Matador, Nasundutan sa Lalamunan ng Toro

I am looking for translators to translate this post into German. Email me if you are interested.

This is the Tagalog translation of Bullfighter Gored by Bull in Spain.



Ang matador na si Juan Aparicio ay kakila kilabot na nanuwagan o nasundutan ng sungay ng isang toro noong panahon ng tag init 2010. Siya ay nailigtas mula sa pag atake at ayon sa balita, siya ay nasa kritikal na kundisyon habang nasa ospital.

Tingnan ang bagay na nasa kanyang bibig, tila parang sinusubukan niyang lumunok ng isang napaka kapal na pagkaing baka sa isahang lunukan- sa maniwala ka't hindi, iyan ay sungay ng toro. Ito ay napunta sa kanyang dila at diresto palabas sa kanyang bibig. Grabe, napaka pangit na pangyayari.

Ang ganitong insidente ay madalas maganap sa Spain kung saan may gantong uri ng laro. Ang matador na si Juan Aparacio ay nadulas at doon nagsimula ang kanyang pagkapahamak.

Ayoko ng hwego del toro o bullfights, maaari kong saktan ang toro sa gantong kaso, ngunit nasa lalaki ang aking awa. Nakaligtas siya mula sa atake, ngunit sukdulang hindi maganda ang kanyang kalagayan sa ospital matapos ang nangyari.

Bumalik siya muli sa ospital noong June 29,2010 dahil sa impeksyon sa kanyang lalamunan, bibig at panlasa pagkatapos ito operahan para ayusin ang mga ito. Halos ma deklarang wala nang lunas ngunit matatag pa din. Sa ngayon ay wala na akong makita pang updates tungkol sa kanyang kundisyon.

Man Badly Beaten on Madrid Subway

In this shocking video, people are on a subway in Madrid, Spain. A man walks down the aisle, then seems to recognize another young man sitting there. The man walking by puts down his backpack, then turns around suddenly kicks the sitting man in the head!

He repeatedly pummels him, often to the head, and lands another couple of hard kicks to the head before he calls it off. The people around clear out while the beating is going on. Then a couple of older men surround the attacker and keep away from the guy he was beating.

It turns out that the attacker was an anti antifascist. He recognized the man he attacked as a fascist who he had seen at a fascist rally a while earlier. The fascist got badly beaten up. He had a big black eye.

Cool! Bash the fash!

Young Men Jumping into Huge Waves In Spain

You know, this is actually not a very smart thing to do. It's actually the concrete harbor walls and the concrete platform they are standing on that is so dangerous, not the waves themselves.

Apparently it is taking place at Zarautz, in the Basque Country of Spain.

Temerarios Caminan El Camino del Rey en España

This is the Spanish translation of the Daredevils Walk El Camino del Rey in Spain post.

I am looking for translators to translate this post into German. Email me if you are interested.

El Camino del Rey es un camino muy estrecho que serpentea a lo largo de los bordes de una quebrada empanada por la montaña en El Chorro, cerca de ¡lora en la provincia de Málaga, España. Málaga está en el extremo sur de la comunidad autónoma del sur de Andalucía, en el Mar Mediterráneo.

Más de 100 años atrás, las represas hidroeléctricas se construyeron en el Chorro del Niágara y las Cataratas del Gaitenejo en la garganta, pero era difícil para los trabajadores hidroeléctrica para ir y venir entre los dos proyectos. Un camino era necesario. Fue empasado en 1901 y se terminó cuatro años más tarde.

La pasarela es sólo alrededor de un metro de ancho y es extremadamente peligrosa. Con los años, ha caído en mal grave estado. La mayoría de las barandillas se han caído y en muchos lugares, el propio camino se ha derrumbado, dejando sólo las barras de acero estrecha y otros objetos para conectar una sección de la pista con la otra. Sin embargo, un cable de seguridad aún se ejecuta a lo largo de la ruta.

