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Today's
Stories
March 19, 2004
Vicente Navarro
The End of Aznar, Bush's Best
Friend
March 18, 2004
Gila Svirsky
Rachel
Corrie, One Year Later: She Never Lost Faith in Decency
Christopher Brauchli
Drilling a Hole in the Sanctions: How Halliburton Made $73 Million
from Saddam
William Kulin
Report from Iraq: Just Another Baghdad Car Bombing
Mike Whitney
Resistance: a Moral Imperative
Rep. Ron Paul
Broadcast Indecency Act: an Indecent Attack on the First Amendment
Josh Frank
The Nader Question
Jack Random
They Lied & They Lost: Madrid and the Lessons of Democracy
Greg Bates
What Makes a Nader Voter Tick? A Survey
Sam Hamod / Alfredo Reyes
Contempt of the World: Hastert, Bush and Cheney on Spain
Gary Leupp
The
Madrid Bombings: the Chickens Come Home to Roost
Website of the Day
Privatizing Armageddon: Buy Your Own Doomsday Key
March 17, 2004
Marjorie Cohn
Spain, the EU and the US: War on
Terror or Civil Liberties?
David MacMichael
Untruth
and Consequences
Michael Donnelly
Wear the Green, But Skip the Green Beer
Tom Stephens
"Steady Leadership": Let the Buyer Beware
Wayne Madsen
Sen. Kerry, Let Me Help You Out
Karyn Strickler
Who Owns the Sierra Club? Anonymous Donors and Rigged Elections
Peter Linebaugh
Bush:
Blanc Blanc
March 16, 2004
Lenni Brenner
James
Madison: the Anti-Clerical Father of the Bill of Rights
Scott Boehm
Madrid
Diary: How to Change World Order in Four Days
Alexander Lynch
From Franco to Aznar: the History
Behind the Spanish Elections
Sam Hamod and Alfredo
Reyes
The Truth About the Spanish Elections: Aznar Was Going Down Anyway
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
You Wouldn't Do a Dog This Way:
Executing David Clayton Hill
Mike Whitney
The Case for a Nuclear Iran
Robert Fisk
The Bloody Price of the "War
on Terror"
Bill Christison
The
Aftershocks from Madrid
CounterPunch Photo Wire
The Passion of St. Teresa
Website of the Day
Join the War on Art!
March 15, 2004
Harry Browne
Terror Nothing New to Europe
Mike Whitney
Justice
Not Murder: the Tragic Symmetry of Terrorism
Lidice Valenzuela
Haiti: a Coup without Consultation
Greg Moses
Lessons
from the Texas Primaries: Looking for a Coalition with Legs
Mickey Z.
Depraved Indifference: C-Sections, Patriarchy & Women's Health
Asaf Shtull-Trauring
AWOL
in New York: From Refusenik to Organizer
CounterPunch Wire
Gen. Gramajo Executed by Bees!
March 12 / 14, 2004
Gabriel Kolko
The
Coming Elections and the Future of American Global Power
Saul Landau
Oh, Jesus...It's the Movie!
William Blum
Neo-Con(tradictions)
William S. Lind
Why They Throw Rocks
Rahul Mahajan
The Meaning of Madrid: War on "Terrorism" Makes Us
All Less Safe
Neve Gordon
Demographic Wars
Kurt Nimmo
Kerry and the Progressive Interventionists
Mickey Z.
The "New" UN Blames the Poor
Mike Whitney
War Games: the American Media Leads the Charge
Helen Scott and Ashley
Smith
Aristide's Fall: What Led to the Coup?
Justin E.H. Smith
Loïc Wacquant: Against a Sociodicy
of the American Prison
Brandy Baker
Him Again? Al Gore Needs to Move On
Robin Philpot
Nobody Can Call It a "Plane Crash" Now: the Report
on the Assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Meat Monopoly Takes a Rare Pounding
Dave Zirin
She Turned Her Back on the War: an Interview with Toni Smith
Daniel Wolff
The Lord's Pier
March 11, 2004
Ron Jacobs
Bedtime
for Democracy
Bill Kauffman
Hey,
Ralph! Why Not Another Party of the People?
