Blog has moved

August 12th, 2008:

Sue Davies's blog, about the current affairs, history and culture of Cymru (Wales) and Catalunya (Catalonia), has moved. It's now at:

suedavies.wordpress.com

Olympics open in Beijing

World's sporting 'heroes'
help keep repression alive
WHAT do 1936, 1980 and 2008 have in common? These are years in which, to the world’s shame, brutal dictatorships (Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia and now Communist China) were allowed to host the Olympic Games.

The parrot cry of the appeasing International Olympic Committee is that sport has nothing to do with politics. Try telling that to repressive regimes to whom the games are a heaven-sent (yes, I’m aware of the irony) opportunity to pretend to the world that everything is hunky-dory and the human rights of millions (today, billions) are not being trampled on.

And, though I blame Olympic administrators far more than athletes, there is no escaping the fact that the very presence of hundreds of the world’s top sportsmen and women, as they scramble for their medals, is helping to keep the repression alive.

The IOC’s appeasement of China goes further - praising to the (polluted?) skies efforts to hack back on endemic pollution. Which doesn’t chime with what the BBC is finding on a daily basis in Beijing (see below). The Beijing authorities claim that the smog that hangs over the city most days is just harmless mist.

* Then there’s internet censorship, contrary to what journalists were promised.

* Then there is that sudden ban on any flags other than the Olympic nations’ main flags. This is to clamp down on free-Tibet protests (on the first day, Tibet protesters were grabbed and dragged off).

But it also meant that Wales’s Nichole Cooke, who won an early gold in a cycling event, was unable to drape herself in the Red Dragon, as medal-winning Welsh athletes have done in the past.

China’s vast economic might has led to schizophrenic attitudes. The United States, for example, ocasionally has a go at China for its poor human rights record, but then hands it “favoured nation” status and encourages American businesses to dive and trade, trade, trade.

Tiny Cuba meanwhile - yes, a bad human rights record, but nothing on the scale of China’s - has been the subject of a massive US trade embargo for many years.

BBC monitoring finds filthy skies
The BBC has been monitoring the amounts of PM10 (tiny lung-penetrating particles) in the air in central Beijing every day in the run-up to the Olympics and plans to continue through the Games.

By the way, the World Health Organisation guideline maximum is 50 micrograms per cubic metre (mcm), averaged over 24 hours.

BBC figures this month up to the opening ceremony:
Aug 1 - 19mcm
Aug 2 - 15
Aug 3 - 79
Aug 4 - 292
Aug 5 - 104
Aug 6 - 186
Aug 7 - 191
Aug 8 - 156

And these figures, mostly way over WHO safety levels, are despite China closing dozens of pollution-producing factories around Beijing just for the Olympics and removing thousands of vehicles from the city’s roads.

After the games, these factories will reopen and the vehicles will be back. I wonder what will the figures be like then?

Spanish judge takes a tilt at repression
MEANWHILE, on the eve of the Olympics, a brave Spanish High Court judge, Santiago Pedraz, allowed several Tibetan organisations to file cases against Chinese bigwigs - two ministers, three political leaders and two generals - alleging crimes against humanity following the repression of the demonstrations led by Buddhist monks in Tibet in March.

The cases are being filed under remarkable legislation that allows Spain to have a go at injustice way beyond its borders.

You may recall Margaret Thatcher’s friend, Chile’s ex-dictator Pinochet, being arrested in London in 1998 on a Spanish warrant issued under the same legislation in respect of the brutal repression carried out by his regime.

This tilt at China may come to nothing (it’s difficult to imagine China allowing top officials to be prosecuted in Spain) but it does help to keep that nation’s dreadful repression in the spotlight. All power to his judicial elbow.

I’m back - but now it’s a
blog about two places
It’s been more than a year since ill-health forced me to put aside my blog about Welsh current affairs and history. I’m picking up the pen again - but there is a big difference. My work always involved travel, mostly to Ireland and Spain. Now, I’m semi-retired so I’ve stepped up the travel and spend almost as much time in my second favourite place on earth, Catalonia, as I do in Wales (I’ve been a regular visitor to this part of Spain since the early 1980s). So from now on this blog is about current affairs and history of both places. A website is being prepared to expand on what is being said here. As ever, your comments will be welcome - even if they oppose my views.

