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. Garish but informative.
Matters Hamburg/German
- The German for 'bakery' is bäckerei. Which probably explains why a pastry-shop/café I noted was called Back-Factory. I thought at first it might be a bacon wholesaler . . .
- Which reminds me . . . Unlike in Spain and Portugal, German advertisers and information-providers actually get native speakers to check their translations into English. And it shows. Except for the bizarre shop names, I've yet to see a mistake.
- Hamburg has more than its fair share of beggars, down-and-outs and homeless doorway-kippers. The contrast between the obvious great wealth of the booming city and these unfortunates is stark. But Pontevedra-style importuning seems very rare. Though there are folk taking collections - 'chuggers' as they're known in the UK. I might have chanced upon a very effective way of not being assailed by these – Carry a city or underground map, so they conclude you're foreign. And it probably helps to look British. I try not to, but . . .
- One of the city's attractions – if that's the right word – is a huge flak tower-cum-bunker, on which there used to be 4 large anti-aircraft guns:-
It's the biggest left in Germany, my host tells me, and it's housed various businesses since 1945. Currently closed, it's future use might be as some sort of solar-powered greenhouse, or a hotel, or even luxury flats.
- My friend resides in a long avenue of elegant 6-storey flat blocks. Outside most of these there are 1 or more small brass plaques. These give the names of jews arrested and deported from the building. This one shows 7 names, 4 of them from one family and 2 from another. The most I've seen is 10 but I'm told there are larger examples. All very admirable by way of atonement. But very sobering.
Matters EU
- Don't just take my word for it . . .
- A Daily Telegraph columnist:- The Continent is being slowly ripped apart: jarring values and contrasting identities demarcate East and West; North and South are, economically speaking, different planets; there is still no unified response to the refugee crisis; nor any coherent strategy for budget reform and boosting productivity in response to ageing and depopulating societies. This all makes the idea that Europeans are strongly enthusiastic about the EU project seem questionable.
- A Guardian columnist: Not since the 1930s, perhaps, has Europe’s political stability, cohesion, and broadly democratic consensus been under greater challenge.
Matters USA
- Here's the Guardian's take on Fart's rhetoric.
- Below is an article by Niall Ferguson on how (North) America is edging closer to civil war.
Matters Spanish
- The Guardian comments here that the Vatican might be unprepared to help the Spanish government deal with the problem of what to do with Franco's bones. Which wouldn't be a great surprise to most of us, I imagine.
Finally . . .
- Having enjoyed living in Iran - albeit before the Islamic Revolution - I have a soft spot for the country and its people, much misunderstood in the West. So, I was interested and pleased by the article below.
© David Colin Davies, Hamburg: 20.10.18
THE ARTICLES
1. America is edging closer to civil war: Niall Ferguson, Milbank Family senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford
It’s nearer midnight than we thought on America’s Doomsday Clock
At the beginning of the Cold War, the artist wife of the physicist Alexander Langsdorf came up with the image of the “Doomsday Clock”. It appeared in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to illustrate the fear of many physicists, including some who had been involved in the creation of the atomic bomb, that a “technology-induced catastrophe” might be terrifyingly close. Midnight on the Doomsday Clock meant nuclear armageddon.
For many years it was the bulletin’s editor, Eugene Rabinowitch, who decided where the hands on the clock stood. After his death a committee took over, meeting twice a year to adjust the clock. During the Cold War the closest it came to midnight was in the years 1953-9, when the Doomsday Clock showed two minutes before midnight. The scientists also thought the years 1984-7 were pretty hairy: it was three minutes to midnight for four straight years.
All of which goes to show how absurd such exercises are. No matter how many reputable scientists endorsed the Doomsday Clock, historians today agree that the most dangerous moment in the Cold War was the Cuban Missile Crisis. But the Doomsday Clock was at seven minutes to midnight throughout 1962 and went back to 11.48pm the following year. Rather disconcertingly, the atomic scientists currently think we are back to two minutes to armageddon today.
I have no doubt that somewhere in academia someone is busy devising an American civil war Doomsday Clock. Any day now they’ll publish it under the headline “Two minutes to Fort Sumter”. But just how close is the United States to the kind of internecine slaughter that began when Confederate forces opened fire on South Carolina’s best-known fort in April 1861?
As I’ve argued on this page before, there is a kind of cultural civil war already being fought on social media. With the mid-term elections just over a week away, that culture war gets more febrile by the day. (I especially enjoyed the latest self-flagellating ravings of the professor at Emory University who decided to denounce himself for sexist thoughtcrimes. He really would have enjoyed Mao’s Cultural Revolution.)
