Spain: another known wolf
A vicious terrorist attack occurred in Spain about a year ago. That one has merged in memory along with so many others that it resembles. It featured vehicles purposely targeting pedestrians in a crowded spot, an explosion in a house, and various known wolves and mystery men.
But this new article tells us much more about what happened—and what didn’t happen. And the information is even more chilling than what was known before.
The attack’s mastermind was killed in the house explosion, which from the start was suspected to have been what is ironically called a “work accident.” His name was Es Satty, and he was born in Morocco but came to Spain about twenty years ago:
He worked for just over a year as an imam in a small mosque in Vilanova, called Al Furkan.
For years, Es Satty also worked on both sides of the Moroccan-Spanish border, moving goods between the countries in a van. According to court documents, Es Satty was arrested in 2002 while trying to smuggle a person with a fake passport from the port in Ceuta, one of two Spanish enclave cities in Africa, to the Spanish mainland. He was sentenced to six months, but, in the end, served no time.
Es Satty later came under investigation for more serious crimes. His name appears throughout court documents related to a major terrorism case known as Operation Chacal…
Spanish police tapped his phone in 2005 on the suspicion that he had ties to the 2003 Casablanca bombings and other extremist groups operating in Spain. In Vilanova, he at one point shared a residence with Mrabet Fahsi and Belgacem [terrorists].
He seems to have probably become a police informant in the investigation of those earlier terrorist incidents, and was later arrested on smuggling charges and imprisoned. There is evidence that he was surveilled while in prison and/or an informant, and after he got out he was ordered deported. However:
…[A] judge in Castellón ruled in Es Satty’s favor, stating that he was integrated into life in Spain and didn’t represent “a real threat” that was “sufficiently grave for the public order and security.”
The accusation that the court dropped Es Satty’s deportation order in return for his collaboration in prison circulated widely throughout the Spanish and Catalan press after the attack. A spokesperson for the courts in Castellón said that the decision was not due to police involvement, but rather the lack thereof: Because Es Satty was never charged with a crime in Operation Chacal, the spokesperson said, the court had no idea of his past.
Seems to me he should have been deported just on the strength of his smuggling conviction, but the court thought otherwise. At any rate, there was additional information that he was simpatico to terrorists and terrorism, but that news never got to the proper authorities, and he continued on his merry way.
Much of the rest of the article is devoted to the lack of communication between various sections of the Spanish police and investigative units:
Ramón Cossío, a spokesperson for the union of the Policía Nacional, described the collaboration between Spanish and Catalan police as “not great.” He listed instances of information-sharing agreements that aren’t acted on, collaborations that never happen, and turf battles.
“It doesn’t make sense to have an antiterrorism unit in the Guardia Civil, another in the Policía Nacional, and another in the Mossos d’Esquadra,” Cossío said. “It’s backwards.”
This story is hardly unique. Over and over we see known terrorists or terrorist-friendly people who have been under surveillance off and on, and yet manage to pull off terrorist attacks and radicalize others, all without the knowledge of police. Our systems of government and law protect their rights and give them second and third chances to remain in countries despite their criminal behavior, suspicious ties, and lack of citizenship. They know this and exploit it.
1. Any unlawful resident accused of a crime in your country should (1) be held in detention and (2) (if convicted) punished with imprisonment, with time spent in detention deducted from the statutory sentence. After he’s served his sentence, take his biometrics and deport him and ban him from entering for any reason for a term of years scaled to the severity of the crime. Debar him from receiving a place in the queue awaiting settler status until such time as he is lawfully permitted to enter as a tourist.
2. Any lawfully-resident alien accused of a crime should be (1) held in detention and (2) (if convicted) punished with imprisonment, with time in detention deducted. After he’s served his sentence, take his biometrics and deport him and ban him from entering for any reason for a term of years scaled to the severity of the crime. If he should have had settler status (rather than a temporary residency permit), his right of domicile would be thus suspended. If a settler / alien, he would be permitted to return after that term of years, provided he passed an English proficiency should his suspension have exceeded 4 years in length and provided he not be known to have committed further crimes abroad during his suspension.
this is silly…
But we dont remember when feminists were a terrorist organization just like the PLO, and so on (see Rote Zora)… and others… why wouldnt birds of a feather work to support each other?
whats the big deal?
The attack’s mastermind was killed in the house explosion, which from the start was suspected to have been what is ironically called a “work accident.”
Greenwich Village townhouse explosion
The bomb was under construction in the basement of 18 West 11th Street, when it accidentally exploded; the blast reduced the four-story townhouse to a burning, rubble-strewn ruin. The two persons preparing the bomb were killed instantly (Diana Oughton and Terry Robbins), as was a third “Weatherman” who happened to be walking into the townhouse (Ted Gold); two others were injured but were helped from the scene and later escaped (Kathy Boudin and Cathy Wilkerson)
so what now? IF we dont keep such out of our politics and colleges and so on, and more, why or how can we complain otherwise?
oh the feminists? [who side with the terrorists now destroying sweden, sweden is dead and gone… and they long to turn the pickle back to a cucumber… ]
[by the way, take a look at rote zoras logos… funny funny]
you guys lack any consistency..
its all situational..
[oh, all the things they are yelling about at the kavenaugh hearing, right?]
we, the USA, through our left and feminism have supported terrorist groups who have earned a seat at the table and respect by being terrorists… why would they ever think like you do and its wrong if everyhthing they have and have won they see they did through the very acts your despising?
[edited for length by n-n]
Arfldgr:
I don’t know why you assume people forget things just because they are not mentioned in every post.
by the way, i told you this stuff leading up as early as 2013…
some before…
tonsof stuff, but why read the past and remember…
after all, right now, sweden is almost a full matriarchy
with women separate from men, with their own lives
and their being terrorized inthe streets by the invites to replace them for not having babies… and following social democracy slowly..
now what?
they think they can recover?
how
they are being put in the position to accept the kind of thinking that was born of engels and born of marx in 1849 with the maguar struggle, that then became my struggle (mein kampf) as hitler saw himselve as the magyar, and saw these “hidebound” peoples and cultures that would have to be whiped out in aworld storm (holocaust)..
