Spanish
life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.
-
Christopher Howse: A
Pilgrim in Spain.
If
you've arrived here because of an interest in Galicia or Pontevedra,
see my web page here.
I'm travelling this
morning so this post will be both brief and early. And indebted to
yesterday's edition of Lenox Napier's Business Over Tapas.
Spain v Cataluña
- Says The Local: The speaker of the
Catalan parliament said Wednesday that new elections were not in the
region's "interest" while Spain persists in blocking a new
president from taking office. So, will they take place?
Spain
- El País report here on 'surprising' developments
among the parties of Spain's Left.
- As for the PP government, it's still
hamstrung in its attempts to push through what one paper sees as a
'high risk' budget
- Talking of the Left . . . Andalucia is
a by word for corruption. So, it's not very surprising to read that
the EU regards its government as the worst in Spain. Though I'm not
clear on the criteria. So, I should probably read the EuropeanQuality of Government Index 2017.
Life in Spain
- HT to Lenox Napier for the news that:-
The radical actor Willy Toledo is called to explain himself in court
for insults made against God on his Facebook page. God forbid.
- The university of
King Juan Carlos in Madrid appears to have become something of degree
factory. On the heels of the Cifuentes affair comes the news that
many senior police officers would not be in their current positions
without their degrees in Criminology, bought for €3,000 each.
The EU
- M Macron has been goading Frau Merkel
and challenging her over whether she wants to form a new
Franco-German double act on a par with those which drove The Project
forwards in the past. The article below suggests he might be
vaingloriously wasting his time.
The USA/Russia/The World
- In a thoughtful article below Peter
Hitchins – the well-known 'right-wing' brother of Christopher
Hitchens – expresses the fear that the drums of WW3 are being
resoundly beaten. One rather hopes not.
Galicia/Pontevedra
- An unexpected consequence of the new
law compelling microchipping of one’s dog is a record number of
dogs being abandoned to their fate in the region. The dog
region's kennels will be even fuller than usual. And there's talk of
the law being applied to cats too.
Finally
- There've been a lot of very funny
things circulating about Sra Cifuentes and the university of King
Juan Carlos. The one I liked most yesterday was a claim that, if you
buy a gym membership there, you can lose weight without ever
attending. Still time for a laugh before we're all nuked to
perdition.
© David Colin
Davies, Pontevedra: 20.4.18
THE ARTICLES
1. Macron recalls giants of history to
taunt Merkel
President Macron appeared to taunt
Angela Merkel today by invoking the successful partnerships of former
French and German leaders as he tried to persuade her to back his
ambitious plans for EU reform.
In promoting the “strength” of
their predecessors such as Konrad Adenauer and Charles de Gaulle, the
French president was claiming a similar leadership role in Europe.
His comments were interpreted as a
challenge to Mrs Merkel over whether she wanted to form a new double
act.
Alongside Mr Macron at their joint
press conference, the German chancellor emerged as hesitant and
cautious. The former “Queen of Europe” appeared to have been put
on the spot by the new prince.
Mrs Merkel, 63, who was never keen on
greater EU integration, has been hamstrung by the loss of seats
in the German election and faces resistance in her own party to the
French president’s more audacious ideas.
Mr Macron, 40, arrived in Berlin after
an impassioned speech to the European Parliament on Tuesday when he
warned of “civil war” in the continent unless radical reform
measures were taken.
Senior German politicians have been
warning that his plans for a minister and budget for the eurozone and
for a European Monetary Fund were expensive distractions when the
real challenge was controlling immigration and asylum.
“We need to come together,” Mr
Macron said. “This is a moment that is decisive for the future of
Europe.” He outlined threats to European democracy from external
forces such as trade wars and internal pressures, such as the rise of
populism.
“In the past we had predecessors who
had the strength to resist bad tendencies and even counter them. This
is something expected from us,” Mr Macron said, standing next to
Mrs Merkel ahead of their talks today.
Mrs Merkel wore her best blank
expression as he said this but the reference to predecessors recalled
champions of EU advancement such as Adenauer and de Gaulle, who
founded the project in the 1950s, as well as François Mitterrand and
Helmut Kohl who saw through the creation of the euro.
