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cd35cfa
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To protest about bullfighting in Spain, the eating of dogs in South Korea, or the slaughter of baby seals in Canada while continuing to eat eggs from hens who have spent their lives crammed into cages, or veal from calves who have been deprived of their mothers, their proper diet, and the freedom to lie down with their legs extended, is like denouncing apartheid in South Africa while asking your neighbors not to sell their houses to blacks.
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compassion
science
bullfighting
seals
canada
apartheid
south-africa
south-korea
spain
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Peter Singer |
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8ea989c
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Certainly paradise, whatever, wherever it be, contains flaws. (Paradisical flaws, if you like.) If it did not, it would be incapable of drawing the hearts of men or angels.
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life
spain
paradise
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Henry Miller |
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643ade0
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"Are you a communist?" "No I am an anti-fascist" "For a long time?" "Since I have understood fascism."
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war
spain
fascism
communism
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Ernest Hemingway |
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84f5b26
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Hitherto, the Palestinians had been relatively immune to this style. I thought this was a hugely retrograde development. I said as much to Edward. To reprint Nazi propaganda and to make a theocratic claim to Spanish soil was to be a protofascist and a supporter of 'Caliphate' imperialism: it had nothing at all to do with the mistreatment of the Palestinians. Once again, he did not exactly disagree. But he was anxious to emphasize that the Israelis had often encouraged Hamas as a foil against Fatah and the PLO. This I had known since seeing the burning out of leftist Palestinians by Muslim mobs in Gaza as early as 1981. Yet once again, it seemed Edward could only condemn Islamism if it could somehow be blamed on either Israel or the United States or the West, and not as a thing in itself. He sometimes employed the same sort of knight's move when discussing other Arabist movements, excoriating Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party, for example, mainly because it had once enjoyed the support of the CIA. But when Saddam was really being attacked, as in the case of his use of chemical weapons on noncombatants at Halabja, Edward gave second-hand currency to the falsified story that it had 'really' been the Iranians who had done it. If that didn't work, well, hadn't the United States sold Saddam the weaponry in the first place? Finally, and always--and this question wasn't automatically discredited by being a change of subject--what about Israel's unwanted and ugly rule over more and more millions of non-Jews? I evolved a test for this mentality, which I applied to more people than Edward. What would, or did, the relevant person say when the United States intervened to stop the massacres and dispossessions in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo? Here were two majority-Muslim territories and populations being vilely mistreated by Orthodox and Catholic Christians. There was no oil in the region. The state interests of Israel were not involved (indeed, Ariel Sharon publicly opposed the return of the Kosovar refugees to their homes on the grounds that it set an alarming--I want to say 'unsettling'--precedent). The usual national-security 'hawks,' like Henry Kissinger, were also strongly opposed to the mission. One evening at Edward's apartment, with the other guest being the mercurial, courageous Azmi Bishara, then one of the more distinguished Arab members of the Israeli parliament, I was finally able to leave the arguing to someone else. Bishara [...] was quite shocked that Edward would not lend public support to Clinton for finally doing the right thing in the Balkans. Why was he being so stubborn? I had begun by then--belatedly you may say--to guess. Rather like our then-friend Noam Chomsky, Edward in the final instance believed that if the United States was doing something, then that thing could not be a moral or ethical action.
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andalusia
ariel-sharon
azmi-bishara
bosnia-and-herzegovina
caliphate
chemical-weapons
fatah
halabja
halabja-poison-gas-attack
israelis
knesset
leftists
politics-of-israel
takbir
gaza
national-security
iran
henry-kissinger
balkans
hamas
plo
noam-chomsky
catholics
war-crimes
theocracy
bosnian-war
oil
kosovo
kosovo-war
bill-clinton
christians
muslims
baath-party
saddam-hussein
nazism
edward-said
spain
imperialism
united-states
fascism
islam
islamism
propaganda
antisemitism
fanaticism
israel
palestinians
religious-extremism
cia
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Christopher Hitchens |
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7eff9ca
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"Call no man lucky until he is dead, but there have been moment of rare satisfaction in the often random and fragmented life of the radical freelance scribbler. I have lived to see Ronald Reagan called "a useful idiot for Kremlin propaganda" by his former idolators; to see the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union regarded with fear and suspicion by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (which blacked out an interview with Milos Forman broadcast live on Moscow TV); to see Mao Zedong relegated like a despot of antiquity. I have also had the extraordinary pleasure of revisiting countries--Greece, Spain, Zimbabwe, and others--that were dictatorships or colonies when first I saw them. Other mini-Reichs have melted like dew, often bringing exiled and imprisoned friends blinking modestly and honorably into the glare. --it still moves, all right."