[edited for length and repetition by n-n]
Artfldgr:
This post deals with how it is that the police, etc., in many Western countries have proven inadequate to deal with terrorists, even known terrorists. Our strengths—our dedication to human rights and protection of individuals against the power of state—handicap us in this endeavor.
It is not meant to be a comprehensive statement about the left and its influence, or feminism and its influence, or any topic other than the above paragraph. And even that is of course a mere summary of a much larger picture on those issues alone.
Railing against people here, and how you told them this and you told them that, is counterproductive. Some people here have told you that they carefully read what you have to say, and you seem to ignore that.
Our strengths—our dedication to human rights and protection of individuals against the power of state—handicap us in this endeavor.
No, otiose bureaucracies and the leapfrogging loyalties of our professional-managerial bourgeoisie handicap us. It’s even more true in Europe than it is here.
Art Deco:
The two sources of handicap are not mutually exclusive.
Well, this is quite a complicated situation.
Catalunya (or Cataluña) is the wealthiest part of Spain. It’s cosmopolitan, open-minded and very focused in business. Catalunya vs Castilla is a bit like New York vs Deep America.
Since it’s a wealthy part, immigration has been massive. Catalunya has a 6-7% of Muslims. Barcelona has about a 15-20% of Muslims (like Paris).
The main problem in Catalunya is that they don’t want to face that problem.
Why?
For them, being ‘more European and less Spanish’ is a pride (and I can understand that). But there’s a dangerous trap there: nowadays, being more European is often associated with being more liberal/progressive. So, how do you face that problem without being labeled as ‘racist caveman’? how you deal with it without losing that edge that makes them ‘more European’?
Nobody knows. And in the meanwhile, the problem grows, and grows, and grows…
We’re looking at a European wide culture that wants to project the aura that they are nothing like the Nazis. This is so even in nations that stood outside WWII and the Holocaust. (Spain, Sweden)
The result is that their courts — and their judges in particular — go totally overboard with leinency. One Muslim in Germany finally made the news. He’d committed over 400 infractions of the law and yet was never deported.(!)
Extreme not-Nazism may prove out to be as destructive in the long run as Nazism was in the short run. One might note in this emotional fad that, as ever, European Jewry is taking a beating.
From a cultural point of view, Muslims are more Nazi than Nazis! On current trends, every Jew in Europe is going to have to flee to Israel — and rather quickly, too.
The brutal fact is that Islam, and all that goes with it, is wholly incompatible with Western norms. As Lincoln said of slavery, you’ll not have a stable half-n-half society. It’s going to be all of the one… or the other.
The result is that their courts — and their judges in particular — go totally overboard with leinency.
Characteristic of judges in the United States ca. 1973. It’s some sort of deep structure in the psyche of professional-managerial types in the occidental world generally. The problem has been haphazardly addressed in the United States by state legislatures reducing the discretion of judges and parole boards. I have a suspicion that the vernacular culture is much weaker among European elected officials, so this never happens there.
So far, most of our Muslim populations in the US are better assimilated, more American, than Muslims in Europe, who haven’t become nearly as European. That may not last, and of course there have been exceptions which cost American lives. It would not be “becoming Nazi” to face the plain fact that extremist Islam is a dangerous ideology, and to give extra scrutiny to people following extremist versions of the ideology. Law enforcement and political leadership in this country are too afraid of being called “racist” to face facts about the ideology, in spite of the fact that race isn’t the defining factor at all.
Kate, David Wood, ex-atheist, has a brilliant video explaining why jihadis spring from the next generation of Muslims.
So even if the immigrant parents were and remain rational and mellow, the son can’t.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6ePVxRLDM0
Virtually ALL of the notorious jihadis fit this profile.
That certainly include’s Es’s crew.
What this means is that it’s IMPOSSIBLE to rationally permit Islamic immigration. PERIOD.
You CAN’T shut off the ‘logic’ of jihad.
What’s getting us in deep trouble are those who think you can parse the sane from the jihadi.
The brutal answer is that you can’t. EVER.
That’s only due to the low number of Muslims in US in comparison with Europe.
Blacks in US, for example, have been never assimilated into US culture, and will never be. Same happens with Latinos last years. Once a group reach some percentage (I’d say, around 5% of the population), they create their own sub-nations and they’ll never assimilate.
A girlfriend of mine was sociologist and worked for the French government for a while, about 20 years ago.
Back then, that problem explained in the video had been already known for years. She told me: first generation just wanted to get a work. Second and third generation felt more entitled and needed a way to define their identity… which was, of course, Islamic religion.
We’re talking about things that have been known for DECADES, and yet they were ignored.
Kate is right that U.S. muslims tend to be better assimilated. In general, the U.S. does a better job of assimilating immigrants of all stripes than any other large country in the world. This is simply because no other country has as much experience. For the entire experience of America as a nation we have been accepting immigrants at greater or lesser rates. This has not always been easy. There has often been crime and gang membership associated with the various ethnic groups in the second and even third generations. These problems have been contained with traditional policing.
But the jihadists are different, in that they are being promoted and encouraged by elements outside the U.S. This is what has never happened before. It is a new form of warfare and the U.S. is still learning exactly how to combat it and defeat it. We are getting better, but we are still not there yet.
One prong of our counter-attack has been to take the war to the enemy as we have in Afghanistan. The other prong is Homeland Security and the closer integration and information sharing between all the various agencies and departments.
Europe is still behind the U.S. in this effort. In the case of Catalonia, they are particularly vulnerable because of the antipathy of local authorities to Spanish Federal authorities. The region of Catalonia has been involved in a highly contentious secessionist movement for several decades. This makes them vulnerable to groups that would exploit the lack of social and civic solidarity there.
