The blogspot EUReferendum (thanks to Jonathan Lockhart) reports that American soldiers are no longer welcome at the Columbus commemorations in Spain next week, and for the first time, French soldiers will be invited. I didn't know Columbus sailed to France, but leave that aside. José Bono says the Spanish are through kowtowing to foreign governments -- but not, apparently, to foreign and domestic mujahedin.
American soldiers have been disinvited from next week’s parade in Spain, that will be commemorating Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the New World. (Columbus was not, of course, a Spaniard but a Genoese.) Americans had first been invited to participate in the wake of 9/11 but Zapatero’s government apparently does not feel that there is any need to honour American or any other dead victims of terrorism. Except, presumably, the Madrid ones. (Am I the only person who is still rather puzzled by the fact that a dozen backpacks filled with explosives were left at various points of the underground system and nobody, absolutely nobody reported them to the police?)Not only has the government decided that Americans were not wanted at the parade, while the French were for the first time (what on earth has Columbus’s arrival in the New World has to do with the French?) but the Defence Minister, José Bono, was also moved to pronounce on the relationship between the two countries:
“What does not continue is subordinating and getting down on our knees on orders from a foreign government.”
Perhaps not. But orders issued by foreign terrorists through bombs seem to be obeyed with regards to participation or otherwise in the war against terror. Spanish forces were pulled out of Iraq, Spanish help in Afghanistan is being cut back and Prime Minister Zapatero is urging America’s allies to follow suit in order to “open up a more favourable prospect” in Iraq. Just how abandoning the people of that country to the neo-Baathist insurgents would open up a favourable prospect is not entirely clear, but perhaps it made sense in Spanish.
The blog Barcepundit carried this story a couple of days ago. It also had an interesting photo of Mr. Bean (oops - sorry I meant Zapatero)refusing to stand as the U.S. flag was paraded by - unlike everybody else in the picture. His comment:
"Asked later why he did that, he answered: "Why should I stand? It was not my flag."
If this is true, Mr Bean has hit a low. Lost my respect for sure, for what it is worth.
Spain, over the centuries, has transgressed from being one of the most feared, respected, prosperous empires, playing a hugh part in history, to a shrivelled little pre-third world nation run by cowards, whose economy's main gain is from tourism.
Well done Spain (NOT)!!!
Spain has chosen irrelevance - who cares what their dhimmi leader thinks?
Re: Voletti
The link follows. Scroll down a couple of pages and you will see the photo and the quote.
http://barcepundit-english.blogspot.com/
Irrelevant is a good adjective to describe both Spain and France, but Spain has now shown to be more even more so.
Once upon a time, we the Catalan people cooperated with the Castilians in the endeavor of the reconquest of half the Iberian peninsula.
Even we gifted them our conquests of Granada and Murcia (as we settled Valencia and Majorca, possibly we had not enough population to resettle there).
And today, how embarrassing is to me to be ruled by Castilian dhimmis...
BTW, the Spaniards (originally named Castilians) faked the real history of the Dicovery of America through the Inquisition and the Royal Censure: The Hispanic crown --dominated by the Castilian aristocracy-- STOLE the American properties of Columbus, who was a Catalan patriot and thus not very friendly to Castile, nor to France.
As Muslims do, Castilians also practice supersession of history. Good dhimmis follow their masters.
John Cabot, the discoverer of North America was also a Catalan admiral (hired by the English crown); again, officially he was "Genoese as Columbus"...
[You can find some info in on the real Columbus in the Discovery Channel,
http://dsc.discovery.com/schedule/episode.jsp?episode=0&cpi=24820&gid=13406&channel=DSC
]
If the United States -- Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean etc. -- is not invited, what about Italy? Would Italy nog have more of a connection to Columbus than France?
And if one accepted the evidence and arguments of the most famous Spanish scholar-in-exile, Salvador de Madariaga, who concluded from his own study that Columbus was Jewish (an argument accepted by Indro Montanelli, who was not quick to accept such speculations), then perhaps Israel too might have been asked to send a representative.
But neither Italy, nor Israel, nor the United States, had representatives. Only M'sieur Dupont, representing the (very temporary) Republique francaise.
Question for Zapatero: Why not go all the way? If, as Muslims are now claiming (ably seconded by the U. S. State Department -- see the article by Robert Spencer a few weeks ago on the announcement by someone in the State Department), Muslims were heavily represented in Columbus' crew, especially as navigators (an unheard-of claim, and without a shred of evidence), then surely Zapatero could have killed a whole flock of birds with one stone by inviting all 22 member states of the Arab League. No, that doesn't go far enough either. Why not invite representatives of every one of the 57 member states of the Organization of Islamic Countries, with Sheikh al-Qaradawi thrown in?
Columbus would have wanted it that way. You see, he had been kidding when he told los Reyes Catolicos that the main point of his mission was to spread Christianity -- a point that Isabella particularly favored. When he kept talking about the need to make an end-run around the Muslim world, of course he talked not only about Christianity but alluded to the problem of the Muslims cutting off the East from the West (students of history will no doubt wish to google "the Pirenne thesis" -- and the counter-Pirenne thesis of Lopez and others -- which suggests that when the Muslims conquered the southern rim and hinterland (entroterra) of the Mediterranean, this led to a shift in the center of European economic development, further to the north). But Columbus no doubt would be delighted to see his insistence on helping to spread Christianity as just a facade -- hey, he was only joking. Time to tell the truth.
