These two brief oral essays by Amy Tan are charming and well-aimed. The first, about what her closet suggests about her disordered consciousness, is especially funny, and (I think) will be recognizable to you as it was to me: We all keep disordered closets in our minds.
Two Essays | Narrative Magazine
Her remarks on her second topic, "Serendipity"reminded me of unexpected discoveries in my recent work, set in and around Constantinople in 1402 and the world-changing battle at Ankara (Timur, or "Tamerlane," defeated the Ottoman sultan, incidentally saving Constantinople from the Ottoman siege).
At the beginning, I knew I had to bring together the fiercest of Ottoman warriors with the gentlest of Byzantine Christian princesses, who would have to be a daughter of Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos. But she would have to be nubile in 1402 and Manuel didn't marry until 1392, so she would have to be a bastard and yet treated as a princess. But was this historically plausible? Dubious, I went ahead anyway and created the mystically inclined, quick-witted bastard princess Theodota.
And then in my more-or-less random readings of everything I could find about the period I discovered Zampia, a real bastard daughter, whom Manuel cared for enough to marry her to a nobleman. And then, a Turkish friend surprised me with the information that the name I had invented for my Ottoman warrior, combining the words for "lion" and "hawk" -- Arslanshahin -- was in fact a well-known and fairly common name; she directed me to an Istanbul telephone directory, where I found several.
In these and other instances, my research kept confirming things I had already invented. That's what Amy Tan would call serendipity. I think it really has to do with being open to discovery, and to "listening" to an epoch or setting so we can anticipate the things that will fit.
2010/04/02
2010/04/01
My latest disguise
I just received the reviews by the "expert reviewers" of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, based on the excerpt consisting of the first three chapters of A Gift for the Sultan. One of them surmised that my novel must take place "at the height of the Holy Roman Empire in Turkey" -- which I can forgive. There must be a lot of people who confuse the Byzantines and their rivals. It was all a long time ago.The other review was more surprising. The reviewer was convinced that the author of this "more or less religious-themed historical science fiction story" must be a "young woman of religious bent." The reviewer wasn't much interested, because "I don't read science fiction, nor religiously-themed works."
Me either.
From p. 61 of July 5, 1993 issue of The New Yorker, (Vol.69 (LXIX) no. 20)only for academic discussion, evaluation, research and complies with the copyright law of the United States as defined and stipulated under Title 17 U. S. Code.
Armageddon is us!
Check it out. A photo essay on the military presence in our nation's capital. By Laurie Arbeiter.
2010/03/23
Health and justice (not so healthy)
"This Obamacare is moving us toward a system like Europe, and that's a disaster!" smirked a protester in front of the U.S. Capitol last night (to an interviewer from Spain's Channel 1 news).
It's that kind of abysmal ignorance that makes me keep writing these notes. You know of course that the health reform bill just passed is nothing like the health plans in Europe, which are far better in almost every way than what we've had in the U.S. and still better than the (much improved) system foreseen by this bill. The Spanish system is far from perfect, but it's free and universal (for Spaniards and anybody else from the European Union or other countries with reciprocation agreements). To avoid delays in treatment, many people supplement their social security coverage with private insurance, but because the state system is always available (and thus the private insurance not absolutely necessary), such private plans are far cheaper than in the U.S., and private doctor's fees are very low. We as U.S. citizens are not supposed to be covered by the free system (the U.S. has no reciprocation agreement with Spain), but the few times we've had to go to a clinic or hospital for something, the doctors have waved away our offers of payment. But a lot of Americans don't know that and won't believe you if you tell them. But I keep telling them anyway.
The U.S. can learn a lot from Spain about how to deliver health care and about several other things besides flamenco dancing and gourmet cooking, such as high speed rail and harnessing wind-power. But Spain, like the U.S., is a bundle of contradictory forces, and there are some things in this country that are as embarrassing to cultured Spaniards as the "Tea Party" is us Americans abroad. Among the great Spanish embarrassments is one I've mentioned before, the (in)justice system.