Mr Macron also made numerous calls for
greater “solidarity”, a word interpreted in Berlin as demands for
more German taxpayer money.
“You have certainly understood that
there is a lot of work ahead of us,” Mr Macron said to the
chancellor in concluding his opening remarks.
“Even though these challenges seem to
be daunting they will certainly be worthwhile and we can succeed,”
he added by way of reassurance.
In stark contrast Mrs Merkel stressed
the need for compromise and pragmatism.
“There are of course always different
starting points when it comes to the opinions of Germany and France.
We need open debates — and in the end we need the ability to
compromise,” she said.
“One issue that we will be working
through very quickly now and that I am very optimistic about is how
to complete the Banking Union. We are also willing to set up a joint
bank deposit insurance system in a more distant future,” she said.
“However, we want to make sure that
liability and risks go together. I believe we also agree that
solidarity is needed in Europe but that competitiveness is also
necessary.”
Mrs Merkel’s idea of a banking union
without a common bailout fund is at odds with Paris, however. Her
emphasis on competitiveness means more of the painful austerity
measures and economic liberalisation that her former finance minister
Wolfgang Schäuble insisted upon to reform the Greek economy.
She pledged to work with Mr Macron to
bring forward compromise proposals for the EU summit in June. Mrs
Merkel has also proposed an enhanced committee for overseeing the
euro which includes economy ministers as well as finance ministers.
It is seen in Paris as a distraction motivated by German domestic
political reasons – Mrs Merkel’s finance minister comes from the
Social Democratic Party while the economy minister is from her own
Christian Democratic Union.
In an example of the domestic pressure
facing Mrs Merkel her coalition partners from the Christian Social
Union, the Bavarian conservatives, urged her to resist Mr Macron’s
reforms.
“A new beginning for Europe cannot
not just mean new money,” said Markus Blume, secretary general of
the CSU.
“Europe must become more efficient
and better not more expensive. One thing is clear we must stay the
course of the stability union. That means no transfer union, no
European finance minister, no new funds and no European unemployment
insurance. We have to be careful. Macron speaks of more Europe but he
also thinks of France first.”
2. The Guns of April : Are we in a pre-War
era, right now? Peter Hitchins.
A pre-war era My feeling that we are
in a pre-war era, and are being prepared for that war almost every
day, grows. I am not feeling especially well at the moment, and my
days are tinged with a certain darkness anyway, despite the arrival
of spring, but I cannot at any point in my life ever recall being
gripped by such a feeling of impending, unavoidable disaster.
It
began early on Sunday morning with claims of a gas attack in the
suburbs of Damascus. Although the BBC were careful to state that the
reports were unverified, my heart sank. The prominence being
given to the story suggested that it didn’t much matter that they
were not verified. Why lead a news bulletin on a main national
material with unverified material, if you think verification matters
a lot? Surely the old rule was ‘verify first’, then publish’?
Is
it 1914 again? I wearily resigned myself to the fact that
at some point I would have to write what I am now writing, a warning
that these claims have not been proven, may not be proven, and serve
the end of those who desire to draw this country into a war. What
sort of war? Well, I am horribly reminded of the summer of 1914.
Two
major powers, Saudi Arabia and Iran, are irreconcilably hostile to
each other. One of them, by aggressive diplomacy in proxy states, has
created a state of grave tension between them which, if it goes much
further, threatens to draw the great powers into open conflict. A
single incident, by providing the basis for aggressive diplomacy,
unacceptable demands and perhaps actual warlike violence, could
trigger that war. If so, it will not be confined to the Middle East,
because of the involvement of Russia in the dispute. Indeed, it may
be Russia’s involvement in Syria, where it has frustrated Saudi
Arabian designs and those of Saudi Arabia’s allies, such as the
USA, this country and France, which triggered the considerable
increase in tension in Ukraine which began to heat up in 2013.
A
single incident could trigger war Given the nature of the
controversy about Ghouta today, even the events in Salisbury have a
relevance to this, as does the mass expulsion of diplomats which
followed that outrage, even though it has never actually been linked
by indisputable evidence to the direct action of the Russian
state.
