Amnesty slams treatment of migrants in Spain enclaves
Amnesty International on Tuesday denounced conditions for migrants arriving in Spain’s overseas territories of #Melilla and #Ceuta, where they said asylum rights were not always respected.
▻http://www.thelocal.es/20161129/amnesty-slams-treatment-of-migrants-in-spain-enclaves
#réfugiés #asile #migrations #Maroc #Espagne #rapport
Spain joins US in condemning Israel’s expansion of Gilo settlement
Nov. 12, 2016 3:21 P.M. (Updated : Nov. 12, 2016 7:38 P.M.)
▻http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?ID=773920
BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — The government of Spain released a statement on Friday joining the United States in condemning Israel’s recent approval of the construction of 181 new housing units in the illegal Gilo settlement in the occupied West Bank.
The approval was the latest in a long line of settlement approvals in recent months that would see more than a thousand new settler units constructed on occupied Palestinian land.
The statement reiterated Spain’s disapproval of Israel’s settlement expansions, and “like the rest of the international community, it considers Israeli settlements on Palestinian Occupied Territories to be illegal under international law. (...) ”
“The government also argues that these illegal settlements are an obstacle to the viability of a two-State solution, and accordingly, to peace, as set out in the report by the Middle East Quartet issued back in June,” the statement continued.
The Spanish government also urged Israeli authorities to overturn their most recent settlement approvals.
#Rosetta #legacy winner announced
▻http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2016/11/10/rosetta-legacy-winner-announced
Between 6 September and 7 October 2016, we collected 235 contributions to the #rosetta Legacy tumblr. A huge and sincere thank you to all participants who shared experiences, stories and images of how the mission of Rosetta and #Philae to #Comet_67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko has inspired their lives, including study and career choices, artistic practice and other creative endeavours! The authenticity and ingenuity of the submitted entries was overwhelming, and it has been challenging to pick one top prize winner (apologies for the delay!). One entry in particular caught the attention of the ESA judges for the combination of creative effort and motivation, so we selected Cristina Romero from Spain as the top prize winner. The prize consists in a special visit to #estec, ESA’s technical heart in (...)
The no-shows at Arafat’s funeral - Opinion - Israel News | Haaretz.com
All those who don’t understand why it was so difficult for the Palestinian-Israelis’ political representatives to show their final respects to Shimon Peres, should recall Arafat’s funeral and the ’respect’ shown him by the Israelis.
Shlomo Sand Oct 14, 2016
read more: ▻http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.747364
On November 11, 2004, Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat died under mysterious circumstances. The next day his body was brought to Cairo, where a official state funeral was held. Representatives of 50 countries participated in the event, both admirers and rivals.
Behind his coffin marched Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Syrian President Bashar Assad, King Abdullah of Jordan, King Mohammed VI of Morocco, the presidents of Tunisia and Sudan, the leaders of Sweden, Brazil, Turkey, Malaysia and Pakistan, the deputy prime minister of China, the vice presidents of Austria, Bulgaria, Tanzania, Iraq and Afghanistan, the foreign ministers of Great Britain, France, Spain, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Ireland, Portugal, Denmark, Finland, Luxembourg, Greece, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Slovakia, Canada, Indian and Slovenia, the parliamentary leaders of Italy, Russia, Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates. It was an official farewell that was less impressive that Shimon Peres’ funeral, but still quite respectable for a president without a country.
The United States, the well known neutral intermediary between Israel and Palestine, sent a low-ranking representative: William Burns, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs. Israel, on the other hand, gave it the finger.
No Israeli representative, either high- or low-ranking, or even very low-ranking, attended. None of the leaders of the opposition dreamed of showing his final respects to the leader of the Palestinian people, the first who recognized the State of Israel, and signed the Oslo Accords. Not Shimon Peres, not Ehud Barak, not Shlomo Ben-Ami and not even Uzi Baram bothered to participate in the Palestinians’ mourning.
Some of them had courageously shaken his hand in the past, other had embraced him enthusiastically several years earlier. But with the outbreak of the second intifada he was once again categorized as a satanic terrorist. The pundits of the sane, moderate left repeatedly claimed in innumerable learned articles that he was not a partner and there was nobody to talk to. When the body of the rais was transferred to Ramallah, the funeral was attended by several “extremist,” marginal Israelis, the likes of Uri Avnery and Mohammed Barakeh.
All the other peaceniks had to wait for the screening of the film “The Gatekeepers” in 2012; in other words, for the videos of all the chiefs of the Shin Bet security services, who declared that in real time they knew that Arafat did not encourage, organize or initiate the mass uprising in the second intifada, nor the acts of terror that accompanied it. For lack of choice the leader was forced to join the wave, otherwise he would have lost his prestige and his status. The disappointment at Barak’s unprepared and totally bizarre diplomatic step, and Ariel Sharon’s ascent to the Temple Mount, were among the main reasons for the eruption of the Palestinians’ unbridled opposition.
Israel’s new hasbara video channels SNL, but offends like South Park
Allison Kaplan Sommer Oct 07, 2016 1:23 PM
▻http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.746358
The video’s liberties with history are shockingly revisionist, insulting and even racist, portraying non-Jews as primitive barbarians perpetrating serial home invasions on their hapless Jewish victims.
A new video posted by Israel’s Foreign Ministry was clearly designed as a humorously sympathetic version of the deep historic ties of the Jewish people to the land of Israel - aimed at a generation that likes their politics delivered in Saturday Night Live-style satiric send-ups.
