The point is that, in the young Spanish democracy, under the government of the talented zp, two PP members were arrested because they appeared in a photo shouting minister Bono during a demostration.Minister Bono was protected by his bodyguards!!.

PP members did not punch the minister and there was no medical report about Bono’ s injuries.

The arrest was carried out by order of socialist Ministro del Interior , Sr. Alonso and the General Attorney.

In my opinion, it was a political arrest , like the ones that happen in Cuba and Venezuela.

These two PP members have been beaten in all tvs and were under medical treatment.
Luckyly, the judge has closed this issue. But no socialist politician has resigned

I wonder, whatever the paper you read, if this happens in old democracies like England, France or the US.

In the Spain of zp yes.

Lonoma: First of all, thank you for the compliment about the US being an old democracy. I sometimes forget that the US is becoming an old country, especially when countries like Spain just got their freedom less than thirty years ago.Trust me democracy did not come cheap for either country.

I can assure you that we do in fact have political prisoners. Currently there is a man in federal prison who was convicted of killing two federal officers. There was never any physical evidence linking him to those two murders, he was a known radical with the American Indian Movement. If you are interested in doing internet research on him, his name is Leonard Peltier. I am not sure of the spelling of his name. The second was a man convicted of killing a federal prison gaurd. Normally he would have been given the death penalty, but at the time of the killing the death penalty was not permitted for his particular murder. For haveing murdered anyone else he would have been given more years on to his sentence, and put back in what is known as "general population" however for haveing killed a gaurd he is under what is known as a "no human contact" order. He is locked in his cell, lights on, under the watch of a camera 24 hours per day. The only sound that he hears is the sound of the light fixture over his head. He is evaluated via intercom once per quarter by a psychologist to evaluate is mental state. When it is all said and done both of those men are political prisoners. In 1968 a man from the middle east shot and killed a Presidential candidate, he is still in prison in California to this day. Had he killed either one of us, he would have long ago been paroled and deported. He also could be considered a political prisoner.

Under the American system of justice, two things are important. One is who perpetratror is, and two who is the victim. The three above mentioned cases illustrate very well how justice is administered when the victim is a federal law enforcement officer or a federal offical. In the case of the Presidential candidate, he was at the time of his death a Senator from New York. To give an illustration of how the perpetrator is treated when he has celebrity status. There is a man who currently resides in Florida, who is a retired football player, was tried for a double murder in California. Inspite of overwhelming evidence, he was allowed to go free. Celebrities are generally treated with "Kidd skin gloves" in our courts. And, in fact it was "kid skin gloves" that allowed him to go free.

Let me be the first to tell you that our system of justice is not perfect. Let me also say, that I would take my chances in an American courtroom over any other in the world. Let me also say, yes we have some very minor cases of "media bias."
;)Nothing serious, right MM.

Anyone could be tempted to think that El País is equivalent to rightist and non-leftist newspapers. But the thing is that, while any newspaper has certain bias, El País hides, manipulates and lies about any news which are contrary to their "business" in the most ample meaning of the term. And their business is to control as many media as possible and protecting them by defending PSOE, which issues laws to improve PRISA (the holding to which El País belongs to) position. For example, PRISA owns Canal + (the unique pay-per-view TV), one of the three analogic contry-wide TVs, and the socialist party (PSOE) has recently approved a law to give one more country-wide TV to PRISA (and they say that is to improve pluralism!!!!).

Other newspapers have a bias, but won't hide the news, and certainly don't have as many interests as PRISA.

Are PSOE and PP equal? We may be tempted to think so... was PSOE in the 80s and 90s as ZP's PSOE? Not as populist and demagogic, but certainly as hooked to the past in its statements as this one.

There are lots of things to be critized in PP (note: try to find a socialist who critizes something in PSOE ). But the facts are:

1) PSOE has ministers (Vera, Barrionuevo) in prison (and outside prison) who were sentenced because they ordered kidnapping, tortures and assasination of ETA terrorists (and the worst thing is that inocent persons were catched in the middle). Thus PSOE committed state terrorism in a "democratic" country, and though the former president (Felipe González) was not judged, he was responsible of it, and didn't even apologized for it.

