Brett Hetherington's Blog: "First thought:" My Substack page, page 39

"Democracy and other duds" -- My latest opinion column for Catalonia Today magazine

[Photo: JUANMA RAMOS.] At a time when the European Union appears to be slowly falling apart, its highest court was fixated on whether a woman at one workplace in Belgium should be allowed to wear material covering her head.

As a staunch non-believer in religion, I find the continuing European fascination with burkas, hijabs and the like very, very odd. Yes, when I was 16 in Australia and deeply afraid of the unknown (in the form of Malaysian and Indonesian Muslim students at my school) it was challenging to my childish attitudes but I associate that kind of fear with cultural ignorance. I don't see why this style of dress should force someone out of their job, as it did in the case of Samira Achbita.
In essence, the European Court of Justice supported the right of a private company to have an "internal policy or rule" on staff clothing. If this means the wearing of a uniform, I see no problem. But to outlaw other items is to trample on human rights. Ironically, this is the very thing that modern and secular society is supposedly better than because fundamental Islam tries to impose restrictions on women's dress. Moderate, progressive Islam does not.
Logic now dictates that if a Muslim-run company based in Europe told its female workers to wear a cloth head covering then they would have to if the company decided it was part of their uniform and not an individual choice. As Human Rights organisation Amnesty International stated after the court's recent decision, "by ruling that company policies can prohibit religious symbols on the grounds of neutrality, they have opened a back door to precisely such prejudice."
Manfred Weber, head of the center-right European People's Party, the largest in the European Parliament, said that he believed it was: "[an] important ruling by the European Court of Justice: employers have the right to ban the Islamic veil at work. European values must apply in public life."
If we substitute the words “European values” for “German values” we have the same flavour of statement that was repeated continually in the 1930’s about another religious minority. “Jews have to accept that German values must apply.”
In this way, by establishing the idea that a Muslim cannot be a true European, it is already going part way to also establishing the idea that a Muslim is a lesser human. This makes the association of a Muslim as a terrorist much easier to create in the mind of the average person. (It is then only a small step to restrict their travel, as Trump is currently in the process of doing.) We are led to believe that the European court decision is a first strike for great European democracy, a brave attack on the terrible dangers of those frightening women who wear a bit more more than others do.
So, what we call democracy has now taken away the liberty of a small number of females without a single good reason. Recently, different arms of our imperfect democracies, have also thrown up a far-reaching referendum result in the UK that only 25 percent of the population voted for. In the USA, a demagogue President strutted into office despite his opponent getting almost 3 million votes more than he did.
In other news, it has come to light that in that same 'land of the free' (the USA) almost 1 in 5 adults are are in fact free from the burden of being able to read. Hurray for democracy![This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, May 2017.]

"Democracy and other duds" -- My latest opinion column for Catalonia Today magazine

[Photo: JUANMA RAMOS.]  At a time when the European Union appears to be slowly falling apart, its highest court was fixated on whether a woman at one workplace in Belgium should be allowed to wear material covering her head.
As a staunch non-believer in religion, I find the continuing European fascination with burkas, hijabs and the like very, very odd. 
Yes, when I was 16 in Australia and deeply afraid of the unknown (in the form of Malaysian and Indonesian Muslim students at my school) it was challenging to my childish attitudes but I associate that kind of fear with cultural ignorance. 
I don't see why this style of dress should force someone out of their job, as it did in the case of Samira Achbita.
In essence, the European Court of Justice supported the right of a private company to have an "internal policy or rule" on staff clothing. If this means the wearing of a uniform, I see no problem. 
But to outlaw other items is to trample on human rights. Ironically, this is the very thing that modern and secular society is supposedly better than because fundamental Islam tries to impose restrictions on women's dress. Moderate, progressive Islam does not.
Logic now dictates that if a Muslim-run company based in Europe told its female workers to wear a cloth head covering then they would have to if the company decided it was part of their uniform and not an individual choice. 
As Human Rights organisation Amnesty International stated after the court's recent decision, "by ruling that company policies can prohibit religious symbols on the grounds of neutrality, they have opened a back door to precisely such prejudice."
Manfred Weber, head of the center-right European People's Party, the largest in the European Parliament, said that he believed it was: "[an] important ruling by the European Court of Justice: employers have the right to ban the Islamic veil at work. European values must apply in public life."
If we substitute the words “European values” for “German values” we have the same flavour of statement that was repeated continually in the 1930’s about another religious minority. “Jews have to accept that German values must apply.”
In this way, by establishing the idea that a Muslim cannot be a true European, it is already going part way to also establishing the idea that a Muslim is a lesser human. 
This makes the association of a Muslim as a terrorist much easier to create in the mind of the average person. (It is then only a small step to restrict their travel, as Trump is currently in the process of doing.) 
We are led to believe that the European court decision is a first strike for great European democracy, a brave attack on the terrible dangers of those frightening women who wear a bit more more than others do.
So, what we call democracy has now taken away the liberty of a small number of females without a single good reason. 
Recently, different arms of our imperfect democracies, have also thrown up a far-reaching referendum result in the UK that only 25 percent of the population voted for. In the USA, a demagogue President strutted into office despite his opponent getting almost 3 million votes more than he did.
In other news, it has come to light that in that same 'land of the free' (the USA) almost 1 in 5 adults are are in fact free from the burden of being able to read. 
Hurray for democracy!

