José Mena Aguado is apparently being punished on the basis of article 7.31 of the Ley Orgánica del Régimen Disciplinario de las Fuerzas Armadas, which requires neutrality of soldiers with respect to the various political alternatives. Since article 8.1 of the constitution requires the armed forces to defend Spain’s territorial integrity and the constitutional order,…
Everyone’s getting excited because Peruvian president-elect Evo Morales does state business wearing a chompa, which the resident linguists at El País today inform us is an indigenous word for jersey or sweater, and which is a sure sign to the paranoid right-wingers with whom I hang that he’s about to do a Chávez. No worries:…
The eighteenth century would have sounded rather different if composers had employed Persian instead of Turkish music: Xenophon and others report: “In battles, Iranians played certain sounds that made the enemy fearful and escape, such as the sound of stones falling from the mountain or the sound of a waterfall or the horrible sound of…