Of course, the culture war is no more a real war than the trade war Donald Trump has launched against China. Nevertheless, the news last week that amateurish pipe bombs had been posted to a dozen of the president’s best-known critics, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, the hedge fund billionaire George Soros and the actor Robert De Niro, provided the cue for new prophecies of a second American Civil War.
The arrest on Friday of a Florida man named Cesar Sayoc, 56, was greeted with cries of “Gotcha!”. His van was covered in pro-Trump stickers including one reading “CNN sucks”.
“Trump owns this!” declared a normally sober Washington correspondent. I wonder. I don’t much like Trump’s regular criticisms of the mainstream media and occasional glorification of body-slamming. But a direct causal relationship to a nut posting a bunch of homemade bombs?
Strange how in June last year the same journalist omitted to tweet, “Sanders owns this!” after the Republican congressman Steve Scalise and three other people were shot and wounded by James Hodgkinson, a left-wing supporter of Bernie Sanders. You may say that Sanders’s rhetoric was never as inflammatory as Trump’s, but these are fine distinctions. In 2016 Sanders called Trump “particularly dangerous and un-American”, accusing him of “bigotry”. In July of this year he called Trump “our idiot president”.
Yesterday’s massacre at a synagogue in Pittsburgh makes matters much worse. Trump is no anti-semite, but some alt-right elements routinely abuse Jews. But then again, the hard left has its anti-semites too.
That people on both sides of the political divide are using intemperate language is undeniable, even if the left will always insist the other side is worse. That there is a potential for an increase in US political violence seems clear. By European standards there are terrifying numbers of lethal weapons in private hands. But civil war?
Some of the people who make this argument can be dismissed as scaremongers. When a Canadian novelist fantasises about Trump being assassinated, the United States tearing itself apart and all the nice Americans moving to Canada, it’s better to avert your gaze. Same drill when a marine turned chat show host calls for red states to secede if a future Democratic administration comes for their guns.
But when a colleague at the Hoover Institution, the historian Victor Davis Hanson, warns that we are “at the brink of a veritable civil war”, we all need to pay attention. The same goes for the National Review’s Reihan Salam, whose new book argues that without root-and-branch immigration reform, the US will come apart at the seams. I also take seriously the work of Peter Turchin, who has been arguing for some time that several leading indicators of political instability (notably inequality) are set to peak around 2020, making the US “particularly vulnerable to violent upheaval”.
Hanson’s argument is that the tensions arising from globalisation, the internet, campus leftism and illegal immigration have led to an ideological split that is also geographical. The toxic atmosphere puts him in mind not only of the 1850s but also of the 5th century BC, when “stasis” (meaning internal strife) tore apart the ancient Greek city states.
Like our colleague Morris Fiorina, I am inclined towards the optimistic view that most normal Americans find the culture war exhausting. As I argued here last week, the evidence suggests that the extreme right and extreme left are two noisy minorities. They would be lost without one another, but they turn everyone else off.
Hanson, who still sees further polarisation as avoidable, makes a crucial point, though. History repeatedly shows that “zealous and sometimes warring tiny minorities can escalate tensions, nullify opposition and bully the silenced majority to sanction — or at least not object to — violence”.
The most troubling analogy I heard last week was between the 2020 presidential election and that of 1860. My interlocutor noted that Abraham Lincoln won a four-way race in 1860. If a centrist, say the Ohio governor John Kasich, runs as an independent, if the Democrats nominate a progressive (Kamala Harris, anyone?) and if Trump seeks re-election, we could have a somewhat similar situation.
The implication is not comforting. For the election of 1860 made clear that the divisions over the issue of slavery had become unbridgeable. Lincoln’s victory was swiftly followed by the secession of seven Southern states and the formation of the Confederacy.
True, there is no single issue in today’s culture war. True, the time on the civil war Doomsday Clock looks more like 11.08 than 11.58. But when I tell you who drew the 1860 analogy to my attention, you’ll know why I’m troubled. Reader, it was Steve Bannon.
2. Don’t vilify Iran while sucking up to the Saudis: Edward Lucas, The Times
In many ways the Islamic republic is a more tolerant, pluralistic society than our regional ally
Iran, hard though it may be to imagine, was once our ally, while Saudi Arabia was regarded with revulsion and suspicion. In 2001 I ended a stint as a war correspondent in Afghanistan by flying in a rickety cargo plane out of Fayzabad, the capital of a sliver of territory still controlled by the country’s recognised government, which was backed by the West — and Iran.