Sue Davies is unwell and has withdrawn
from blogging for a while. Her friends wish
her a speedy recovery.

Her website cymruwales.net has
plenty of scope for your own comments - at
length, if you wish. There is a letters policy,
but beyond that there is no censorship.

Comment added today (22.12.06):
* Offended by Merry Christmas?
* Pinochet: shame on Thatcher
* Obscene Iran ‘conference’
* Plaid-Labour work for Wales
* Prince ‘concerns’ a sham?
* Why this disinterest in politics?

Religious bans play
into hands of bigots
There’s nothing
wrong with a
Christian Christmas

Traditionally, Santa was always
in green - the red version being
a fairly recent invention.

Western Mail columnist Lowri Turner took time out from slagging off her fellow C-list celebs to slagging off Christmas. She’s all in favour of “de-Godding” the festive season, though in that confusion of mind that makes her column almost unmissable she doesn’t mind school nativity plays (at least as long as her tiny tot is involved).

Otherwise she is happy to join the woolly-minded brigade that thinks that by pretending that religious festivals such as Christmas aren’t really religious at all they will avoid offending religions other than Christianity. In other words, discriminating against the biggest faith somehow helps the smaller ones.

Hence we end up with clumsy inventions such as “Winterville” (Birmingham) and “Luminos” (Luton). In the same light, a study showed that Christmas displays by most UK companies make no reference to Christianity at all.

I believe that this intolerance towards Christianity is dangerous because it plays into the hands of bigots who will then conclude that it’s safe for them to lash out at any faith they don’t like.

Trees complaint

Among people of various faiths who I’ve spoken to I find no demand at all for a ban on seeing Christmas (the word include “Christ”, for heaven’s sake) as a Christian festival. All they ask for is that their festivals are not forgotten, surely a reasonable plea.

This was illustrated last week in Seattle, USA, where a rabbi complained that decorated trees at the city’s airport did not contain Jewish symbols, it being the Jewish festival of Hanukkah. Officials frantically removed all dozen trees to avoid offending Jews. But the rabbi said (and I believe him) that he wasn’t being anti-Christian and was not demanding that Christian symbols be removed. After an outcry (including, encouragingly, calls from faiths other than Christianity) the trees were reinstated.

It illustrates the paranoia that grips authorities and propels them into actions that end up serving nobody but the bigots. The rabbi received hate mail. In the UK a Muslim woman is attacked and her veil torn off after Jack Straw MP’s stupid yearning to see Muslim women without their veil.

Billons follow faiths

All over Europe we’re seeing the growth of religious intolerance leading to increasing resentment as more bans are introduced. I’ve already commented on how the religious symbols ban in French schools (in reality aimed at Muslims) has led to many Muslims girls opting out of education rather than submit and to the radicalisation of a whole generation of young Muslims.

Organised religion has its detractors, maybe with good reason, but it cannot be denied that for billions of people around the world their faith is important. So if a particular faith is clearly the main faith in that country then its religious festivals should prevail. Other faiths should not be forgotten and should be given the attention their support deserves.

Anyone should be allowed to wear what clothing or symbols they like at any time, anywhere. Bans that encourage intolerance should be scrapped.

I don’t mind in the slightest if Jews wishes me happy Hanukkah or Muslims wish me happy Ramamadan and I don’t believe that anyone other than the woolly-minded would mind if I wished them a Merry Christmas.

A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all.

(Regarding Hanukkah, see http://www.akhlah.com/holidays/hanukkah/hanukkah.php for a brief introduction to this fascinating Jewish tradition, which last for eight days from December 15).

Pinochet-style dictators were really
there to support rich and powerful
Thatcher should be ashamed
of tears she shed for Chile’s
brutal murderer Pinochet

Franco: murderous Spanish
dictator became a
blueprint for Pinochet

We should all be ashamed of Margaret Thatcher for the tears she shed for the late General Augusto Pinochet, for he was nothing more than a mass-murderer.