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, May 2017.]

Video: I talk and listen about this week's national and international stories

This week I was a guest again on Matthew Tree's English language discussion program on El Punt Avui TV. 

We covered topics including Trump's latest actions, the current Spanish government's insistance on preserving Europe's largest fascist monument and their threats of legal action against any company making ballot boxes for the Catalan government.

For a video of the show click here.

Video: "Meet Spain’s Only All-Female Cricket Team...[in Barcelona]"

Via the excellent Business Over Tapas, I came across the above short video that tells how "when Aïna Coscollola began working with a group of teenage girls from Pakistan who had recently moved to [Besos in] Barcelona, she came up with a unique approach to tackling the self-confidence and language challenges that many of these young immigrants faced. 

She started an all-women’s cricket team. Cricket, the most popular sport in Pakistan, proved a unifying force for this community, helping the girls unearth a sense of identity, cooperation, and a newfound sense of self-esteem at school."

Spain (and Australia) in top ten countries for corporate tax dodging

 "What would you do with $500 billion? 

The first challenge might be actually getting your head around quite how much money that is. If you like to travel in style you could buy 1,150 Airbus A380s, according to the published Airbus list price. 

If you just wanted to show off, you could cover a football field to a depth of 1.5 metres with cash. 

So, it’s a lot of money. It’s also the amount of revenue the world is losing as a result of tax avoidance, according to a new report from the United Nations World Institute for Development Economics Research (pdf).

Corporate tax is a vital source of government revenue across the globe. It is especially vital in developing countries, argue the report’s authors. Their findings highlight the extent of global tax avoidance - as well as the countries facing the biggest shortfalls.

The issue was also on the agenda at this year’s World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos. The session ‘Taxation without Borders: A Fair Share from Multinationals’ looked at the action needed - particularly in the wake of the leak of the Panama Papers, which exposed the use of tax havens around the world."

Read more from source here.

