As published at Unz Review , OpEd News and Intrepid Report, 9/9/17:
In Catalonia, there’s a summer drink that combines beer with lemon soda. In Barcelona, it’s called “clara.” Further South, it’s dubbed, most charmingly, a “champu,” as in Head and Shoulders. Champu is quite good at eliminating the dandruff inside your skull.
It is late summer, and I’m in Cambrils, drinking my second champu in Hawaii, a beach bar. The tables around me are mostly empty. I face the ocean. There are few bodies on the sand, and fewer in the water. It is peaceful here.
In 2001, Mohammed Atta and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, of 9/11 fame, were in Cambrils, however, and just 2 1/2 weeks ago, five Muslim “terrorists” were killed by police a few hundred feet from where I’m sitting.
It is said that at 1:15AM on August 18th, these Muslims drove their car through a police checkpoint outside the yacht club, then ran over six people, three of whom were cops. The three civilians were an old couple, and the woman’s sister. The wife, 61-year-old Ana Maria Suarez, died.
Exiting their car with knives and an ax, four Muslims were killed immediately by police, while the fifth were gunned down 270 meters away, but not before he had stabbed a civilian and taunted the cops, it is claimed.
A cellphone video shows an unarmed Moussa Oukabir, 17-years-old, acting rather hysterical, but you would be too if you had just witnessed four of your friends murdered. Shooting him many times, a cop executed Moussa.
Interestingly, Moussa was located by a helicopter. El Pais, “El quinto terrorista ha sido abatido poco después cuando ha sido localizado desde un helicóptero por los policías.” It was already in the air, get it? It seems they had tracked these five Muslim youths to Cambrils and killed them. That evening, these kids were caught on a service station’s camera. Buying snacks and sodas, they appeared quite relaxed because they had no idea what awaited them.
After Trotsky’s skull was cracked by an ice pick, the 60-year-old still had enough sense to order his bodyguards to not silence his assassin, “No, he must not be killed. He must talk.” When it comes to Muslims these days, the running order seems to be, “Kill them all so they can’t talk and contradict our bullshit charges against them.”
How many Muslims are needed to drive one suicide car? Five, of course. What’s the best, most lethal vehicle for the purpose? The compact Audi A3, naturally. What’s the best time to stage such an attack? 1:15AM, grasshopper, when there are almost nobody on the Paseo Maritimo. Finally, what should you wear for such a momentous and self-defining occasion? Fake suicide vests, stupid, because they serve no purpose besides giving cops an excuse to perforate you immediately.
I go to the spot where Moussa Oukabir was murdered to find women pushing strollers and kids on bikes. Life is back to normal. Outside the yacht club, there’s a cop with a submachine gun, however, with two toddlers within four feet of him. Seeing the armed man, the girl points. They create a false problem, then bring the solution, which you welcome because you don’t realize that it will be used to solve you.
Astonishingly moronic, the five Muslims in Cambrils made all the worst choices possible, but the rest of their “terrorist cell” weren’t any smarter, it is said.
Eight hours earlier, a van had killed 14 people and injured 130+ more in Barcelona, and the purported driver of that van, 22-year-old Younes Aboyaaqoub, had rented the vehicle with his own credit card. Very stupid. He also left his IDs in a second van, meant as a get-away car.
From 9/11, Charlie Hebdo, Paris’ Bataclan Concert Hall, Berlin’s Christmas Market to Barcelona, etc., Muslim mass murderers seem expert at leaving behind their identity papers. Otherwise, the official narrative can’t be broadcast immediately. Wait a week or a month for a proper investigation, and the public won’t have any idea what you’re talking about, fixated as they are on a Kardashian pumped up buttocks or Messi goal.
In the Catalan incidents, a Muslim who was neither in Barcelona nor Cambrils still managed to leave his identity papers in an incriminating van, it is said. Driss Ukabir had the wits to turn himself in, however, before he was gunned down in the street. Similarly framed, could you be that decisive?
Roberto, a 42-year-old Cambrils resident, reflected, “People are saying how stupid these guys are, because once you drive onto the Paseo Maritimo, you can’t get out! It’s also strange how all five of them were killed, because Spanish cops aren’t like that. You almost never hear about a cop killing anyone here.”
He paused to sip from his glass of Rioja Reserva, pronounced it excellent, leaned back, “All along that street, people were kept inside restaurants and stores until five in the morning.”
“On Las Ramblas in Barcelona, people were kept inside until nearly midnight,” I added.