Getting judges to make fair decisions, independent of political loyalties or economic incentives, is always a problem, everywhere. And in its recent finding that coporations can spend all they like on election campaigns because they, like persons, should enjoy "freedom of speech," the U.S. Supreme Court has again struck a blow against democracy, as it had (for example) in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) and Bush v. Gore (2000).
But for all its problems, the U.S. system gives you a better chance of a fair hearing in politically sensitive cases than the one in Spain, where the bias in favor of the hard right and the liberals has become even more obvious than usual in the past couple of months.
A note on terminology: Americans think of "liberal" as being "left." In Spain, and in Europe generally, "liberals" are one part of the right, or "conservative" forces. They are the radical pro-business, free-enterprise types that Ayn Rand celebrated, akin to the neo-cons of the U.S. The "Greed is good" crowd. They push for privatizing services such as health and education and turning them into businesses, from which they and their friends can profit. Other main currents of the right include surviving fascists nostalgic for Franco, extreme Catholics nostalgic for the Inquisition (there are quite a few of those still around), white supremacists and intolerant nationalists, motivated more by ideology than by the bottom line. Politicians who call themselves "liberal," like Esperanza Aguirre, president of the Madrid autonomous community, are generally too sophisticated to let racism or religion interfere with their efforts to turn a fast euro. But they have no problem joining with the fascists and racists in street demonstrations or other actions to torpedo the Socialist Party and the trade unions and other groups that try to rein in their money-making efforts -- on the principle that "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
The problem with the justice system is that it is riddled with judges representing one or another of these right-wing tendencies. Some of them were sworn in under Franco. Many more of them were appointed by Aznar, who (following his mentor Fraga) pulled together the Popular Party as a coalition of fascists, nationalists and liberals (in the European sense). And in the Spanish system, judges choose other judges to sit on the higher courts.
The best analysis I've seen of the right-wing skewing of Spanish justice appeared in today's El País, in an opinion piece by sociologist Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca, Los jueces en la política española. Unlike the U.S., where a single Supreme Court is genuinely supreme, Spain has three high courts, none of them clearly superior to the others: the Constitutional Tribunal, the Supreme Court, and the General Council of Judicial Power. All (though each in a slightly different way) are highly politicized, subject to maneuverings of the political parties (in one case resulting in a stalemate between the Socialists and Populares, and thus no changeover of conservative judges whose terms have expired) and divided into factions of different ideological tendencies.
And this is what has made it possible for the Spanish justice system to prosecute its best-known, most independent and most prestigious judge, Baltasar Garzón, and thus to protect two objects of his judicial inquiries: the corrupt pols of the liberal (neo-con) tendency, caught in flagranti taking money and other favors for land deals, and the fascist and extreme nationalist groups opposed to any investigation of Franco-era crimes. And because of the multiple currents of the right, joined together against their common enemy, Garzón, they have brought multiple cases against him. The cases are absurd and would have been thrown out in any rational court system -- in fact, the government fiscal (roughly equivalent to attorney general) has asked that they be dismissed, but judges of one or another of the right-wing tendencies have persisted, even admitting the Franco falangistas and the ringleader of the PP's huge corruption network as accusers.
Garzón has received enormous support, both from ordinary Spanish citizens (including especially surviving relatives of Franco's victims) and from human rights advocates around the world. But the system grinds on, denying him privileges (including the opportunity to respond in court) ordinarily granted, especially to sitting judges.
And it's hardly consolation to think that things could be worse. We could, for example, be seeking justice in Italy.
It's that kind of abysmal ignorance that makes me keep writing these notes. You know of course that the health reform bill just passed is nothing like the health plans in Europe, which are far better in almost every way than what we've had in the U.S. and still better than the (much improved) system foreseen by this bill. The Spanish system is far from perfect, but it's free and universal (for Spaniards and anybody else from the European Union or other countries with reciprocation agreements). To avoid delays in treatment, many people supplement their social security coverage with private insurance, but because the state system is always available (and thus the private insurance not absolutely necessary), such private plans are far cheaper than in the U.S., and private doctor's fees are very low. We as U.S. citizens are not supposed to be covered by the free system (the U.S. has no reciprocation agreement with Spain), but the few times we've had to go to a clinic or hospital for something, the doctors have waved away our offers of payment. But a lot of Americans don't know that and won't believe you if you tell them. But I keep telling them anyway.