"The words we use" - My latest opinion column for Catalonia Today magazine

Good. Bad. These are two words that have come back into public language recently. 
Unfortunately, they are words which express the extremes of a moral spectrum and have been returned to politics via the snarling mouth of US liar-in-chief Donald Trump.
I have tended to think that using a word like 'good' is a clear one and therefore better than saying something is 'appropriate'. 
We can easily discuss why X, Y or Z is good or bad (and just as importantly, who something is good or bad for) but it is much more difficult to say why something is appropriate. 
That is why it has been a popular word with pre-Trump politicians looking for a sneaky way to justify the unjustifiable.
I remember first hearing the word appropriate when I started out as a secondary school teacher in the mid-1990s. 
Students would often be told that their behaviour was inappropriate and I could see that this word had no meaning for them, apart from being prohibitive. 
It would have been a lot more educational to tell them that they had done something that was disrespectful, dangerous, illogical or even thoughtless.
Of course it could be argued that all this concern with words is just for writers and teachers and is some kind of an academic exercise that has no relevance for the average person. 
After all, they are only words, right? 
I would simply reply: tell that to the Roma rights groups. Only a couple of years ago they felt compelled to protest against a decision by Spain's Royal Language Academy (RAE) to include a definition of a gypsy as a 'swindler' in their new official dictionary. 
Words inform and they can also misinform. Trump and May and Le Pen and Wilders know this all too well.
Others have noted the importance of language across society. Writing in the Spanish newspaper El Pais, Josep Ramoneda argued that "the struggle for power, anywhere, is also the struggle for the control of words. 
The one who imposes his verbal categories on the public mind wins. Example: the word austerity." 
His opinion is that "people are accepting it as something inevitable. Austerity is one of the terms of virtue. From it derives a whole chain of complementary words: sacrifice, rigor, responsibility, etc."
Ignoring all shades of grey in his black and white universe, Donald Trump tells anyone listening what is bad and what is good but he almost never uses the word ‘because’ to explain why things can be categorised so neatly. 

He asserts. He insists. If he and the others like him are to be countered, it will be for the rest of us to do the explaining. 

Through clear imagery and equally simple words.


[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, April 2017.]

"Marine Le Pen Denies French Guilt for Rounding Up Jews"

Photo: Sylvain Lefevre/Getty Images  "A casual remark about France’s wartime anti-Jewish actions by Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Front, threatened on Monday to derail her yearslong effort aimed at “un-demonizing” her party just as she is emerging as a strong contender in this month’s presidential election.

The remark was made on Sunday during an interview in which she referred to the most notorious roundup of Jews in France during World War II, when nearly 13,000 were arrested in Paris by the French police on July 16 and 17, 1942, in what is known as the “Vel d’Hiv roundup.”
“France wasn’t responsible for the Vel d’Hiv,” she said. “If there was responsibility, it is with those who were in power at the time, it is not with France. France has been mistreated, in people’s minds, for years.”
Ms. Le Pen’s words created a small eruption in an already heated campaign, drawing strong criticism by politicians right, left and center and by Jewish groups, who all saw it as an echo of her party’s anti-Semitic roots."

Read more from source here.

Chatting with Jim Kent on Barcelona City FM radio

[image error] This week I had an extended session chatting (between short tracks) with Jim Kent on the region's only local English language radio station.

An enjoyable time was had by all and the full podcast can be downloaded here.

"I don't like divisions. They belong to a schizophrenia of thinking"

[Photo: JOSEP LOSADA.]
Romanian writer Mircea Cartarescu makes one of the most compelling arguments in favour of the existence of Europe in an interview with Marcela Topor, the Editor of Catalonia Today magazine...



"I've always been a fervent pro-European. My Europe is one built on an enormous cultural, philosophical and scientific heritage. 

The Judaic-Greek tradition dating back 3,000 years is its spine. 

Descartes is the archetype of the European spirit. His famous quote starts with the word “dubito”, which is the most European word possible, in my opinion. T

he spirit of doubt, which leads to rational thinking, is the best thing that Europe has. This is my ideal Europe: a place of humanism, centred around education and culture...

I don't like divisions. They belong to a schizophrenia of thinking.  The Berlin Wall was the main symbol of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. I dream of a Europe without frontiers, I am also aware that we still have a long way to go until we can hope to achieve this dream.  European countries are not just simple squares on a map, but they have a bloody and traumatic past. The United States of Europe seems something of a utopia right now." Read more from source article at Catalonia Today here.

"This weekend, DiEM25 lands in Rome to present its “European New Deal..."

"It’s the EU’s 60th birthday this weekend, and leaders of all EU countries will be in Rome that day to celebrate it. 

Their goal? To preserve the status quo.

We, the Democracy in Europe Movement, see things differently. We want to give the people of Europe a real alternative to the Establishment and the rising ‘nationalist international’; a progressive path to save Europe from itself.
That’s why this weekend we’ll be landing in Rome to set that alternative in motion, over three days of events and important announcements. 

And we invite you to be part of it!"

Read more at DiEM25's comprehensive site here.