Jonathan Revusky, “That’s probably because they need all that time to clean up the moulage. Imagine someone tripping over some moulage kit, from the Acme Corporation. That would be some major fuckup, wouldn’t it?”
Trained as an engineer, Roberto has traveled to Iraq and Cuba on business, and now makes most of his money as a musician and singer of bolero classics. “People talk of Europe being overrun by Muslims, but Europe has always been multicultural. Look at the Austro-Hungarian Empire and how many nationalities it had. What Merkel has done in Germany is incredible. She took in a million, a million and a half refugees, and there has been no major problem. It has been a great success, a miracle.”
Roberto’s father is Castillian and his mother, German, so he grew up speaking German also. His maternal grandfather, a Nazi, was killed during the last days of World War II.
On another night, I talked to Francisco, a 69-year-old retired professor of philosophy and English. The Padres resident said, “The new slogan is ‘no tengo miedo,’ but of course, I’m afraid, and many of ex-students are also afraid. When I was teaching, I could see the anger in my Arabic students’ eyes. Feeling socially excluded, of course they’re angry. To tell you the truth, I don’t much like Arab culture, how they treat their women. There are too many psychopaths among them, but of course, there are Spanish psychopaths also.”
Francisco’s favorite country is the United States, “When I came to New York the first time, I was jumping up and down, out of joy! I went to Florida, California. I overstayed my visa, got a job everywhere I went. I was a waiter at a Jewish fraternity. I did drugs with them. It was the 60’s, man. We need another counterculture revolution! There is too much corruption these days. Your average Spanish politician makes 7,000 Euros a month. That should be the minimum income, for everybody!”
Every so often, Francisco would grab his right side, “Oh, it’s my liver,” or his left knee. Two chicas at the next table drew his too naked glances. The restaurant owners are a couple whose husband is Spanish, and the wife, Chinese. One of the waiters is from Venezuela.
Three days after the Cambrils incident, Jon and I drove to Ripoll, where most of the Catalan “terrorists” were from. At a checkpoint, we passed cops with submachine guns. The town of 11,000 was crawling with journalists, most of whom could not investigate anything simply because they had no Spanish, and no interpreters.
We found a Russian crew in front of the apartment building were the local imam had stayed. Abdelbaki es Satty is the mastermind behind the attacks, it is said, and he blew himself up while trying to make bombs. Speaking Russian, Revusky said to the reporter, “You must know this is a fairy tale, no?”
“No, no, no, it’s all true. It has all been confirmed by the police.”
Two blocks away, we ran into two Chinese journalists based in Brussels. With less Spanish than your chihuahua, they just wanted some convincing backdrops to authenticate their regurgitation of the official story. Revusky chatted with them in Mandarin.
Soon after, we ran into three people whom Revusky greeted in Spanish. When one answered in French, Jon used that language to find out they’re from BFMTV, France’s most watched news channel. In town for two days, they had unearthed plenty, they claimed. We peruse their reports later to discover nothing new, however. Amplified and confirmed in hundreds of languages, it’s still the official fable.
Though so evil, the young Muslim “terrorists” of Ripoll seemed perfectly normal to their neighbors. One was quoted by El Espanol on August 18th, “Of course we knew who they were; in this town we knew everyone. They were always together and hung out each afternoon at the indoor soccer pitch. They did not wear long beards, dress oddly nor go often to the mosque. Nothing. They were all very young. A bunch of kids. We saw them together and thought they were just playing and talking about sports […]”
Eight percent of Ripoll are Muslims. We chanced upon a halal butcher shop on Barcelona Street to find its proprietor very weary, understandably. “I’m not Moroccan,” he joked without smiling. “I’m Senegalese.”
At the signless mosque, there’s a hastily written Catalan note taped to the door: “The attack at the rambla of Barcelona / The annour islamic community of ripoll expresses its strongest condemnation and rejection of the terrorist attack that occurred on thursday in barcelona, the catalan muslims express our condolence to the families of the victims, wish for the full recovery of the injured and convey our solidarity to the people of barcelona, catalan and spain. Before this criminal act, the annour islamic community of ripoll reiterates its committment in the fight against any sort of terrorism, and hopes that those responsible for these attacks will be brought to justice as soon as possible / annour islamic Community Of ripoll.”
On the poorer side of town, we spotted some old guys sitting outside the Jose Franquesa Vila bar, so we walked in to find a jovial drunk who laughed at everything we said, and a serious barista who complained of “ten to fifteen more Muslims who show up every day,” an impossible figure.