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television
freedom
milos-forman
postcolonialism
ronald-reagan
moscow
czechoslovakia
despotism
liberation
zimbabwe
mao-zedong
journalism
dictatorship
spain
soviet-union
united-states
propaganda
colonialism
russia
communism
greece
cold-war
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Christopher Hitchens |
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4b4a59f
|
I can remember when I was a bit of an ETA fan myself. It was in 1973, when a group of Basque militants assassinated Adm. Carrero Blanco. The admiral was a stone-faced secret police chief, personally groomed to be the successor to the decrepit Francisco Franco. His car blew up, killing only him and his chauffeur with a carefully planted charge, and not only was the world well rid of another fascist, but, more important, the whole scheme of extending Franco's rule was vaporized in the same instant. The dictator had to turn instead to Crown Prince Juan Carlos, who turned out to be the best Bourbon in history and who swiftly dismantled Franco's entire system. If this action was 'terrorism,' it had something to be said for it. Everyone I knew in Spain made a little holiday in their hearts when the gruesome admiral went sky-high.
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1973
basque-people
dictatorship
eta
francisco-franco
house-of-bourbon
juan-carlos-i-of-spain
luis-carrero-blanco
terrorism
spain
fascism
assassination
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Christopher Hitchens |
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d3240bd
|
"In
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george-orwell
spain
spanish-civil-war
stalinism
soviet-union
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Christopher Hitchens |
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0912511
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Incluso aunque nuestros hombres y sus generales distaban de ser los mismos que cuando el duque de Alba y Alejandro Farnesio, los soldados espanoles continuaron siendo por algun tiempo la pesadilla de Europa; los mismos que habian capturado a un rey frances en Pavia, vencido en San Quintin, saqueado Roma y Amberes, tomado Amiens y Ostende, matado diez mil enemigos en el asalto de Jemmigen, ocho mil en Maastrich y nueve mil en La Esclusa, peleando al arma blanca con el agua hasta la cintura. Eramos la ira de Dios.
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ira
tercios
spain
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Arturo Pérez-Reverte |
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abfc8af
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On May 30, 1539, Hernando De Soto landed his private army near Tampa Bay in Florida. De Soto was a novel figure: half warrior, half venture capitalist. He grew very rich very young in Spanish America by becoming a market leader in the nascent slave trade. The profits helped to fund the conquest of the Inka, which made De Soto wealthier still. He accompanied Pizarro to Tawantinsuyu (aka, The Inka Empire), burnishing his reputation for brutality - he personally tortured Challcochima (a leading Inka general of the north) before his execution. Literally looking for new worlds to conquer, De Soto returned to Spain soon after his exploits in Peru. In Charles V's court he persuaded the bored monarch to let him loose in North America with an expedition of his own. He sailed to Florida with six hundred soldiers, two hundred horses, and three hundred pigs. From today's perspective, it is difficult to imagine the ethical system that culd justify De Soto's subsequent actions. For four years his force wandered through what are now Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Texas and Louisiana, looking for gold and wrecking most everything it touched. The inhabitants often fought back viorously, but they were baffled by the Spaniards' motives. De Soto and his soldiers managed to rape, torture, enslave, and kill countless Indians. But the worst thing he did, some researchers say, was entirely without malice - he brought pigs.
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conquistadors
florida
hernando-de-soto
hernando-pizarro
small-pox
pigs
spain
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Charles C. Mann |
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ebac706
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I kako ovaj tvoj spis ne ide ni za cim drugim nego da unisti ugled i vlast koju i medu svijetom i medu svjetinom uzivaju viteske knjige, ne treba ti prosjaciti sentencije od filozofa, recenice iz Svetog pisma, price od pjesnika, govore od retora, cudesa od svetaca, nego nastoj da ti u knjizi budu krepke, valjane i dobro probrane rijeci, pa da ti pricanje i recenice poteku zvucno i ugodno, koliko god mozes, znas i volis, a da misli svoje iskazujes ne brkajuci ih i ne zamracujuci. Nastoj i o tome da se citajuci tvoju historiju melankolik nasmije, smjesljivac da puca od smijeha, priprostomu da ne bude na dosadu, razborit covjek neka se divi invenciji, ozbiljan neka je ne odvrgne, a umnik neka je svagda hvali. Sve u sve, upni da razoris lose osnovanu zgradu tih viteskih knjiga sto ih mnogi mrze a jos brojniji hvale; ako to postignes, nisi postigao malenkost.
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inspirational
wrting
renaissance
prologue
spain
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Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra |
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cf7bb98
|
BERNARDA.-- Las mujeres en la iglesia no deben mirar mas hombre que al oficiante, y a ese porque tiene faldas. Volver la cabeza es buscar el calor de la pana. MUJER 1.-- (En voz baja) !Vieja lagarta recocida! LA PONCIA.-- (Entre dientes) !Sarmentosa por calentura de varon! BERNARDA.-- (Dando un golpe de baston en el suelo) !Alabado sea Dios! TODAS.-- (Santiguandose) Sea por siempre bendito y alabado.
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theatre
mourning
religion
la-casa-de-bernarda-alba
spanish-literature
theatre-plays
teatro
spain
españa
honour
honor
theater
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Federico García Lorca |
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6ff8bee
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el humano no es fruto de la perfeccion, sino de una enfermedad
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humanity
reality
historical-romance-fiction
spain
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Manuel Rivas |