James Hollander
Slaughter
in Madrid: Consolidating an Ally?
Norman Solomon
They
Shoot Journalists, Don't They?
Patrick Gavin
The Salvation of Dan Quayle: Family Values Return
Becky Burgwin
You're
Messing with the Wrong Generation
John Sugg
The FBI is on My Trail
March 10, 2004
Hammond Guthrie
Read
This Book!: "Who the Hell is Stew Albert?"
Chris Floyd
Operation Enduring Sweatshop: Another
Bush Brings Hell to Haiti
Elizabeth Corrie
Remembering the Death of Rachel Corrie
Mike Whitney
US Press Torpedoes Aristide
M. Junaid Alam
An Anti-Civilizational War?
Bob Feldman
The Occupation of Haiti: Recalling 1915-1934
John L. Hess
An Overload of Crises
Gary Leupp
On Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi and the Uses of al-Qaeda "Links"
March 9, 2004
Greg Weiher
The
Zarqawi Gambit, Part 2
Ben Tripp
Word Up! Let's Have a Conversation
Tom Barry
Neo-Cons Target Syria
Sharon Smith
The Hypocrites in the Catholic Church
Robert Fisk
The Same Old Iraq
Doug Giebel
The Bush Strategy: Laughing All the Way
Ralph Nader
Pension Rights, the Trail of Broken Promises
Daniel Estulin
In Memory of Ricardo Ortega: a Great Journalist, Killed in Haiti
Dave Lindorff
Martha Stewart's Cloudy Day
Saul Landau
Will the Filthy Rich Dump Bush?
Website of the Day
Imperial Armies in the Garden
March 8, 2004
Amy Goodman
An
Interview with Aristide
Eric Ruder
An Interview
with Robert Fatton on the Coup in Haiti
Robert Jensen
The Presidential Library Terrorist
Connection
Mike Whitney
Expel the US from the Security Council
Jason Leopold
How Cheney Helped Cover Up Pakistan's
Nuclear Proliferation
Mazin Qumsiyeh
Why is Apartheid Touted as a Solution?
Kevin Alexander Gray
The Legacy of Strom Thurmond
Derek Seidman
Radical Continuity: an Interview with Paul Buhle
Steve Perry
Kerry Fiddles While He Could be Burning Bush
Website of the Day
Patriot
Act Game
March 6 / 7, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Understanding the World with
Paul Sweezy
Robert Pollin
Remembering Paul Sweezy
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Timber Theft
Tom Reeves
Bush's Mass Deportations: 63,000 and Counting
Charles Lewis
Who Mugged Howard Dean in Iowa:
Kerry, Torricelli and a Mysterious Frontgroup
Tom Jackson
My Breakfast with Sen. Judd Gregg
Kurt Nimmo
Is Venezuela Next?
Alan Cisco
A Report from Caracas
Jack Random
Haitian Democracy be Damned
Colin Piquette
Oh, Canada: the Coup Coalition
Lee Sustar
Labor's State of Emergency
William D. Hartung
Iraq and the Costs of War
David Sally
Rebuilding
Amérique
Mark Scaramella
When God Mooned Moses: Test Your Bible Knowledge
Mickey Z.
What We Can Learn from Ashcroft's Gallbladder
Ron Jacobs
Politics and Baseball
Dave Zirin
The Longest Jump: the Blackballing of Phil Shinnick
Poets' Basement
John Holt and Larry Kearney
Website of the Weekend
National Day of Action for Rachel Corrie
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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March
19, 2004
From Fascism to Democracy in Spain
The
End of Aznar, Bush's Best Friend
By VICENTE NAVARRO
The Spanish fascist dictatorship led by General
Franco was one of the most repressive regimes to have existed
in Western Europe in the 20th Century. For every political assassination
that took place under the Mussolini regime, Franco assassinated
10,000. The Franco dictatorship was established by the Armed
Forces, the Church, the banking community, the large employers,
the oligarchic land owners, and sectors of the middle class after
a military coup took place in 1936 against a democratically elected
government who had enacted major reforms that had injured the
pro-Franco groups' interests. The elected government was very
popular because it introduced the public school system (controlled
until then by the Catholic Church), social security, land reform,
divorce and the abortion laws, and other public policies that
benefited the working class and other components of the popular
classes.