The U.S. can learn a lot from Spain about how to deliver health care and about several other things besides flamenco dancing and gourmet cooking, such as high speed rail and harnessing wind-power. But Spain, like the U.S., is a bundle of contradictory forces, and there are some things in this country that are as embarrassing to cultured Spaniards as the "Tea Party" is us Americans abroad. Among the great Spanish embarrassments is one I've mentioned before, the (in)justice system.
Getting judges to make fair decisions, independent of political loyalties or economic incentives, is always a problem, everywhere. And in its recent finding that coporations can spend all they like on election campaigns because they, like persons, should enjoy "freedom of speech," the U.S. Supreme Court has again struck a blow against democracy, as it had (for example) in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) and Bush v. Gore (2000).
But for all its problems, the U.S. system gives you a better chance of a fair hearing in politically sensitive cases than the one in Spain, where the bias in favor of the hard right and the liberals has become even more obvious than usual in the past couple of months.
A note on terminology: Americans think of "liberal" as being "left." In Spain, and in Europe generally, "liberals" are one part of the right, or "conservative" forces. They are the radical pro-business, free-enterprise types that Ayn Rand celebrated, akin to the neo-cons of the U.S. The "Greed is good" crowd. They push for privatizing services such as health and education and turning them into businesses, from which they and their friends can profit. Other main currents of the right include surviving fascists nostalgic for Franco, extreme Catholics nostalgic for the Inquisition (there are quite a few of those still around), white supremacists and intolerant nationalists, motivated more by ideology than by the bottom line. Politicians who call themselves "liberal," like Esperanza Aguirre, president of the Madrid autonomous community, are generally too sophisticated to let racism or religion interfere with their efforts to turn a fast euro. But they have no problem joining with the fascists and racists in street demonstrations or other actions to torpedo the Socialist Party and the trade unions and other groups that try to rein in their money-making efforts -- on the principle that "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
The problem with the justice system is that it is riddled with judges representing one or another of these right-wing tendencies. Some of them were sworn in under Franco. Many more of them were appointed by Aznar, who (following his mentor Fraga) pulled together the Popular Party as a coalition of fascists, nationalists and liberals (in the European sense). And in the Spanish system, judges choose other judges to sit on the higher courts.
The best analysis I've seen of the right-wing skewing of Spanish justice appeared in today's El País, in an opinion piece by sociologist Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca, Los jueces en la política española. Unlike the U.S., where a single Supreme Court is genuinely supreme, Spain has three high courts, none of them clearly superior to the others: the Constitutional Tribunal, the Supreme Court, and the General Council of Judicial Power. All (though each in a slightly different way) are highly politicized, subject to maneuverings of the political parties (in one case resulting in a stalemate between the Socialists and Populares, and thus no changeover of conservative judges whose terms have expired) and divided into factions of different ideological tendencies.
And this is what has made it possible for the Spanish justice system to prosecute its best-known, most independent and most prestigious judge, Baltasar Garzón, and thus to protect two objects of his judicial inquiries: the corrupt pols of the liberal (neo-con) tendency, caught in flagranti taking money and other favors for land deals, and the fascist and extreme nationalist groups opposed to any investigation of Franco-era crimes. And because of the multiple currents of the right, joined together against their common enemy, Garzón, they have brought multiple cases against him. The cases are absurd and would have been thrown out in any rational court system -- in fact, the government fiscal (roughly equivalent to attorney general) has asked that they be dismissed, but judges of one or another of the right-wing tendencies have persisted, even admitting the Franco falangistas and the ringleader of the PP's huge corruption network as accusers.
Garzón has received enormous support, both from ordinary Spanish citizens (including especially surviving relatives of Franco's victims) and from human rights advocates around the world. But the system grinds on, denying him privileges (including the opportunity to respond in court) ordinarily granted, especially to sitting judges.
