Catalan news : Burning King's Photos & Bombing the Greens

by salicious + Tue Oct 02, 2007 20:03

link for Catalans & students of the language to a video interview offered today on the Catalan indepedence web platform "Vilaweb" with Armand de Fluvià, who is a heraldist & former advisor to the current King's dad. He claims the King hasn't done enough to endear himself to Catalans or Katalanders. There's not really much money in heraldry & sort of raise my eyebrows when people describe themselves as being a "heraldist". It reminds me of how Billy Connolly that old scottish royalist of infamy made poor people laugh in the years of Thatcher by recounting a chat he had with a duke. & what do you do Mr Connolly ? - I'm a comedien your grace. I make people laugh. What do you do?......... I tobaggon -
http://www.vilaweb.cat/www/noticia?p_idcmp=2573952&p_ed...neral

& on the other side of that wonderful state which is the Kastillian empire, a noted member of Opus Dei, the radio presenter with "Radio Cope" the mouthpiece of the Roman Catholic church in the state who played a key part in undermining the last peace process with ETA, Mr Federico Jiménez-Losantos has called for the abdication of the King. Sweet muscular jesus on a cross for your sins knows what or who he would like to see instead.
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/espana/Dios/salve/Rey/al...4/Tes

Meanwhile kiddes of the Austurian communist 3rd republic variety assembled with the noble flag which though "pre-constitutional" ought never occupy the same psychic space as "franco's eagle" to shout Republican slogans at the King & Queen yesterday & had their names taken down in little books by the police.

Now that wouldn't have happened before the Katalan antics with the Greenie Bomb. Which is why generally it is a good idea to take the youngsters who think such bravado works on a political level by the scruff of the neck & forcefeed them psilocybin mushrooms imported from Eire till they forget all about it. Little hint there. Help me in my work.

by o as if Mon Oct 01, 2007 21:48

No doubt there are many for whom a flag & nation is more important than the class war & enlightenment. For them a republic's name is more valuable than a republic's inclusion. We don't need to go back to the declaration of a Catalan republic within the Spanish 2nd Republic of 1931 or any other fets de maig or the Anarchist denunciation on March 14th 1937 the anniversary of the declaration of that republic made by the "friends of Durruti" that the 2nd Republic had become a bourgois entity or enter into the jaded hindsight 20/20 vision of how Catalan first socialist second and Socialist first Catalan second contributed to Franco's victory in what was the first chapter of Europe's 2nd continental war which became a world war & was the first chapter of our reality today. Right now we can see that anarchists, socialists, republicans, anti-systemists, anti-capitalists, black blocks & so on - are not united in their wishlist or priorities or indentification of oppressions.

Here's the report of the bomb (which in all honesty was probably as terrible a tool of death as a pipe bomb which any kid can make) from Barcelona indymedia with comments in catalan and castillian
http://barcelona.indymedia.org/newswire/display/319046/...x.php

Here's a video of the King today who I suppose has to say something now, & has thus asked kids or youth to adhere to ''convivencia democrática, tolerancia y libertad'' which means living together in the democratic contract, tolerance and liberty. Oh well he would say that. He says the constitutional monarchy has seen the longest period of stability and prosperity in Spain. http://www.elpais.com/videos/espana/Rey/destaca/Monarqu.../Ves/

He would say that.
But It's true as well.

The king is not saying what he says because his institution faces a threat. The judges do what they do, because they have notions of our society which we in truth find oppressive and intolerant. The journalist who photographed the incident in Girona 13/ix/07 Jordi Ribot, of the agency Click Art Foto, has been ordered to surrender his CD of images of the 50 photocopied pictures which were burnt. It is my exercise of liberty of expression to challenge the justice of such an order. It follows the case taken against a satirical magazine "El Jueves" for a front cover which showed the prince & heir in the doggy position with his wife with a caption of "with ZP's grant to parents we'll feel like we're working now". The magazine was impounded on court order but the image spread through the internet and broadsheets to the world. The "fiscal" or DPP seem ever more to reflect an attitude to society which is sentimental for the control & censorship of what youth believe was the daily reality of Franco-ism. But youth don't remember Franco-ism & I defy many of them to tell me what it really was like from day to day. For less than 1% of the readership of this website or of the Irish Times would be able to tell me without searching - what day RTE was switched off along with the phones in Ireland. By that I mean - youth is distanced and divorced from the reality of the past, and as such is alienated from the freedoms of today.

Oh but I am as foreign as the Bourbon King in this land. I may holiday in the katalan hills & speak their language & teach their kiddies english & music & share most of their problems adjusting to 21st century globalised economics, precarity without enjoying the advantages which natives of any land often forget they have - but I too am an alien. If the 3rd republic of which I & manyy peers dream of someday happens, it will not begin with the antics of many of the younger independence heads now, whose avowed patriotic passions all to often hide xenophobia & intolerance of migrants by shifting blame for the woes we all have onto Madrid or a Bourbon crown. I fear I would have no place in such an independent Catalonia & would rather pack up my bag of tricks & leave in the face of injustice & wrongs worse than those which saw me leave the anglo-saxon world & exile myself by choice from the UK, USA & dare I say it in the knowledge of how ridiculous it may seem - the Eire state in the final year of the 20th century.

At end this is a mountain made out of a mole hill because the bomb didn't go off.
A Katalan coat dragged on the ground which is as sordid as any Spanish bullfighter's cape.

They protest a Green collaboration with capitalism, & betrayal of socialism - don't we all?
They protest a Catalan national police who in the name of nationalist ambition were recruited from their neighbours houses - is that the oppression of Madrid?

& thus, though I know it plays into the hand of the liberal - capitalist - post-fascist press to say it, I also believe it needs be said for this youthful ignorance born of historical distance & social divorce is seen throughout Europe & is called what it is - Fascism. There it is written -

Katalan Fascism lurks in the hills.