But the video’s liberties with history are shockingly revisionist, insulting and even racist, portraying non-Jews over 3,000 years of history as primitive barbarians perpetrating serial home invasions on their hapless Jewish victims. All aspects of the Diaspora are utterly ignored. Palestinian Arabs only enter the scene at the last moment of the video, portrayed as latecomers to the country, appearing out of nowhere only after the Jewish state was declared in 1948.
The video begins with a knock on the door with a sign “Jacob and Rachel - State of Israel” - the apartment of a young Israeli Jewish couple with a baby.
They open the door to what Jacob describes in a voiceover as “Two hipsters with well-groomed beards” who “probably wanna sell me an encyclopedia. I told them ‘hello, have you ever heard of Wikipedia?’”
But the “hipsters” are no salesmen. They are the Assyrians. Wielding long knives, they angrily drive the couple out of their living room into their bedroom. He continues, “So it’s now 750 BC. In about 2750 years, we’ll have some quiet here.”
A series of invaders follows, each one more chaotic and warlike, trashing the house: the Babylonians, the Hellenists, the Romans, “early Arabic era” Arabs, Crusaders, Mamelukes.The couple is forced to wander from their bedroom to the kids’ room to the bathroom and then into a tent. Finally, when the Ottoman Empire shows up, things settle down and they are served Turkish delight in their tent. Jacob asks, “And then it was quiet. Is it finally over? Has everyone left my house? My Land of Israel?”
But no. A British soldier knocks on their door. They serve him some tea in the living room among the wreckage of the previous tenants until he declares, “In the name of the League of Nations, we give you back your house.” They dance celebrate. “Finally, a state of our own in the Land of Israel!”
But then - a final knock at the door. It’s a Palestinian couple - a man in a kaffiyeh and a woman in hijab. They stare and shake their heads as the video ends.
The video has received 150,000 views and was shared more than 3,000 times. The high-end, two-minute video was produced by ZED Films, a production house that has created clips for the Foreign Ministry, along with other government entities.
As a piece of “hasbara” - the Israeli word for “explain” commonly used when referring to making Israel’s case on the stage of public diplomacy - the clip is rather puzzling and quite unusual.
The traditional arguments used to defend the Jewish state, while recognizing the ancient religious and historic ties to the land of Israel, also tend to strongly emphasize Israel as a critically necessary national refuge for Jews who have suffered oppression in the Diaspora.
One doesn’t need to be particularly left-wing to have serious issues with aspects of the video’s portrayal of history. Throughout the narrative, the Jewish characters are utterly passive, at no point resisting or standing up to the invaders in any way. There are no arguments, let alone armed revolts. There is no Masada in the bathroom and no Dir Yassin in the kitchen.
The Jewish story in the video also makes no mention whatsoever of anti-Semitism in the wider world, choosing to leave the Diaspora out of the story entirely. At no point over the contracted “3,000 years” does any member of the family venture out of the “Land of Israel” apartment.
As one of the numerous critical commenters wrote on the Foreign Ministry’s Facebook post of the video, “You forgot the part when the husband turns approximately one third Christian and one third Muslim between 0-500 AD, while the wife emigrates to Spain, Russia and Germany and eventually also to Northern Africa, while sleeping around with the locals, and generally having a pretty OK time.”
While the film is undeniably well-made, it is hard to believe whether anyone who doesn’t already believe that “Rachel and Jacob” have an inalienable right to their entire apartment and need not share it with the Palestinians who come knocking at the end will find it convincing.
Whether many will find it offensive? That is certainly believable.
▻https://www.facebook.com/IsraelMFA/videos/10154038006641317
Israel prepares for Women’s Boats heading to Gaza – Middle East Monitor
▻https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20161003-israel-prepares-for-womens-boats-heading-to-gaza
October 3, 2016 at 1:17 pm
The Israeli navy has been preparing to face the Women’s Boats heading to break the ten-year-old siege on the Gaza Strip, Quds Press reported yesterday. The boats, which are part of the Freedom Flotilla Alliance, are expected to arrive in Gaza within three days if they are not impeded in any way.
Palestinians thank the Women’s Boat to Gaza
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0p2yWq45C4
All women solidarity ship set to arrive in Gaza Wednesday evening
Oct. 4, 2016 6:26 P.M. (Updated: Oct. 4, 2016 10:31 P.M.)
▻http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=773409
GAZA (Ma’an) — The all women solidarity ship called “Zaytouna” — meaning “olives” in Arabic — is expected to arrive in the besieged Gaza Strip in two days after setting off from the shores of Barcelona, Spain last month as part of the larger Freedom Flotilla aimed at disrupting Israel’s nearly decade-long siege on the small Palestinian territory, according to a statement released Tuesday by the International Committee for Breaking the Siege of Gaza.
The committee said that the 13 women activists on board are set to arrive in the besieged coastal enclave on Wednesday evening or Thursday morning after traveling for nearly 2,000 miles, if the ship is not obstructed by Israeli naval forces en route to the shores of Gaza.
Follow Zaytouna-Oliva‘s progress here. Below is a still image of Zaytouna-Oliva‘s position as of Monday 4 October at 19:00 CEST. The curved line added to the map represents our estimation of the “military exclusion zone” imposed illegally by the Israeli military, 100 nautical miles into international waters off the coast of Palestine around the Gaza strip, where previous Flotilla boats have been assaulted.