His brutal reign in Chile started when in 1973, with the help of the United States, his forces overthrew the democratically-elected government of Salvador Allende. Thousands of innocent Chilean men, women and children “disappeared” during his 17-year right-wing regime. We now know that they were all murdered, many of them after being tortured by the brutal sadists Pinochet relied upon to keep the population in check in a climate of continual fear. Many were dropped into the sea from helicopters.

His deluded supporters claim that Chile’s current economic well-being is entirely due to his dictatorship. Rubbish! The centre-left coalition that has governed the country for the past 16 years deserves the credit, not Pinochet. Sure, his dictatorship saw the wealthy prosper but there was a massive rise in unemployment among the poor.

The claim that “he saved Chile from communism” is rubbish, too. This mantra is always used to excuse right-wing dictators and their slaughter of many thousands of innocent people, such as Franco in Spain, Pinochet in Chile or the Junta in Arentina.

These dictators used the “struggle against communism” as a code to hide what was really going on – seizing power in support of the rich and powerful, whose basic aim was to keep the poor and uneducated in abject poverty so as to provide their estates and factories with a plentiful supply of labour so poorly paid it was little better than slavery.

Cruel savagery

Anyone trying to raise the poor out of poverty would be dealt with in a simple manner – murdered.

This is what happened in Spain, when the far-right defrauded its way to electoral victory in 1934. It immediately started to roll back reforms to help the poor, giving rich landowners and industrialists the green light to slash the wages of their already-poor workers even further and reacting with cruel savagery against anyone who objected.

When the far-right lost power in 1936, their fraud attempts having failed, its supporters – a ragbag of thugs, including royalists and fascists – began to rampage through Spain to deliberately cause the chaos which they would soon use to justify Franco launching his terrible Civil War. Tens of thousands were murdered during Franco’s 40-year regime, which became a blueprint for Pinochet in Chile. No wonder, the right-wing in both countries now snarls at attempts bring out the truth.

Among the many accounts of Pinochet’s savagery, I noted the sad report about a footballer who was a member of Chile’s World Cup squad. Pinochet held a reception for the team but this player refused to shake his hand. On the dictator’s orders, the footballer’s mother was arrested and tortured.

Such are the people Mrs Thatcher counts among her friends.

Jewish ‘anti-Zionism’ movement
mistaken to attend Iran event
Obscene ‘conference’
doubted slaughter
of six million Jews
The “conference” that took place in Iran about whether the Nazi’s slaughter of some six million Jews really took place was obscene.

There is an immense amount of historical evidence, including personal testimony and documentary, to prove that the dreadful slaughter was real enough and deserves its status as one of the greatest crimes against humanity of all time. What is happening in Iran is sheer anti-Semitism. Nothing else.

The behaviour of successive Israeli governments towards the Palestinian people upsets me (as it upsets a significant number of the Israeli people) but that does not mean that I have anything but respect for the Jewish people in general and the immense and positive contribution they have made in many fields. I condemn the discrimination they have suffered over many generations and I deplore the evidence that anti-Semitism is once again on the rise.

As to the Iran “conference”, I noted the presence there of a Jewish movement called Neturei Karta. Founded in 1938 and describing itself as “Jews against Zionism”, the sect, which I’m told is steadily growing, believes that the foundation of the state of Israel was contrary to Jewish religious law and argues for its dissolution.

I first heard about this movement two years ago when I was discussing with a Jewish friend the view some hold that the very existence of Israel was a catalyst for unrest in the Middle East, the state having been founded on lands which Arabs regarded as belonging to them. He startled me by saying there were Jews who actually held that view and told me about Neturei Karta (see http://www.nkusa.org if you want to know more).

I don’t know enough about Jewish religious law to say whether Neturei Karta is right or wrong. Maybe they’ve a point to make. But, no matter how right they regard their cause, their presence at the Iran event was a big mistake. Their defence there of the Holocaust truth was meaningless in the face of what that evil event was really all about – just Jew-bashing.

Tories and LibDems fume as Assembly
pledges more money for education
Budget voted in
after direct
Plaid-Labour talks
The Welsh Assembly has finally voted through its Budget, the minority Labour government winning by 30 votes to 17 after the Plaid Cymru group and one independent abstained and another independent voted with Labour.

