Más gráficas sobre la curiosa fortaleza económica del franquismo

Es difícil, habiendo crecido en democracia, escribir que “el periodo de mayor prosperidad económica en España fue el franquismo”, pero es verdad, y eso ya lo discutí detalladamente en esta entrada.

Aquí lo que voy a hacer es poner más gráficas insistiendo en el mismo tema. Tasa de mortalidad:

Tasas de crecimiento económico comparadas, por periodo:

Producción comparada de automóviles:

Capacidad de producción eléctrica vía nuclear, comparada:

Costrucción de viviendas (aunque aquí España superó estos niveles durante el primer mandato de Zapatero, en 2004-2008, con desastrosas consecuencias):

Tasa de homicidios, comparada (esto apenas ha variado desde entonces, y en 2020 estaba en 0,64):

Habitantes por médico:

Tasa de provisión de proteínas:

Flotas pesqueras:

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Zizek Explains Political Trolling

You may perhaps wonder why one of the most salient features of the ongoing conflict in the Ukraine is trolling. The Ukrainian government trolls the Russians with social media videos and postings; the Russian trolls respond in kind in their own channels (since many are banned in Western channels) with videos showing Ukrainian positions being “boinked,” etc.

The rise of political trolling, of an unserious detachment for reality that results in disputes played out in public “for the laughs” is very well explained by Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, in this extract from his contribution to the 2018 volume “Mapping ideology.” For that, Zizek uses as an example “The name of the rose,” a seminal 1980s novel and adapted movie version in which the Bad Guy is Jorge, a Spanish monk meat to represent the dead seriousness, the lack of humor of the Spanish inquisition. Jorge is also, as many critics have pointed out, a fictional version of the (notoriously rightist) Argentine genius Jorge Luis Borges, a man who avoided humor in his published works:

Dialectics can still help us to grasp the phenomenon of so-called ‘totalitarianism’. Let us take as our starting point Umberto Eco’s Name of The Rose, precisely because there is something wrong with this book. This criticism does not apply only to its ideology, which might be called – on the model of spaghetti Westerns – spaghetti structuralism: a kind of simplified, mass-culture version of structuralist and post-structuralist ideas (there is no final reality, we all live in a world of signs referring to other signs . . . ).

What should bother us about this book is its basic underlying thesis: the source of totalitarianism is a dogmatic attachment to the official word: the lack of laughter, of ironic detachment. An excessive commitment to Good may in itself become the greatest Evil: real Evil is any kind of fanatical dogmatism, especially that exerted in the name of the supreme Good.

 This thesis is already part of the enlightened version of religious belief itself: if we become too obsessed with the Good and with a corresponding hate for the secular, our obsession with Good may itself turn into a force of Evil, a form of destructive hatred for all that fails to correspond to our idea of Good. The real Evil is the supposedly innocent gaze which perceives in the world nothing but Evil, as in The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, in which the real Evil is, of course, the gaze of the storyteller (the young governess) herself…

First, this idea of an obsession with (a fanatical devotion to) Good turning into Evil masks the inverse experience, which is much more disquieting: how an obsessive, fanatical attachment to Evil may acquire the status of an ethical position, of a position which is not guided by our egoistical interests. Consider only Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the end of the opera, when he is confronted with the following choice: if he confesses his sins, he can still achieve salvation; if he persists, he will be damned for ever.

From the viewpoint of the pleasure principle, the proper thing to do would be to renounce his past, but he does not, he persists in his Evil, although he knows that, by persisting, he will be damned for ever. Paradoxically, with his final choice of Evil, he acquires the status of an ethical hero – that is, of someone who is guided by fundamental principles ‘beyond the pleasure principle’ and not just by the search for pleasure or material gain.

