely, they believed that the 16th century regent of Portugal Dom Sebastiao, MIA in Morocco since 1598, would return to lead them to victory (this belief had fascinating roots; the songs of medieval Portuguese troubadours, transplanted to the Brazilian outback, much like the similarly incongruous elf-ridden Anglos-Scots ballads of the Ozarks and the Appalachians).

O Conselheiro and his followers were extreme cases, but all revolutionary movements have a millenarian element, they can’t be divided (as Hobsbawm would wish) into perfectly rational Bourgeois and Proletarian revolutions, and crazy millenarian peasant revolts. The blind faith in “the revolution” as the only instrument of change often creates the belief that it will, in and of itself, solve everybody’s problems; but up till the dawn of the internet, few revolutionary movements explicitly based their ideology on anything as nebulous and supernatural as “The Kingdom of God”.

We now face worthy successors to the pre-modern irrationalism of the Sebastianists, that strange brand of anarcho-capitalist which, in the US, currently sullies the good name of libertarianism. This philosophy rests on the seemingly self-evident concept that everybody has a right to do whatever they want as long as it doesn’t involve using violence in anything other than a defensive capacity (what this gang of IT nerd wrong-cocks call “initiation of force”). From this standpoint they argue that any restriction on the use of one’s property amounts to an initiation of force: therefore no taxation, environmental protection laws, labour rights, socialised policing or healthcare, and in some cases, government itself, can be morally defensible.

Here’s the sting; this initiation of force always relates to damage to property (“libertarians” kindly include our bodies amongst our chattels, so even violent crime is crime against property), but not to land (in the economic sense, all natural resources) . No other crimes are recognised. So nobody can prevent the hunting to extinction of any animal, nobody can prevent the poisoning of the air, or, should a company wish to do so, the production of unsafe merchandise, nobody can stop the deforestation of Amazonia, no individual action which is harmful to the collective can be prevented.

Now, perhaps one or two of you can see where the flaws in this plan are(Aside from the obvious moral problem that the only people who get a say in the use the Earth’s resources are put to would be the rich, and that a lack of environmental laws would mean that companies could make a bigger profit by deciding to poison people). But you’d be wrong, “libertarians” assure us that the market will take care of everything.

Q: Won’t people starve? A:No, the market will provide everybody with jobs, there’ll be no tax!
Q:What about people who can’t work? A:Charities will look after them, there’ll be no tax!
Q:Won’t people kill each other for food? A: No, silly! That would be an initiation of force. And there’ll be plenty of money for food, because of the no tax!
Q:Won’t the entire environment be degraded and the Earth turned into a shit tip? A:Why would a good businessman do that? If he owns the land he will manage it better than the state, because it’s his. And there’ll be no tax!
Q:What about the rainforests of Borneo which are being burnt down by their owners to produce palm oil? And the Buffalo hunters who exterminated their own livelihoods, and the Spanish fishermen, and tiger hunters...? A: This wasn’t capitalism!!!!! There was tax! When we have capitalism, there’ll be no tax!!!!
Q: What about all the things the state provides me with now, how much will that cost me when there is no state? A: Market, market, gibber, no tax, Von Mises, Austria, gibber, Friedman was a Socialist, men with guns, gibber, market, no tax, gibber.

These incest-legalising social misfits have a messianically unshakeable faith in the market, and an absolute hatred of any form of collective action. Which is what makes their similarity to raging Trotskyites so amusing: they even have the same slogans when the obvious flaws in their arguments are pointed out:

“That’s not real communism/capitalism (delete as appropriate), real communism/capitalism’s never been tried.”
“In a socialist/free market system, that problem wouldn’t exist”

Well I too would like to dust off a cold war standard for our demented “libertarian” friends, and also suggest a holiday destination so they can see their ideas in action (perhaps in the style of the anglo-soviet friendship tours of old):

“Oy, Atlas Shrugged! If you like anarcho-capitalism so much, why don’t you fuck off to Somalia?”

Detingut per pegar a la seva companya i retenir-la contra la seva voluntat a Lleida

2008-07-14T11:31:00.000-07:00

(From Avui)

Well done to the Guardia Urbana.

I can imagine nothing worse than being forced to stay in Lerida against my will. Except being forced to stay in Reus....

(apologies to anybody who doesn't think domestic violence is a laughing matter)

Je joue au babyfoot dukla Prague FC

2008-07-13T13:05:00.000-07:00

Is my suggestion for an open collaborative blog.

Any interested parties please answer here (including ANYBODY who has posted previously...)

Then e-mail ishotthemosso@gmail.com, and I will invite you to join.

Ishotthemosso will of course continue.

Robert Westall: Best British short story writer since the war?