The savage repression by the Franco regime
(that lasted forty years, 1939-1977) was particularly harsh on
the working class, a repression that continued up to the very
end of the regime. Nearly one million died in the popular resistance
against the coup and afterwards. Even on the year of his death,
Franco signed five death sentences for members of the anti-fascist
resistance. The two major foreign powers that supported the Franco
regime were the U.S. government (both Republican and Democratic
administrations) and the Vatican. It is, therefore, not surprising
that the Spaniards have been the least pro-U.S. in Europe and
the least among southern European countries to attend catholic
masses on Sundays.
The transition from dictatorship to democracy
was triggered in large part by a growing popular resistance against
the Franco regime. From 1974 to 1977 (the dictator died on November
20, 1975, day the country ran out of champagne), Spain was the
country in Europe that had the most general strikes. These working
class mobilizations and the "Revolution of the Carnations"
in nearby Portugal worried the Francoist establishment, which
controlled the state apparatuses and the media outlets in Spain.
In addition, the U.S. government expressed the concern that they
could lose control over the Spanish geopolitical territory. The
U.S. passed word to the head of that Francoist establishment,
the King, that something needed to change. The U.S. ambassador
told the King to become friendlier with and more knowledgeable
of the Spanish working class. This was the first time the U.S.
ambassador had used the expression "working class"
in his exchanges with the King.
The transition from dictatorship to democracy
took place in a manner very favorable to the right, which still
controlled the Army, the state machinery, and the media. A right-wing
condition for the transition to democracy was the retention of
the Monarchy and the establishment of an electoral law that would
benefit the right enormously. Even today, Avila, one of the most
conservative regions in Spain, needs only 30,000 votes to place
a member in the Parliament, while Barcelona, a progressive region,
needs 150,000. In spite of this discrimination, the left, represented
by the social democratic party PSOE, won big in 1982, and established
the welfare state, including the universalization of public education
and health care. This was a time of reforms and explains the
popular support of that government during the period of 1982
to 1993.
The PSOE, however, was divided between
its own right and the left. The right was influential in the
economic and labor ministries, and was responsible for some labor
market reforms that triggered three general strikes, an unprecedented
phenomenon in Europe. Social democratic governments do not usually
have to face general strikes. The PSOE, however, did, and, in
1993, the right became the dominant force within the PSOE. The
leader of the left in the PSOE, Alfonso Guerra, Vice President
of the government, had resigned one year before, and the transformation
of the PSOE was completed. In 1993, the leading force in the
PSOE's economic policies was its Minister of Economic and Finances,
Pedro Solbes, who enacted enormous cuts in social expenditures
(social public expenditures per capita declined for the first
time since democracy was established) in order to eliminate the
government's budget deficit, as intended by the Maastrich criteria,
a goal required to reach the monetary union. These policies became
very unpopular and were one of the reasons for the PSOE's defeat
in 1996, thus allowing the victory of the right-wing party. It
is important to stress that the defeat of the PSOE in 1996 was
primarily caused by the de-mobilization of its grassroots and
the substantial growth of abstention among the working class.
That defeat started a whole process of deterioration of the left
in Spain. Pedro Solbes, incidentally, was appointed, with the
support of not only the PSOE but also the major conservative
party, the Popular Party (PP), as the European Commissioner for
Economic and Finance Affairs, thus directing a program of social
austerity all over the EU. His latest effort was his aggressive
campaign against the German and French governments (both countries
in profound recession) for not eliminating their public deficits.