War fever means the death of honest debate
Careful readers will also have noticed that the Labour leader has
been facing increasing accusations from the Tory party of being a
Russian stooge, in my view a breach of the moral code which allows
freedom to live. If the Leader of the Opposition cannot oppose the
government without being accused of some sort of fealty to a foreign
power, then we are not free. I have no doubt something similar will
soon be said of me. I find this worrying not because it is
bone-headed and childish (though it is) but because it is a symptom
of something very serious – the death of open, honest debate.This
is an invariable symptom of a country whose elite is bent on
war.
Idiot-proofing So before I began, I knew I was
going to have to idiot-proof it by showing (before they were made)
that claims that I am some sort of stooge of the Damascus Government
are false.
Here is
the proof of that, a catalogue of my long record of severe criticism
of the Assad state (such that I have never even sought a visa for
Syria, on the assumption that it might be refused or, worse, that it
might be granted and some sort of revenge taken on me once I
arrived).
By the way, my fear of such accusations is
not unfounded, as you may read
here in an account of my dispute with
the former Tory MP Brooks Newmark, during an earlier attempt to drag
this country into intervening in
Syria.
Mr
Newmark, who has subsequently come to grief through his own folly in
other matters,
accused me of acting ‘in support of the Assadregime’.
I
contacted him and politely asked him to withdraw, but he would not,
and eventually my own then MP, the excellent Andrew Smith (a proper
old-fashioned Honourable Gentleman who treated his constituents
without fear or favour) was kind enough to make my rebuttal for me in
the Commons, so ensuring that it was
recorded in Hansard. But Mr
Newmark never
retracted.
No,
not a Putin Patsy either Now, despite my equally long record of
criticism of Vladimir Putin, going back to 2004, see
here. I have no doubt that some semi-literate will accuse me of being a
‘useful idiot’.This hackneyed and ill-understood Cold War term
was never actually used by Lenin, as claimed. In any case it applies
specifically to the dim fellow-travellers of Communism, who defended
the USSR’s misdeeds because of ideological sympathy. This is
an accusation that simply cannot be made against me. Russia has no
ideology. And I am not a defender of, or a friend of, the Russian
state.
I also knew I would have to republish
this posting. Iin my view a pretty arduous and definitive demonstration that the
previous accusation of poison gas use by Assad’s forces had never
been proven, though it had been made to look as if it had been. It is
also, though I say it myself, fascinating in many ways, if you are
interested in evidence at all.
That done, I was going to
have to examine, patiently and dispassionately, the accounts of the
latest alleged atrocities, and apply the same treatment to them. I
cannot, alas, analyse them all. So I have chosen two left-wing
papers. But I must also remind readers of the difficulty of sources
for reports in these areas, where in general western journalists
cannot safely go. This article (please note the interesting
background of the doctor quoted) may help you understand just how
difficult it is to get straight information under these
circumstances
It is
very hard to get straight facts outof war zones.
Some
coverage of the Syria crisis examined
Here goes:
The
Financial
Times prominently quotes the words of others who *have* assumed the
case is proven, such as President Trump and, apparently, the EU, both
of whom are said to be calling for action. ‘Sentence first, verdict
later’, as the King of Hearts says in ‘Alice in Wonderland’.
But it is careful to say in its headline that it is an ‘alleged
chemical attack’. And it uses the qualifying phrase ‘if
confirmed’ , before saying it would then be the most serious since
sarin gas *was* dropped in Khan Sheikhoun a year ago.
See what
you think It seems oddly unaware that this allegation
remains in question, or that no independent observer ever
investigated the site. Time does not turn an allegation into a proven
fact, and the truth about this should not be forgotten. The FT’s
story is datelined ‘Rebecca Collard in Beirut’. Beirut is 70
miles from the alleged attack, and in a separate country, even
assuming she could have got to the scene in time or entered the very
dangerous conflict zone involved, and also to ‘Courtney Weaver in
Washington’, which is even further away from Ghouta than I am. The
report cites as a source a body called the Syrian American Medical
Society, whose website here https://www.sams-usa.net/who-we-are/
gives some indication that it may not be wholly neutral in Syrian
matters. Click on ‘Our Advocacy’ and then on ‘Campaigns’ and
see what you think.