The next morning, we had coffee at Bar Alesia in the center of town. Opening Diari di Girona, we learnt that Younes Abouyaaqoub had just been killed by cops. The 22-year-old’s last words were, you guessed it, “Allahu Akbar!”
Though this Spanish and Catalan speaking young man had a good job, many Spanish friends and no previous run ins with the laws, he just had to kill a bunch of innocents and destroy his own life because, well, Muslims are like that, so goes the by now all-too-familiar narrative.
At a nearby table, a bald, bespectacled gent was bent over the news, so we asked what he thought of Abouyaaqoub’s death. Barely raising his head, he barked, “They should all be killed!”
A few days later, someone spray painted “Fora Islamo” on a Ripoll wall, “Out with Islam,” but then someone quickly appended “fobia,” so it became “Out with Islamophobia.”
In Tarragona, Jon’s home, a similar graffiti appeared near the train station, “STOP ISLAM. ARRIBA ESPANA [VIVA SPAIN].” Near his apartment, however, there’s a new sign in English strung from a balcony, “REFUGEES / MY EUROPE / IS YOUR HOME.” Above the message is an X over a barbwire.
On August 23rd, El Pais quoted a Ripoll resident, “They insulted me on the street yesterday. ‘Shitty Moor! We will kill you.’ I was with my three-year-old daughter.” She recognized her harassers, for they’re her neighbors.
A beautiful town at the foothill of the Pyrenees and near the French border, Ripoll attracts tourists and has long been comfortable with the foreign. Many locals speak French, on top of Catalan and Spanish. On the menu at La Taverneta, there’s a Vietnamese-inspired fried rice-vermicelli with shrimps, and as I tried to chew through my plate of horse meat, a local specialty, a Vietnamese pop song actually came on, right after Bob Marley. With the Catalan terror incidents, Ripoll has become known as a place that spawned a dozen cold-blooded killers, however. Poisoned and divided, it will never be the same.
So it’s all going according to plans. The American Israel empire attacks one Muslim nation after another, causing millions of refugees to stream into Europe. Naturally, this causes social tensions which are further exacerbated by false flags and fake news, resulting in increasing acceptance of the police state, growing hatred of Muslims and exploding anger between the political left and right, with both always jerked around by the American Israel Empire. You’re being played, in short.
In Taragona, Salou and other Catalan towns, blue concrete barriers have been placed on promenades to prevent cars from plowing into people and, more insidiously, to remind each person, daily, that he’s living in a constantly threatened and occupied land.
Wearing his stars-and-stripes T-shirt, your average Jose Pacquete de Seis will look suspiciously at his local kebab takeout, and not know that the Kosher Nostra has gotten him by the cojones.
In Ara, a Catalan daily, there’s this recent headline, “Els docents rebran formació per detectar alumnes radicalitzats” [“Teachers will receive training to detect radicalized students”]. Into this tranquil province, they spread fear, distrust and lies.
Remember when you still believed in innocent until proven guilty, with each accused entitled to his day in court, and not shot on sight, with his purported crime broadcast immediately? Remember when you still had the faculty to detect an enormous, world-class mound of bullshit?
Swallowing nonsense nonstop, you become another empire idiot, for believing in cartoon narratives, you become a caricature yourself, with exaggerated, buffoonish emotions, unseemly in a civilized man, which you no longer are.
A moronic cartoon, you’re conned by empty sound bites from two dimensional "leaders," Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump. Betrayed every four years, you can’t wait for the next joke election.
How stupid must you be to not see that the American Israel Empire has rigged every aspect of your reality?
By now, only a cretin can fail to see that the American Israel Empire is working nonstop to deform the Middle East, North Africa, Europe and, frankly, the rest of the world. Until it implodes, we can neither see straight nor even be ourselves.
Finishing this article, I have only a few hours left in Europe. I’ve been here a month. While in Spain, I got news from Philly that a former bartender at the Friendly Lounge, my local haunt, had just overdosed on Fentanyl-laced heroin. Andrea was no older than 45. Another Friendly regular, 69-year-old Felix, got into an online political argument with someone half his age, then challenged this man to a playground fight. Drugged and inflamed define the America I’m returning to.