The conservative party, PP, which became
the governing party in Spain in 1996, was founded by Fraga Iribarne,
who was Minister of Information and of the Interior (in charge
of the hated political police) during the Franco regime. He had
signed the death sentence of Grimau, a leader of the anti-fascist
underground who belonged to the clandestine Communist Party,
the major force in the anti-fascist resistance. He is proud of
his fascist past, having recently written a prologue to a book
that denies the existence of the Holocaust. He has repeatedly
said that Franco was the greatest European and Spanish leader
of the 20th century. His main disciple is. Aznar, who had been
a member of the fascist youth and who had campaigned against
the establishment of the new democratic constitution. Aznar also
criticized the democratically elected municipal government of
Guernica (the town destroyed by the Nazi air forces allied with
Franco's Armed Forces) for changing the name of its main square
from Caudillo's Square to Liberty Square (during the fascist
regime all main squares of any town, city, or village had to
be named after General Franco, referred to in Spain in the official
rhetoric as Caudillo). This. Aznar is the same Aznar that the
U.S. Congress is ready to grant a Congressional Medal of Honor
to, in the process offending the thousands of American soldiers
who died in World War II fighting Nazism and fascism.
The major forces in the PP are the monarchic
forces, the employers associations, banking institutions, the
Church, and the large land owners, among others, i.e., the same
cast of characters who have been ruling Spain for most of the
20th century, except for those short periods of democracy that
Spain enjoyed in that century. The PP has a very limited democratic
culture. Its congresses are the most similar to the Bulgarian
Communist Party congresses. All resolutions are approved by a
100% vote and the leader, Aznar, is practically omnipotent. His
major objective in foreign policy was to become the closest European
ally to the Bush Administration. He and Bush became close friends
very quickly.
Both are religious ultras. Aznar's wife
is a member of, the Christian Legionaires, one of the most ultra
right wing Catholic sects in existence today. In addition, several
members of Aznar's cabinet belong to Opus Dei, also defined by
the Belgian Parliament as a Christian sect, and there are members
who are children of prominent fascist families that played key
roles under the fascist regime. Aznar, as Franco before him,
made the Spanish government into a mere puppet of the U.S. government.
One of the most unpopular policies developed
by Aznar was the support of Bush's invasion and occupation of
Iraq. That support has meant the provision of Spanish troops
for the military campaign. During the last mobilization against
the war, one year ago, one out of every five adults in Spain
went to the street to march in protest against such an invasion.
A main slogan during the march was "It is a Bush-Aznar war;
not our war". The polls systematically showed the Spanish
population as the most anti-Iraqi-war population in Europe.
The PP government, however, ignored the
demonstrations, justifying support for the Iraq war by saying
that terrorism needed to be fought. . Spain has had to face a
terrorist group, the Basque pro-independent party ETA, which
is immensely unpopular in Spain and even in the Basque country.
The PP presented itself as the party of law and order, the toughest
party against ETA, linking ETA with all other forms of terrorism.
This explains why, when the massacre
took place on Thursday, 11 March in Madrid, the PP, who controls
all major public media in Spain (and influences the majority
of oral, visual, and written media), presented ETA as the terrorist
group behind the massacre, trying to capitalize on the enormous
popular anger expressed by the mass demonstrations that took
place all over in Spain to mourn the deaths in that massacre.
If successful in its manipulation of the media, the PP believed
it could get an overwhelming vote of support in the next Sunday
election, March 14, giving it a large majority in the Parliament.
The Minister of the Interior,Acebes, and the Minister of Foreign
Relations, Ana Palacio (one of the closest allies and a personal
friend ofPowell, Secretary of State of the Bush Administration)
were the major PP spokespersons promoting the idea of ETA responsibility
for the massacre. The government's credibility, however, was
very low among the population and very much in particular among
the working class, whose anger was especially accentuated because
most of the killings took place in a working class neighborhood
in Madrid. By Friday and Saturday, there were huge mass demonstrations,
quite spontaneous and without any party's involvement, questioning
the PP's explanations. When Aznar presided at the mourning ceremonies,
he was booed by the public, who called him a liar and an assassin.