The
Guardian’s Page One story is from
Martin Chulov, likewise 70 miles from the scene, in Beirut.
Moving
It is illustrated by a moving photograph of a child, eyes
closed, with an oxygen mask over his face. The caption says he is
‘struggling to breathe after the attack”. No qualification is
visible in this caption , in the headline (Outcry over chemical
attack in Syria’), or in the opening paragraph, which uses the
phrase ‘chemical strike’ and the word ‘atrocity’ without the
word ‘alleged’ or ‘suspected’.
The picture is credited to
Mouneb Taim, who I think must be the same person as the author of
this Twitter feed.
Why Verify if you've already made Your Mind up, and vice versa?
Interestingly, Mr Chulov’s story noted ‘[President] Trump
demanded that access be opened to Douma, which is the last of three
besieged districts in the Ghouta area of Damascus to remain under
opposition control. Trump said access was necessary to verify what
had happened and treat remaining victims.’ If he is so keen to
verify, as indeed he should be, why is he calling President Assad an
‘animal’ and warning of a ‘big price to pay’? Surely such
things should wait for the verification? Or does he know in advance
what its verdict will be? By the way, it is worth noting that the
Islamist group based in Douma is Jaysh-al-Islam, the 'Army of Islam'
(which is not very nice, see
here.
I believe Jaysh (or Jaish) al Islam has had significant
Saudi support. But the US administration in the past has been pretty
unkeen about it. See t
hese remarks by John Kerry.
On
page nine, the
Guardian has a longer account from Kareem Shaheen –
in Istanbul, 900 miles from Damascus. It attributes to ‘aid
workers and medics’ descriptions of ‘apocalyptic scenes’, and
does use the word ‘alleged’. But I could not see a single named
person quoted, just unidentified doctors, paramedics and a local
journalist.
The
Guardian Becomes the Warmonger’s
Gazette Remember, this is the
Guardian, a newspaper which
for decades was the house journal of ban-the-bombers and protestors
against the Suez adventure and the Vietnam war, with very high
proportions of Quakers, moth-eaten liberals and vegans among its
readers. Yet now it has become a trumpet for armed intervention.
Under the pious slogan ‘Comment is free…but facts are sacred’
first stated by its greatest editor C.P.Scott, the paper’s opinion
column declares (again without the slightest qualification): ‘Syria's
renewed use of chemical weapons against its own people at the weekend
is shameless and barbaric. Dozens of people in the remaining
rebel-held suburbs of Damascus were suffocated by Saturday's chemical
attack on the Douma district. This is not the first time this has
happened. Since the use of sarin at Khan al-Assal in 2013 there have
been dozens of chemical attacks by the regime. These deliberate
attacks on civilians show callous contempt for humanity and disregard
for the laws of war. Official Syrian claims that the latest killings
have been fabricated are beneath contempt.’
But if facts are
sacred, how can the
Guardian be so sure, given that it is
relying on a report from one correspondent 70 miles away, and another
one 900 miles away, however good they are at their jobs, and some
anonymous quotes from people whose stories it has no way of
checking?
Long-distance Psychiatry? A Breakthrough!
It recognises the problem that any such action by President Assad
would be raving mad. Assad is on the verge of a highly significant
victory in Ghouta, and a gas attack would provide the only realistic
opportunity for an American intervention against him, about the only
thing that could once again put his position in doubt. The
Guardian isn't troubled by that. It argues: ‘Some may ask why,
since the slow throttling of Damascus's eastern Ghouta suburbs seems
to be approaching a grisly climax, the government feels any need to
breach one of the oldest taboos in warfare once more. To answer that
adequately it is necessary to delve into the darkest places of the
psychology of a regime that celebrates the overwhelming use of force,
the need to terrorise civilians and the right to punish opponents
indiscriminately as a weapon of policy.’ In other words, yes,
President Assad is mad. Well it is a point of view, but even if
reporting of atrocities can be done accurately from a distance of 900
miles, I have heard of no attested experiments showing that
psychiatry can be done at such distances.