Massacres and dates

[Celso Alvarez Cáccamo]

Hello,

Thank you for your message.

lahcen at fulbrightweb.org wrote:

>I don't know much about 20 Muharram. However, I doubt whether killers of
>that caliber need to pay much attention to religious or national symbols
>to deliver their inhuman blow. Nor do Critical Discourse Analysts need to
>try to find justification or explanation for a massacre in religious or
>other symbols. Nothing justifies the killing of humans.

Of course, you're right. And I wasn't trying to start any sophisticated
analysis, of which I'm incapable (nor am I a CDAnalyst!). It just struck
me, again, that the "11" coincidence with 9/11 is emphasized by some
political analysts (=journalists), when that is a coincidence in the
Gregorian calendar that shouldn't (shouldn't) have any meaning in Muslim
religious terms, I assume. Since official discourse presents Al-Qaeda as
"religious fanatics" waging a "jihad" (and the Madrid massacre is probably
due to some "Al-Qaeda" faction), I guess there should be some sort of
coherence here in their treatment of "religious fanatics'" symbols. So,
there's some sort of contradiction here, as Christian values and symbols
are applied to "Islamic" actions. Intelligence services are supposed to be
intelligent. Or, of course, there's no contradiction whatsoever in public
discourse, because intelligence services perfectly know that Al-Qaeda has
anything to do with "Islam", just as ETA has nothing to do with "Basque
nationalism".

>Alvarez, perhaps inadvertantly, left "the PP's international policy toward
>Iraq" unqualified. He rather made it sound legitimate in his use of the
>term 'international'. As the word 'international' tends to collocate with
>such positive words as "community", "cooperation", "aid", "relations",
>"sports", etc., the reader is led to believe that the PP's policy towards
>Iraq is another positive thing.

Please! ;-). I must have written very poorly.  I left the PP policy
unqualified perhaps because I assumed my position was obvious. I talked
about the invasion of Iraq. I talked about the millions of citizens around
the world demonstrating against the invasion. I don't need to mention how
many of those demonstrations I attended.

But I will now qualify that "PP international [and internal] policy", for
your comfort ;-) : international terrorism, and state terrorism.  A couple
of hours ago, a Spanish policeman killed a breadmaker in Pamplona because
the man refused to display a black lace in his shop in solidarity with the
victims in Madrid. The breadmaker's son had been in jail accused of
belonging to ETA or its affiliate groups. The policeman's wife had an
argument with the breadmaker. She went home, told this to the Man of the
Household with the Big Gun, and the policeman came down, entered the store
and shot the breadmaker four times in the chest. Right one day after
millions of people like that woman and that cop demonstrated "against
terrorism", "for the Constitution" and "with the victims".

At any rate, in the Madrid massacre we're also talking oil and social
class, and that's what neither OPA (Official Political Analysis ;-) ) nor
CDA really address when talking about metaphors.

Best,
-celso

PS: BTW, for those of you who might be interested, 32 Spanish filmmakers
prepared a film called "Hay Motivo: Tres Minutos", 32 3-minute fragments
which are social commentaries on Spain's situation today after 8 years of
government by the unqualified ;-) Popular Party.  The film is freely
available in DivX format from www.haymotivo.com through the P2P system
Overnet, and can also be watched online in EL PAIS and EL MUNDO websites,
www.elpais.es , www.elmundo.es . Very interesting, indeed.