And it's hardly consolation to think that things could be worse. We could, for example, be seeking justice in Italy.
2010/03/18
Sects and violets
My mother was a lover of sects and violets. African violets gave her a pleasure whose source I never quite understood: whether their color, their fuzziness, or their function as reminders of some pleasant time.
I can't be blamed for the violets, but her interest in sects may have been mainly my fault. She probably would have remained content with a vague Protestantism as soft and fuzzy as her violets (especially in its vision of the afterlife). But she accompanied me -- that is, she observed and reflected upon my behavior -- as I searched for the One Great Truth somewhere in the nebula of hints and promises of Protestant Christianity. When I was 13 or 14 I thought that I had found it in Christian Science, that extreme expression of American positive thinking (evil, illness or misfortune are mere illusions). Before I even finished high school I had given up that attempt at faith in the Incredible, but my mother persisted, partly because the Scientific Statement of Being had the added attraction (for her) of having been written by a woman.
In college I read up on Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and my college roommates briefed me on Judaism. Some Baha'is took me to their splendid mosque-like temple in Boston (also, incidentally, home of the Mother Church of Christian Science). Baha'ism was appealing, with its claim of the ethical oneness of all religions -- that is, disregarding their peculiar dietary, sartorial and other ritual demands. But if all the gods are the same God, then what is God if not Us? The rules of behavior that the Baha'is claim to find in all the great religions (those that have survived for many generations and that appeal to the largest numbers of believers) are simply those that work best for the survival of our species: don't murder, don't steal, help one another out when someone is in trouble.
By this time I was also reading Marx. We make ourselves and our social orders, and every social order contains forces capable of destroying that order and creating a new one, and we are therefore free to make or destroy if only we understand that we have that power ("consciousness"). I liked that. And although today I would not call myself a "Marxist" (neither would Marx), many of his expressions and his whole approach to philosophical issues remain part of my thinking.
What I would call myself today is a "pragmatist." When I read Rorty, or Peirce or William James, I feel that I'm in a conversation with like-minded friends. Also, Jeremy Bentham (despite his unmusical prose), Benjamin Franklin or Voltaire (much better stylists), all of them (to my mind) pragmatists avant la lettre -- that is, before Peirce invented the term and James and Dewey and others popularized it. It is not an exclusively American philosophy (I've already mentioned Bentham and Voltaire), but it is especially typical of America, a country where anything is believed to be possible and it's up to us to realize those possibilities.
We have no choice but to make choices, though for many people the choice is to deny that we have any choice. That is, they choose to submit themselves to some higher authority (such as Allah, Jehova or karma). Pragmatism, or Marxism, in my reading of it, or any philosophical starting point that denies a higher authority and absolute moral judge, requires more courage than many people can muster. You have to be willing to assume responsibility for your own actions and your own decisions of right and wrong. And to face the music when things go wrong, making do with whatever you have at hand and not expecting some miracle to save you.
I enjoyed this essay by Stanley Fish, which says in more detail and a more complicated vocabulary pretty much what I had worked out for myself, with a lot of help from the authors I read. The problem now is how to survive as a pragmatist in a world full of fanatics. Sometimes the most pragmatic option is to pretend to believe.
Pragmatism’s Gift - Opinionator Blog - NYTimes.com
I can't be blamed for the violets, but her interest in sects may have been mainly my fault. She probably would have remained content with a vague Protestantism as soft and fuzzy as her violets (especially in its vision of the afterlife). But she accompanied me -- that is, she observed and reflected upon my behavior -- as I searched for the One Great Truth somewhere in the nebula of hints and promises of Protestant Christianity. When I was 13 or 14 I thought that I had found it in Christian Science, that extreme expression of American positive thinking (evil, illness or misfortune are mere illusions). Before I even finished high school I had given up that attempt at faith in the Incredible, but my mother persisted, partly because the Scientific Statement of Being had the added attraction (for her) of having been written by a woman.