2) PSOE has condemned members in all levels of their Administration (ministers, state secretaries, directors of public institutions as police, official state bulletin, Guardia Civil, state subsecreaties, attorney general,...) accussed of corruption and stealing several million euros from public funds (included those which were reserved for the use against terrorism).

3) Two PSOE ministers (Serra, Barrionuevo) were ceased and prosecuted for ordering to our intelligence agency illegal interventions of phone lines, mobile phone lines and recordings of conversations of politicians. All these for a political use.

4) PSOE was condemned for using illegal ways of financing, including the creation of several firms (Filesa, Malesa, IberCorp) and the use of public funds.

5) A PSOE minister (Alonso) has ordered the arrest without charges of two members of a political party (as I have explained above), which is a political and illegal arrest.

The thing is, there is no political party in Spain (and I would say Europe) with such level of political and moral corruption.

They accuse PP of being the heirs of Franco (a very "democratic" position of respecting the antagonists), but the thing is that PP leaders condemn the previous regime, while PSOE is very proud of its 120 years of corruption, kidnapping, tortures, burning of churches (1934), creation of paramilitary militias (1930-1936), terrorism (1934, 1982-1990), illegal demonstrations, illegal arrests,...

Are they shamed? No, they are very proud. Everything is solved by calling fascist to any who thinks the opposite and yelling how democratic you are.

Fernando

Fernando,

It's just amazing how similar your political rivals are to ours. The particulars are somewhat different, but if you were to substitute the Republicans for he PP and the Democrats for he PSOE, you would find striking parallels.

Currently the left-wing, Democrats, are the losers of the last election, and have one agenda; impune and destroy President Bush. They have and will do this regardless of the negative effects it has on our country. And, like the PSOE, when cornered with their own words, will say, without any evidence, that the Republicans do the same thing. Then when cornered about who the Republican official might be who uttered such hatred, they allude to an admittedly, right-wing, radio talk show host who isn't even running for dog catcher.

The current head of the Democratic party, Howard Dean, recently said that the Republican party is an exclusively White Christian party. The funny part is that he's from Vermont that has a very, very low percentage of minorities and the Democrats have several ex Ku Klux Klan members, racists, for Senator.

If the political situation here weren't so amusing, it would be very frustrating. I can only hope that the other 50% of our country, if indeed as the last election pointed out it is that high, can see whats going on. I'm not holding my breathe though.

Gazpacho, while political media tools may be similar in every country, you can believe me in one thing: our political parties have no equivalent in your country.

Both republicans and democrats are rightist parties (one more rightist than the other).

Even PP is at the left of the Democrat Party. PSOE (socialists) is far to the left, and IU (communists) further. You don't have nationalist parties similar to ours.

PP representatives were sent to the congress of both the Republican Party and the Democrat Party in the past elections, while PSOE didn't send any representatives (has nothing in common with your parties).

As far as I know, your parties are similar to conservatives and labourists in the UK. PP defends similar positions than the Labourist Party in UK (Aznar had a very good relationship with Blair).

For example, PP defend a free public health-care system, unemployment subside, for-life subside after you stop working, a protection to workers so they can't be fired for free without a good reason,... does the Republican Party defend those positions?

Fernando

I think Fernando may be right when he says you cannot compare 'left-wing' parties in the different countries. Here in the UK Tony Blair's party is now regarded as centre-moderate right (which may be why it has won 3 elections in a row). It supports foreign armed interventions, subsidizing private home ownership, tough anti-social crime measures and is very pro-business. Whether or not its disastrous pensions policy (which will devastate all but the very rich) is viewed as right-wing or left-wing is, I feel, academic. I would prefer to use the term incompetent.
It has to be said that in a majority of democratic countries you find that most media companies are owned and run by right-wingers. If there is a media group in Spain that represents the left wing and has a 30% influence including El Pais(or whatever the amount is) then to me that is a good sign and is good for democracy. It doesn't happen in most countries.