2008-07-12T01:51:00.000-07:00

This year marks the 15th anniversary of Robert Westall's death. There should be articles and retrospectives and solemn acts of rememberance for this great Tyneside writer, but Westall made several serious mistakes that prevented this from happening. Indeed, if a British writer should ever want to be shamefully under-rated, they could do no better than to follow the 4 point Westall plan:

1. Write short stories. Lots of brilliant short stories. Nobody in the London media establishment values short stories unless they are written by blind Argentinians and have mirrors in them.

2. Don't live in London. Don't write about London. Don't mention London. ("Unless you write about the city we all live in, your work will seem so terribly parrochial darling!")

3. Specialise in not just one, but two chronically unfashionable genres; ghost stories and sci-fi.

4. Allow your work to be marketed as books for teenagers.

Number 4 was the factor that really stitched Westall up. People who would wank themselves blind over MR James' Ghost Stories would never consider Westall's work worthy of a second look because it was "for kids". This despite the fact that Westall dealt with themes of loss, sex, death, growing old, poverty and the whole twentieth century history of Britain.

When he is mentioned at all today, it is usually in reference to his war novels The Machine Gunners and Fathom Five. This was largely because they fit with the more fashionable kitchen-sink aesthetic of "regional" fiction, which was popular with the literati in the 70's and 80's, but to my mind it is not his best work.

His collections of short stories are spectacularly good (Rachel and The Angel, The Haunting of Chas MacGill), scary thoughtful and tightly written gems. I also loved his supernatural novels, particularly "The Scarecrows". They are top draw horror and sci-fi, much better than what most of his for-adults counterparts were knocking out at the time.

One story of his has stuck in my mind over the 17 years since I first read it.

It is classic McGuffin story, about a gang of bikers in their late teens who go up to reputedly haunted abbey. Obviously the reader expects the apparition of a spectral nun, but nothing of the sort happens and the lads just lark about, in a beautifully observed scene with one of the best illustrations of the complex relationship between a group of male friends I've ever seen in print.

The most charismatic of the group, Geronimo drives off separately, then the rest go home. The narrator, one of the lads, then describes how he finds out Geronimo was killed in a crash, and tells how his funeral procession was escorted by hundreds of bikers. At the end of the tale we realise it's a few years later, and the narrator explains he is getting married next year and will trade his bike for a family car. He talks about how every day he is getting further from Geronimo, and closer to the boring cardigan-wearing middle-aged men they used to laugh at. But before he sells, he will go for one last ride, sure that Geronimo will be with him, riding just outside his peripheral vision.

It is one of the most beautiful laments for the loss of a friend, and the loss of youth, that I have ever read, and it still haunts me today.

Kids' books my arse.

Economics: Not science, bollocks.

2008-07-09T09:55:00.000-07:00

Here is an excellent article by Tory-boy Simon Jenkins, talking about my favourite people, the economists.

In a previous post I outlined my take on why the world economy is up shit creek without a paddle. Basically my thesis is that credit got out of control, and the financial markets of the post-industrial world started to believe that housing could increase in value forever and therefore the only logical destination for investment was property and its derivatives.

I realised the economy was fucked around 2003, the year when everybody I knew seemed to be buying a house, despite only earning the same as me. Admittedly I was spending a lot on drugs, but not enough to make up the difference between my one-bedroom rent and the price of the mortgage on a scabby terraced house in Beeston. AND I was saving on food...

So if a drug addled loner in a grim West Yorkshire bedsit could work it out, why were so many of the top public and private sector economic analyists completely unaware that the economy was heading towards the worst recession since the 30s?

Because economists know fuck all. Economics depends on the mathematical analysis of a complex system, a system which is completely resistant to correct modeling due to the near infinite number of variables that need to be taken into consideration to get a true picture.

Of course that doesn't stop economists from making up mathematical models to predict and explain what's happening, but it does mean they are always wrong.

But the true hubris of the economist is that they believe that they can separate economic activity from all other systems, as if it were in some way "pure mathematics", rather than a symbiote of politics. To decide economic policy one must first decide what goals one finds desirable, and that is first and foremost a political decision.

Not even the never-ending quest for "growth", the foundation of economic policy-making, is a neutral aim. Can the environment sustain constant growth in economic output? Is perceived growth real, or does it disguise costs (environmental or social) that far outweigh its benefits? The professors of economics would either ignore these issues, or present them as dry methodological questions, when theyshould be the subject of intense public and politcal debate.

BLOGHUNT: Mission Accomplished

2008-07-08T12:19:00.000-07:00

(From avui)

President B. Namedsue of The United States of Shothemosso today declared victory in his War agianst Manipulacio TV3. The president made the announcement in a surprise visit to the crew of the SS. YoudorealiseChina'spayingforallthis, moored 2km off Pals de La Frontera (PPCC).