Fayzabad had a conspicuous if taciturn American presence, but my fellow-passengers, bright-eyed young men from the presidential bodyguard, were off to Iran for training. I chatted to them and their Iranian escorts, saying how moved I had been to see the candlelit vigil held in Tehran after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington a few weeks earlier. The Taliban, we agreed, were barbaric. So too were the Saudis, both for their repressive, sectarian domestic policies and for sponsoring people who flew planes into skyscrapers. Iran had every interest in ridding Afghanistan of this extremist scourge. Perhaps we could co-operate on other things too.
That never happened. Saudi Arabia is, supposedly, our indispensable ally. For all its faults it sells us oil, buys our weapons and provides vital help on counterterrorism. Iran, by contrast, is supposedly our indisputable enemy: a thuggish theocracy with menacing ambitions.
The murder of Jamal Khashoggi, and the preposterous lies the Saudi authorities continue to tell about it, should prompt us to ask if we are still right to favour one obnoxious regime over the other.
On many issues Iran looks better. By the (admittedly dismal) standards of the region, its political system is a paragon of pluralism. Among Muslim countries, only Tunisia, Turkey and Lebanon offer anything like the same levels of participation and contestability. Saudi Arabia is only now allowing women to drive. In Iran they can hold high office, get a first-rate education and live independently. On minority rights, Iran has blackspots but the secretary of the National Security Council, Admiral Ali Shamkhani, is an Arab. Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader, is half-Azeri. The Saudi record is of ruthless repression.
It is a similar story on religious issues. Iran has hundreds of Christian churches and the biggest Jewish population of any Muslim country besides Turkey. You can go to a synagogue in Tehran. In Saudi Arabia, where all non-Muslim religious observance is banned, you cannot even buy a Bible, let alone go to church.
Iran’s foreign policy is the real problem. Though revolutionary fervour has ebbed since the days of Ayatollah Khomeini, it intervenes in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, and backs the rebels in Yemen and the Shia underground in the Gulf states, while issuing murderous threats to Israel. Some of this is a hard-headed response to past wrongs, such as western support for Saddam Hussein’s Iraq during the war of 1980 to 1988. Iran does not want extremist Sunni Islamists to triumph in Iraq or anywhere else — and least of all in Saudi Arabia. The presence of its fearsome proxy, the Hezbollah militia, on Israel’s Lebanese and now Syrian borders is in Iranian eyes the best deterrent against any future American or Israeli attack.
Yet the experience of recent years is that Iran is at least open to negotiation. It has stuck to the nuclear deal despite the Trump administration’s withdrawal. That could have been the basis for discussions about other issues too.
Moreover, Saudi foreign policy is equally problematic. It has brutally bungled the war in Yemen. Though the regime has good backstage relations with Israel, it is Saudi private and public money that supports the most toxic Wahhabi form of Islam in other countries, financing Islamic schools and teaching materials that preach violent hostility towards other religions and cultures, including non-mainstream versions of Islam.
None of this is to say that we should switch sides. For all its lies and incompetence, Saudi Arabia is still a useful ally. Iran behaves abominably on many issues, not least in the persecution of those believed to have ties to the West. The cruel treatment of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian woman detained since April 2016 on spurious charges, and the vindictive harassment of relatives of journalists working for foreign broadcasters are just two examples. But it is not clear to me that keeping Iran in the deep freeze while toadying to the Saudis regardless of their behaviour is going to make any of this better.
Instead, we should make it clear to the princely potentates in Riyadh that we have other options, and to the Iranian leadership that détente is possible and welcome. European countries are already getting ready to sidestep renewed US sanctions with a special-purpose vehicle, in effect a bank, which will allow European companies to do business with Iran without having any contact with dollars or the US financial system. Such efforts deserve our support too.
Our behaviour encourages the Saudis to treat us with contempt, as the story of an exiled Saudi dissident, Ghanem al-Dosari, attacked in central London on August 31, exemplifies. Video footage of the incident shows Mr Dosari being punched. When an English friend intervenes, the attackers say: “F*** London, the Queen is our slave.” They later tried to bribe the friend not to give a witness statement, with one of them saying: “I’m speaking on behalf of his royal highness, the police will not show up. We can arrange for anything. This is London, it belongs to us.”
Self-respect, as well as self-interest, suggest that we show them it doesn’t.