Slave Revolt in Jamaica, 1760-1761
►http://revolt.axismaps.com
This animated thematic map narrates the spatial history of the greatest slave insurrection in the eighteenth century British Empire. To teachers and researchers, the presentation offers a carefully curated archive of key documentary evidence. To all viewers, the map suggests an argument about the strategies of the rebels and the tactics of counterinsurgency, about the importance of the landscape to the course of the uprising, and about the difficulty of representing such events cartographically with available sources. Although this cartographic narration cannot be taken as an exhaustive database—for instance, it does not examine major themes such as belonging and affiliation among the insurgents or the larger imperial context and interconnected Atlantic world— the map offers an illuminating interpretation of the military campaign’s spatial dynamics.
In 1760, some fifteen hundred enslaved black men and women— perhaps fewer but probably many more— took advantage of Britain’s Seven Year’s War against France and Spain, to stage a massive uprising in Jamaica, which began on April 7 in the windward parish of St. Mary’s and continued in the leeward parishes until October of the next year. Over the course of eighteen months the rebels killed as many as sixty whites and destroyed many thousands of pounds worth of property. During the suppression of the revolt over five hundred black men and women were killed in battle, executed, or committed suicide. Another 500 were transported from the island for life. Colonists valued the total cost to the island at nearly a quarter of a million pounds. “Whether we consider the extent and secrecy of its plan, the multitude of the conspirators, and the difficulty of opposing its eruptions in such a variety of places at once,” wrote planter-historian Edward Long in his 1774 History of Jamaica, this revolt was “more formidable than any hitherto known in the West Indies.Mapping the great Jamaican insurrection of 1760-61 allows us to see how the island’s topography shaped the course of the revolt, how the rebellion included at least three major uprisings, and how its suppression required the sequenced collaboration of several distinct elements of British military power. From the cartographic evidence, it appears that the insurrection was in fact a well-planned affair that posed a genuine strategic threat, checked ultimately by an effective counterinsurgency. Yet if the map draws a clearer picture of the extent and contours of the insurrection, it cannot convey the ambition, hope, desperation, shock, dread, alarm, cruelty, bloodlust, and sheer mayhem of the experience. These are matters left to the historical imagination of viewers and readers.”
Economic diary of Latvia
This week, it became known about the biggest merging process in the banking sector in the past several years. Nordea and DNB have announced their plans to combine their experience, knowledge and efforts in Baltic States.
–—
This week, the Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia announced results of Latvian hotels and other places of accommodation for the first half-year of 2016. As it turned out, foreign guests have spent 1,892 million nights in Latvia, which is 6.5% more in comparison with the same period of 2015. In Q2 2016, the number of foreign tourists in Latvia reached 432.7 thousand people. 29.6% of them came from neighbouring countries: Russia (10.9%), Lithuania (8.6%), Estonia (8.1%) and Belarus (2%). There has also been an increase in the number of guests from USA (+56.6%), Spain (+33.4%), UK (+27%), Lithuania (+17.9%), Poland (+17.4%) and Finland (+13.5%).
▻http://bnn-news.com/economic-diary-of-latvia-banks-are-combining-their-efforts-149912
The Crossing. The EU is ignoring international laws it helped found as it tries to turn Morocco into a ‘final destination’ for African migrants.
Morocco, curving around the northwest corner of Africa, is less than eight miles from southern Spain. It is also still home to the colonial-era Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. This makes the country one of the primary crossing points for all African migrants and refugees — hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children — who dream of escape every year. As the only African nation to share land borders with Europe, Morocco brings this dream within reach. From the forest camp where I spent weeks sleeping alongside Beni and his “brothers” this summer, there are only a series of fences separating those desperately fleeing war and poverty from the promise of a second chance at life in an internally borderless European Union.
Musicians in a Refugee Camp in France Record ‘The Calais Sessions’ - The New York Times
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/11/arts/international/refugees-in-calais-jungle-record-an-album.html?smid=tw-nytimesarts&smtyp=cu
“I am happy, like a myna/Life in a caravan, thinking about my friends/Let’s go to the garden,” go the upbeat lyrics from “Khandahar,” a poem first written in English and then translated to Farsi by two Afghan sisters, ages 9 and 12, who were living in a trailer in the sprawling migrant and refugee camp in Calais, France, that is known as the Jungle.
“Khandahar” is one of 13 tracks on “The Calais Sessions,” a benefit album released on July 29 that was recorded in the camp as a collaboration involving about 20 refugees and professional musicians. The music ranges from Middle Eastern-inflected pop to Iraqi rap to tunes from the Balkans and Spain. Some pieces are love songs. One mourns the death of a Syrian brother. Others are joyful instrumentals set against a backbeat of traditional percussion.
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6jQFgTACvY
Los refugiados de Calais luchan contra el terror a través de la música
Los habitantes de ’La Jungla’, el campo de refugiados francés, han grabado un disco para sobrellevar su estancia y recuperar la esperanza.
Liquid migration, grounded lives: considerations about future mobility and settlement among Polish and Spanish migrants in Norway
The 2004 EU extension and the 2008 financial crisis triggered new migration flows within Europe, and subsequent debates about what the novelty of these migration flows consists of. We draw on adult Polish and Spanish migrants’ in Norway’s considerations about future mobility and settlement, and explore how these situate themselves in relation to conceptualisations of intra-European migration as ‘liquid’. Family concerns, economic factors and working life conditions in countries of origin appear as significant in migrants’ reflections about the future. This seems to contrast with conceptualisations of intra-European migration as ‘liquid’ in the sense of increasing individualisation, lifestyles of mobility and a migrant habitus. Rather a ‘normal life’ is emphasised by migrants’ underscoring desires to lead more grounded lives, under less ‘liquid’ conditions. Migrants’ already established lives in Norway, together with deregulated labour markets in Poland and Spain, are experienced as reasons not to return. Migrants’ considerations about the future suggest that key characteristics of South–North and East–West intra-European migration flows to Norway, appear to be converging: with a trend of transition to longer-term settlement and a wish for more grounded lives, where dignity is central and ongoing mobility is less prominent.