"Mission Accomplished" shouted the unelected leader of the worlds most difficult to follow blogging community, "We have arbitrarily chosen a date for this conflict to finish, and as I'm not dead, we can assume we are victorious."

Mr Namedsue's critics were quick to point out that MTV3's leader, the logically handicapped Truthdetector, was still in hiding somewhere in the .cat domain, but sources close to the president answered that, given the master criminal is now owned by Tom Clarke of thebadrash.com, he no longer represents a threat to democracy.

Sadly neglected tracks, No. 3. You're in a bad way, St. Etienne.

2008-07-03T12:36:00.000-07:00

1993 was a personal musical wilderness. Don't get me wrong, there were some great bands about; Pulp were starting to sound amazing with their tales of lonely council estate sexuality, Nirvana still smelled like teen spirit, Blur were turning into something that promised more than it would ever deliver, and the Pixies (perhaps the greatest band ever) were splitting up at the height of their powers. But if you were a 14 year old boy from Wakefield, short of the occasional Nirvana track on Top of The Pops you never heard any of it.

So anything different was like water to a man dying of thirst, and this track was something different.

The jangly 60's keyboards really hook you into the beautifully sung intelligent lyrics, and it was these vocals that blew me away. The incredibly glamourous razor-blade-in-honey-voiced Sarah Cracknell sings about waltzing into the life some ridiculously lucky mug and sorting out his grim, incompetent bachelor existence. You can see why a fourteen year old lad's head might get turned by that concept...

But more than this, it was the very British context of the song that drew me in. It refers to British popular culture (Bruce Forsyth, The Generation Game) and the new fashions of what would become Britpop in an unashamed way. At a time when everybody I knew who liked indie music was trying to be Kurt Cobain, this was a radical departure. It made it ok to be British, cool even.

Because if this, I will always associate a personal epiphany with "You're in a bad way": The revelation that there was a world out there where people were doing really exciting things, and even people from Wakey could be part of it.

BLOGHUNT: Manipulaciò TV3, examples of its stupidity: JUN 08

2008-07-02T23:02:00.005-07:00

25 JULY: MTV3 complains about comment in the Vila People radio show. The presenters are critical of the invasion of Grenada, claiming that it in no way threatened US security. They then state that the US has a habit of invading countries the moment it has a problem. TD says that the Grenada invasion threw out Cuban troops out of the island and that the locals celebrate the invasion with a local thanksgiving.
ANALYSIS: TD's view is that the commentators didn't mention what he sees as the positive aspects of the inasion. However, nothing the "manipulators" said is untrue; Grenada was no threat to the US and that the US is invasion-happy. Certainly no other country as frequently attacks weaker countries. His "this is the truth" statement is particularly ironic, as he completely misses out the fact that that the US invasion followed the ousting of immensely popular socialist prime-minister Maurice Bishop, who had invited the Cubans to the island. As always, the truth is much more complex than Truthdetector's cut and paste from conservapedia.
VERDICT: COMMENT NOT BIAS

19 July: MTV3 complains that TV3 says "Obama wanted to surround himself with millitary and diplomatic experts to counteract Republican attacks about his ALLEGED inexperience in the matters of foreign policy and counter-terrorism." Truthdetector feels that this is bias as the inexperience is proven.
ANALYSIS: I happen to agree that Obama has little hands on experience in these matters (though his knowledge is more extensive than that of McCain), but the job of reporters is not to give credence to one side or the other, but report what they say.
VERDICT: COMPLAINING ABOUT LACK OF BIAS

Anonymous Comments Enabled

2008-07-02T23:01:00.000-07:00

Google's reign of terror is over, all shall be free to post.

Manipulacio TV3, examples of its stupidity Jun 08

2008-07-01T11:27:00.000-07:00

June 29: Truthdetector complains that Hizbullah is described in El Periodico and on TV3 as a Militia. He wants them to be called terrorists.
Analysis: One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist, is another man's policeman, is another man's soldier. It is entirely possible to describe almost any individual, group or state commiting violence as "terrorist". It is an emotional word which attempts to strip violence from its context. If we are going to to use the T word for political violence outside of warfare, we should use it in a neutral way. Let's use it to describe General Pinochet's repression of the Chilean left, the Italian police's actions in Genoa, the ANC's attacks on power lines, Israel's kidnap of nazi scum in South America; all these were acts of violence commited outsider the legitimate procedures of the state. Terrorist is not a neutral term, it should not be used in news items because it immediately takes the side of those who are fighting against the terrorists, it is a partisan statement.
ANALYSIS: Truthdetector is complaining about a LACK of bias.