The vote – which days ago Labour looked set to lose – came after Plaid and Labour held direct talks and much more money was promised for education.

Schools will get £9.6m more and an extra £1.7m has been promised to services for children with special educational needs. A £2m grant to help schools meet fuel bills is now pledged every year rather than as a one-off. It was claimed that this is “new money” and not cut from other budgets

The Tories and Lib-Dems are, of course, spitting feathers and claiming betrayal. But two things pleased me – seeing two major political parties co-operating to the benefit of Wales instead of being at each other’s throats and not seeing Plaid Cymru (on this occasion, anyway) getting into bed with the obnoxious Tories.

Prince hardly spends any of his
vast wealth on causes he supports
Fine words from
Charles – but does
he genuinely care?
In a speech the other day, Prince Charles waffled on about green issues, urged companies to adopt “sustainability” and pledged that his staff (but not him, I note) would be encouraged to cycle to work. They were fine words designed to make us believe that he really cares about our troubled world.

But is he genuine? Do you ever see him actually spend any of his own money, beyond tiny pittances, to really help the causes he worries so much about?

For example, every year billions of children die of starvation. Many could be saved if, instead of spending all his vast personal wealth on maintaining his luxurious lifestyle (he has several homes and has just bought himself another one), Charles was to divert a significant amount it to help the world’s needy.

At the same time he could be encouraging his vastly wealthy friends around the world to do the same. What a difference that would make.

We’d better not hold our breath, though. Billionaire Charles has become adept at empty gestures (fine words cost nowt), hand-wringing to make it look as if he cares and grabbing the credit for the work of others (the Prince’s Trust, for example, which relies totally on other people coughing up the cash).

Why so much disinterest in political process?
Voters are fed up with
politicians always at
each other’s throats
A South Wales councillor Adrian Hobson, who I gather is Plaid Cymru, wrote a rather pointless letter to the Western Mail the other day.

He bemoaned the lack of interest of young people in politics or community activity and then lashed out at an interesting proposal (by Labour, I presume) to try and engage young people by getting them to shadow councillors on his authority, Rhondda-Cynon-Tâf.

I hold no brief for any party and maybe the proposal will fail. But he should be asking, why is there this lack of interest? And is his sort of politician part of the problem?

All over Wales, people - young and adults - tell me they have lost interest in the political process because of the sight of stupid politicians always at each other’s throats; Plaid and Labour wrangles at local council level is often cited. Hence plummeting voter turnouts. And it’s wrangling that often spills into community activity.

People want politicians who are willing to work together for the good of all. The tone of Mr Hobson’s letter suggests that he isn’t one of them.

He writes, “Interest would plummet if the truth was known about the workings (or not) of our [Labour] Cabinet!”, he claims. But I recall that when Plaid Cymru ran RCT there were similar claims about the Cabinet of which he was a member - even from within Plaid. A back-bench Plaid councillor from the Valleys once told me that its goings on were so secretive that often the first he heard of RCT Cabinet decisions was when he picked up the local paper.

There were few more
anti-Welsh than the Tudors
English royals have
no moral right to
include Wales in their titles
Philip Grice, grandly styling himself Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order (one of those meaningless titles that make us the laughing stock of the world) wrote to the Western Mail to criticise a reference to the Queen of England.

Here’s his letter:

SIR - I was very surprised to read that Dr Robyn Lewis, in referring to the Queen as Queen of England, was apparently unaware that The Queen is in fact the Queen of the United Kingdom .

Perhaps it should be "Queendom" and this is what threw the good doctor.

For the Queen is of course the Queen of the United Kingdom due to her descent from the Welshman Henry Tudor - King Henry VII - who united England and Wales through his marriage to Edward IV's daughter Elizabeth, and his defeat in battle of the Yorkist King Richard III. It seems to me in these circumstances, and what with the Queen being half Welsh and all, that if anybody was upset by the present situation it would be Yorkshire people rather than Welsh people.

PHILIP GRICE, Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order, Llansteffan Road, Carmarthen

Mr Grice - sorry, sir, LIEUTENANT Grice - fails to grasp the reality of Tudor politics.