En los últimos años, varias personas han caído del El Camino del Rey a la muerte en el desfiladero de cientos de metros aun más abajo. Después de dos muertes, una en 1999 y uno en el año 2000, las dos entradas a la pista fueron cerradas por la Málaga Gobierno Regional. Sin embargo, si este video es prueba alguna, la gente sigue encontrando una manera de caminar esta completamente loca y peligrosa rutay como todos salir a un camino.

Este video es algo extremadamente fuera de las exrtremas y es de locos. Usted tendría que estar loco para caminar en este sendero en la forma que se encuentra, pero muchas personas, en su mayoría hombres jóvenes, al parecer, seguirán hacienda lo de todos modos.

Daredevils Walk El Camino del Rey in Spain

I am looking for translators to translate this post into German. Email me if you are interested.

Spanish translation (en Español).

The Camino del Rey is a very narrow pathway that winds along the edges of a steep mountain gorge in El Chorro, near near Álora in the province of Málaga, Spain. Málaga is in the far south of the southern autonomous community of Andalucia, on the Mediterranean Sea.

Over 100 years ago, hydroelectric dams were built at Chorro Falls and Gaitenejo Falls in the gorge, but it was difficult for hydroelectric workers to go back and forth between the two projects. A pathway needed to be built. It was commissioned in 1901 and finished four years later.

The walkway is only about one yard wide and it is extremely treacherous. Over the years, it has fallen into serious disrepair. Most of the handrails have fallen off and in many places, the trail itself has collapsed, leaving only narrow steel bars or other objects to connect one section of the trail with the other. A safety wire still runs along the path though.

In recent years, several people have fallen from El Camino del Rey to their deaths in the gorge hundreds of feet below. After two deaths, one in 1999 and one in 2000, both entrances to the trail were closed by the Málaga Regional Government. Yet if this video is any evidence, people are still finding a way to hike this completely insane and dangerous as all get out trail.

This video is wild. You would have to be insane to hike on this trail in the shape it's in, but many people, mostly young males, apparently continue to do anyway.

Bullfighter Gored in the Throat by a Bull

I am looking for translators to translate this post into German. Email me if you are interested.

Tagalog translation here.

Bullfighter Juan Aparicio horribly gored by a bull in Summer 2010. He barely survived the attack and last heard from was in very serious condition in the hospital.

See that thing in his mouth, like he's trying to swallow a thick beef jerky stick all at once? Believe it or not, that's the bull's horn. The bull's horn went into his tongue and straight out of his mouth. Damn, nasty stuff.

This incident got a lot of play in Spain in the summer of 2010. The matador, Julio Aparicio, slipped, and that's where he messed up.

I hate these bullfights, so I should probably root for the bull in this case, but I did feel sorry for the guy. He survived the attack, but he was in extremely bad shape in the hospital right after the attack. He was back in the hospital on June 29, 2010 from an infection following surgery to reconstruct his throat, mouth and palate. His condition was listed as grave but stable. I don't have any further updates on his condition.

This guy's lucky to be alive.

Some Thoughts on Worker Self-management

The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.

Updated August 23:

In the comments section, huy points out that the former Yugoslavia under Tito had a different type of Communist system that allowed worker self-management of plants.

That system provided a quite nice standard of living too, I am told. The former Yugoslavia supposedly had one of the highest standards of living in Eastern Europe, and was particularly good at providing plenty of consumer goods for their people. This is important because many Communist states promoted heavy industry at the expense of consumer goods, leading to much frustration.

A female writer from Czechoslovakia, in a critical book on the Communist experience in that country, said that one of the things that angered the people (I would gather the women) the most was the chronic shortage of washing machines. Who wants to wash your clothes by hand?

The problem with the Yugoslavian model was the workers really did run the enterprises. So they had the choice of whether to take home the profits of the enterprise as spending money or to reinvest in the business. They usually chose to take home the profits for more spending money. Eventually, plants did not receive reinvestment and they fell apart and became uncompetitive.

I do not think that workers should run their own enterprises because they do not know what they are doing and will usually take home profits as pocket money instead of pumping them back into the enterprises. What has to be done is for an outside manager to run the business.