Manipulacio TV3, examples of its stupidity Jul08

2008-07-01T10:50:00.000-07:00

It is the "Glorious" 1st of July; in England chinless aristocrats are taking to the hills for the annual Royal Deer Shoot; in Sicily smiling Mafia "protected" fishermen are clubbing tuna to death in the grotesquely picturesque "Mattanza"; while in Japan, IWC certified techno-monks are adjusting the skewer settings on their cyborg killing machines in time for the traditional shinto ceremony of the aquatic robot panda hunt.

And of course, here on ishotthemosso we begin the BLOGHUNT. You may or may not know that our quarry is the rancid Manipulaciò TV3, a blog pointing out supposed instances of bias in the Catalan media. The irony is of course, that NONE of Truthdetector's examples are actually bias, as you will see below.....

july 01: MTV3 complains that TV3 has broadcast a programme entitled "Islamic extremism, the United States' fault?". Truthdetector accuses TV3 of disguising an opinion of a question, and then disagrees with some opinions expressed by people who self define as islamists on the programme.
Analysis: I also disagree with the opinions expressed by the people interviewed on the programme, but if you want to find out why many muslims hate the US, as was the point of the programme, you have to ask them. He confuses allowing an interviewee to express an opinion with an endorsement of that opinion, it is a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of the media. The question "why do many people hate America?" is important, and needs asking, indeed many conservatives have asked the same question.
Verdict: NOT BIASED

BLOGHUNT: Manipulació TV3.

2008-06-30T11:21:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-25T03:04:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-24T04:00:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-06-22T04:14:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-06-21T02:50:00.000-07:00

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?

2008-06-20T10:41:00.000-07:00

("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

2008-06-20T02:36:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-17T01:40:00.000-07:00

(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

2008-06-16T16:04:00.000-07:00

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

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

Forthcoming attractions....

2008-06-16T13:44:00.000-07:00

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?

2008-06-15T02:04:00.000-07:00

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?

2008-06-07T13:13:00.000-07:00

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

Skinhead moonstomp!

2008-06-07T11:25:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-06T13:09:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-06T01:49:00.000-07:00

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....

Chiki-Chiki is shit.

2008-05-31T07:06:00.000-07:00

After a long internet free hiatus, I return with a topic that can unite all people of goodwill.

That chiki-chiki song is shit.

Not just a little shit either, sub-Cruz-y-Raya shit. It has a complete lack of subtley, and manages to stretch 1 half-gag (reggaeton is misogynistic shite, its singers are probably inadequates) over a 3 minute song. It's poorly written half-arsed childish pap .... "lo baila Hugo Chavez, lo baila Zapatero...." Do you see what he did there? He mentioned two famous people! Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of chuckle.

That leads seemlessly onto a topic I genuinely don't know the answer to: Why is there no tradition of genuinely funny Spanish comedy?

Spain has had many good "monologuistas", basically old-school gag-merchants in the Bob Monkshouse mold, the finest of these being the genius Eugenio , who is also a fine adverisement for the natural, creative, code-switching and borrowing between Iberian dialects that the Generalitat has promised to outlaw as part of its anti-cultural genocide drive. However, their material is basically the kind of joke anyone can tell, not the elaborate linked story-telling that characterises British, Australasian and American comedy.

Why has this sophisticated form of humour never become generalised in Spain? The reason must be Spain specific, as Portuguese comedy is much more sophisticated (the incredibly funny Gato Fedorento for example) and the often-political comedy of Italy is subtle and inteligent (I humbly offer you this gem, by way of example)

What have tigers and the Iberian "languages" got in common?

2008-05-18T15:54:00.000-07:00

The tiger vies with the panda for the "world's favourite endangered animal" job. It is mercilessly hunted throughout its range and has seen its numbers decline to 2000 from a population of around 200,000 in 1900.

The animal's future depends largely on 2 conservation programmes: the preservation and protection from farmers and poachers of what remains of its natural habitat, and the captive breeding of a population for future (lets be optimistic, 100 years?) reintroduction to the parts of its range from which it has been extirpated.

Science divides the tiger into 5 surviving sub-species; The Bengal, The Amur (often called Siberian), the Indo-Chinese, the near extinct South Chinese and the Sumatran. The South Chinese is the most reduced population (extinct in the wild, with 20 or so chronically inbred examples in zoos), but if you look at the map below you will be able to see the remarkable contraction of all the sub-species.