In many ways the Islamic republic is a more tolerant, pluralistic society than our regional ally
Iran, hard though it may be to imagine, was once our ally, while Saudi Arabia was regarded with revulsion and suspicion. In 2001 I ended a stint as a war correspondent in Afghanistan by flying in a rickety cargo plane out of Fayzabad, the capital of a sliver of territory still controlled by the country’s recognised government, which was backed by the West — and Iran.
Fayzabad had a conspicuous if taciturn American presence, but my fellow-passengers, bright-eyed young men from the presidential bodyguard, were off to Iran for training. I chatted to them and their Iranian escorts, saying how moved I had been to see the candlelit vigil held in Tehran after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington a few weeks earlier. The Taliban, we agreed, were barbaric. So too were the Saudis, both for their repressive, sectarian domestic policies and for sponsoring people who flew planes into skyscrapers. Iran had every interest in ridding Afghanistan of this extremist scourge. Perhaps we could co-operate on other things too.
That never happened. Saudi Arabia is, supposedly, our indispensable ally. For all its faults it sells us oil, buys our weapons and provides vital help on counterterrorism. Iran, by contrast, is supposedly our indisputable enemy: a thuggish theocracy with menacing ambitions.
The murder of Jamal Khashoggi, and the preposterous lies the Saudi authorities continue to tell about it, should prompt us to ask if we are still right to favour one obnoxious regime over the other.
On many issues Iran looks better. By the (admittedly dismal) standards of the region, its political system is a paragon of pluralism. Among Muslim countries, only Tunisia, Turkey and Lebanon offer anything like the same levels of participation and contestability. Saudi Arabia is only now allowing women to drive. In Iran they can hold high office, get a first-rate education and live independently. On minority rights, Iran has blackspots but the secretary of the National Security Council, Admiral Ali Shamkhani, is an Arab. Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader, is half-Azeri. The Saudi record is of ruthless repression.
It is a similar story on religious issues. Iran has hundreds of Christian churches and the biggest Jewish population of any Muslim country besides Turkey. You can go to a synagogue in Tehran. In Saudi Arabia, where all non-Muslim religious observance is banned, you cannot even buy a Bible, let alone go to church.
Iran’s foreign policy is the real problem. Though revolutionary fervour has ebbed since the days of Ayatollah Khomeini, it intervenes in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, and backs the rebels in Yemen and the Shia underground in the Gulf states, while issuing murderous threats to Israel. Some of this is a hard-headed response to past wrongs, such as western support for Saddam Hussein’s Iraq during the war of 1980 to 1988. Iran does not want extremist Sunni Islamists to triumph in Iraq or anywhere else — and least of all in Saudi Arabia. The presence of its fearsome proxy, the Hezbollah militia, on Israel’s Lebanese and now Syrian borders is in Iranian eyes the best deterrent against any future American or Israeli attack.
Yet the experience of recent years is that Iran is at least open to negotiation. It has stuck to the nuclear deal despite the Trump administration’s withdrawal. That could have been the basis for discussions about other issues too.
Moreover, Saudi foreign policy is equally problematic. It has brutally bungled the war in Yemen. Though the regime has good backstage relations with Israel, it is Saudi private and public money that supports the most toxic Wahhabi form of Islam in other countries, financing Islamic schools and teaching materials that preach violent hostility towards other religions and cultures, including non-mainstream versions of Islam.
None of this is to say that we should switch sides. For all its lies and incompetence, Saudi Arabia is still a useful ally. Iran behaves abominably on many issues, not least in the persecution of those believed to have ties to the West. The cruel treatment of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian woman detained since April 2016 on spurious charges, and the vindictive harassment of relatives of journalists working for foreign broadcasters are just two examples. But it is not clear to me that keeping Iran in the deep freeze while toadying to the Saudis regardless of their behaviour is going to make any of this better.
Instead, we should make it clear to the princely potentates in Riyadh that we have other options, and to the Iranian leadership that détente is possible and welcome. European countries are already getting ready to sidestep renewed US sanctions with a special-purpose vehicle, in effect a bank, which will allow European companies to do business with Iran without having any contact with dollars or the US financial system. Such efforts deserve our support too.
Our behaviour encourages the Saudis to treat us with contempt, as the story of an exiled Saudi dissident, Ghanem al-Dosari, attacked in central London on August 31, exemplifies. Video footage of the incident shows Mr Dosari being punched. When an English friend intervenes, the attackers say: “F*** London, the Queen is our slave.” They later tried to bribe the friend not to give a witness statement, with one of them saying: “I’m speaking on behalf of his royal highness, the police will not show up. We can arrange for anything. This is London, it belongs to us.”
Self-respect, as well as self-interest, suggest that we show them it doesn’t.
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