Salon.com > Joseph Wilson

Region in Spain bans bullfighting

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 21:46:00 +0000

Lawmakers in the region of Catalonia thrust a sword deep into Spain's centuries-old tradition of bullfighting, banning the blood-soaked pageant that has fascinated artists and writers from Goya to Hemingway.

Wednesday's vote in the Catalan parliament prohibits bullfighting starting in 2012 in the northeastern region that centers on Barcelona. Although animal rights activists want to extend the ban, there is no significant national movement to do away with bullfighting in the rest of Spain.

Many see the vote as a political statement by a wealthy and powerful region that likes to assert how different it is from the rest of Spain, rather than an expression of concern over cruelty to the half-ton beasts by sword-wielding matadors.

The center-right Popular Party, which is fervent about the idea of a unified Spain run from Madrid, said it will fight the ban -- the first by a major region in the country. It will press the national Parliament to pass a law giving protected status to bullfighting and bar regions from outlawing it, said Alicia Sanchez-Camacho, president of the party's Catalan branch.

Still, animal rights activists rejoiced and cheers broke out in Catalonia's 135-seat legislature when the speaker announced the ban had passed 68-55 with nine abstentions.

A strange encounter with Robert Novak

Tue, 04 May 2004 19:06:00 +0000

Late on Tuesday afternoon, July 8, six days before Robert Novak's article about Valerie and me, a friend showed up at my office with a strange and disturbing tale. He had been walking down Pennsylvania Avenue toward my office near the White House when he came upon Novak, who, my friend assumed, was en route to the George Washington University auditorium for the daily taping of CNN's "Crossfire." He asked Novak if he could walk a block or two with him, as they were headed in the same direction; Novak acquiesced. Striking up a conversation, my friend, without revealing that he knew me, asked Novak about the uranium controversy. It was a minor problem, Novak replied, and opined that the administration should have dealt with it weeks before. My friend then asked Novak what he thought about me, and Novak answered: "Wilson's an asshole. The CIA sent him. His wife, Valerie, works for the CIA. She's a weapons of mass destruction specialist. She sent him." At that point, my friend and Novak went their separate ways. My friend headed straight for my office a couple of blocks away.

The cult that’s running the country

Mon, 03 May 2004 19:51:00 +0000

Editor's note: In July 2003, former ambassador Joseph Wilson revealed in a New York Times piece that President Bush's assertion that Saddam Hussein was seeking to acquire uranium from the African nation of Niger was false and should have been known by the Bush administration to be false. Wilson was in a position to know: He himself had been sent by the CIA (acting at the behest of Vice President Dick Cheney) to Niger to investigate the claims, which he reported were baseless. Coming on top of other reports that the Bush White House had cherry-picked intelligence to make a distorted case for war, Wilson's piece caused major political damage to the Bush administration. It reacted by attempting to discredit and punish Wilson. On July 14, 2003, syndicated columnist Robert Novak dutifully revealed that Wilson's wife was an undercover CIA operative, writing that "two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report."

This article, the first of two excerpts from Wilson's new book, "The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies That Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity," begins as Wilson confronts the media and political firestorm that erupted after Novak's column appeared.