Showing posts with label Cambrils. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cambrils. Show all posts
Friday, September 8, 2017
Monday, August 14, 2017
Sunday, August 13, 2017
George Orwell and Mohammed Atta were Here
As published at OpEd News, Unz Review, Lew Rockwell and Veterans Today, 8/13/17:
In 1937, Orwell was shot in the neck during the Spanish Civil War. Known mostly as a political allegorist, Orwell was also a master at describing all that is seen, heard and felt, so in Homage to Catalonia, you can read about his near death experience, “Roughly speaking it was the sensation of being at the center of an explosion. There seemed to be a loud bang and a blinding flash of light all around me, and I felt a tremendous shock—no pain, only a violent shock, such as you get from an electric terminal; with it a sense of utter weakness, a feeling of being stricken and shriveled up to nothing. The sandbags in front of me receded into immense distance. I fancy you would feel much the same if you were struck by lightning. I knew immediately that I was hit, but because of the seeming bang and flash I thought it was a rifle nearby that had gone off accidentally and shot me. All this happened in a space of time much less than a second.”
After spending several days in Lerida, where he was tended to by sweet, well meaning yet incompetent nurses, Orwell was sent to Tarragona by train. He recovered in a hospital two blocks from where I'm typing this.
Orwell, “I was three or four days at Tarragona. My strength was coming back, and one day, by going slowly, I managed to walk down as far as the beach. It was queer to see the seaside life going on almost as usual; the smart cafés along the promenade and the plump local bourgeoisie bathing and sunning themselves in deck-chairs as though there had not been a war within a thousand miles. Nevertheless, as it happened, I saw a bather drowned, which one would have thought impossible in that shallow and tepid sea.”
The day I arrived in Tarragona, a 25-year-old Russian drowned, so the seemingly impossible keeps on happening. Retracing Orwell's path down the Rambla, the city's wide promenade, I ended up at the edge of a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean. Among the handful of people milling about at this early hour, there was a portly Muslim lady in a head scarf. Ten percent of Tarragona are Muslims. Looking down a hundred feet, I noticed a large graffiti in Catalan, “el jovent construim alternatives.” The young build alternatives.
Often, the young also step on the same piles of manure and spout only a slightly different set of nonsense from previous generations. The young are also prone to be manipulated by their cynical and sinister elders. In short, there is rarely anything new in the jejune, just cute, at best, vanity. Artaud, “You are quite unnecessary, young man!”
As you could see, Catalan is at least half decipherable to Spanish, Portuguese, Italian or French speakers, unlike Euskera, the Basque language. Close enough to Castilians, Catalans still see themselves, quite naturally, as a distinct family, so all over Tarragona, there are Catalan flags hanging from balconies. Walking or riding for miles through just about every neighborhood, I have yet to spot a Spanish flag. Draped on any home, it would surely be perceived as a provocation. Shop and product signs are often in Catalan only, and bookstores carry volumes in both Spanish and Catalan, with the former still predominating, however, and the latter heavily subsidized.
On the block where I'm staying, there is a restaurant/bar, Apple, that’s run by a Chinese immigrant who's been in Spain five years. From eight in the morning until eleven at night, there are always customers sitting at his tables, inside and out. A few feet away is the Tian An-Men restaurant, and around the corner, there is a kebab joint owned by Pakistani immigrants. As with most western European cities, Chinese and kebab eateries sprinkle Tarragona.
On the outskirt of town is City Wok, a huge Chinese-owned buffet that’s always packed with people stuffing their faces. Its employees are Chinese, Pakistanis and one Argentinian. Nearby is Merca China, a big box store selling made-in-China merchandises.
A seafood restaurant, Taller, is owned by a gay couple, with one of them a half Japanese Peruvian. The two waiters at Osteria del Lab are Ukrainian and a chatty dude from Torino. Italian run gelaterie and pizzerie are not uncommon, Pakistanis own many convenience stores and many of the venders at the weekly clothing flea market are Arabs. Nannies and caretakers for the elderly are often Latin Americans. My host, Jonathan Revusky, sometimes hires a Moroccan cleaning lady. Jon’s long-time girlfriend arrived in Spain with a Lithuanian passport, and his daughter’s best friend is Russian.
When Mimi asked Katia if she liked Putin, the 12-year-old answered, “Yes, I love chocolate pudding!”
Though quite cosmopolitan for a small city, Tarragona is still 80% Spanish, and Carlos, a 42-year-old high school math teacher, told me there are no problems with immigrants, for they are quickly assimilating. Many of his students are immigrants.
Carlos has only traveled to four nearby countries. More than Paris or London, his ultimate destination is New York.
Each Friday in Tarragona, there’s an English corner at a bar where expats and learners of English can chatter. At one, I got to know Leo, a middle-aged American who’s been in Tarragona for five years. Leo’s great-great-great grandfather came to America in 1615 from Reus, just 15 minutes from Tarragona, and his family never stopped speaking Castilian Spanish at home, so Leo grew up bilingual in Texas.