In college I read up on Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and my college roommates briefed me on Judaism. Some Baha'is took me to their splendid mosque-like temple in Boston (also, incidentally, home of the Mother Church of Christian Science). Baha'ism was appealing, with its claim of the ethical oneness of all religions -- that is, disregarding their peculiar dietary, sartorial and other ritual demands. But if all the gods are the same God, then what is God if not Us? The rules of behavior that the Baha'is claim to find in all the great religions (those that have survived for many generations and that appeal to the largest numbers of believers) are simply those that work best for the survival of our species: don't murder, don't steal, help one another out when someone is in trouble.
By this time I was also reading Marx. We make ourselves and our social orders, and every social order contains forces capable of destroying that order and creating a new one, and we are therefore free to make or destroy if only we understand that we have that power ("consciousness"). I liked that. And although today I would not call myself a "Marxist" (neither would Marx), many of his expressions and his whole approach to philosophical issues remain part of my thinking.
What I would call myself today is a "pragmatist." When I read Rorty, or Peirce or William James, I feel that I'm in a conversation with like-minded friends. Also, Jeremy Bentham (despite his unmusical prose), Benjamin Franklin or Voltaire (much better stylists), all of them (to my mind) pragmatists avant la lettre -- that is, before Peirce invented the term and James and Dewey and others popularized it. It is not an exclusively American philosophy (I've already mentioned Bentham and Voltaire), but it is especially typical of America, a country where anything is believed to be possible and it's up to us to realize those possibilities.
We have no choice but to make choices, though for many people the choice is to deny that we have any choice. That is, they choose to submit themselves to some higher authority (such as Allah, Jehova or karma). Pragmatism, or Marxism, in my reading of it, or any philosophical starting point that denies a higher authority and absolute moral judge, requires more courage than many people can muster. You have to be willing to assume responsibility for your own actions and your own decisions of right and wrong. And to face the music when things go wrong, making do with whatever you have at hand and not expecting some miracle to save you.
I enjoyed this essay by Stanley Fish, which says in more detail and a more complicated vocabulary pretty much what I had worked out for myself, with a lot of help from the authors I read. The problem now is how to survive as a pragmatist in a world full of fanatics. Sometimes the most pragmatic option is to pretend to believe.
Pragmatism’s Gift - Opinionator Blog - NYTimes.com
2010/03/15
Egyptian interruption
I skipped last Monday's essay on Spain because I was on a cruise ship on the Nile, far from Internet connections and with other things on my mind. I'm writing up details of that trip on the Spanish-language blog (link below) that I share with my alter ego, Baltasar Lotroyo.
Our tour started in Aswan, whence some of us took a bus south (upriver) to Abu Simbel and the colossi of Ramses II. We then cruised downriver to Luxor, where we saw more remains of pharaonic, Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt. From there we flew to Cairo, where we saw as much as you can see in three days -- we want to go back. More than that, Susana & I plan to study Arabic to get to know not only Egypt but the other countries speaking that language.
But not now. I have to avoid repeating an error that has has caused me great problems in the past: starting a new big project before I've completed the ones I have pending. That's why I took so long to finish my doctoral dissertation and many other things. Right now my biggest pending project is a book on Latin American architecture and urbanism, so if I take up any new language, it will have to be Brazilian Portuguese. Then, Arabic.
Same goes for smaller projects. Since I'm thinking and writing about Egypt this week, I'm suspending writing about Spain for now. I should have something thought-out about Spanish justice, or economy, or culture, to post next Sunday or Monday.
Our traveling companions were all (almost all) Spanish or Latin America. So that they can read my commentaries, I'm posting in Spanish. You can find them at Lecturas y Lectores.
Photo by Gilbert de Jong from Digital Wallpaper.
Our tour started in Aswan, whence some of us took a bus south (upriver) to Abu Simbel and the colossi of Ramses II. We then cruised downriver to Luxor, where we saw more remains of pharaonic, Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt. From there we flew to Cairo, where we saw as much as you can see in three days -- we want to go back. More than that, Susana & I plan to study Arabic to get to know not only Egypt but the other countries speaking that language.But not now. I have to avoid repeating an error that has has caused me great problems in the past: starting a new big project before I've completed the ones I have pending. That's why I took so long to finish my doctoral dissertation and many other things. Right now my biggest pending project is a book on Latin American architecture and urbanism, so if I take up any new language, it will have to be Brazilian Portuguese. Then, Arabic.