▻http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369183X.2016.1211004
#migrations #Norvège #Espagne #Pologne #migrants_espagnols #migration_économique #migrants_économiques #migrants_polonais
cc @reka
Moscovici: pas d’amende pour l’Espagne, pour «éviter un sentiment d’humiliation»
▻http://www.latribune.fr/economie/union-europeenne/moscovici-pas-d-amende-pour-l-espagne-pour-eviter-un-sentiment-d-humiliati
La Commission européenne a renoncé à infliger une amende pour déficit excessif à l’Espagne et au Portugal pour éviter « un sentiment d’humiliation », affirme dimanche dans le quotidien espagnol El Pais le commissaire aux Affaires économiques, Pierre Moscovici. « Imposer des amendes aurait généré un sentiment anti-européen et une perception d’humiliation dans un pays comme l’Espagne, qui a fait énormément de sacrifices ces derniers temps », affirme le Français Pierre Moscovici, après que la Commission a renoncé à sanctionner l’Espagne et le Portugal pour dérapage budgétaire.
Did Germany Just Blink? | naked capitalism
By Don Quijones, Spain & Mexico, editor at Wolf Street. Originally published at Wolf Street
▻http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/07/did-germany-just-blink.html
Of Europe’s 27 commissioners, only four voted in favor of applying the fines; the other 23 voted against. According to El País, the deciding factor in the decision was an impromptu phone call from German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble to some of the more conservative commissioners, giving them the green light to forego the fine.
[...]
For a taste of just how disastrous the political fallout would be for Italy’s embattled premier, Matteo Renzi, here’s an excerpt from a furious tirade given by Italian financial journalist Paolo Barnard on prime-time TV, addressing Renzi directly:
“ You went to meet Mrs. Merkel to ask for a minor public funded bail-out of Italian banks and you got a sharp NO. But did anyone tell you that Germany from 2009 onwards bailed out its failing banks with public money?
“Banks, that is, with holes in their balance sheets visible from the Moon. Germany bailed them out to the tune of 704 billion euros. It was all paid for by European taxpayers’ money, public funds that is.
“It was done through the EU Commission of Mr Barroso and by Mr Mario Draghi at the ECB. Didn’t you know that Mr Renzi? Couldn’t you have barked this right into Ms Merkel’s face?”
Barnard rounded off his rant with a rallying call for Italians to follow the UK’s example and demand an exit from the EU — a prospect that should be taken very seriously given that one of the manifesto pledges of Italy’s rising opposition party, the 5-Star Movement, is to call a referendum on Italy’s membership of the euro.
Such a vote would be impossible since the Italian constitution expressly forbids referendums on international treaties such as those that hold the EU together. But as Reuters reports, 5 Star’s party leader Matteo Salvini and the party’s founder, Beppe Grillo, have vowed to pursue a legislative change to allow an ad-hoc exception to the Italian constitution.
Whether or not a referendum on the euro takes place, one thing that’s clear is that a post-Renzi Italy will be a much more difficult, unpredictable force to deal with than the current Renzi-governed Italy. And if Italy ever did decide to leave the Union, whether in an orderly or disorderly fashion, it would be the end of the road for the European project.
For that reason alone, the Commission and Germany will almost certainly end up granting further concessions to Italy and its Southern European neighbors, including a taxpayer-funded rescue of MPS. It may even include a bail-out top-up for Portugal’s crumbling financial system, which was left out of last week’s stress tests.
The challenge for Merkel and other leaders of core euro zone nations will be trying to persuade their already disgruntled voters of the need for increased solidarity with their struggling neighbors to the South. That may well be a bridge too far. By Don Quijones, Raging Bull-Shit.
Unconnected to Israel’s water grid, Palestinians go thirsty | The Economist
IYAD QASSEM is trying to run a coffee shop without water. He reuses the stuff in his sink, which quickly fills with muck, and in the shishas that Palestinians puff on his patio. It would be a difficult task, if he had many customers: but it seems people who haven’t showered in a week lose interest in sipping tea in 35°C heat. “The café is empty because everyone is worried about the situation. It’s getting impossible to run a business,” he says.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians in Salfit and the surrounding villages are suffering through a months-long drought. Summer shortages are nothing new on the parched hills outside Nablus, in the northern West Bank. But this season is particularly bad. Taps slowed to a trickle before the Ramadan holiday; and few expect relief before the winter rains.
Related topics
West Bank
Israel
Israelis once obsessed over the level of their largest natural reservoir, the Sea of Galilee. This week it was just 11cm above its “red line,” the point at which Israel stops pumping water to avoid ecological damage. Yet this no longer causes public concern, for most of Israel’s water is artificially produced. About a third comes from desalination plants that are among the world’s most advanced. Farmers rely on reclaimed water for irrigation. Israel recycles 86% of its wastewater, the highest level anywhere; Spain, the next best, reuses around 20%.