“So this is a home coming for you! How often do you return to the US?”
“I don’t want to go back there again!”
“Don’t you still have many relatives there?”
“They can come here to see me. Six of them already have. It’s so much nicer over here.”
“What was the last place you lived in the US?”
“Houston.”
“Oh man!” I laughed. “The freeways, the traffic, Houston sucks!”
“Yes, it does.”
“I like other places in Texas, though.”
“I love Austin. It is one of my favorite cities.”
“Since you’re Spanish, were you ever annoyed at being confused for a Mexican growing up?”
“But I am also Mexican. Texas was Mexican!”
We were sitting at an outside table, in the shadow of the hulking ruins of a Roman wall. The square was filled with people eating and drinking. Half a dozen small kids kicked around a couple of plastic soccer balls. A middle-aged Gypsy played the accordion for tips. It was cool, breezy and quiet enough to talk comfortably.
As a seaside resort, Tarragona has plenty of foreign tourists, but not too many to make the place tacky. Thanks to compounding ineptitudes by Delta Airlines, my plane was more than three hours late leaving Philadelphia, so I ended up being rerouted through Amsterdam. My flight into Barcelona, then, was filled with mostly blonde Dutch vacationers, including many small children. People were literally giddy with laughter, jokes and general goofiness at the promise of being on a Spanish beach in a few hours. A mother sang one verse to her toddler. A twelve-year-old turned around and said “Hola!” to the Spanish young lady next to me.
Increasingly, Russians are also vacationing in Spain. Moreover, the Spanish government have been targeting rich Russians and Chinese as immigrants. In 2012, anyone who bought a house for 160,000 Euros was given residency. A year later, this was bumped up to half a million. At the Barcelona airport’s arrival terminal, there is a large add in Chinese for Spanish real estate. With a birthrate of just 1.3 children per woman, Spain needs immigrants to sustain its economy.
Of the 19 Arab “terrorists” of 9/11, Mohammed Atta is the most recognized. Fingered as the suicide pilot of the first plane to hit the Twin Towers, Atta’s name and face have become famous. The Cairo-born Atta has been traced in the mainstream press to a Hamburg university, Brooklyn apartment, Maine public library, Oklahoma motel, Florida flight school, San Diego house, Kandahar house, Georgia payphone and Prague Casino. There is a video of a smiling and laughing Atta supposedly declaring his suicide will in Afghanistan, but with no sound, it can be him saying just about anything, and nothing in the short clip even indicates that it was filmed in Afghanistan.
Two months before 9/11, Atta flew to Spain from Miami. Landing in the late afternoon in Madrid, Atta met up with Iqbal Afzal Admat, an Arab with an Irish passport, and they stayed in adjacent rooms at a hotel near the airport. The next morning, they rented a car and drove to Tarragona, where they met four more buddies. After 9/11, the Spanish police conducted a ten-month investigation of these Arabs’ movements in Spain, and the result is a 700-page report that documents no crimes, just a few guys checking in and out of hotel rooms. Several made calls overseas. Two drank vodka. One visited a theme park.
With nothing to sensationalize, El Pais still managed to publish on June 30th, 2002 an article called “The Terrorist Summit Where 9/11 Was Prepared Took Place in Tarragona” [“La cumbre terrorista donde se preparó el 11-S se celebró en Tarragona”] Sprinkled throughout with pure inventions, it often reads like pulp fiction. A typical passage, “Atta, 33-years-old, born in Kafr el Shikh, showed his Egyptian passport to the customs control, and neither his glance nor pulse fluttered when the National Police agent looked him in the eyes and, with a faint gesture, ordered him forward. A man who two months later would trigger the worst attack against the United States since Pearl Harbor (1941) appeared quite a bit less than a suicide pilot. Dressed in a short-sleeved shirt, long pants and shoes, he held in his right hand an elegant leather wallet. Although his face was characteristically Arab, he appeared as a Western tourist.”
According to the official 9/11 version, there were supposed to be 20 suicide terrorists, but one man, the Yemeni Ramzi bin al-Shibh, could not gain entry to the US, so he stayed behind in Europe. Captured in Karachi, Pakistan on September 11th, 2002, al-Shibh languishes in Guantanamo at age 42.