(range in 1900, yellow. range in 1990, green)

But you may have also noticed that, a mere 110 years ago, the ranges of the first 4 "sub-species" were continuous; the mainland tiger “sub-species” could walk into each others’ territories unimpeded and, crucially, mate with each other. We can only assume they did, as the niche and ecology of all the sub-species is the same; kill anything smaller than an elephant then eat it. So why are they classified as different sub-species? Well, they have certain morphological differences, cold climate tigers in Russia and China are bigger than warm climate ones in Indo-China and South China, with Indian populations (who lived in hot lowlands and cooler highlands) as an intermediate. Also tropical forest tigers tend to be darker in colour. But it is fair to assume that tiger size and colour previously existed as a cline from hot to cold areas, given there is no evidence whatsoever of the existence of discrete populations, prior to separation by human activity.

It would seem logical to describe all mainland Asian tigers as just one sub-species, with the island species as separate. However, all captive breeding programmes reject "sub-specific hybrid" animals as breeding stock despite the fact that no geographical barrier had ever prevented gene-flow between these "sub-species" prior to the 20th century.

Artificial sub-specific barriers are one of the unfortunate facts of zoology, and if we were up to our necks in tigers this would be of little importance, but the "South China Tiger" now has a population so low that the captive breeding programme is almost certain to fail. New genes are desperately needed, and could be judiciously added by mating "South China-like" individuals of other "sub-species".

This won't happen because current scientific orthodoxy says, without a great deal of evidence, that there are 4 discrete sub-species of mainland tiger. Supporters of this 4 sub-species model point out that if one does a statistical analysis of the genes of any given animal, and assumes 4 poles, animals of the same “subspecies” cluster together into groups around one of these poles.

Talk about stating the bleeding obvious. Of course tigers from the same area will be more closely related than tigers from other areas, but the fact we are dealing with a fragmented population means that we are unable to get a true impression of the former genetic continuity. If one had done an analysis of people from Lewis, Milan, Leicester and Caen in 1900, one would have found results clustered in exactly the same way, but in no-way could one argue for 4 different subspecies on this evidence. Frighteningly, all tiger conservation programmes are based on this erroneous logic.

Due to humanity's pseudo-autistic desire to classify everything into artificial categories, the South China tigers (NOT "The South China Tiger") will probably be allowed to degenerate through inbreeding to a point where they would be unfit to return into the wild, or, more-likely, succumb to some combination of disease and congenital disorder. In the name of genetic purity, they will be inbred out of existence and their diversity expunged from the tiger gene-pool.

The whole sorry mess reminds me of the linguistic situation in the Iberian peninsular. A patchwork of interrelated Latin dialects once shaded into each other, before governments decided to split them into first three, then five, and now umpteen different “languages”. The intermediate forms are illegitamised or, ridiculously, given the status of languages (like the near-identical Asturian and Leonese) and the complex history of linguistic interchange amongst the Iberian sprachbund is denied.

This leads to ridiculous situations like a so-called philologist (Catalan anti-christ, Jordi Bilbeny) alleging that the Quixote was written in Catalan, as it uses common Iberian features no-longer found in Spanish. It also leads to impassioned debates as to whether the dialect spoken in the Pyrenees, just west of the Aragonese Franja, is Catalan or Aragonese (it’s neither, it’s just itself).

My least favourite example of this is the zealous quest for linguistic purity in the minor languages, as evidenced by the constant stream of “aixo no es catala” letters in Avui every time someone departs from the made up (in 1963) rules of the language. Watching a set of grammatical rules invented within living memory are defended as if they were holy writ is funny at first, but the rage sets in soon enough.

The health of a language, like that a species, depends on diversity, and its capacity to react to environmental change. Linguistically that means accepting evolution (even that of the lightening fast “punctuated equilibrium” type) and rejecting artificial barriers that restrict human creativity. For the tiger it means coming out of the 19th century and recognising that it is being bred for survival, not for Best In Show.

4f - Catalan Justice

2008-05-08T13:30:00.000-07:00

Barcelona, for all its cosmopolitan pretensions, is in many respects nothing more than a middle-sized provincial city, a Mediterranean Bristol. Of course it’s bigger than Bristol, Newcastle or even Leeds, but it suffers from the same narrow parochial mindsets and chippy inferiority complexes. Despite its huge population, you don’t have to live there long before you realise that all the people who matter, the police, the judges the politicians and the press, all go to the same calçotada. The Catalan elite all know each other, and, in the subsidy rich “autonomous” culture, they all eat from the same trough. It is in nobody’s interest to rock the boat.

Which is why you will probably have read very little in the mainstream press about the arrest, torture, 2-year imprisonment and sham trial of 3 men who were brought in to the Nou de la Rambla police station on the night of the 4th of February 2006. What you have read will have been heavily seasoned with reassuring key words like “squatter”, “anti-system”, “anarchist” and, a lovely one this, “of South American origin”. These words send very important signals to the Spanish reader; the arrested men were dirty, drug-taking criminals, they were certainly extremists and probably involved in violent activities, they stole Property with a capital P (“imagina’t! I si venen per el nostre pis?”*), and above all they were foreigners, not real people like us or our children.