What is really disturbing about The Name of the Rose, however, is the underlying belief in the liberating, anti-totalitarian force of laughter, of ironic distance. Our thesis here is almost the exact opposite of this underlying premiss of Eco’s novel: in contemporary societies, democratic or totalitarian, that cynical distance, laughter, irony, are, so to speak, part of the game. The ruling ideology is not meant to be taken seriously or literally. Perhaps the greatest danger for totalitarianism is people who take its ideology literally – even in Eco’s novel, poor old Jorge, the incarnation of dogmatic belief who does not laugh, is rather a tragic figure: outdated, a kind of living dead, a remnant of the past, certainly not a person representing the existing social and political powers.

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Un ejemplo de cinismo típicamente español

Esta discusión sobre la (no) celebración de la toma de Granada de 1492 por parte de la izquierda española es muy ilustrativa y recomendable.

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Geli Hitler: First Time in Vienna, 1932

(This is a short extract from chapter 6 of my novel “Geli Hitler,” available here)

Waiglein had never been out of Germany in his life, and only rarely out of Bavaria. To him, Austria, no matter how close on a map, was as foreign as the other side of the Moon. He had certainly known many natives from the strange place who had wandered into Munich, speaking their unusual Southern accent; but they surely hadn’t enlightened him on the issue of what to expect from the actual sight of their mountainous, mysterious land.

As he eyed Waiglein, who sat in ill-fitting civilian clothes in the bench in front of him, striving to read a German newspaper as the train rolled into Vienna, eyes shaded under the brim of his lumpy civilian hat, Maier thought of detective stories; and, more specifically, of the fact that policemen in civilian garb were always conspicuous in such stories, always easily identifiable by the good or the bad guys. He had never thought of himself as one such impossible-to-disguise policeman; but, if such a breed existed, he realized, Waiglein was a sterling example.

Walking down the corridors of the huge central station of the formerly imperial capital, amid the din of nations flowing past them, Waiglein whispered a question:

“Did you bring your weapon?”

Maier turned to him, and made a face of displeasure.

“Of course. Did you?”

“Diehl said I shouldn’t. But I still–”

“Alright then.”

They dropped their luggage in a cheap pension not far from the Imperial Palace, ruled by a stiff, bald man with a dark mustache and goatee who seemed suspicious of the two German travelers.

“It’s a pity my land has been reduced to this rump around Vienna you just went through,” he intoned. “It used to be the largest country in Europe; I always thought it was misguided of the emperor to join Germany in its stupid war against France and England.”

“I always thought it was Germany who joined Austria in its stupid war against Russia,” Maier said.

“I always thought Russia was the largest country in Europe,” Waiglein said.

The bald man lifted his chin theatrically, not deigning to respond to either, and closed the door behind him, leaving them in their sparse, but clean, room. Their budget was somewhat limited, Diehl had explained, and yet the biggest concern was publicity. It was of paramount political importance that the Austrian authorities, always extremely wary of having the Germans involve themselves in their business, wouldn’t suspect that two German policemen were conducting an unauthorized investigation in their fiefdom. A cheap lodge satisfied both concerns—the offending policemen were less likely to be found in a non-conspicuous location.

Speed was, of course, the other main consideration. That was the main argument that Maier used to explain his plan to Waiglein, and convince him to do as he told: that is, to stay all afternoon in their pension, as he set out to find a way to locate Markus Leutert; which was what Waiglein did very reluctantly.

Maier went into a nice-looking, biggish Austrian police station in the downtown, looking upset and haughty as a good German would be, if forced to deal with the notoriously incompetent Austrian police force. He was made to wait for close to an hour, but in the end he was given a chair to sit down in front of the desk of a detective that was obviously not happy for having to deal with him. Having already made the needed impression with the detective’s underlings, one that had them reassured that he was nothing more than another visiting German with a problem who acted like a pain in the ass, Maier held his hat in his hands in a most humble manner, and avoided the man’s gaze as he spoke in a slow tone, wholly respectful of Austria’s legal authority. For this second stage of his act, Maier needed to make a whole different impression altogether.

“My problem is simple, sir,” he said. “I’m here to beg your help, to find the man who left my sixteen-year old daughter pregnant.”