Same goes for smaller projects. Since I'm thinking and writing about Egypt this week, I'm suspending writing about Spain for now. I should have something thought-out about Spanish justice, or economy, or culture, to post next Sunday or Monday.
Our traveling companions were all (almost all) Spanish or Latin America. So that they can read my commentaries, I'm posting in Spanish. You can find them at Lecturas y Lectores.
Photo by Gilbert de Jong from Digital Wallpaper.
2010/03/13
Robber Barons of Social Change
Mark Engler's review of Michael Edwards new book, Small Change: Why Business Won’t Save the World gives a neat summary of the weaknesses of philanthropic capitalism -- which is always more about capitalism (the bottom line) than about people's needs.
Toward Freedom - The Robber Barons of Social Change
Toward Freedom - The Robber Barons of Social Change
2010/03/03
Unjustice & the continuing battle of the two Spains
Last week I titled my weekly essay on Spain "Spain: Macrosociology of an economic crisis", but I got so caught up in the economic details I never got to the concept of "macrosociology." That's what can happen when I write a headline before I write the essay. By "macrosociology" I mean the sociology of a whole society, not just its economic or justice system, or its problems of urbanization, or its demographic changes, or its religious and other ideological conflicts, or its narrative and musical traditions, but all of these (at least) and how they relate to one another. What I meant to imply by that headline last week was that, to properly understand Spain's current economic problems, we need to understand many other things about Spain, because the peculiarities of its economic crisis cannot be explained by economists alone.
I consider economics to be a specialization within the broader field of sociology, as cardiology within medicine. We need those specialists, but they need us generalists to understand why the systems they focus on don't always function the same way. The bursting of the housing bubble and "sub-prime mortgages" in the U.S. has hurt everywhere, but in different ways in the U.S. and Canada, Germany, Ireland, Greece, or Spain, because social context of political and social pressures, cultural traditions toward spending and consuming, in each of those countries limits what spculators and finance institutions and governments and businesses can do.
In Spain the rapid growth and sudden collapse of an economy overly dependent on the construction industry was facilitated by the weakness of institutional controls over conflict of interest (local city councils in cahoots with and on the take from developers to privatize everything that could yield a profit) and the continuing polarization of the society between rich opportunists, convinced that they deserve every penny that they can steal, and a much larger but more poorly organized segment maintaining collective, communal values. And this polarization and this institutional weakness are both aftermaths of the still-unresolved conflicts, which began before and have continued long since the open war of 1936-39.
The furious campaign to silence Spain's best-known, most admired and most aggressive defender of institutional justice, Baltasar Garzón, is evidence that the hostilities continue. The charges are so absurd, and the accusers uncredible, that respected jurists defending human rights around the world find it hard to believe that Garzón, whom they look to as a leader in their struggle, should be put on trial. But the reasons have become obvious: Garzón's investigations of wrong-doing of the Franco years are intolerable to all those judges who were sworn in at that time or by judges of that era; his investigations in the past of illegal police actions by the Socialist government of Felipe González lost him the support of many of the old Socialists; his discovery of deep and extensive corruption by the right-wing Popular Party has turned the many powerful PP regional political bosses and national deputies (members of parliament) into a lobby to destroy him; and a lot lawyers and judges hate him out of jealousy, because he is so famous and so popular abroad.
And there is another peculiarly Spanish sociological phenomenon: The judicial system is almost entirely corrupted by partisan politics, with judges named not by merit or popular election but by bartering among the politicized judges associations. Thus the judges who have admitted what should have been inadmissible charges, including some that had already been thrown out by earlier courts, are all those who have a grudge against this man.