The incident for which Juan, Rodrigo and Alex were imprisoned occurred in St Pere Mes Baix street, outside a squat where a party was taking place. Police arrived to move on people who were outside the squat, charging violently against the crowd. The accounts of those in the street that night and of people who lived in the neighbouring flats agree that the police used excessive violence against the partygoers. A good indication of the level of this violence can be found in the fact that Mossos were later dispatched to local casualty departments to pick up anyone “of a squatter aesthetic” reporting severe cuts and bruises or broken bones. They actually arrested two local men who had been involved in cycle accidents, later releasing them without charge. One wonders what offense was written the arrest sheet, “limping under the influence of a Che Guevara t-shirt” perhaps.

Tragically, during the police’s first charge, an officer was struck on the head by a heavy object and left in a coma from which he is unlikely to awake. This crime must clearly be punished, and the individual responsible should face time in prison (as should any policeman striking a defenceless civilian), but there is no reliable evidence indicating that Rodrigo, Juan and Alex had any connection to the policeman’s injuries.

The testimony of police officers present that night is farcical. They sustain that, whilst the police were rampaging through the fleeing crowd, swinging their batons, the three accused climbed a two and half metre fence, picked up stones, climbed back and threw one of them with sufficient force to put a man in a coma, pausing only to establish collective responsibility and mens rea by shouting “A por los maderos!” (a very Spanish expression meaning “let’s get the coppers”). The individual accused of saying this is Argentinean, making the story about as likely as an man from south L.A. crying “Let’s ‘av a go at those ruddy rozzers chaps!” before rushing into the fray. The stone that police allege caused the damage was not retained, a curious oversight from trained police officers, even in extremis.

Early reports from, amongst others, Joan Clos (then mayor of Barcelona) indicated that the wounded officer had been injured by a plant pot dropped from the squat above, an object which would clearly have enough weight and velocity to cause the severe injuries he suffered. The doctor who attended the injured man in the street mentioned seeing a broken plant pot nearby, however no forensic evidence was recovered from the street, and the morning of the incident a cleaning crew washed away any possibility that it could be. Why was this permitted? Perhaps the police had already decided that catching the real culprits was in nobody’s interests.

The accused were held incommunicado for 2 days, during which time they were beaten by Mossos d’Esquadra. The police refused to advise their relatives of their whereabouts, implausibly denying any knowledge of which police station they were being held in. They were then remanded in custody, where they were to remain for two years.

The examples of bias shown by the judge are too numerous to go into here, but their sum was the elimination of all evidence except for the conflicting testimonies of the accused and the police. No statements from residents on the street were considered, and none of those present at the party or in the street came forward to give evidence, as they had been warned by the police that admitting their presence would lead to charges of “atentado a la autoridad”, the Spanish catch-all charge for pissing off a copper. Given this “offence” carries a custodial sentence their reluctance is understandable.

The only evidence accepted in their trial were their statements, the statements of arresting officers, and medical reports as to the extent, but not the cause of the officer’s injuries. Clearly, the case would never have arrived in court in most countries, the police being obliged to provide a tad more evidence than “it was him what done it!”. Despite this, the judge found the three guilty of the lesser charges against them, but innocent of the more serious one. It is difficult to see how the judge decided Officers’ testimony was true in part, not in full, when she had no evidence whatsoever to work with. Coincidentally, she sentenced the men to more or less the exact period of imprisonment that they had already served, removing both the necessity of paying compensation for wrongful detention and the motivation for an expensive appeal to a higher, less biased court.

The judge in this case must have known full well that there was nowhere near enough evidence to convict, and that it was more than likely that the men before her were innocent of the specific charges against them. But they represented a group that was beyond the pale of Barcelonan society, and a decent person had been terribly injured, so of course the scum were going to pay for it.

As I said in a previous post, Spanish culture does not recognise right/wrong and true/false as binary categories, and Catalonia is the most collectivist region of a collectivist nation , where communal experience is prized over individual . In the judge’s verdict these two factors combine; the guilt of the squatter “collective” was clear, and therefore Juan, Rodrigo and Alex were guilty even though they hadn’t committed the crime. The aggressor was a squatter, they were squatters, therefore they were morally culpable (to the tune of two years and a couple of torture sessions in Nou de la Rambla).

Either that or it was just a disgraceful stitch up by a corrupt judge and a legal system still stuck in the Franco era.

* Just imagine! What if they came for our flat?

