Dawn

Dawn

Thursday, May 25, 2017

Thoughts from Galicia: 25.5.17

Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.
- Christopher Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain.
  • You might have thought a fair tax system wouldn't impose a capital gains tax if you'd lost money on the sale of an asset. If so, you'd be wrong in the case of Spain. It's taken a decision of the Constitutional Court to stop the tax authorities here hitting you with a plusvalía tax based on what they said was and is the value of your asset, regardless of the reality. This - blatantly obvious - decision will mean a tsunami of court claims for repayment, with the inevitable consequences for Spain's woefully slow judicial system. Which is already struggling to deal with a similar decision in respect of illegal 'floor clauses' in mortgage contracts. See this article, in English. I wonder if this rule also applies if you've only made a loss because of the high transfer taxes paid to the regional government.
  • Talking about inequity here. . . I've said more than once that, if you're to avoid being hit with speeding fines here, it's advisable to drive everywhere at 50kph(31mph). I'm saying it again now because my latest fine arrived yesterday morning. For doing 69 on a straight, unsigned country road which I obviously thought had a 70 limit. No one could be more careful than I am about keeping within the limits. In more than 35 years driving in several countries, I was never fined. Not even once. Here in Spain in just over 16 years, I've been hit 8 or 9 times. So . . . Has my driving deteriorated or is the revenue department of the Tráfico ministry the most efficient organisation in Spain? Or the most deceitful? Of course, it's not totally accurate to say that driving at 50 will keep you safe; the ludicrous limit on the steep hill to and from my house is 30kph(19mph). Which - along with everyone else - I break at least twice a day. It's either that or driving up in second gear and down with your foot on the brake. Final word on this - Someone on the web has complained about being fined €300 and losing 2 points for doing 71 on this stretch. My fine is 'only' €100 and no points are being deducted from my licence. Is this a function of the tiny difference between 71 and 69kph? Anyone know?
  • So, what's going to happen later this year in Cataluña? And what will the consequences be for Spain and the EU? I ask because the pesky Catalan nationalists are threatening to unilaterally declare independence if Madrid doesn't allow them to have a referendum in September. Ironically, the chances are high they'd lose this but the right-of-centre PP government can't contemplate a concession on this and continues to threaten court action. At the very least. Click here and here for views on this issue. We seem to be heading for a pointless nuclear war.
As I'm in a bilious mood . . . . What is it about stupid coffee pods? It's now reported that 13 billion of these bits of plastic are polluting the planet, though this seems tad high to me. Whatever the accurate number, it's surely time to rebel against this latest example of a marketing triumph that spits in the face of common sense. And costs you money in the process. Wake up, people!

More importantly . . .  Here's Donald Trump's comment in the visitors' book at the Holocaust Museum in Israel. You don't have to compare it with those of his predecessors to appreciate how inadequately and pathetically puerile it is:-


Like the author of the article which follows, I find the attitude of the West towards Saudi Arabia utterly incomprehensible unless you assume - rightly - it has everything to do with money. Especially that flowing to the US military-industrial complex.

Before you read it, here's a cartoon which points up the madness of one aspect of this issue:-


The Manchester Attacks: What Price Hypocrisy?John Wight. Counterpunch

The lack of a coherent anti-terrorism strategy in Washington and by extension the West, as emergency services deal with the devastating aftermath of yet another terrorist atrocity in Europe – this time a suicide bomb attack at a concert in Manchester, England – has been thrown into sharp relief during President Trump’s tour of the Middle East.

Specifically, on what planet can Iran be credibly accused of funding and supporting terrorism while Saudi Arabia is considered a viable partner in the fight against terrorism? This is precisely the narrative we are being invited to embrace by President Trump in what counts as a retreat from reality into the realms of fantasy, undertaken in service not to security but commerce.

Indeed those still struggling to understand why countries such as the US, UK, and France consistently seek to legitimise a Saudi regime that is underpinned by the medieval religious doctrine of Wahhabism, which is near indistinguishable from the medieval religious extremism and fanaticism of Daesh and Nusra in Syria – those people need look no further than the economic relations each of those countries enjoy with Riyadh.

The announcement that Washington has just sealed a mammoth deal with its Saudi ally on arms sales – worth $110 billion immediately and $350 billion over 10 years – is all the incentive the US political and media establishment requires to look the other way when it comes to the public beheadings, crucifixionseye gouging, and other cruel and barbaric punishments meted out in the Kingdom on a regular basis.

The sheer unreality of Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, as he stood shoulder to shoulder with President Trump during the latter’s state visit to the country recently, lamenting the chaos and carnage in Syria, which he described as having been “one of the most advanced countries” prior to a conflict that has wrought so much death and destruction, the sheer unreality of this is off the scale – and especially so considering the role the Saudis have played in providing material, financial, and ideological and religious support to groups engaged in the very carnage in Syria as has just been unleashed in Manchester.

There are times when the truth is not enough, when only the unvarnished truth will do, and in the wake of the Manchester attack – in which at time of writing 22 people have been killed and 60 injured – we cannot avoid the conclusion that neither principle nor rationality is driving Western foreign policy in the Middle East, or as it pertains to terrorism.

Instead it is being driven by unalloyed hypocrisy, to the extent that when such carnage occurs in Syria, as it has unremittingly over the past 6 years, the perpetrators are still described in some quarters as rebels and freedom fighters, yet when it takes place in Manchester or Paris or Brussels, etc., they are depicted as terrorists. Neither is it credible to continue to demonize governments that are in the front line against this terrorist menace – i.e. Iran, Russia, Syria – while courting and genuflecting at the feet of governments that are exacerbating it – i.e. Saudi Arabia, previously mentioned, along with Qatar, Kuwait, and Turkey. Here, too, mention must be made of the brutal and ongoing injustice meted out to the Palestinians by an Israeli government that shares with the Saudis a doctrine of religious exceptionalism and supremacy, one that is inimical to peace or the security of its own people.

Ultimately a choice has to be made between security and stability or economic and geopolitical advantage, with the flag of democracy and human rights losing its lustre in recent years precisely because the wrong choice has been made – in other words a Faustian pact with opportunism.

As the smoke clears, both literally and figuratively, from yet another terrorist atrocity, we are forced to consider how we arrived at this point. And when we do we cannot but understand the role of Western extremism in giving birth to and nourishing Salafi-jihadi extremism. Moreover, in the midst of the understandable and eminently justifiable grief we feel at events in Manchester, it behooves us not to forget the salient fact that Muslims have and continue to be the biggest victims of this terrorist menace, unleashed in the name of religious purity and sectarianism, and that it is Muslims who are also doing most to confront and fight it, whether in Syria, Iraq, Libya, or Afghanistan. It should not escape our rendering of the issue either that what each of those countries have in common is that they have all been victims of the Western extremism mentioned earlier.

It bears repeating: you cannot continue to invade, occupy, and subvert Muslim and Arab countries and not expect consequences. And when those consequences amount to the slaughter and maiming of your own citizens, the same tired and shallow platitudes we are ritually regaled with by politicians and leaders intent on bolstering their anti-terrorism and security credentials achieve little except induce nausea.

Enough is enough.

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