Soon, information came out that Islamic radical fundamentalists
linked to Al Qaeda were the actual assassins, which allowed linkage
between that massacre and the war in Iraq. The demonstrations
against the murders quickly became demonstrations against the
PP government. One of the most frequently heard slogans in Saturday's
demonstrations was, "They put their war, we put our death".
On Election Day, that anger was channeled against the PP, resulting
in its enormous defeat. Most importantly, three million people
who had previously abstained from voting for the PSOE decided
to vote for it as a way of getting rid of Aznar, one of the most
unpopular figures in Spain today. Bush, who has never been liked
in Spain, remains the most unpopular foreign figure among the
Spanish people.
The mobilization of the young and those
sectors of the popular classes that had abstained in the previous
elections were key to the PSOE's victory. It is true that the
growing popular frustrations with the PP government had made
the PSOE more attractive, thus closing the gap (according to
the polls) between the two parties. But in Spain (and I believe
in other countries, including the U.S.) whether the major left
wing parties win or lose on election day depends on whether their
working class supporters stay home or decide to vote. The move
to the right by the PSOE, (accepting uncritically most of the
neoliberal dogma) had demoralized the grassroots of the party
and increased abstention in previous elections. The anger against
the PP, and the massacre of March 11 were, however, the trigger
points for the three million more votes the PSOE received (the
exit polls showed that most of these three million votes were
from young people who had never voted before and from the working
class, which had abstained in previous elections). It was not
so much love for the PSOE than it was disgust with the PP that
explains PSOE victory. Zapaterno, the secretary general of the
PSOE and new President of the Spanish government, was elected
three years ago with the support of the left wing branch of the
PSOE. His first act, after elected, was to visit the tomb of
Pablo Iglesias, the founder of the Socialist Party and of the
socialist union U.G.T, accompanied by the head of the socialist
trade union (one of the most popular figures in Spain, Candido
Mendez),
His second act was to indicate--as he
had promised in the election campaign--that, by no later than
June 30, all Spanish troops are to be withdrawn from Iraq, and
he has quite openly criticized Bush and Blair's policies regarding
that war. Zapatero is aware that his election victory is due
to the mobilization of the left wing electorate and his greatest
challenge is in retaining it. This is why it is unlikely he will
backtrack on that commitment, knowing that that war and occupation
is immensely unpopular; it was unpopular before March11 and it
continues to be unpopular after March 11. Zapatero is also aware
of the enormous contempt the Spanish people have for the Bush
administration.
The withdrawal of the Spanish troops
could stimulate the withdrawal of Italian and Polish troops,
leading in this way to the dismantling of the Bush coalition.
Vicente Navarro
is professor of Public Policy at the Johns Hopkins University
in Baltimore and of Political and Social Sciences in the Pompeu
Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain. He can be reached at: navarro@counterpunch.org.
Weekend
Edition Features for March 12 / 14, 2004
Gabriel Kolko
The
Coming Elections and the Future of American Global Power
Saul Landau
Oh, Jesus...It's the Movie!
William Blum
Neo-Con(tradictions)
William S. Lind
Why They Throw Rocks
Rahul Mahajan
The Meaning of Madrid: War on "Terrorism" Makes Us
All Less Safe
Neve Gordon
Demographic Wars
Kurt Nimmo
Kerry and the Progressive Interventionists
Mickey Z.
The "New" UN Blames the Poor
Mike Whitney
War Games: the American Media Leads the Charge
Helen Scott and Ashley
Smith
Aristide's Fall: What Led to the Coup?
Justin E.H. Smith
Loïc Wacquant: Against a Sociodicy
of the American Prison
Brandy Baker
Him Again? Al Gore Needs to Move On
Robin Philpot
Nobody Can Call It a "Plane Crash" Now: the Report
on the Assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Meat Monopoly Takes a Rare Pounding
Dave Zirin
She Turned Her Back on the War: an Interview with Toni Smith
Daniel Wolff
The Lord's Pier
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