None of these high-tech solutions helps the Palestinians, though, because they are not connected to Israel’s water grid. They rely on the so-called “mountain aquifer”, which sits beneath land Israel occupied in 1967. The 1995 Oslo Accords stipulated that 80% of the water from the aquifer would go to Israel, with the rest allocated to the Palestinians. The agreement, meant to be a five-year interim measure, will soon celebrate its 23rd birthday. During that time the Palestinian population in the West Bank has nearly doubled, to almost 3m. The allocation has not kept pace.
The settler population has doubled too, and they face their own shortages. In Ariel, a city of 19,000 adjacent to Salfit, residents experienced several brief outages this month. Smaller settlements in the area, which are not hooked up to the national grid, have dealt with longer droughts. Palestinians have suffered far more, however. On average they get 73 litres per day, less than the 100-liter minimum recommended by the World Health Organisation.
Walid Habib spends 300 shekels ($75) each week to fill the tanks on top of his house in Salfit—a huge sum in the West Bank, where the average monthly wage is about $500. The water, drawn from wells drilled by the Palestinian Authority, is trucked in each morning on the winding mountain road. Supplies are limited, and residents do not always get their weekly deliveries. “We have a sea underneath us in Salfit, but we can’t even take a shower,” he says. “It’s pathetic.”
Down the hill at a taxi company, workers have no water to brew tea. A more urgent problem is the office bathroom—dry toilets do not flush. “We’ve probably spent more on Dettol this summer than on gasoline,” jokes a dispatcher.
The situation is worse in #Gaza, which relies almost entirely on a fast-shrinking coastal aquifer; what little remains is polluted from years of untreated sewage and agricultural run-off. The stuff that comes out of Gazan taps is already brackish and salty. UN experts think that aquifer will be irreversibly damaged by 2020.
Israel’s water authority sells the Palestinians 64m cubic metres of water each year. It says they cause their own shortages, because up to a third of the #West_Bank’s water supply leaks out of rusting Palestinian pipes. A joint water committee is supposed to resolve these issues, but it has not met for five years. Predictably, each side accuses the other of causing the deadlock. Palestinians also find their own government neglectful: the administrative capital #Ramallah is well-supplied as the hinterlands go thirsty. Blame is never in short supply, even if water is. “When you don’t have water, it destroys everything,” says Mr Habib, sipping on a cup of the stuff—bottled, of course.
▻http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21702716-palestinians-go-thirsty-despite-sitting-over-underground-ocean-nor-yet-drop?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/unconnectedtoisraelswatergridpalestiniansgothirsty
Spain’s biggest bullfight: The militant Catalans waging war against the ’Osborne bulls’
▻http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/spains-biggest-bullfight-the-militant-catalans-waging-war-against-the
Painful memories of civil war purge live on in southern Spain - France 24
LA ALGABA (SPAIN) (AFP) -
“They would say: ’We have to eliminate the red seed’,” said Rogelia Beltran as she recalled how her grandfather died in a purge against leftists in southern Spain during the country’s civil war.
The bloody conflict pitted forces loyal to the elected Socialist-led government known as Republicans against rebel Nationalist troops that rose up under General Francisco Franco in a military putsch.
After Nationalist troops staged a coup on July 18, 1936, large landowners in the southern region of Andalusia aided the revolt by persecuting day labourers who they believed backed the government.
In Beltran’s hometown of La Algaba the pro-Nationalist landowners were led by a matador, Jose Garcia Carranza, also known as “El Algabeno”, who became known as the “killer of bulls and reds”.
Civilian supporters of the military uprising like “El Algabeno” received “carte blanche” from the military men who quickly seized control of the region, historian Francisco Espinosa told AFP.
“They were members of the rural bourgeoisie” who offered to repress opposition to the coup “mounted on their own horses and using their own weapons”, he said.
Eighty years after the war began, the memory of the purge carried out against leftists in Andalusia, known today for its sandy tourist beaches, lives on.
– Hunted like animals -
Paramilitaries and the rebel troops “carried out clean-up operations in the mountains” where leftists and unionists sought sanctuary, said Juan Jose Lopez, a member of an association of victims of the civil war and the dictatorship that followed.
His great uncle was killed in November 1936 in a raid near the village of El Madrono.
“It was like a deer or wild boar hunt. The raiders would sweep the mountains so the prey would flee” and then shoot them, he said.
As he speaks he holds a photo of his relative which is part of a travelling exhibition called “The DNA of Memory” which aims to give visibility to victims of the conflict eight decades after it started.
A 1977 amnesty law prevents Spain from investigating and trying the crimes of the civil war era and the repressive right-wing dictatorship of General Francisco Franco that followed until his death in 1975.
“They did horrible things. They would leave bodies scattered in the streets as an example and would prevent them from being collected so they would be eaten by animals,” said Antonio Narvaez, 83, a retired steelworker.
He was just three-years-old when his father was killed in Marchena. A day labourer who did not belong to a union and had no political affiliation, his only crime was that he knew how to read, said Narvaez.
“He would read the press to his colleagues,” he said with a toothless smile.
Widows were also punished. Supporters of the right-wing coup would confiscate their homes and goods, leaving them without work and stigmatised with young children to raise.
“They would shave their hair off and parade them around the town,” said Antonio Martinez, 80, a retired hotel worker whose father was repressed during the war in the town of Escacena del Campo.
– ’Ideological purge’ -
Beltran, a 53-year-old nursing assistant, said the idea was “’if you don’t think like me, I will eliminate you’ and that is called genocide”.
“It was an ideological purge which also included teachers, lawyers, journalists, writers with a liberal ideology,” added Paqui Maqueda, 52, a social worker whose great-grandfather and three great-uncles were killed in the town of Carmona near Seville.