That’s simply not true.
European boundaries changed often, and population had to adapt to the new country. In general, assimilation between different European cultures has been quick (rarely more than a couple of generations). North of France, for example, was German not long ago.
The problem appears when it comes to assimilate non-European cultures, like Hispanics, or Muslims, or blacks, or Gypsies.
Until now, both Europe and US have failed. Gypsies haven’t assimilated no matter they had 10 centuries. Blacks haven’t assimilated no matter they had 3-4 centuries. And neither Hispanics or Muslims will do.
US has the very same experience than Europe: no problem to assimilate European cultures, and no way to assimilate non-European cultures, even after centuries.
Yann:
I think that both blacks and Asians are quite well assimilated into US culture. Yes, there are some cultural differences that remain, on average (as with any ethnic groups), but in general they are very much part of US culture. In fact, at this point and for quite a few years now, blacks in particular have been leaders in certain areas of popular culture such as music, sports, dance, and perhaps even fashion.
Yann, I can’t agree that blacks and Hispanics will never assimilate. I know many from both groups who have. I know Korean, Chinese, and Vietnamese who are American-assimilated. Their daily meals may be a bit unlike mine, but otherwise they’re part of us. The problem with Muslims is that it’s a political ideology as well as a religious dogma. In this country, Buddhists and Hindus, for instance, don’t threaten their neighbors (although this may not be the case in their countries of origin). The key with Islam is to be clear-eyed about the ideology and on the watch for its extremist expression. This is often visible: Look at the women.
Roy and Kate, you two are entirely mistaken.
Yann has it nailed.
You really need to click on David Wood’s video to comprehend why your notions just can’t EVER work with Muslims.
Wood explains why Islam cranks out jihadis from the next generation.
The more a Muslim adopts Western norms, the more likely he will flip and go on a jihadi rampage. It’s the consistent pattern. Wood explains why… the compulsion for murder-suicide.
If your notions held any water, jihad would be winding down.
But they don’t… sadly they don’t.
Roy,
To add to David Wood’s excellent explanation of why succeeding generations of “westernized’ young Muslims resort to violence (thanks blert) here are some relevant statistics;
“Nearly half of 600 Muslim-American citizens polled who plan to vote in the 2012 presidential election believe parodies of Muhammad should be prosecuted criminally in the U.S., and one in eight say the offense is so serious violators should face the death penalty.
The poll also found 40 percent of Muslims in America believe they should not be judged by U.S. law and the Constitution, but by Shariah standards.
…one in five Muslims across America cannot say they believe Christians or others who criticize Muhammad should be spared the death penalty.
Asked whether U.S. citizens who are Christians have the right to evangelize Muslims to consider other faiths, just 30 percent agreed Christians have such a right. Only 19 percent said they “strongly agree” with the idea that Americans have a right to invite Muslims to consider another faith.
One in five say Muslim men should be allowed to follow their religion in America and have more than one wife, and 58 percent said criticism of their religion or of Muhammad should not be allowed under the Constitution.”
https://www.wnd.com/2012/10/guess-who-u-s-muslims-are-voting-for/#6peMYIX1QmucJ84E.99
That was the situation in Oct. of 2012.
84% of Egyptians support the death penalty for former Muslims who have left Islam. They do so because Allah has commanded it.
Here in America, ‘Moderate’ Muslims i.e. “cafeteria” Muslims know this and so stay silent in the face of violent rhetoric, which young Muslims take as implicit agreement by moderate Muslims that the fundamentalist Muslims hold the theological ‘high ground’.
“Pew Research Center estimates that there were about 3.3 million Muslims of all ages living in the United States in 2015. … and we estimate that that share will double by 2050.”
A 2015 poll revealed that,
“More than half (51%) of U.S. Muslims polled also believe either that they should have the choice of American or shariah courts, or that they should have their own tribunals to apply shariah.
nearly a quarter of the Muslims polled believed that, “It is legitimate to use violence to punish those who give offense to Islam by, for example, portraying the prophet Mohammed.”
Nearly one-fifth of Muslim respondents said that the use of violence in the United States is justified in order to make shariah the law of the land in this country.”
So in America from 2012 to 2015, those Muslims who believe that violence is justified in response to guaranteed US freedoms went from 12.5% up to 24%…
2012: 3.3 million x .125% = 412,500 ‘American’ Muslims who believe that violence is justified in order to impose Shariah and punish those who ‘insult’ Muhammad and Islam.
Yann and blert, I am well aware of the problems with Islam, having lived in Egypt. However, the number of Muslims, immigrants here or American-born, who become jihadis are a minority. It’s a troubling minority, sure. Law enforcement and anti-terrorism authorities need to be clear-eyed about what the risk factors are. We also need to be freed from the politically correct, and dangerous, idea that evangelizing Muslims and criticizing the religion’s teachings are unacceptable. Lots of people criticize my conservative Christian beliefs in public every day. Islam should not be immune in this country.
Is it true? Or is it wishful thinking?
I suggest some thought experiment. Imagine you’re in a desert island, or in a alien city, with some other groups from Earth around. Who would you join?
A close experience is being a expat. I have been, and I used to get along with western people, eastern European people, middle-class Hispanics, Israelis and, in a lesser degree, Asians (Chinese and Japanese).
You want to know people who share common values? check people who join spontaneously when they’re expats. The more likely you’ll join some people, the closer you are.
I call it the ‘expat test’. If two groups of people don’t join spontaneously when they’re expats, they’re not likely to assimilate easily one into another.
Now, if you were a expat… would you rather join a group of black guys from Detroit? A group of japanese? A group of Europeans? A group of Muslims from Middle East?. That will give you the best idea about how close (or far) you are.