The Austrian detective, a man of Maier’s age with dark, large eyebrows and a meritorious paunch, relaxed visibly. He had been told to be prepared to deal with an idiot from the other side of the border, not with a polite, distressed father who begged for things.

“I’m not sure we can help you with that, Mr. Maier,” he said in his softest voice, his timid denial swamped by goodwill and a desire to accommodate the wronged foreign visitor.

“Please, let me explain myself. My darling Lotte is my only daughter. I knew she was seeing this young man, and I approved of the relationship because I like him. I actually treated like my own son, and he always had the doors to my house opened. I’m just amazed that this happened–”

Maier fell silent, as if deep in his remorse; he knew that trailing off, not giving up all the main points in his message at once, was a key to that particular performance. The detective nodded thoughtfully.

“Well, Mr. Maier, this is not the kind of–”

“Please, listen to me, Detective. I don’t hate this young man, even though I should, because he did this to my daughter without my knowing or my approving. I know he’s a fine person, who did something wrong. I’m not looking for him to punish him. I just want him to do the right thing.”

“I’m not sure that I follow.”

“I just want to find him, to let him know that Lotte is pregnant, and let him have a chance at doing the gentlemanly thing.”

“He doesn’t know she’s pregnant,” the detective said, a bit puzzled.

“Of course he doesn’t. I wouldn’t have come all the way here from Munich, if he knew.”

The detective nodded again. Pieces were falling into place, within his particular mental construction.

“So, you want us to find this young man for you?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t dare to ask for such a thing. I know you must be very busy chasing criminals and the like. No, I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing that at all.”

“So–”

“No, I just want you to give me a little hand. I came to you, to the police, because I don’t know anyone in this city, and I trust police more than anyone else in the world.”

“Well, of course we’d like to–”

“The name of this boy is Leutert, Markus Leutert. As I said, he’s a good boy, so I would be absolutely astonished if you had his name on any sort of police record–”

“I can make sure we check that for you, though. It would be no hassle at all.”

“I’d really appreciate that, Detective.”

“Consider it done. I’ll let you know if–”

“There’s one other thing, detective. I don’t have a lot of time, or money to spend here, so I’d like to keep looking for Markus in the meantime. There is a—how do you call it? A clue? —a clue I’d like to follow. A friend of Markus told me he’s enrolled in an artistic school, you see: Markus is a painter. Or so he hopes.”

Maier smiled, cue for the detective to do just the same. The detective responded:

“What I can tell you is that there are two big schools here. The old imperial school, and a new contemporary arts school. It really depends on what sort of temperament this fellow Markus has. Young boys tend to prefer the contemporary thing. More modern, you understand, but not really to my taste.”

Maier came out of the police station with addresses for both schools. He was fairly certain of what sort of painter Markus thought he was, but a cold, foggy night has fallen, so he went straight to the pension and told Waiglein the plan for the next morning: Maier would hit the contemporary arts school, while Waiglein, also acting like the concerned father of the poor, trusting girl, would take care of the classic arts school.

Waiglein had no objection to that plan, or to Maier’s idea that they might as well spend part of the budget in some moderately-prized eatery, for dinner. He sat his bulk behind a greasy table as a sullen waiter gave them a short choice of courses in what sounded like a non-native German accent, possibly Slavic. The walls of the eatery had some cinema posters in Hungarian, and a small coat of arms with chess-like red and white squares, plus a string of bizarre-looking words including one that Maier understood: Hrvatska, or Croatia, one of the southern Slavic lands, formerly Austrian territories, that the Serbians had taken over after the Great War to make them part of their brand new Yugoslavian state, now thrice the size of the sorry Austrian rump of a state. Vienna was like that sometimes, exposed as driftwood from what had once been an empire that perhaps should have never been.