She gave the example of the celebrated Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca, known for works including the play “Blood wedding”, who was shot for his suspected leftist sympathies by supporters of the military uprising near the southern city of Granada in 1936.
“But the lower classes were the most repressed,” said Maqueda.
Plagued by high levels of illiteracy and miserable living conditions, farm workers had formed a strong union movement.
And wealthy landowners like “El Algabeno”, who is said to have speared day labourers as if they were bulls, decided to quash their movement, historians and victims say.
“Many of Garcia Carranza’s crimes were gathered and detailed by witnesses and contemporaries,” said Diego Aguera, the mayor of La Algaba, the matador’s hometown.
In a narrow street of white houses near the bougainvillea-lined main square of the town, a plaque reads: “Jose Garcia Carranza Street”.
Aguera in March got the town hall to approve changing the name to “Equality Street” because of the “countless murders he carried out, the majority in cold blood, the countless detentions and tortures he practiced”.
Several family members of the late matador, contacted by AFP, refused to be quoted about his legacy.
“Sometimes you think you are doing good and you are doing bad,” said one of his great-nieces who declined to be named.
But for now, the street sign bearing Carranza’s name remains in place as local authorities wrestle with the bureaucracy needed to change it.
by Anna Cuenca
▻http://www.france24.com/en/20160713-painful-memories-civil-war-purge-live-southern-spain
Statement regarding #Sahrawi women held in #Tindouf refugee camp - Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch is a non-profit, non-governmental human rights organization that conducts fact-finding investigations into and advocates against human rights abuses worldwide. Human Rights Watch issued a press release regarding the restrictions on the rights of Sahrawi refugee women near Tindouf, Algeria of returning to Spain. It appears here with permission.
▻http://rightsinexile.tumblr.com/post/146757093012/statement-regarding-sahrawi-women-held-in-tindouf
#Sahraoui #femmes #camps_de_réfugiés #réfugiés #asile #migrations
Press release:
▻https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/supporting_resources/st.2016.5.19.human_rights_watch_statement_on_sahrawi_women_held_in_tindouf_refu
The Big Business of Europe’s Migration Crisis.
The EU’s migration policy has produced a lucrative “illegality industry” that is prolonging the emergency it was put in place to end.
After three months in Rabat, the capital of Morocco, Famara (who requested his last name not be used) left for the Gourougou mountain forest of northern Morocco. Wearing nothing more than shorts, a blue jean jacket, and flip-flops, the diminutive Senegalese man joined a makeshift camp comprised of dozens of West Africans hiding in the mountains between the town of Nador and Spain’s North African city of Melilla. Stays at the camp were temporary. Those with opportunities to move on did so while new migrants making their way north arrived daily. Many in the camp were injured, and all were hungry. None were prepared for life in the woods.
▻http://www.sapiens.org/culture/migration-crisis-illegality-industry
#business #asile #migrations #réfugiés #frontières #fermeture_des_frontières #passeurs
Nobel Laureate’s Love of Israel Has Become a Tormented One, Thanks to the Occupation - Opinion - Haaretz - Israel News Haaretz.com
▻http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.725214
The road Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa has taken with Israel is a sad mirror image of the country’s deterioration.
Gideon Levy Jun 17, 2016
It’s the 87th minute. Gerard Piqué scores and the man beside me leaps for joy. He’s 80 years old, the 2010 Nobel Prize laureate in literature. We’re watching the game between Spain and the Czech Republic over an erratic internet connection, on an old computer, in the yard of the “Youth Against Settlements Center” in the neighborhood of Tel Rumeida in Hebron. We’re right under the house of Israeli right-wing activist Baruch Marzel, whose terrifying dog is barking at us from his balcony, with a sign saying “Free Palestine” in the background. Could there be anything more surreal?
It is dusk in this ghostly neighborhood. We met here by chance 11 years ago. Since then Mario Vargas Llosa, author of “The Time of the Hero” (“The City and the Dogs” in Spanish), makes a point of coming to the occupied territories every few years, inquiring about the occupation and its fate. On his last visits he’s been the guest of Breaking the Silence. This time he participated in an ambitious project launched by the group, which brought 26 renowned writers here over the last few months. These authors are expected to write their impressions, which will be collected into a book to be published in many countries on the 50th anniversary of the occupation in June of next year.
Vargas Llosa doesn’t know yet what he’ll write. Israel fascinates him. He once told me the country was like a story written by Jorge Luis Borges – fantasy that was realized. He always opposed boycotting it. In his opinion, boycotts should be imposed on dictatorships such as Cuba, not on democracies like Israel, in which there is an opposition. “Only dissidents will save Israel,” he told me in 2005. “Everyone here is talking about two states but no one is doing anything about it,” he told me in 2010. He makes a point of coming back, learning and gathering impressions. He later publishes these impressions, which are usually very critical.
As someone who has long since broken down conventional delineations between right and left, Vargas Llosa defines himself as a friend of Israel. A friend who’s convinced of his duty to criticize and encourage dissidents such as Breaking the Silence, in order to save the country. He proposes a different model for people of conscience around the world: Come and see for yourself, encourage the moral opposition in Israel and make your voice heard.
Spain’s Podemos Party publishes its manifesto in Ikea Catalog form / Boing Boing
▻http://boingboing.net/2016/06/10/spains-podemos-party-publish.html
Spain’s anti-austerity, left-wing Podemos ("We Can") Party (previously), which grew out of Spain’s Occupy-like Indignados movement, has just published its election manifesto for the June 26 election — in the form of an Ikea Catalog.