Well, Yann, I am living in a smallish neighborhood in North Carolina, about thirty miles from a town where there were serious race riots a couple of decades ago. Our neighborhood is 20% black owner/occupants, 10% Asian immigrant owner/occupants, a Jewish family, and the rest a mix of old-time (white) Southerners and European-ancestry transplants from other American regions. We’re all on good terms, all the kids are doing well. One (black) family have twin sons who took advanced classes in high school and are off to college combined with the National Guard. I’d say assimilation is well underway. This neighborhood probably wouldn’t have been like this in the 1960s or before.
Fine.
Now, tell me, Kate, in your group of friends, the group you use to hang out with, what are the percentages?
Yann,
I don’t really wish to debate you on this, since I suspect we are carrying very different definitions of the word “assimilate” in our heads. However, your assertion that Hispanics are non-Europeans is clearly wrong. The definition of hispanic is: “relating to Spain or to Spanish-speaking countries, especially those of Central and South America.” Spain is part of Europe. Would you claim that Australians and New Zealanders are non-Europeans? I would think not. The culture of Hispanics is mostly from Spain, a European country. Their primary religion is Christianity. Why do you distinguish Hispanics from the rest of Europeans?
Why do you distinguish Hispanics from the rest of Europeans?
Because Latin American countries have signature problems which European countries do not. Have a look at the homicide statistics for Latin America and a look at the income distribution statistics. Or, read Hernando de Soto on how running a business in Latin America differs from running one in Europe.
Yann:
Who people choose to hang out with doesn’t tell you whether certain groups are assimilated into American life.
I probably hang out with a very small demographic. So what? For example, over my lifetime, I haven’t tended to hang out with many white-Anglo-Saxon-Protestants. I gravitate much more to Catholics. Does that mean that WASPS aren’t assimilated into America? Does it mean that I’m not assimilated into America? It doesn’t mean anything of the sort. It’s irrelevant.
Black people are extremely American, at least to me. I also think it’s interesting that I’ve read the work of black Americans writing that when they went to Africa they were immediately recognized as Americans by Africans.
Art Deco:
Not biting…
That’s not the same.
There you’re not talking about meaningful differences. It’s natural that you gravitate more towards some people. I get along better with Polish, Germans and Italians, for example. Why? No idea. It just happens. But it’s not such a big difference. Cultural differences are not black and white, 0 or 1. There’s shades of grey, and darker greys.
Go to some expat meeting. It’s quite an interesting experience. You’ll see that some people mix very easily, which doesn’t mean that people will gravitate more and less towards some others. Chinese, for example, use to join western expats and socialize without problems, though at the same time they gravitate towards themselves inside the group. I’ve seen it more than once.
And then you have groups that don’t mix at all. Like water and oil. That’s the kind of difference that makes a country hard to be united.
Yann:
But earlier you wrote this, as part of your argument about how some groups are supposedly not assimilated into the US:
You seem to now be saying that who you hang out with doesn’t really tell us who is assimilated and who isn’t.
In fact, by the way, I “hang out” with Muslims at times. In fact, there are Muslims in my family. They are extremely assimilated.
I do agree with you, however, that there are elements within each group that separate themselves out (fundamentalist Muslims, for example, or even black separatist blacks, and for that matter ultra-Orthodox Jews or certain extremist Christian sects). It doesn’t say much about the average person in that larger group of blacks, Jews, etc..
However, I do think that among the Muslim population, the proportion of people who are not assimilated (and who are not assimilated by choice) is higher than in the other groups.
My assertion is right. Latin-American countries has grown apart from Spain, Portugal and Italy. And while there’s common elements, they’re quite different at the same time.
And inside Latin-American countries, there’s strata, higher class being more European and white, lower class being more mixed with original inhabitants. That’s a common feature in Spanish colonies. You have exactly the same dynamic in Philippines, in the Southeast of Asia. In Philippines, the high-class looking more European (Spanish) while the low-class looking more Asian. That has created a stratified pseudo-system of casts based in racial looking. Those classes use to hate (or despise) each other. That has caused a high lack of cohesion and unity and it’s one of the causes of the constant violence and populism in Latin-America.
It’s likely that the same will happen in US during the next centuries. Indeed, US is just starting to walk the same path that Latin-America, including polarized society and frequent violence.
Ok. Fine. You’re right there. I was not specific enough in that comment.
Besides that, I wasn’t specific enough (neither) about group vs individual. I was talking about groups, or about the majority of individuals. Of course, there’s individuals who adapt easily, or who think better of foreign cultures than of their own (ahem, me), or who get along better with people from other cultures than from their own (me, again). But that uses to be the exception.
That has caused a high lack of cohesion and unity and it’s one of the causes of the constant violence and populism in Latin-America.
Most Latin American countries (Chile a notable exception) suffer high rates of street crime. They don’t suffer ‘constant’ political violence. Some countries have in the last century had a great deal of political violence, some hardly any. Nor is ‘populism’ necessarily pathological or a signature feature of Latin American political life.
including polarized society and frequent violence.
The violence we’re experiencing is not consequential and it occurs only because Democratic politicians insist police and campus security stand down. The impulses which generate that have almost nothing to do with racial fissures, but rather with the contempt of professional-managerial types with people who don’t subscribe to their cultural markers.
Chile is a special case. It was colonized by Basques, and back then Basque Country was quite influenced by french protestantism. You can notice the Protestant influence in Basque Country and in Chile. It’s vanishing, though, since Chile is having a high immigration from other Latin-American countries.
And the rest of Latin-America, street violence vs political violence?… mmm, not that simple. It’s quite more complicated than that.
One example: Venezuela. Look at this picture. This is how people from Venezuela look:
https://www.lapatilla.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/1497319201932.jpg
Now look at this picture. This is the oposition to Nicolas Maduro a couple of years ago:
http://kaosenlared.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/oposicion-venezolana.jpg
Do you see the pattern?