Al-Shibh was also in Tarragona Province in July of 2001. One afternoon, Jonathan Revusky and I drove to the Hotel in Cambrils, where al-Shibh had stayed. Just a block from the beach, the five-story hotel has a private pool, bar and low couches, Arab styled, in the reception area, with a Turkish samovar set. Unlike Selou down the road, Cambrils is not overrun by British, German, Russian and French tourists. With a historical core and several fine restaurants, Cambrils still has character and charms. There aren’t Irish pubs all over, as in Selou. Al-Shibh, my man, you have taste, and it’s a shame they’ve locked you up for nothing.
Why nothing? Simply because commercial planes cannot fly over 500 miles an hour at such a low altitude, around a thousand feet, then disappear completely into steel skyscrapers, so the acts for which al-Shibh and the other 19 Arabs are accused of simply didn’t happen. They did not cause any building to implode and pancake into its own footprint on 9/11, nor did any of them fly into the Pentagon. The only proof of a violent hijacking that day is a farcically unconvincing recording of a purported air stewardess, one Betty Ong, who talked quite casually for 23 minutes about murder and mayhem on a plane, but without any sounds of panic in the background, as if people were quite OK with their fellow passengers being murdered, and terrorists running amok. Oh Lord, the guy next to me just had his throat slashed with a boxcutter. Let me finish this tiny cup of coffee.
Revusky, “There are facts, then there is story telling. What are presented as facts in the media these days are often just fiction, just bullshit. When I was in Marrakesh in 2001, I saw these professional story tellers mesmerizing crowds, and we have professional spinners of tales also, so a handful of Arabs hanging out on the Costa Daurada is spun into a terror summit. They can say that the notorious Vietnamese-American terrorist Linh Dinh suddenly showed up in Tarragona, an Al Queda hotbed, to hash out some plots with the deranged subversive, Jonathan Revusky. Locals could observe them swimming at various beaches, as if looking for weak spots in the city’s de-fense. Occasionally, some Slavic broad was seen to carouse with them.”
So there you have it. Though I’m sitting in this sun bathed apartment, with palm trees just outside, dark plots are being hatched, apparently, for on the wall, there’s a Putin calendar, and the music is the Algerian Cheb Hasni belting out “My Way,” then “Saddam,” an homage to the late Iraqi leader. Not quite believing my eyes, I stare at a plate of potato frittata and blood sausage. Oh, the endless terrors! The Mossad! The C.I.A.!
.
In 1937, Orwell was shot in the neck during the Spanish Civil War. Known mostly as a political allegorist, Orwell was also a master at describing all that is seen, heard and felt, so in Homage to Catalonia, you can read about his near death experience, “Roughly speaking it was the sensation of being at the center of an explosion. There seemed to be a loud bang and a blinding flash of light all around me, and I felt a tremendous shock—no pain, only a violent shock, such as you get from an electric terminal; with it a sense of utter weakness, a feeling of being stricken and shriveled up to nothing. The sandbags in front of me receded into immense distance. I fancy you would feel much the same if you were struck by lightning. I knew immediately that I was hit, but because of the seeming bang and flash I thought it was a rifle nearby that had gone off accidentally and shot me. All this happened in a space of time much less than a second.”
After spending several days in Lerida, where he was tended to by sweet, well meaning yet incompetent nurses, Orwell was sent to Tarragona by train. He recovered in a hospital two blocks from where I'm typing this.
Orwell, “I was three or four days at Tarragona. My strength was coming back, and one day, by going slowly, I managed to walk down as far as the beach. It was queer to see the seaside life going on almost as usual; the smart cafés along the promenade and the plump local bourgeoisie bathing and sunning themselves in deck-chairs as though there had not been a war within a thousand miles. Nevertheless, as it happened, I saw a bather drowned, which one would have thought impossible in that shallow and tepid sea.”
The day I arrived in Tarragona, a 25-year-old Russian drowned, so the seemingly impossible keeps on happening. Retracing Orwell's path down the Rambla, the city's wide promenade, I ended up at the edge of a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean. Among the handful of people milling about at this early hour, there was a portly Muslim lady in a head scarf. Ten percent of Tarragona are Muslims. Looking down a hundred feet, I noticed a large graffiti in Catalan, “el jovent construim alternatives.” The young build alternatives.
Often, the young also step on the same piles of manure and spout only a slightly different set of nonsense from previous generations. The young are also prone to be manipulated by their cynical and sinister elders. In short, there is rarely anything new in the jejune, just cute, at best, vanity. Artaud, “You are quite unnecessary, young man!”