Ceuta and Melilla Fences : a EU Multidimensional Border ?
Abstract
Fences of Ceuta and Melilla are an
appropriate
model to study to what extent
governments could harmonize between stated purposes and hidden objectives.
Although, Spanish government has constantly stated that fences of the two
enclaves aim onl
y to stop irregular migration, comprehensive view of various
aspects of the issue leads us to conclude the existence of other objectives behind
this policy.
Spain’s policy of fencing the two enclaves’ borders reflects a
contradictory
process in the region.
While Mediterranean sphere has witnessed
during the last two decades an increasing number of cultural and economic
cooperation projects, new real and virtual walls have being built in the region to
achieve “Fortress Europe”.
The paper tries, first, to sho
w the controversial
aspects of Ceuta and Melilla fences as the EU
southern
border. Second, it aims
to highlight the changing roles of the two enclaves’ Fences
.
‘I don’t want to go back with nothing’: the #Brexit threat to Spain’s little Britain
▻http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/may/27/brexit-threat-to-spains-secret-little-britain
In Spain’s biggest British enclave, the EU referendum looms large over an expat Shangri-La based on bowls, beaches and high-quality free healthcare. But is there any real love for Europe there?
MAREA: Microsoft and Facebook to build submarine cable across Atlantic : 160Tbps over 6600km
▻https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/server-cloud/2016/05/26/microsoft-and-facebook-to-build-subsea-cable-across-atlanti
The new MAREA [Spanish for “tide”] cable will help meet the growing customer demand for high speed, reliable connections for cloud and online services for Microsoft, Facebook and their customers. The parties have cleared conditions to go “Contract-In-Force” with their plans, and construction of the cable will commence in August 2016 with completion expected in October 2017.
[...]
MAREA will be the highest-capacity subsea cable to ever cross the Atlantic – featuring eight finer pairs and an initial estimated design capacity of 160Tbps. The new 6,600 km submarine cable system, to be operated and managed by Telxius [part of Telefónica], will also be the first to connect the United States to southern Europe: from Virginia Beach, Virginia to Bilbao, Spain and then beyond to network hubs in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. This route is south of existing transatlantic cable systems that primarily land in the New York/New Jersey region. Being physically separate from these other cables helps ensure more resilient and reliable connections for our customers in the United States, Europe, and beyond.
►http://www.wired.com/2016/05/facebook-microsoft-laying-giant-cable-across-atlantic
Microsoft offers Bing, Office365, and its Azure cloud services. Facebook has its social network along with Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram. The data moved by just a few online giants now dwarfs that of most others, so much so that, according to telecommunications research firm Telegeography, more than two thirds of the digital data moving across the Atlantic is traveling on private networks—namely networks operated by the likes of Google, Microsoft, and Facebook.
#submarine_cable #câble_sous-marin #câbles_sous-marins
#câble #câbles #personnellement_je_préfère_le_singulier_parce_que_plus_facile_pour_les_recherches
et repris ici aussi : ▻http://seenthis.net/messages/494416
The remarkable case of Spanish immigration
During the first decade of the twenty-first century, Spain experienced one of the largest waves of migration in European history, relative to its population. Shortly after signing the Treaty of Adherence to join the European Community in 1985, Spain went from being a sender to a receiver country.
http://bruegel.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Spanish_Migration_1.png 
http://bruegel.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Spanish_Migration_3.png 
http://bruegel.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Spanish_Migration_4.png 
U.S. launches long-awaited missile defense shield - CNNPolitics.com
▻http://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/11/politics/nato-missile-defense-romania-poland
The U.S. launched a new ground-based missile defense system in Romania Thursday, sparking fresh tensions with Russia, which quickly blasted the system as a threat to its security.
The system, to be operated by NATO, is getting up and running nearly a decade after the U.S. first announced plans to do so, only to encounter pushback from Russia. The U.S. has long insisted that the shield is directed against rogue states like Iran and not intended to target Moscow’s missiles, but Russian officials have slammed the move as an “attempt to destroy the strategic balance” in Europe.
“The United States’ Aegis ashore system is declared certified for operations,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Thursday at the ceremony launching the system.
“Missile defense is for defense,” he added. “It does not undermine or weaken Russia’s strategic nuclear deterrent.”
Russia has described the U.S. anti-missile shield in Europe as a “threat” and says it is taking “protective measures” to guard against it, the country’s state news agency TASS reported.
President Barack Obama scrapped the George W. Bush administration’s planned bilateral deployment of a different system to Poland and the Czech Republic and has instead pursued a NATO-centric approach using alternate technology.
The system is to be turned over to NATO command and will be housed at a U.S. naval support facility in Deveselu, Romania, the site of a Romanian military base. Construction will begin on an additional anti-missile platform in Poland on Friday.
The Aegis Ashore Missile Defense System unveiled Thursday is capable of firing SM-3 defensive missiles that can “defeat incoming short and medium range enemy missiles,” according to Lt. Shawn Eklund, a spokesman for the U.S. Navy.
Eklund told CNN that the facility will be manned by approximately 130 U.S. sailors. The inaugural ceremony for the new system will be attended by top U.S. and NATO military officials.
The Romania installation is the first land-based defensive missile launcher in Europe and will join other elements of the NATO defensive shield, including a command-and-control center at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, a radar installation in Turkey and four ships capable of identifying enemy missiles and firing their own SM-3s based in Rota, Spain.
The U.S. and NATO have continually stressed that the system is intended to defend Europe from Iran and its expanding arsenal. Tehran has continued to test-fire ballistic missiles following the internationally negotiated deal to limit its nuclear program.