People in US think that it’s a left vs right problem. And it’s far more complicated. Chaves didn’t have support because he was leftist. He had support because he didn’t look like the Latin-American white high-class. And that’s why many people keep voting Maduro, even when the country is going to Hell. It’s the same pattern that has started in US: a white high-class right party, and a mixed low-class leftist party. Both hating each other. Fully polarized. And that can last for centuries. Latin-America is the evidence.
Of course, that’s only one reason for violence. But it’s a unsolvable reason, and that makes a recipe for poverty, since it can keep triggering violence again and again.
Chile is a special case. It was colonized by Basques, and back then Basque Country was quite influenced by french protestantism. You can notice the Protestant influence in Basque Country and in Chile. It’s vanishing, though, since Chile is having a high immigration from other Latin-American countries.
Oh, for crying out loud. It’s a mestizo country which took in immigrants from all over Europe.
People in US think that it’s a left vs right problem. And it’s far more complicated. Chaves didn’t have support because he was leftist. He had support because he didn’t look like the Latin-American white high-class.
No, he had support because of a generation’s worth of economic mismanagement and institutional failure by Venezuela’s political class, failure which was driven by what economic geographers call the ‘resource curse’.
Nope. Out of Spain, it had mostly German immigration, the same way Argentine had Italian immigration.
And it’s mestizo now. Originally, it was not.
Again, nope. If that was the ultimate cause, Venezuela would have turned their back to Maduro. Last year elections, he won.
The Brown underclass has a typical IQ one full standard deviation below that of the White upperclass.
That’s what is driving the political schism.
Again, nope. If that was the ultimate cause, Venezuela would have turned their back to Maduro. Last year elections, he won.
No, he lost the most recent (minimally competitive) elections.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_parliamentary_election,_2015
The election you’re referring to was fraudulent
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_presidential_election,_2018
The Brown underclass has a typical IQ one full standard deviation below that of the White upperclass. That’s what is driving the political schism.
The political schism is driven by the disposition of the professional-managerial class to the non-exotic working class. Blacks and hispanics are a useful tool as far as that professional-managerial class is concerned. The actual material interests of impecunious blacks and hispanics will never be paramount.
Art… these drastic IQ gaps across entire communities are not to be argued around.
They have a HUGE impact.
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/sft2.htm
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/dct.htm
And that’s just the tip of the burg.
blert:
Actually, there are plenty of ways to cast doubt on what those gaps actually mean.
It’s been discussed many times on this blog. I refer you in particular to this post and thread.
It wasn’t. He used a lot of tricks to discourage vote in areas dominated by the opposition and to ban the most popular candidates. That decreased participation, mainly among people who had voted against him.
But still, the votes he got were real. That wasn’t made up. He was voted by 30% from the total poll. That’s a LOT. To compare, that’s a similar percentage from the poll than the one that voted for Trump in 2016.
And we’re talking about a country that’s going to Hell. And he still he gets (proportionally) as many voters as Trump did in 2016? I’m not saying that without the tricks the opposition would have had even more and would have won. But still, it’s a LOT of votes for a person who has brought HUNGER as only African countries can relate.
I’m sorry, but your theory about economy and mismanagement being the reasons because Chaves had so much support doesn’t fit.
Yann,
When it comes to Venezuela, you don’t know what you are talking about. All of the institutions of democracy are controlled by the ruling party. It’s a rigged game. It’s like a bull fight. It looks like the Matador is taking risks. But, the outcome is never in doubt.
The actual support for Chavismo an Maduro in Venezuela is about 15 percent of the population. Most of the “votes” they get are extorted or bribed.
I know this because I lived there for 12 years until a month ago.
I’m afraid I know better than you, Roy. I have debated about that quite a few times, mostly in Spanish (which is my mother tongue). And I have long talked about that with a friend who had to escape from Venezuela and opposed Maduro.
Yes, it’s a rigged game. But it’s not that rigged. The support and the votes he got are very real. Maduro still keeps a lot of support in the street, I can tell you that. And he still keeps a lot of support in the Latin-American radical left.
People from US love that narrative where there’s an evil tyrant that oppresses the innocent good people. But that’s just another narrative and many times, it’s just plain wrong. I’m sorry if that doesn’t fit your wishful thinking, I hope it was like that, but it’s not.
Yes it is that rigged.
https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2018/venezuela
Yann,
Seriously? I lived in Venezuela for 12 years. I speak read and write in Spanish. I have followed closely the political situation for all that time. I spoke daily with Venezuelans of all classes. Hell, I was even a political prisoner for five days last year! (Long story for another time)
But, you know better than I do, because you speak Spanish and spoke to one Venezuelan who left a long time ago.
Right…
Wonderful. Now, please, read the link first.
All the rigging was about discouraging voters that supported opposition. But that doesn’t make the votes pro-Maduro fake.
If you have 10 votes, and 5 are pro-Maduro, and then you prevent the other 5 from voting, the election is rigged, of course, but that doesn’t make the 5 pro-Maduro votes fake.
And Maduro, after all the Hell breaking loose and the hunger, still kept a 30% from the total poll of voter. That’s the same percentage from the US poll that voted for Trump. It’s a LOT. And that support is real. Maduro still keeps a huge level of support in Venezuela.
Stating that him rigging the election means that he has almost no support is delusional. Dear god, why people have so many problems dealing with facts that contradict their core beliefs?
Yann,
You are neglecting two other forms in which the voting is rigged:
1. People vote for Maduro because they have been convinced that the vote is not secret, and that if they vote against Maduro or even abstain, they will lose their food ration, pension, or other government benefit.
2. The voter rolls are controlled by the government. They are full of ghost voters. The government starts out every election with about 20 percent of the “eligible” vote already in the bag.
I stated before that real support for the government is 15 percent. Of that, 5 percent are people that are plugged in to the system (enchufados) and benefit from the status quo. The other 10 percent are the deluded kool-aid drinkers who are so emotionally invested in “La Revolución” that to admit they were wrong would be a form of emotional suicide.