As you could see, Catalan is at least half decipherable to Spanish, Portuguese, Italian or French speakers, unlike Euskera, the Basque language. Close enough to Castilians, Catalans still see themselves, quite naturally, as a distinct family, so all over Tarragona, there are Catalan flags hanging from balconies. Walking or riding for miles through just about every neighborhood, I have yet to spot a Spanish flag. Draped on any home, it would surely be perceived as a provocation. Shop and product signs are often in Catalan only, and bookstores carry volumes in both Spanish and Catalan, with the former still predominating, however, and the latter heavily subsidized.
On the block where I'm staying, there is a restaurant/bar, Apple, that’s run by a Chinese immigrant who's been in Spain five years. From eight in the morning until eleven at night, there are always customers sitting at his tables, inside and out. A few feet away is the Tian An-Men restaurant, and around the corner, there is a kebab joint owned by Pakistani immigrants. As with most western European cities, Chinese and kebab eateries sprinkle Tarragona.
On the outskirt of town is City Wok, a huge Chinese-owned buffet that’s always packed with people stuffing their faces. Its employees are Chinese, Pakistanis and one Argentinian. Nearby is Merca China, a big box store selling made-in-China merchandises.
A seafood restaurant, Taller, is owned by a gay couple, with one of them a half Japanese Peruvian. The two waiters at Osteria del Lab are Ukrainian and a chatty dude from Torino. Italian run gelaterie and pizzerie are not uncommon, Pakistanis own many convenience stores and many of the venders at the weekly clothing flea market are Arabs. Nannies and caretakers for the elderly are often Latin Americans. My host, Jonathan Revusky, sometimes hires a Moroccan cleaning lady. Jon’s long-time girlfriend arrived in Spain with a Lithuanian passport, and his daughter’s best friend is Russian.
When Mimi asked Katia if she liked Putin, the 12-year-old answered, “Yes, I love chocolate pudding!”
Though quite cosmopolitan for a small city, Tarragona is still 80% Spanish, and Carlos, a 42-year-old high school math teacher, told me there are no problems with immigrants, for they are quickly assimilating. Many of his students are immigrants.
Carlos has only traveled to four nearby countries. More than Paris or London, his ultimate destination is New York.
Each Friday in Tarragona, there’s an English corner at a bar where expats and learners of English can chatter. At one, I got to know Leo, a middle-aged American who’s been in Tarragona for five years. Leo’s great-great-great grandfather came to America in 1615 from Reus, just 15 minutes from Tarragona, and his family never stopped speaking Castilian Spanish at home, so Leo grew up bilingual in Texas.
“So this is a home coming for you! How often do you return to the US?”
“I don’t want to go back there again!”
“Don’t you still have many relatives there?”
“They can come here to see me. Six of them already have. It’s so much nicer over here.”
“What was the last place you lived in the US?”
“Houston.”
“Oh man!” I laughed. “The freeways, the traffic, Houston sucks!”
“Yes, it does.”
“I like other places in Texas, though.”
“I love Austin. It is one of my favorite cities.”
“Since you’re Spanish, were you ever annoyed at being confused for a Mexican growing up?”
“But I am also Mexican. Texas was Mexican!”
We were sitting at an outside table, in the shadow of the hulking ruins of a Roman wall. The square was filled with people eating and drinking. Half a dozen small kids kicked around a couple of plastic soccer balls. A middle-aged Gypsy played the accordion for tips. It was cool, breezy and quiet enough to talk comfortably.
As a seaside resort, Tarragona has plenty of foreign tourists, but not too many to make the place tacky. Thanks to compounding ineptitudes by Delta Airlines, my plane was more than three hours late leaving Philadelphia, so I ended up being rerouted through Amsterdam. My flight into Barcelona, then, was filled with mostly blonde Dutch vacationers, including many small children. People were literally giddy with laughter, jokes and general goofiness at the promise of being on a Spanish beach in a few hours. A mother sang one verse to her toddler. A twelve-year-old turned around and said “Hola!” to the Spanish young lady next to me.
Increasingly, Russians are also vacationing in Spain. Moreover, the Spanish government have been targeting rich Russians and Chinese as immigrants. In 2012, anyone who bought a house for 160,000 Euros was given residency. A year later, this was bumped up to half a million. At the Barcelona airport’s arrival terminal, there is a large add in Chinese for Spanish real estate. With a birthrate of just 1.3 children per woman, Spain needs immigrants to sustain its economy.