The Mondragon Cooperatives in the Basque Country is a good example of a non-capitalist cooperative economy in Spain. It works very well and has for many years. The cooperatives are formally run by the workers, but actually the owners are some giant regional banks. They operate with the enterprises' best interests at heart and often money is reinvested in the plant. Sometimes workers just get to take it home.

The workers also get to elect their own managers. One would suspect that workers would elect those managers who let them screw off the most and work the least, but that has not been the case.

Bottom line: the decisions are in the hands of people who know what they are doing.

In China, a similar thing is operating. Workers still formally own most of the plants in China. They may even own most of the so-called private plants. Anyway, most enterprises in China are still run by the state, but they are typically run by smaller municipalities and labor collectives.

For instance, the enterprise that is the third largest producer of television sets on Earth, an immensely successful enterprise, is a socialist institution that is state-run. Officially, it is owned by its workers, but they elect managers and abide by their decisions. This worker-ownership thing is seen as a Maoist holdover by rightwingers inside and outside China and they are itching to get rid of it.

As another example, there is a very successful plant in a small city in Northern China that I read about. It is officially owned by its workers, but they are required by law to plow 90% of their share of the profits back into the enterprise every year. Their 10% share is still a fat paycheck in Chinese terms. Workers from all around are flocking to this city to try to work in its enterprises, so there is a competitive system involved.

The cities with more profitable plants attract large numbers of workers wishing to live in those cities. With the money from the plants, the small municipality has made very nice homes for its workers, nice streets, nice cultural and civic programs and structures, etc.

So this is a great example of how worker self-management or the cooperative model, or some strange new socialism, can operate. It is essential to find new models of socialist and cooperative ownership and economics in order to avoid the socialist failures of the past.

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1825: When the US South Was Not Yet White

The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.

Updated January 23, 2008. The piece has undergone substantial revision. The title now reads, 1825: When the US South Was Not Yet White. The data referred to spoke of the US South in 1825, not the entire US. I apologize to anyone who got confused by my error.

Most people take it as a given that the USA as a nation and society is and always has been basically White, even mostly British or Northern European White. We have only to look at the authors of the Constitution and signers of the Declaration of Independence to see that all of them where White. And as the Christian fundamentalists love to remind us, they were all "Christians" too. Too bad most of them were actually Deists.

It's true since 1830 or so (see 1830 census figures Excel, pdf ), this has been a majority-White land, and that is the picture most people's memory and cultural knowledge of this country gives them.

But Whites have only been here a short while, and we were immigrants, or actually invaders at first, ourselves. Previously, this land was inhabited 100% by Amerindians, a race close to Northeast Asians. Before this was even a nation, huge numbers of Black slaves were imported to this land, such that most Black lineages in the US go back farther than most White lineages.

In California and the Southwest, we have even had Hispanics (almost all Mexicans) living here before those states were even a part of the US. A Filipino was part of the party that founded Los Angeles before California was even a state. He got sick in Baja and ended up staying there, but he was still present on the voyage. See below where many more Filipinos were already in this country even before 1781.

On the eve of the Gold Rush, there were a mere 1,000 Chinese in the US. Only seven of them were in California. But within a year of becoming a state, California was full of East Indians (Hindoos), Samoans/Hawaiians, Mexicans and other Pacific Islanders (Kanakas) and Chinese, all come for the Gold Rush.

By 1852, there were 25,000 Chinese alone in California. All of these groups stayed on through the whole decades-long Gold Rush and afterwards remained here as residents in the US.

So are West Africans, as this is where many of the American slaves came from. There was a Filipino settlement in St. Malo, Louisiana, in 1763, before the US was even formed. The first Chinese immigrants came to the US in 1820, but before the Gold Rush, only 1,000 or so had arrived.

Japanese and Filipinos have been present in Hawaii in large numbers since 1890, and Koreans have been present in much smaller numbers there from 1896. Hawaii was only made into a state in 1959. Cubans have also been here a very long time. Hundreds of Cubans came to St. Augustine, Florida in 1565, over 200 years before there was a USA.

Similarly, the first Jamaicans (a party of 20) in America were already in Jamestown, the first White British colony in the US, by 1619. Further, many Jamaicans were included in slave shipments to the US since Jamaica was a way station along the way between Africa and the US.