Cool birds of Libya

2008-05-02T03:01:00.001-07:00

One of the ace things about living in a new city is seeing the new varieties of birds that make up the common or garden fauna of the place. My particular favourites, up to coming to Tripoli, were the feral green Argentinian Parrots of Barcelona, and the urban hummingbirds of La Paz (called "picaflores" by the Paceños, rather than "colibríes" as in the rest of sudakalandia).

The avian fauna of Tripoli is best described as impoverished but charismatic. It is an urban environment which is rapidly expanding into farmland, thus creating interesting new niches, but reducing the diversity of species.

The most common birds here, as in the UK, are house sparrows, though they seem a little more gracile than the British variety. Present in almost every city, the second most common bird is the feral Rock Dove, or Fucking Pigeon. The most interesting thing about Libyan pigeons is the number of escaped individuals from fancy breeds that are integrated into the population. In the abscence of alcohol and casual sex, free at the point of delivery, pigeon-breeding is a popular passtime amongst Libyan men.

Now we come to the cool stuff: When I first arrived here I noticed that, alongside the pigeons I was familiar with, there were smaller skinner purply-maroon pigeons, who were much shyer of people, and much more beautiful, than their more well-known columbiform cousins. I immediately baptised them "palomas de nivel" ("classy pigeons") and became infuriated when my wife was consitently unable to distinguish them from their scruffy relatives. Having looked on the internet, I am 99% certain that they are actually Laughing Doves.

(laughing dove from wikipedia)

The Paloma de Nivel is quite common in the suburbs and is a joy to watch, but it is not the most charismatic diurnal bird in Tripoli. That would be this little fella:

(Common Hoopoe from wikipedia)

The Hoopoe, from what I can tell, is the only species in the genus Upupa, though the sub-saharan version was formerly recognised as a separate species. The wing markings of the Libyan Hoopoe are more defined than in this Indian example, typically appearing as 3-4 black and white chevrons when in flight. The photos of the hoopoes from UAE also seem to show less definition in the markings, so the effect may be a trick of the camera. The hoopoe can raise it's crest, giving the impression of curiosity, and flies in darts, folding its wings in and moving forward losing height for about a metre and a half, then beating its wings again. It always reminds of the scene in Wallace and Grommit with the sidecar-aeroplane.

These are the most common diurnal Urban birds here, though you occasionally see a couple of types of wagtails, along with migratory swallows. Also a cool Falcon I haven't been able to identify.

Howover, at night, Barn Owls are everywhere. I suspect they nest in the half finished building you find all over the place, and in the minarets of mosques. I once saw a parliament of Barn Owls round our local mosque, I counted nine individuals circling and skriking. I have no idea what theywere up to, but I watched them for an hour and a half.

They share the night with the absurdly cute Little Owls, who hunt for rats and mice in our local rubbish dump/building site/recreation ground.

Now the wrong thing's the right thing.

2008-04-26T09:22:00.000-07:00

I've just finished reading a mediocre millitary history book called "50 batallas que cambiaron el mundo". The book is by an American author called William Weir, and recounts, in episodic form, the 50 battles that Weir feels have had the greatest influence on shaping the world we live in. His discussions of millitry tactics and strategy are excellent but he suffers from a severe case of americentrism, and drops occasional clangers* which make one suspect that he is only interested in the bits of history which are apt to be turned into action films.

But the book itself is not the principle subject of this entry, rather its translation, and the surprising difference it reveals between the Anglo-Saxon and Spanish moral universes, as encoded in their linguistic structures.

Weir devotes a chapter to the ill-fated (and bloody stupid) Dublin rising of 1916, which he sees as the template for the 20th century's anti-colonial wars of liberation. ** In his brief background to the origins of the rising, he cites Winston Churchill's syphillitic father, Randolph's famous warning about Gladstone's Home Rule bill:

"Ulster will fight, and Ulster will be right."

In the translation of my edition (by one Gabriela Ventureira) the famous reactionary whore-monger's words are rendered as:

"El Ulster peleará, y el Ulster impondrá sus razones." (More or less: Ulster will fight, and Ulster will get its own way.)

This is, of course, a very poor translation of the original phrase; although in fairness to the translator, if you are looking at the sentence out of context, it is just possible to arrive at this translation. *** But why has the translator made this error?

Incredibly, the Spanish language does not have an adequate adjective to describe moral certainty which exists outside of the speakers opinion. The concepts of right and wrong as understood by English speakers, and encoded in our language, do not exist in Spanish. That is not to say that there is no way to say right or wrong in Spanish, there are in fact many, but there is no one way. For right/wrong answers we have correcto/incorrecto, for being right/or wrong about something, you can use tener razon/estar equivocado; these are perfectly adequate translations of the English expressions, though they feel a little limp when compared to them.