Zapatero's palpable dislike of the United States fits the dreary template. Too bad he does not realize that when Spanish television stopped signing off at night with that flag flapping and that nasty fascist song -- you know the one -- "Por Dios, la Patria y el Rey/Lucharon nuestros padres/Por Dios, la Patria y el Rey/Lucharemos nosotros tambien." it had not put Fascism behind it. No, though Zapatero does not realize it, with every step he takes to appease Islam, and with every step he takes to distance himself from those sometimes silly, those sometimes inarticulate, but those almost always correct politically -- NOT politically correct -- Estados Unidos -- he is getting closer and closer to real Fascism. And that real Fascism? It is the Fascism contained in that Total Explanation of the Universes, with its Handy Scapegoad For Every Occasion, the Infidel -- that is to say, Islam.
Adios, Spain. It was swell. last time you had Fascists, we got Jorge Guillen teaching at Wellesley, and Pablo Casals playing everywhere. And a host of others. Yes, some very nice people fled to Mexico City. The Soviets, being the Soviets, got only La Pasionaria. Well, in ten years, or twenty, as the Spanish feel the Muslim presence making life even more expensive, difficult, unpleasant, and constrained, and begin to seek shelter, one hopes that at least a few universities will reserve a chair or two for a distinguished Spanish literary scholar, or poet, or historian.
After all, it's the least we can do.
Was Columbus Jewish?
On August 3, 1492, due to the Edict of Expulsion, all Jews were required to leave Spain. Boarding their vessels before midnight, and sailing one-half hour before sunrise, Columbus and his crew set out on his now-famous voyage....
http://www.khouse.org/articles/biblestudy/19960801-109.html
Was Columbus Portuguese?
http://www.apol.net/dightonrock/columbus_day_material.htm
Zapatero is obviously turning a celebration into something highly politicized. It should be stated, however, that American soldiers have only been envited since the 911. As to the French, it is indeed a first (which makes it even more ridiculous). Zapatero wants to join the Berlin-Paris axis and turn it into a Berlin-Paris-Madrid triumvirate.
This is only indirectly related with Moors in Spain, and even less with Columbus. As such - and this is probably a first for me - I think that many of you are over-reacting to a political decision that while being ridiculous (and almost childish, one could say), has little or nothing to do with Zapatero's stance regarding Islam and the Muslim colonization of Spain.
To Joel Catalã:
Assuming that you are a Catalan - and by consequence a Spaniard -, you obviously know that Spaniard and Castillian is hardly the same thing (Castille is only one of the many nations that compose the modern kingdom of Spain). As a Portuguese who knows his fair share of history, I have plenty of reasons to complain about Spain but even I can see that you are exagerating.
To some of you:
Common sense, please. You won't win any friends in Spain or in France by turning those two countries into punching bags that are guilty of everything. What's next? "Freedom fries", Spanish style? Common sense, please.
I feel ashamed to hold a Spanish passport, having a spineless government and a cowardly population.
Regarding internal Spanish politics, Mr Columbus was not Catalan, he was Genoese and possibly a citizen of the Kingdom of Aragon. I believe Catalunya was part of Aragon at the time... just as Mr Bush is American and not from Oklahoma; they both belong to the USA, but being an American from Texas does not make you an Oklahoma local even if they are close...
Greetings
Mr Tea (who actually would like to live in Catalunya!) ;-)
Teaman,
If you are a Portuguese, congratulations the freedom you won in Aljubarrota. In the other side of the Iberian peninsula, we Catalans didn't have the same fate.
The siege of Barcelona was terrible: we resisted 13 months.
Listen: Barcelona fell the 11th of September of 1714.
---
Teaman, your unsuported assertions are not adjusted to objectivity:
"Mr Columbus was not Catalan, he was Genoese"
Here you go against eminent historians as Luis Ulloa or the recent studies of the American Historian Charles Merrill, and the Catalan historian Jordi Bilbeny. The Inquisition is late to hide the truth: those scientists already proved with an important amount of historical evidence and the use of logic that Columbus was a Catalan.
Related to Columbus: he was an admiral, not a wooler; he was a Catalan, not a Genoese, nor Potuguese, nor Castilian; he was a Jewish convert or son of a Jewish convert; was born in a wealthy Barcelonese family of traders and military men, and possibly grandson of William Columbus, a leader of the Catalan society and the Jewish community of Barcelona, who around 1400 fouded the Exchange Table, a bank, something forbidden to the Catholics.
---
The Kingdom of Aragon was a federation of two free nations, the Aragonese and the Catalan peoples. The leading role was carried by Catalonia, the dinasty of kings was Catalan --the House of Barcelona; all serious, unbiased historians know and explain that.
Lately, the Hispanic crown, a try to build an extension of that federation, was parasited by the expansionst Castilian agenda.
---
Hugh,
Your suggestion is somehow partially fulfilled by the following fact: an al-Husseini ally will parade tomorrow; the parade will include a survivor of the "Division Azul", a Francoist division that was sent to Russia to contribute to the (failed) Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.
Thank you for your comment on Pau Casals. He was the author of the Hymn of the United Nations --when that institution still kept a hint of honorability--, and in his presentation of the hymn did a moving speach in the defense of Catalonia, today still ruled by Spain.
Naturally, he was a friend of Israel and its leaders, as we the emancipated Catalans are.
Errata:
The first two lines should have been:
"alex221166,
If you are a Portuguese,..."
Where I wrote "The Kingdom of Aragon was a federation of two free nations...", the correct expression is
"The Crown of Aragon formed a federation of two free nations...".
Addenda:
Franco's personal guards were the Moorish Guard.
Jimenez de Parga, now member, and then President of the Spanish Constitutional Court, once said that the times of Muslim rule was as a golden age, and opposed it to a supposedly uncivilized Catalonia.
In reality, Catalonia was unislamized.