Significant numbers - two large ships full of Chilean and Peruvian miners were in California for the Gold Rush as early as 1848. A couple of thousand Brazilian and Caribbean Blacks also came for the Gold Rush. Note that California did not become a state until 1850.

Pakistanis (people from what later became Pakistan) were in the US since the 1700's and continuing into the 1800's in Oregon and Washington, working in agriculture, logging and mining in California. The first known East Indian Hindu came to the US in 1790, soon after the Declaration of Independence, as a maritime worker.

Mexicans, Samoans, Blacks, Cubans, East Indians, Pakistanis, Chileans, Peruvians, Filipinos, American Indians, Canadians, Japanese, West Africans, Hawaiians, Japanese, Koreans and Chinese have been here in significant, not trivial, numbers, from the very start.

They are not, as groups, wholly immigrants or foreigners to this land. They are not foreign to American culture - they are part of the very building blocks of it. Perhaps Germany, Russia, Sweden, France and most of Europe can lay claim to being predominantly White countries for centuries or millenia, but the US cannot.

On the inside back cover of a recent issue of American Heritage Magazine was a painting of the Antediluvian American South with some text below. The text took me aback. I shook my head and read it again and again and it's stuck in my head ever since.

It said that in 1825, the US South¹ was estimated to be 37% Black (almost all slaves), 25% American Indian², and only 38% was White³. Neither the Blacks nor the Indians could vote and none were citizens until the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, but so what.

Both the US South, and the nation as a whole, were already White-minority as early as 35 years after signing of the Constitution. Take that, "White America" fools!

The White America of movies, TV, magazines, books and memories was just a temporary mirage, a ship passing in the night.

Now, as the USA moves back to becoming a White-minority land, we are not changing the basic nature, culture and essence of this nation. We just reverting to our roots.

I am not arguing for unlimited immigration to this land (In fact, I want to seriously limit it) and I am a staunch opponent of illegal immigration. Nevertheless, it angers me when White Nationalists act like this is some kind of a "White country".

Nothing could be further from the truth.

¹I misremembered the text in the issue - it referred to the US South only, not the US as a whole. A look at the US Census Bureau information (Excel file here, pdf here) clears up the mystery. A 37% Black figure is apparent for Blacks in the US South.

The 25% Indian figure quoted was obviously for Amerindians in the South. Therefore, the article claimed that Whites were 38%, Blacks 37%, and Indians 25% in the US South in 1825.

Figures for the whole of the US reveal a White majority, however, if we include the Amerindians living in the Louisiana Purchase at that time (recently part of the US in 1825), we can still make a case for a non-White majority in the US. See note 3 below for more on that.

²There were numerically small numbers of Filipinos, Chinese, Mexicans, pre-Pakistanis (people from the land that would later become Pakistan), East Indians and Cubans here in 1825, but they probably added up to less than 1% of the population.

³The American Heritage figures quoted have now been called into question (see comments at the end of this post and the comments at the end of the frankly White racist American Renaissance article that linked this piece); the suggestion is that Blacks made up 19% of the US at the time, and Whites made up the rest.

The mystery is cleared up in note 1, where the magazine text referred to only the US South, not the US as a whole.

Indians were not counted in either the 1820 or 1830 censuses, and may have numbered 8 million in the US at the time (recall that the Louisiana Purchase had just been added to the nation).

Figure 12 million Indians in the US and Canada pre-contact, with 90% of those in the US (compare US and Canadian populations now for a 9-1 disparity in US versus Canadian population - a similar distribution was probably extant pre-contact). Assume 2 million Indians gone from the original population by 1825, mostly East of the Mississippi, and 2 million living in New Spain and the Oregon Territory.

This leaves us with 7 million Indians in the US in 1825. Further, runaway slaves were clearly not counted, probably 10% of the Black population. Figuring 7 million Indians, 9.2 million Whites and 2.5 million Blacks in 1825 still leaves us with a bare minority-White population in the US. The US was probably non-White majority from 1803-1825. By 1830, Whites were the majority entire nation, and have remained so ever since.

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