After the Battle of Bosworth, the Tudors still needed to prove themselves to the powerful English barons (not just the Yorkists) and they, along with many of the so-called “great” Welsh families, did so by rejecting any Welsh roots to become more English than the English.

That is why many anti-Welsh laws were were left on the statute book and curbs on the Welsh language were introduced. English anti-Welsh sentiments were very strong in mediavel times and during the Tudor era there were few more anti-Welsh than the Turdor hierarcy.

This massive Tudor betrayal led to considerable Welsh discontent that was savagely surpressed, in particular by Henry VIII, who executed (polite word for murdered) tens of thousands of his subjects for dissent, many of them in Wales.

To describe England and Wales as “united” is perverse. The Tudors aimed to eradicate Wales completely by destroying its language and culture and absorbing what remained into England. What they didn’t bargain for was Welsh determination not to let that happen. People are still trying to eradicate our language and culture today, so the struggle goes on.

The traitorous Tudors lost the right to be truly regarded as Welsh and the current royals have no moral right to include Wales in their titles as long as the Welsh continue to be denied the right, in a referendum, to say yes or no.

He should have faced trial
but instead he got a gong
James Baker - a name Iraq’s
Shias recall with horror

Acidic comment
from US news
cartoonist
Chip Bok

One of the co-authors of the Iraq Study Group report now before George Bush is the Honorable James Addison Baker III.

No wonder some of Iraq’s Shia leaders have been less than enthusiastic to see this particular US politician crawl back into the limelight. Baker, Secretary of State to President George Bush Senior, was a leading architect of one of the most shameful episodes in American history - the stabbing in the back of Iraq’s Shia population in 1991.

You may recall that Bush Senior, flush with victory after ousting Iraq from Kuwait in the Gulf War, made a speech urging Iraq’s Shias to rise up against a weakened Saddam Hussain. He promised full support from the US, which still had massive forces in the region.

The Shia people took him at his word and rose in a massive rebellion. They fought bravely and came agonisingly close to toppling the brutal dictator. But there was no US support. Instead, Bush, Baker and all the US candle-stick makers, stood by and watched as Saddam crushed the rebellion with ferocious savagery. Some 200,000 Shias are thought to have lost their lives.

Why did Bush allow the carnage? The answer is simple - political expediency. The Shias are allied to Iran and Bush and Baker concluded it best that Saddam stay in power than risk seeing increased Iranian influence over Iraq. The US even helped Saddam by relaxing the no fly zones so he could more easily move his troops around.

Which is why Saddam continued for 12 more years to fill his blood-drenched torture chambers until, post 9/11, it became politically expedient to bring him down, Bin Laden having proved too elusive.

Bush and Baker should have been tried for crimes against humanity. Instead, Baker received one of America’s highest honours, the Freedom Medal. That’s the sort of world we live in.

The Bolton way failed, so now try genuine democracy
Reforms UN needs
- scrap Security
Council, end the veto
So John Bolton, the US’s combative ambassador to the UN, has decided to jump before he’s pushed, the chances of his temporary appointment being made permanent by the Democrat-controlled Senate less than those of George Bush ever seeing sense about anything.

He was sent in to push for reform of the UN. A laudable aim. But, as ever, the Bush regime idea of the US getting its way by arrogantly throwing its weight around was doomed from the start. All it did was make more people anti-American.

The UN is badly in need of reform. The structure that US now howls so much about as failing the world was put together by - guess who? - the US when the UN was founded in 1946.

If the Western nations are serious about pushing genuine democracy round the world then they could start at the UN with two basic reforms:

1) Scrap the Security Council which was specifically designed to deny the majority of nations a voice.

2) End the veto used by the bigger nations to continually thwart the majority view.

In other words, let the UN be run according to the principle of one nation, one vote on every isue. How more democratic could you get?

We condem slaughter of innocent people
but are quite prepared to do it ourselves
Surely nukes make
us no better
than Al Queda
I’m not surprised that Labour, a party in love with big business, in particular the arms industry, is proposing a new generation of nuclear weapons to replace Trident missiles.

But think on this. By their very nature, nuclear weaposns are weapons of mass destruction. Drop a missile or a bomb on a city (as the Americans did twice in 1945 with horrific results) then, quite deliberately, you will kill many thousands of innocent men, women and children and hideously main many more.