I should add a third way the vote is rigged:
3. All of the truly viable Opposition candidates have been removed from the playing field by throwing them in jail, disallowing them to participate, or effectively exiling them through threats of jailing them. The remaining available candidates are, and are perceived as, weak and lacking in in political legitimacy.
Well, Roy. I’m afraid that even after 12 years you didn’t get how Latin-American cultures work.
I’m not saying that in a negative way. I don’t doubt for a moment that you’re a clever guy, but getting to understand how other cultures work is quite a rare thing.
There’s a Spanish guy called Roger Senserrich, political analyst, very clever guy too, who have been living in US for years working for Democrat think-tanks. He writes columns about American politics once in a while. It’s a very interesting reading, not for what he says, but for how his mind works. His view about the gun debate is, for example, that white Republicans are a bunch of crazy supremacist white guys feeling threatened that want to have guns to keep other ethnic groups under their boot. Once I was debating with him about that. The idea that guns were a part of individual freedom and was a core value was just unacceptable. White republicans should be a bunch of hypocritical liars, aren’t they?. That’s his view, after years living in US.
Why? Because he was Spanish, and a Spanish person (or Latin-American one, for what matters), he always tries to find the hidden reason. Truths are often partial, or dressed. Appearances, included moral appearances, are fundamental, and people play a dance where the truth lies hidden and it’s often quite hard to find (that’s another cause for perennial violence, by the way, since that makes conflicts MUCH more difficult to solve). People from US are considered as rude and lacking elegance, too straight-forward.
You can spend years in Venezuela, hearing how people claim about mismanagement. If you think that those claims are a straight-forward truth, without hidden layers, because this is how your mind uses to work… well, that’s a mistake. A Spanish guy will go to US, will live there for years hearing the republican claims, and will think that it’s just a straight-forward hypocritical lie, because there must be some hidden truth, things that are not said, probably that they are a bunch of racist supremacists, isn’t it?… because this is how his mind works.
People can live together for years without ever understanding each other.
Neo,
I followed the link on your response to Blert regarding IQ. Thank you for introducing me to the concept of the “Flynn Effect”. This model of how IQ potential is genetically inherited, but is affected by outside factors, matches very well with my own observations after having lived in 12 different countries on five different continents.
Yann,
You are not even attempting to dispute my comments. You are simply saying that I could never possibly understand. That is not civilized nor respectful debate.
Entonces, vete al carrajo, hijo ‘e puta!
I’m sorry you felt it was disrepectful. It was not my intention. Your arguments were perfectly valid if we were talking about US and England. That case, you tell me that you heard for years people claiming about mismanagement, and it would be perfectly reasonable that the problem actually was mismanagement.
But in Latin-American countries and Spain, politic claims are often lies people tell themselves to preserver their self-image. It’s a far more complicated situation. In Spain, the Spanish Civil War, which happened almost one century ago, is STILL one of the main subjects of debate with no agreement whatsoever. The new leftist government proposed last month a law to define the historic truth about it BY LAW.
Well, let’s agree to disagree.
By the way, the sentence in Spanish felt…. weird. I know that people from some Latin-American countries use to have those random sudden outburst with swear words. But they’re not really that random. It’s like a dance, often with hidden layers (again). Very hard to use them well without making it sound weird, when you’re not a native from those countries. (I never do, just in case).
Where did I claim anything about mismanagement? You claim (or rather, your Venezuelan contact, who left, claimed) that there is 30 percent core support in Venezuela for Maduro. The last time he had that level of support was in his first election immediately after the death of Chavez was finally acknowledged in March of 2013 (there is a considerable body of evidence that he actually died the previous December).
Five years ago, Maduro was able to use Chavez’s image and all of the institutional advantage and vote rigging to eak out a 55% victory over Henrique Capriles. After Capriles chose not to fight for his rightful win, it took the heart right out of the Opposition. Most of the remaining Opposition are actually in bed with regime in any case. Ever since then, elections have gone from being a minor farce to being a complete farce. You cannot read anything into the election results because they are not a reflection of the popular will of Venezuelans.
What you also probably do not understand about Venezuela is that Maduro is merely a puppet of the Cuban Regime. You should read the book La Franquicia Cubana by Eduardo Hurtado.
http://reporteconfidencial.info/movil/noticiamovil.php?id_n=3315355
Yann
All the rigging was about discouraging voters that supported opposition. But that doesn’t make the votes pro-Maduro fake.
Venezuela Reported False Election Turnout, Voting Company Says.
Chavista voter fraud involves a bit more than just “discouraging voters.”
The 2015 results: Caucaguita (and Caracas) sweetest moment for the MUD:comment on gerrymandering.
Devil’s Excrement: Delfino and Salas research on electoral fraud in the 2004 Recall Referendum.
I have noted recently a number of newbies to the issue of Venezuela who know a lot less than they believe they know about Venezuela. Roy Nathanson may not know as much about Venezuela as someone born and bred in Venezuela, but he knows a lot more about Venezuela than you think.
¿Me entendés, pana?
Yann
And Venezuelan voters had a real choice in the 2018 “election,” such as having the likes of Capriles or Leopoldo Lopez to vote for? No, because the Chavista government forbade them to run.
The last election with a legitimate opposition permitted to run would have been the 2015 legislative elections. The oppo won two thirds of the seats- 112 out of 168. Maduro responded by ignoring the oppp-dominated National Assembly and creating a Constitutional National Assembly. You know, because Venezuela REALLY needs a new Constitution. The Chavista government doesn’t follow the one it wrote.
