Grave Error

You got to be kidding me!!! How ridiculous is it that someone is denied the right to citizenship because a country does not accept an individual’s right to have their own name? I just read this Reuters news release on how the Spanish government has rejected a Colombian woman’s citizenship application because her first name “Darling” is unacceptable. I could understand rejecting one’s application for a name change to a vulgar word or term. The Spanish law permits rejecting names that may cause a person to be “exposed to ridicule or do not clearly indicate gender.” But “Darling”? Come on, in Spain it is very common for males to have the name “Jesus” or for women to have the names of females saints but, after dropping the “María”, are of the masucline gender such as “Pilar”, “Rocío” or “Camino”. Women can also go by (as translated into English) “Immaculate Conception”, “Ascencion”, “Incarnation”, “Sea”, “Solitude”, “Suns”, or “Miracles”. How about the fact that “Angel” is a common male name? Come on!!!!!

This is pure cultural fascism, where certain names are accepted while others are rejected because they are foreign sounding and not common. There really isn’t much difference in the name “Darling” and “Hope” (the name of the President of the Community of Madrid). You don’t need to look around much in the US to see that the US government could never restrict people’s right to give their children names derived from their own cultural traditions or variations thereof, or simply as expressions of their own creativity — like it or not.

Darling wasn’t even asking for a name change, just this simple request that the name given to her at birth be respected by the Spanish authorities. What message does this send to any foreigner arriving on the shores of Spain? Where is ZP’s Alliance of Civilizations? Or is this as the Spaniards say, “moros en la costa”?

Ironically, I have just recently written a post in Spanish on how the radical Islamists are not the only ones who are dividing the world with their fanatic fundamentalism. This is a great example that proves my point that in the West we are doing the same thing but in a much more subtle way.

In any event, here is the Reuters news feed: Continue reading →

Berga and Cobra’s roomate, Edu (a bit of a leftest poser because he owns a Playstation) is a writer for the Spanish TV show El Intermedio on La Sexta. This show does something that no TV station would ever allow in the US. During each episode it runs a 20 second clip beginning with President Bush’s May 1, 2003 speech proclaiming victory and the end of combat operations in Iraq. It then lists the number of civilian deaths on that particular day in Iraq.

Although I find Spanish news to be incredibly politically biased and unfairly anti-American, US journalism and television are simply too self-censuring. The press is either afraid to tell the truth or believes that the American people are too reality adverse. In any event, irrespective of what the US media should or should not publish, this video highlights the grave harm Bush, his policies, and the war in Iraq have done to the image of the US in the world. Fortunately for him, the great majority of Americans are not living abroad and don’t have to witness how our nation has fallen into ill repute in practically every corner of the globe. For the few of us who are out there, we have to degrade ourselves by pretending to be Canadians just to get laid.