Something good may come out of this horror, though. The campaign of accusations against Garzón -- that he sinned by daring to investigate human rights violations under Franco, that he ordered phone tapping in the corruption cases, and that he solicited money from the Santander Bank in exchange for dismissing a case against the bank president -- is so absurd that it is bringing to light the far wider corruption of the whole judicial system. We hope Garzón survives, but if his judicial enemies succeed (or even if they don't), they will be the laughing stock of the civilized world, and maybe some serious institutional reform of the system can get underway in this country.
I consider economics to be a specialization within the broader field of sociology, as cardiology within medicine. We need those specialists, but they need us generalists to understand why the systems they focus on don't always function the same way. The bursting of the housing bubble and "sub-prime mortgages" in the U.S. has hurt everywhere, but in different ways in the U.S. and Canada, Germany, Ireland, Greece, or Spain, because social context of political and social pressures, cultural traditions toward spending and consuming, in each of those countries limits what spculators and finance institutions and governments and businesses can do.
In Spain the rapid growth and sudden collapse of an economy overly dependent on the construction industry was facilitated by the weakness of institutional controls over conflict of interest (local city councils in cahoots with and on the take from developers to privatize everything that could yield a profit) and the continuing polarization of the society between rich opportunists, convinced that they deserve every penny that they can steal, and a much larger but more poorly organized segment maintaining collective, communal values. And this polarization and this institutional weakness are both aftermaths of the still-unresolved conflicts, which began before and have continued long since the open war of 1936-39.
The furious campaign to silence Spain's best-known, most admired and most aggressive defender of institutional justice, Baltasar Garzón, is evidence that the hostilities continue. The charges are so absurd, and the accusers uncredible, that respected jurists defending human rights around the world find it hard to believe that Garzón, whom they look to as a leader in their struggle, should be put on trial. But the reasons have become obvious: Garzón's investigations of wrong-doing of the Franco years are intolerable to all those judges who were sworn in at that time or by judges of that era; his investigations in the past of illegal police actions by the Socialist government of Felipe González lost him the support of many of the old Socialists; his discovery of deep and extensive corruption by the right-wing Popular Party has turned the many powerful PP regional political bosses and national deputies (members of parliament) into a lobby to destroy him; and a lot lawyers and judges hate him out of jealousy, because he is so famous and so popular abroad.
And there is another peculiarly Spanish sociological phenomenon: The judicial system is almost entirely corrupted by partisan politics, with judges named not by merit or popular election but by bartering among the politicized judges associations. Thus the judges who have admitted what should have been inadmissible charges, including some that had already been thrown out by earlier courts, are all those who have a grudge against this man.
Something good may come out of this horror, though. The campaign of accusations against Garzón -- that he sinned by daring to investigate human rights violations under Franco, that he ordered phone tapping in the corruption cases, and that he solicited money from the Santander Bank in exchange for dismissing a case against the bank president -- is so absurd that it is bringing to light the far wider corruption of the whole judicial system. We hope Garzón survives, but if his judicial enemies succeed (or even if they don't), they will be the laughing stock of the civilized world, and maybe some serious institutional reform of the system can get underway in this country.
2010/03/01
Coming up: Spain's un-justice system
Busy time right now, we've been preparing for our trip to Egypt -- from Carboneras to Madrid tomorrow, on Friday to Aswan, then Cairo for a week before we come back to Spain. Reading up on Egypt has been fascinating, but I hope to have a little time tomorrow or Wednesday to write my weekly report on Spain. Because there is a lot going on here that should be noticed. Especially the twisting of the judicial system for partisan ends that have nothing to do with justice and are seriously threatening the whole structure of Spanish democracy -- vibrant and noisy, but still not consolidated after the fratricide and dictatorship of recent memory. So I hope you'll come back tomorrow or next, and that you'll find some thoughts worth thinking about here.
By the way, it's been a big holiday locally: El Día de Andalucía, anniversary of the setting up of the autonomous region. That history, and Andalucía's present conditions, deserve some attention too. But later.
By the way, it's been a big holiday locally: El Día de Andalucía, anniversary of the setting up of the autonomous region. That history, and Andalucía's present conditions, deserve some attention too. But later.
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