This perceived weakness derrives from the powerful moral connotations associated with right and wrong, and carried by the words even when they are used in less manichaean contexts. When we say that "The government's policy is wrong" we are not saying that it is merely "bad", but that there is a universal standard of judgment against which this policy has been measured and found unacceptable. Neither of the Spanish adjectives which could be used in place of wrong here fully capture this: injusto, which is roughly equivalent to unfair or injust; or mal which is closer to bad. Crucially, both of these translations can be used in comparative statements, whereas right/wrong can't be, unless as a stylistic or rhetorical device. Wrong and Right are, for the English speaker, binary categories, they are absolutes. Not so for the Spanish, where, morally-speaking, everything exists along a continuum of more or less bad/good options.

So poor Ms Ventureira must obviously have thought long and hard about how to phrase this bombastic pronouncement in the language of Torrente. In fact, I suspect that evidence of this struggle still exists, fossilised on-line. My googling skills have uncovered this intriguing thread from wordreference.com. If this was her, she started with the right idea; "El ulster luchará, y el ulster razón tendrá." and was diverted from the true path by another poster on the forum.

There's a lesson there for all of us, don't listen to people you meet on the internet, they're usually wrong.

*Vasco da Gama most certainly didn't inspire Columbus's voyage of discovery, being as his famous voyage happened 7 years after that of Columbus. The 11th century Scandinavian world was not backwards, whatever that might mean in a historical context.

** A mark of how frustrating this book is. The Easter Rising was the template of how not to resist a powerful modern millitary machine occupying your country. Michael Collins learned this lesson very quickly and immediately set up the first succesful anti-colonial insurgency by doing everything the Easter rebels didn't.

***By assuming that the first "will" is a future prediction/fact whereas the second is a declaration of immovability like "I've warned him about gatecrashers, but he will have his party on Saturday night."

God for Montse, Catalunya and Saint George!

2008-04-22T11:23:00.000-07:00

As a voluntary exile, I often find myself yearning for the communal experiences of the rain soaked island of my birth . The pub bonfire, the New Year's Eve piss up, the 3 and a half centimetres of snow that make everybody act like it's the fucking blitz.... you know the type of thing.

What I love about these moments is the collective decision that reserve and individualism, the defining characteristic of the English, are temporarily suspended and everyone is allowed to be friendly and helpful to people they don't know without having to justify themselves. One of things that make me quietly happy that my origins lie in that abandoned isle, is that tomorrow, St George's day, will not be one of those moments. On the whole, England is completely indifferent to its national day, most people remaining resolutely unaware that it is St George's day unless they're reminded by the newspaper. This contrasts quite starkly with the reception the day receives in Catalonia.

Catalans love St George (in Catalan "Jordi")'s day, with a passion which is incredibly difficult to understand for outsiders. It is true that the festival is something of a mish-mash; it is a day celebrating Catalonia's national identity, the day of lovers, and a celebration of reading (or more accurately, of buying) books. The festivities manage to be simultaneously low-key in form and wildly over the top in scale. Literally millions of Catalans descend upon the centre of Barcelona to shuffle round slowly bumping into each other, looking at kilometre after kilometre of trestle tables selling identical books and identical roses. The streets are packed, uncomfortable and impossible to traverse. A book or rose is bought for one's significant other, in a somewhat sinister mingling of sex and nationalism, and then everybody packs into a Dr Zhivagoesque metro carriage for an unpleasant journey back to Rubi, Pedralbes, Montgat or Hospitalet.

And everybody swears blind that it is their favourite holiday of the year. Not faeces dripping christmas, or firey hedonistic Sant Joan (a festival I find genuinely frightening) or the joyful musical Merced. Booky-rosey-packed out-boring Sant Jordi. This recently invented farce actually makes people happy. Go figure.

The Spanish have a strong desire for collective experience, experience that unites a divided nation, you can't shoot a town councilor without starting 500 protest marches across the nation. Why does one need to march against something as evil as bomb on a train? Any reasonable person knows it is an outrage, the only logical response is to tut, grit your teeth and pretend nothing has happened.

Perhaps St Jordis's day is an extension of this phenomenon: A way for Catalans to all be in the same place all feeling the same way, all doing the same thing. Even if what they are doing is fulfilling a tradition invented primarily by florists, booksellers and 20th century folklorists.

This rant reminds me of the last time I felt proud to be English. Two years ago I was waiting for a UK bound plane in Malpensa airport. The queue for the check-in desk snaked all the way round the departures hall, as instead of forming 2 queues for the 2 available desks, my compatriots had formed a single line to ensure nobody had an unfair advantage. Everybody was smiling, the queue was exactly as it should be, we had decided to do things properly and were thus enobled.

2008-04-21T11:32:00.000-07:00