There are (or were) three english language blogs about Venezuela:
The Devil’s Excrement by Miguel Octavio followed the situation from a business and economic perspective. Unfortunately, Miguel had a bad accident and was disabled for some time. He has done a few posts since then, but the situation has deteriorated so far, there is little left to say, other than, “Told you so…”
https://devilexcrement.com/
Caracas Chronicles. This blog is mostly political. It was started by Francisco Toro and later added Juan Nagel. Juan had the conservative perspective and Francisco more liberal. This is now a group blog with many authors, some better than others. Since Juan left a couple of years ago, the level of debate hasn’t been what it used to be. However, they are still doing a good job of reporting on the news of Venezuela and chronicling the social and economic implosion.
https://www.caracaschronicles.com/
Venezuela News and Views by Daniel Duquenel. Daniel has gradually become far less active.
http://daniel-venezuela.blogspot.com/?m=1
That was ArtDeco’s position. You attacked my comment disagreeing with that position, so I supposed that you sided with his position.
Another option was to suppose that you attacked me out of the blue for no reason. In any debate, I consider as a good habit to take the most reasonable interpretation, here that meant to infer that you supported ArtDeco’s points and disagreed with mine. Of course, that could be not the case and the attack could be unwarranted, and I would have been wrong to consider it as reasoned. If that’s the case, my apologies.
Actually, that’s not true. His support in that election was the 40% of poll. (50% of votes with a 80% turnout)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_presidential_election,_2013
Actually, you can read about his support. What lacks are the votes that oppose him. That’s why the turnout in 2013 was 80% while the turnout in 2018 was 45%. The election was rigged because that 35% was discouraged or not allowed to vote or could not vote their candidates because they were banned.
No. It’s not. It’s just the standard Latin-American radical left. Maduro is actually a clone from Salvador Allende (he applied the very same recipes until Pinochet took him out), who is still highly praised. You need to believe that Maduro is a puppet for the reason I said before, and I quote myself: “People from US love that narrative where there’s an evil tyrant that oppresses the innocent good people” (actually, what SJW did was to reboot that narrative placing white men as tyrants and other ethnic groups as the innocent good people, they didn’t change the narrative, they just reassigned roles). Fidel Castro has played the role of the evil great Latin-American puppeteer tyrant for decades in US’s mind. But there’s no evil Mr.Villain playing his puppets. This is just how the Latin-American radical left works, and it has a lot of support. While there’s tyranny involved, it’s just an additional factor. It’s not a simple tale of tyrants vs poor oppressed people.
NO.
No Constitution wouldn’t fix shit there.
You think that a Constitution would fix it because of your values: when your culture values the rule of law, you can solve problems choosing carefully a good set of laws. But that would fix nothing in Venezuela. Law is not seen as a set of common rules, but a set of obstacles that should be bypassed if necessary for your morally superior goals.
Have you seen the problems with judges in US using their power to oppose Trump? Have you seen in the very same blog how neo feels about the law being disrespected and abused to achieve political goals?
Well, that’s not a temporary problem. That’s a cultural shift. And when you take that shift much further, what you reach is Latin-America. And no Constitution will fix shit at that point.
Yann,
I don’t know how to convince you. You haven’t been there and you don’t want to listen to those who have, or pay credence to articles such as the one that Art Deco provided. As near as I can tell, your opinions have been formed from conversations with one Venezuelan expat. Is it possible that your Venezuelan friend is self-justifying his reasons for leaving? Most Venezuelan expats are very conflicted. They often tend to blame the the Venezuelans themselves (excluding themselves) for what has happened.
And, of course, the Venezuelans themselves are at fault. They voted for this. Or, at least, they did so until their vote didn’t matter any more.
The roots of the crisis go back to 1975, when then President Carlos Andres Perez nationalized the oil industry. See:
https://www.caracaschronicles.com/2018/08/29/how-the-oil-debate-changed-venezuela-after-august-29-1975/
After that all federal, state, and local governments were primarily financed by oil rents instead of taxes. This concentrated total power in the Federal government instead the decentralized systems we are used to. In Venezuela, all roads lead to Caracas. It worked, for awhile… sort of. Corruption was high, but the oil rents were high enough cover it. It was only when Chavez came along that the real problems started.
Well, I don’t want to write a book here, though I probably could. The point is you really should open your mind and consider that truth is much more complex than the simple narrative you have heard about.
Yann,
Re your last response to Gringo:
You really need to take your irony detector into the shop to have it recalibrated.
No. This is not only about Venezuela. It’s nothing new. It’s the same very old story that has been happening in Latin-America over and over again. If any, my opinion was formed studying the story of Allende and Pinochet. Because of family reasons, I have a personal link to that country. And you can see the same pattern, again, and again (and before). Chavez and Maduro were nothing new. It’s just watching a movie you have watched before.
It’s not political. It’s cultural. And it’s a cultural problem that shows both in the right and left wing, though in different ways. When you say that expats from Venezuela feel conflicted, that’s a very common cultural pattern too. Those people (right and left) bring with them the very same cultural elements that, ultimately, created Maduro. And you have the old “I’m not the monster. They are the monster” personal conflict which is a main aspect in Latin-American cultures and Spain.
There’s a very small percentage of people who support that as a cultural flaw, both sides pointing at each other while shouting ‘you’re the monster‘ will never fix anything, because the flaw is not in one political side but in the very roots of the society. The solution lies then in driving the society towards being more similar to North-European ones (French, English or German). Unfortunately, it’s US the one becoming more Latin-American, instead of the opposite.
This video is a speech from Perez-Reverte, a Spanish writer that belongs to that minority, where he supports that position about the Spanish civil war, that happened a century ago and it’s still unfinished business
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHcUyjxpHuw
What I mean is this is far wider and older than the events in Venezuela. Maduro is just the last iteration of a quite known and old story.
Roy:
Don’t use Spanish cursing and then complain about someone else’s irony meter being out of calibration. When and if you write that book we, the readers, can assess who is the wiser.