So what we have is a policy of being prepared to slaughter innocent people on a massive scale in order to achieve our aims, whatever those might be. Blair’s proposals are simply aimed at making that slaughter more efficient.

But how can world leaders who support this policy expect to be taken seriously as they scream their condemnation - as they rightly should - when Al Queda or any grouping slaughters innocent people. After all, aren’t they simply carrying out the same policy?

Big guns wheeled out to fend off nationalists
Independence issue
has Labour
scared witless
Labour is clearly worried about the growing strength of the Nationalists in Scotland, independence now commanding a majority in some polls. Hence the big guns - Blair and Brown - recently piling in with dishonest speeches about how freedom will wreck Scotland. Blair even dragged Wales into his condemnantion.

Well, my views have been clear for years. I’ve studied the economic arguments and I have no doubts that Wales will benefit from full independence. The list of small nations with strong economies is long and cannot be ignored.

But we have a democracy-deficit problem in Wales. The Labour Party, which dominates our country, steadfastly refuses to get involved with a debate on the pros or cons of independence. Our docile media, almost all of which is owned, controlled and, at senior level, largely staffed from outside Wales, has no desire to push for such a debate, either.

But why not have a proper debate? If Blair and Brown really do believe the anti-nationalist bilge they spew out, then surely they would want the nationalist arguments to be publically proved to be rubbish.

But no, Labour is prepared to deny Wales and Scotland the economic prosperity that freedom will bring for one grubby reason alone - it needs the parliamentary seats of those two nations to keep power in the English Parliment.

That’s why we won’t get that debate from Labour. They’re scared witless about the outcome.

Newspaper hides its own anti-Charles poll verdict from readers
Royalist tendency
leads Western Mail
into dishonest ways
The Western Mail gives its readers the impression that there is broad support for Charles buying an estate in Wales by publishing several pro-royal letters and just one opposing.

Yet I know that from what people tell me the Mail received other critical letters, including one from me based on my comment below. My letter highlighted the findings of the Mail’s own online poll which showed considerable opposition to the purchase.

It seems that the poll embarrassed the royalist tendency that seems to have the Mail in its grip, hence the decision to hide it from its readers. But there you go. Dishonesty is all that’s left to the royalists as they continue pretend they have support when they damn well don’t.

And it’s not the first time. A few weeks ago the Mail gave prominance to a letter from a thoroughly dishonest outfit, Monarchy Wales, claiming that republics were economic basket-cases continually having to be rescued by monarchies. I worte in proving that it was a pack of lies by showing how basket-case monarchies - many of them in reality brutal dicatorships - had brought much death and destruction to 20th Century Europe.

The Mail refused to publish my letter and Monarchy Wales’s pack of lies was allowed to stand.

Poll shows huge opposition
to ‘glorified holiday home’
Charles’ Welsh estate is King
Canute bid to stem tide of
anti-monarchism in Wales
The royals already have far more sprawling estates, palaces and luxury mansions scattered around Britain than they will ever need so Prince Charles’s decision to add a huge estate in Wales to the ever-growing list is a slap in the face for those struggling to put just one roof over their heads.

I listened to some estate agents gloating about how property prices will now soar in Carmarthenshire. Obviously, they couldn't care tuppence for the immense problems that young people have in trying to afford property in the county now, leave alone when the royals come galloping in.

I’m not surprised. I see the purchase as a desperate King Canute-style bid to stem the tide of anti-monarchism that has been steadily rising in Wales. If opinion polls I’ve monitored in recent years are anything to go by then republicanism is now backed by at least 30 per cent of the Welsh, royalty by a similar percentage (and a lot of those are settlers) with the remaining 40 per cent not caring much either way.

Mind, you, royalists support may have slipped even further. I note that the Western Mail’s own online poll showed 49.37% opposing Charles “glorified holiday home in Wales”, with only 21.52% in favour. The rest couldn’t see it making much difference to tourism or couldn’t care less.

And that hugh level despite the Welsh republican movement being lamentably fragmented and the royalists holding almost all the levers of power. It’s time we republicans got our act together.