Of the 19 Arab “terrorists” of 9/11, Mohammed Atta is the most recognized. Fingered as the suicide pilot of the first plane to hit the Twin Towers, Atta’s name and face have become famous. The Cairo-born Atta has been traced in the mainstream press to a Hamburg university, Brooklyn apartment, Maine public library, Oklahoma motel, Florida flight school, San Diego house, Kandahar house, Georgia payphone and Prague Casino. There is a video of a smiling and laughing Atta supposedly declaring his suicide will in Afghanistan, but with no sound, it can be him saying just about anything, and nothing in the short clip even indicates that it was filmed in Afghanistan.
Two months before 9/11, Atta flew to Spain from Miami. Landing in the late afternoon in Madrid, Atta met up with Iqbal Afzal Admat, an Arab with an Irish passport, and they stayed in adjacent rooms at a hotel near the airport. The next morning, they rented a car and drove to Tarragona, where they met four more buddies. After 9/11, the Spanish police conducted a ten-month investigation of these Arabs’ movements in Spain, and the result is a 700-page report that documents no crimes, just a few guys checking in and out of hotel rooms. Several made calls overseas. Two drank vodka. One visited a theme park.
With nothing to sensationalize, El Pais still managed to publish on June 30th, 2002 an article called “The Terrorist Summit Where 9/11 Was Prepared Took Place in Tarragona” [“La cumbre terrorista donde se preparó el 11-S se celebró en Tarragona”] Sprinkled throughout with pure inventions, it often reads like pulp fiction. A typical passage, “Atta, 33-years-old, born in Kafr el Shikh, showed his Egyptian passport to the customs control, and neither his glance nor pulse fluttered when the National Police agent looked him in the eyes and, with a faint gesture, ordered him forward. A man who two months later would trigger the worst attack against the United States since Pearl Harbor (1941) appeared quite a bit less than a suicide pilot. Dressed in a short-sleeved shirt, long pants and shoes, he held in his right hand an elegant leather wallet. Although his face was characteristically Arab, he appeared as a Western tourist.”
According to the official 9/11 version, there were supposed to be 20 suicide terrorists, but one man, the Yemeni Ramzi bin al-Shibh, could not gain entry to the US, so he stayed behind in Europe. Captured in Karachi, Pakistan on September 11th, 2002, al-Shibh languishes in Guantanamo at age 42.
Al-Shibh was also in Tarragona Province in July of 2001. One afternoon, Jonathan Revusky and I drove to the Hotel in Cambrils, where al-Shibh had stayed. Just a block from the beach, the five-story hotel has a private pool, bar and low couches, Arab styled, in the reception area, with a Turkish samovar set. Unlike Selou down the road, Cambrils is not overrun by British, German, Russian and French tourists. With a historical core and several fine restaurants, Cambrils still has character and charms. There aren’t Irish pubs all over, as in Selou. Al-Shibh, my man, you have taste, and it’s a shame they’ve locked you up for nothing.
Why nothing? Simply because commercial planes cannot fly over 500 miles an hour at such a low altitude, around a thousand feet, then disappear completely into steel skyscrapers, so the acts for which al-Shibh and the other 19 Arabs are accused of simply didn’t happen. They did not cause any building to implode and pancake into its own footprint on 9/11, nor did any of them fly into the Pentagon. The only proof of a violent hijacking that day is a farcically unconvincing recording of a purported air stewardess, one Betty Ong, who talked quite casually for 23 minutes about murder and mayhem on a plane, but without any sounds of panic in the background, as if people were quite OK with their fellow passengers being murdered, and terrorists running amok. Oh Lord, the guy next to me just had his throat slashed with a boxcutter. Let me finish this tiny cup of coffee.
Revusky, “There are facts, then there is story telling. What are presented as facts in the media these days are often just fiction, just bullshit. When I was in Marrakesh in 2001, I saw these professional story tellers mesmerizing crowds, and we have professional spinners of tales also, so a handful of Arabs hanging out on the Costa Daurada is spun into a terror summit. They can say that the notorious Vietnamese-American terrorist Linh Dinh suddenly showed up in Tarragona, an Al Queda hotbed, to hash out some plots with the deranged subversive, Jonathan Revusky. Locals could observe them swimming at various beaches, as if looking for weak spots in the city’s de-fense. Occasionally, some Slavic broad was seen to carouse with them.”
So there you have it. Though I’m sitting in this sun bathed apartment, with palm trees just outside, dark plots are being hatched, apparently, for on the wall, there’s a Putin calendar, and the music is the Algerian Cheb Hasni belting out “My Way,” then “Saddam,” an homage to the late Iraqi leader. Not quite believing my eyes, I stare at a plate of potato frittata and blood sausage. Oh, the endless terrors! The Mossad! The C.I.A.!
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