Maier watched Waiglein in silence as his subordinate methodically dispatched a goulash and a cabbage dish with his eyes firmly on the prize, surprised to glimpse the small, round-faced boy that Waiglein had once been: a boy who had been big and gentle, possibly not quite a giant but still perceived as one; a well-mannered boy who did as he was told, not the brightest light in the street but a reliable pupil on which moderate hopes had once been placed. Would he become a welder? A tramway driver? An assistant carpenter in a Polish circus? A policeman, perhaps?

“What do you think of Diehl?” Maier asked, when he noticed that Waiglein’s mouth was empty enough to respond.

Waiglein hadn’t expected such a question. He shrugged, looking like a suspicious farmer in the process.

“He’s all right,” he said.

“Do you like him?”

“I like all my bosses, Detective.”

Maier lit a cigarette.

“Not everyone in our line of work likes Diehl, you know,” Maier went on. “He has opinions.”

“Everyone has opinions.”

“He believes in them, more than most.”

“I’m not so sure about that.”

“He doesn’t like the Nazis.”

“Not everyone likes the Nazis. Not even in Munich.”

Maier nodded, conceding the point.

“Do you?” he asked.

“I only do as I’m told. I don’t worry about politics.”

“Is that why Diehl picked you for this case?”

“Possibly.”

Waiglein seemed to be strangely at ease, deflecting Maier’s questions. Looking at him, Maier reflected that overweight men have a way to appear nonchalant. Emil Berger, the stocky chauffeur, shared the same trait.

“You know, Waiglein, lots of guys in our outfit like the Nazis. Diehl is handling a tricky case here. We will need pretty convincing evidence to talk any judge into going ahead with a murder trial against one of the most prominent politicians in Germany.”

“That’s your job, Detective.”

“Yes, and I wonder why.”

Now it was Waiglein’s turn to lit his own cigarette, and look a tad more thoughtful.

“Everyone knows your wife is Jewish. Diehl knows too.”

“Do you think that’s the reason why?”

“I don’t know, and it’s none of my concern. I’m just saying that most people would think you’re probably not too sympathetic to the Nazis.”

“Yes, I believe that’s a fair assessment.”

Maier looked away; behind them, there was a conversation in a Slavic language, involving the waiter.

“Listen, Detective, we only have to do our job here. Put the evidence together, get some witness who can be called to make a statement. Let Diehl worry about making a case for the judge. That’s what they pay him for.”

“Is it true that Diehl has powerful friends in the ministry?”

Waiglein shrugged again, turning his eyes back to the table.

“How should I know?”

“That’s what people say, right?”

“You don’t get to become a chief without friends in the ministry,” Waiglein said. “That’s what people know. There are other chiefs, apart from Diehl, and they have friends too.”

“It’s a big, friendly world.”

“You know, I once met Hitler personally.”

Maier swallowed slowly.

“That’s interesting,” he said.

“One of my brothers-in-law – I have six sisters, honest to God, all older than me – one of my brothers-in-law was an early member in the Nazi party. He joined before Hitler came around.”

“That’s – something – “

“Hitler’s party card was number eleven or something, my brother-in-law eight or seven I think. He says that, when Hitler joined, he was just just a quiet guy with this intense – intense way of looking at people. You know, those eyes. My brother-in-law had been an aircraft mechanic during the war, he worked with Zeppelins. Anyway, they all later knew that Hitler had actually joined as a police informer.”

“That’s not in his police file.”

“Yeah, well, what do you want me to say – You never think your own shit stinks as bad as other people’s.”

“And your brother-in-law was fine with that?”

“By the time he knew, he was on his way out. Anyway, all of those nationalists groups after the war were full of informers. Unemployed soldiers and informers, that was pretty much it, if you ask me. But apparently Hitler told his main guys, came clean at some point: he said, look, I came here as an informer, I was told to keep an eye on you people, and I have come to like and respect you people, so I’m staying as your leader. And whoever doesn’t like it, there’s the door. Or words to that effect.”

“And your brother-in-law left?”