But Russia has dismissed the justification.
“From the very outset we kept saying that in the opinion of our experts the deployment of an anti-missile defense poses a threat to Russia,” Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to the Tass News Agency. “The question is not whether measures will be taken or not; measures are being taken to maintain Russia’s security at the necessary level.”
Russia believes the missile defense system breaches a 1987 agreement it signed with the U.S.
In October, at a meeting of the meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club in Russia, Russian President Vladimir accused the U.S. of “lying” about a “hypothetical Iranian threat, which never existed” and called the system “an attempt to destroy the strategic balance.”
At a Wednesday press conference in Romania, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Frank Rose pushed back on Putin’s perspective.
“Russia has repeatedly raised concerns that U.S. and NATO missile defenses are directed against Russia and represent a threat to its strategic nuclear deterrent,” he said. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”
He added that the “U.S. and NATO missile defense systems are directed against ballistic missile threats outside the Euro-Atlantic area. NATO and the United States have explained this to Russia many times over the years.”
Heather Conley, the director of the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told CNN that Russia has previously suggested that it could retaliate for the missile defense system by stationing S-300 surface-to-air missile systems in Crimea and Kaliningrad, its European enclave located between Poland and Lithuania.
[…]
But she added, “Despite an incredible amount of consultations with Russia, the Russians never bought the argument that the system was not directed at them.”
Les Américains construisent la partie polonaise de leur bouclier antimissile, Poutine proteste - L’Obs
▻http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/topnews/20160513.AFP5105/des-mesures-en-russie-pour-faire-face-au-bouclier-antimissile-a
Washington et Varsovie ont lancé vendredi la construction d’une base faisant partie du système antimissile américain en Europe, s’attirant immédiatement une mise en garde du président russe Vladimir Poutine.
Tant le secrétaire adjoint à la Défense américain Bob Work que le ministre polonais de la Défense Antoni Macierewicz ont affirmé à Redzikowo près de Slupsk dans le nord de la Pologne que leur base, similaire à celle de Deveselu en Roumanie, devenue officiellement opérationnelle jeudi, aurait un rôle purement défensif, devant servir à intercepter des missiles balistiques pouvant venir du Proche-Orient et surtout d’Iran.
the unbalanced evolution of homo sapiens: An imaginary dialogue between the “bosses”
▻http://failedevolution.blogspot.gr/2013/12/an-imaginary-dialogue-between-bosses.html
2013,
Biggest Multinational Corporations (BMCs) : What the hell are you doing? You dictate governments to cut salaries and pensions, proceed in massive layoffs! You destroy our consumers!
Banksters : Don’t worry we know what we are doing.
BMCs : No you don’t. You reduce our profits!
Banksters : Calm down! We are major shareholders in many of you. Do you think we want to lose?
BMCs : Then what, exactly, is your plan?
Banksters : Look, can you imagine what would happen if people were receiving higher salaries and pensions?
BMCs : Yes, we would be selling more products and making more profits!
Banksters : Far from it! Your losses would be much more than your profits for a number of reasons!
BMCs : Can you be more specific?
Banksters : First: if more money were going to the market, then they would lose much of their value and we would lose profits because we are the ones who print money! That’s why we invented inflation, to keep governments in fear and directing money back to us through the so-called Quantitative Easing Policies.
BMCs : But inflation happens anyway!
Banksters : Yes, but it is controlled. We control it. When money start to spread in the society “above acceptable limits”, we create financial crises to take them back. We dictate governments to take measures and apply austerity policies directing money back to us. We keep money valuable to everyone and secure our profits.
BMCs : Ok, how about the other reasons?
Banksters : Second: small-medium businesses would have more customers because consumers would have the “luxury” to buy higher quality products locally, even if they were more expensive than yours of low quality due to mass production, so, you would have to deal with thousands of competitors locally because much more of them could survive!
Third: expensive labor force. You would have to pay higher salaries, therefore lose profits.
Fourth: without government budget cuts you would have to pay more money through taxes in healthcare and education and other social benefits. Plus, you will have the opportunity for new business in healthcare and education.
BMCs : Ok, how about extremely low salaries in India, China and SE Asia. We lose a huge market there.
Banksters : Can you imagine if one day all these people demand Western salaries? That’s why we dictate the fairytale of budget cuts and fiscal discipline to countries. So that to reduce salaries in West and say to Asians: look, don’t ask for too much, look what happens in West. You will get your raise up to a certain limit.
You see? Once we equalize salaries everywhere, you will get your new market there. New consumers who could spend as much as Americans and Europeans. Plus you will get rid of regulations and fire employees at will without consequences. Governments and politicians by then would become totally powerless.
BMCs : And how will you do that practically?
Banksters : But we are doing it already! The experiment in Greece continues as planned. Once we bring salaries at the level we want, and destroy the welfare state, we will continue to the rest of the eurozone.
BMCs : Well, alright with the PIIGS, but how about France, Germany and the entire north? People will never accept such policies there.
Banksters : They will. We will start with Italy and Spain. We will order rating agencies to attack, exclude them from markets and throw them to the ECB trap. They will be forced to take similar measures, as Greece did, in order to receive liquidity. Then, we will attack France and Germany.
the unbalanced evolution of homo sapiens: Alert: The European Financial Dictatorship seriously threatens France
▻http://failedevolution.blogspot.gr/2016/05/alert-european-financial-dictatorship.html
It appears that the dialogue between the “bosses” will turn out to be real