I get so tired of hearing this Latino self-loathing. There is nothing wrong with Latinos other than civic immaturity. The nations of LatAm started out as new nations about 30 to 40 years after the U.S. did. Unfortunately, their political development was arrested for a large part of the 20th Century while the U.S. was heavily involved. As long as big brother was always there to save them, they could never grow up and take responsibility for themselves. After the Cold War ended, the U.S. began a hands-off policy, whose goal was to allow the Latino countries to make their own mistakes and grow up sufficiently to become full political and economic partners, rather than clients, of the U.S.
That process is underway, but geopolitics is interfering again. Cuba is continuing to export it’s misery, and they are better at it than they have ever been before. Google “scientific dictatorship”.
It remains to be seen if the U.S. will change its policy and intervene. In Venezuela, Colombia would like to intervene, but is loathe to do so on their own. A consensus to act is developing within LatAm, but most are hesitant to act without the U.S. taking the lead. It is a real watershed moment for the region. Personally, I would like to see Iván Duque, the new president of Colombia, be bold and forge the coalition needed to intervene and restore democracy in Venezuela. A successful intervention would go a long towards curing Latin America of its inferiority complex.
So, don’t give me any of this crap about the cultural inferiority of Latinos. Stop whining about it and grow up!
Yann,
Although all of the Latin American countries share a mother tongue (except for Brazil) and similar cultural roots, They all have unique modern histories. Your personal understanding of Chile, a temperate zone country, may not be applicable to Venezuela, a tropical zone country and culture.
Unfortunately, their political development was arrested for a large part of the 20th Century while the U.S. was heavily involved. As long as big brother was always there to save them, they could never grow up and take responsibility for themselves. After the Cold War ended, the U.S. began a hands-off policy, whose goal was to allow the Latino countries to make their own mistakes and grow up sufficiently to become full political and economic partners, rather than clients, of the U.S.
Absolute rubbish. Latin America’s political history was troubled all throughout the 19th century (when the principal foreign power was Britain and the most intrusive act by external powers was the attempt to turn Mexico into a French client state). American interventions during the early 20th century were confined to a short menu of countries in the Caribbean basin whose political history has been neither more nor less troubled than other Latin American countries with similar real income levels and sectoral mixes. As for the period since 1935, the secular trend has been in favor of more regular order, more popular participation, and more formal pluralism. The notion that Latin America’s political dysfunction is attributable to the CIA or USAID or the State Department is one promoted by Latin Americans to help themselves feel better.
Roy, growing up is about being able to learn from your mistakes and to identify where are the flaws. Closing your eyes while you shout ‘grow up’ won’t make you a grown up.
And I’m not implying that Latin-America is the only culture with flaws. Far from it. North-American culture has its own flaws too, and those flaws run free both in the right and left wing. One example I used before: American people use to simplify every social conflict to a tale of good people versus evil tyrants and oppressors.
Go to the right, and you’ll find people like you explaining Venezuela as a tale of good people, maybe with a bit of (how did you say?) civic immaturity, oppressed by an evil group of communists supported by Cuba.
Then go to the left, and you’ll find American Liberals explaining problems in the black community as a tale of good people, maybe with a bit of civic immaturity, oppressed by an evil group of Republican white supremacists.
It’s the same trope, the same pattern. Only difference is how the roles are assigned. At the deep end, your values carry the very same flaws that run in Liberal SJWs. And that’s not political. That’s a cultural flaw. The SJW trend didn’t appear out of the blue: it’s deeply rooted in the American values.
Latin-America has bigger flaws than North-America, that’s true, but having less problems is not the same than having no problems.
Gringo:
Yann in reply:
Yann may not realize it, but we are in agreement. Roy Nathanson has detected my irony/sarcasm, probably because like me, he is aware of Venezuela’s record on Constitutions. Why Venezuela May Change Its Constitution for the 27th Time. Constitution-of-the-month 🙂 , or more accurately said decade, is rather common in Latin America.
You’re right. We agreed there. Anyway, the irony will only work for people who are native from US, where the Constitution is almost a holy book and has foundational values, which gives the edge that makes the sentence witty. In most of the world, it’s just a book of laws.
Art Deco,
You could study the history of the U.S. in the 19th Century. We were not a stellar example of political maturity. Local politics was rife with corruption and the federal level was full of blunders.
Roy:
And your point is what? That the 20th century was so much better for political maturity in the world, or that 21st century politics in this country and world wide are mature, wise, and without blunders? Care to count the genocides of the last century or the local little current atrocities? Who or what country are your exemplars of political maturity and wisdom?
You could study the history of the U.S. in the 19th Century. We were not a stellar example of political maturity. Local politics was rife with corruption and the federal level was full of blunders.
Personally, I think ‘political maturity’ is a humbug term.
Latin America in the 19th century had several ways business was conducted in their national politics, with countries alternating between those modes. One was to have factions of grandees who slated political offices through occult methods (making occasional use of competitive election). These were commonly termed ‘Liberal’ and ‘Conservative’ which in turn were sorted by conflicts between commercial interests and masonic lodges on the one hand and the landed gentry, the military and the Church on the other. Another was to have short term caudillos (soldiers or partisans) who had their ad hoc collection of followers (and sometimes an association with the grandee factions). Another was electoral competition, but with low levels of popular mobilization and with highly restrictive suffrage being the order of the day. You had a few durable autocracies (Paraguay, 1814-70; Mexico, 1876-1910).
None of the foregoing was manifest in the United States, wherein government was consistently constitutional (if messy) and suffrage was broadly distributed among the adult male population. IIRC, about 40% of the adult male population (aliens excepted) had the vote during the pre-Jacksonian period and somewhere around 85% did by the time of Jackson’s retirement. You didn’t see broad suffrage in post-Napoleonic Europe until the 1860s; you didn’t see military dictators, either. As for Latin constitutionalism, as late as 1915, no more than about 15% of the adult male citizen population in Chile cast ballots in a national election. It was after the 1st World War that you began to see episodic electoral mobilization which implicated more than an affluent minority here and there in Latin America.