“Many people left. People were leaving before the Beer-Hall putsch. That’s probably why Hitler acted so rashly then. He and the communists. They saw things were improving, people would find jobs, so they had to strike and use their manpower before they went away. I’m not judging here, just stating the obvious.”

“They became pretty irrelevant for a while. Nobody paid them any attention for what, five years or so.”

“Exactly. With a full belly and a safe job, everyone is a moderate who can ponder all points of view. It was only when people started to lose their jobs again, that they had a second look at good old Adolf.”

“Your brother-in-law too?”

“He was a solid supporter of the Center Party all these years. He’s not going back to the Nazi meetings. He’s not about to go out looking for Reds to beat up. But he will vote for Hitler next time around, yes.”

“Did he lose his job?”

“No, but he knows people who did. He always tells me that Hitler has this ability to put everyone on their feet. He makes sense of things. His speeches have few of those parts, you know, when politicians just fill up the time until the next big proclamation. Hitler lives in a permanent state of excitement, that’s how he speaks and that’s how he acts. My brother-in-law thinks it’s because of those years he spent as an artist bum in Vienna. Hitler probably believes he wasted his time, and is always in a hurry now.”

“That doesn’t mean he will fix anything.”

“Well, lots of guys will be happy if he just abides by his promise to take revenge on their enemies for them. They know they can trust him to destroy stuff. Building stuff, we will see about that.”

Waiglein was slurring some of his words. Maier wasn’t drunk but he wished he was, so he snapped his fingers and failed to get the waiter’s attention; he then called aloud for the waiter and asked for two more beers before Waiglein had the time to object.

“I’m not drinking any more, Detective,” Waiglein said.

“You won’t let me drink both, will you?”

“That’s up to you. You will pick up the tab, I trust. I should only remind you that we have an early start tomorrow. I need the sleep, myself.”

As he finished the sentence, Waiglein was already up. Before Maier could think of anything reasonable to respond, he was walking out of the eatery.

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Race Does Exist, Say Black Doctors

As somebody married to a person of a different race, who has lived in multiple continents surrounded by people of different races, it’s pretty obvious to me that genetic differences exist between peoples, and this is particularly and importantly the case when it comes to medicines and the effect they have. That’s why I’ve always been extremely wary of American trials of Chinese medicine with white American college students which — unsurprisingly to me — show very limited or inexistent effects for popular treatments in China, like acupuncture.

This is not even controversial, it’s well known by anyone with a basic scientific and genetic background. Weeks ago, for example, the New York Times had this story about how American Blacks have a much higher prevalence of kidney disease in the US, because of an Sub-Saharan allele most of them carry, a variant of a gene called APOL1.

Here’s a group of Black doctors explaining the same, in a statement published by the New England Journal of Medicine that should for ever bury the stupid notion that race is only “skin-deep.”

The genetics of racial classifications has been discussed for centuries,2 with general positions falling into two broad categories: either the use of race in clinical practice and biomedical research has substantial benefits3 or race has no biologic basis and thus no place in medicine.4 This long-standing debate has involved epidemiologists, geneticists, clinicians, and social scientists.

The debate has recently resurfaced (in the evaluation of race’s use in clinical algorithms5 and the implementation of antiracism curricula6), largely in response to two key events that have brought increased attention to health disparities negatively affecting Black communities. The first is the Covid-19 pandemic, in which higher Covid-19 mortality has been observed among Black Americans than among White Americans, with evidence suggesting that racial differences in rates of coexisting conditions at least partially account for these disparities.7 The second is the death of George Floyd, which has sparked global protests against anti-Black racism.

It has been demonstrated8 and more recently confirmed9 that a small but appreciable proportion of the genetic differences between any two people (about 15%) reflect divergence between, rather than diversity within, groups defined according to continent of ancestral origin. There is a remarkably strong correlation between a person’s continent of ancestral origin and self-identified race.10 Thus, we believe that race has both a genetic and a social component.

Read the rest here.

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