Saturday, February 26, 2011

Spanish society surveyed about international issues.

The Real Instituto Elcano surveyed 1,200 people in Spain between October 28 and November 10, 2010, regarding international issues. When it comes to rate different countries in a 0 to 10 scale, the results are the following:

1.- Brazil: 6.
2.- Germany: 5.9.
3.- France: 5.8.
4.- United States: 5.7.
5.- Argentina: 5.6.
6.- Chile: 5.3.
6.- Venezuela: 5.3.
8.- Russia: 4.7.
9.- Cuba: 4.6.
10.- China: 4.5.
11.- Turkey: 4.4.
12.- Israel: 4.1.
13.- Morocco: 3.9.
14.- Iran: 3.

Russia, Cuba and China are considered Not Free by Freedom House's Freedom of the World report of 2010, while Venezuela and Turkey are considered Partly Free and Israel is considered Free by the same report. But in spite of these facts, Israel is rated worse than Venezuela, Russia, Cuba, China and Turkey by the Spanish society.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Does a Spanish intelligentsiya exist, properly speaking?

Through an article by Lucía Villa published on Público's official website on Monday, February 7, 2011, a video has been presented in support of a campaign for a new Gaza flotilla, called Ship to Gaza (translated into Spanish as Rumbo a Gaza). The video shows Spanish celebrities such as Alberto San Juan, Guillermo Toledo, Wyoming, Juan Diego Boto and Melanie Olivares, among others. They mainly come from the so-called mundo de la cultura (literally, culture world), which encompasses personalities from sectors like the TV, the cinema or the literature.

In other words: celebrities. Celebrities who serve as useful idiots (as Bernard-Henri Lévy portrayed those who joined the last Gaza flotilla on behalf of the I.H.H. through an article I'll translate soon) for a cause related to the Arab-Israeli conflict, whose history and characteristics they surely don't even know (as they demonstrate by their own words, repeating myths proven historically wrong on this blog), but who don't hesitate to present themselves as a moral authority on humanitarian issues (and they're often accepted as such by the public opinion and the mainstream media).

Well, or that's what they pretend to be. Because we've been presented individuals in that video such as Spanish actor Willy Toledo, who justifies the Cuban dictatorship and portrayes a non-violent anti-Castro activist as a common criminal.

Independent documentary filmmaker Maital Guttman managed to explain all of this and more here. Why don't we the Spaniards have such an example of real (and, by the way, beautiful) intelligentsiya?