Brett Hetherington's Blog: "First thought:" My Substack page, page 48

Compare Spain to any other country...

A very useful little site that allows you to compare clearly-phrased statistics related to everyday life in different countries.
More at If It Were My Home

"Discussing European Democracy in Barcelona - 15th October 2015, 19.00"

That beacon of wisdom, former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis will be at Barcelona’s Born Cultural Centre, in conversation with Monica Terribas (by invitation of Mayor Ada Colau.)


Live streaming here.

"Male suicide on rise as result of austerity"

"Young males between the ages of 10 and 24 have committed suicide in growing numbers as a direct result of austerity measures brought in across Europe following the 2009 recession."


Read more from ScienceDaily source here.

"Refugees in a strange land" - My latest opinion column for Catalonia Today magazine

Now even the Daily Mail's editors have finally accepted that British Prime Minister David Cameron's "swarms" of refugees need to be helped. 

The next question has become one of where Europe's newest asylum seekers and victims of war will be settled.


Conservative governments (including Spain's) have agreed to take a 'fair share' of refugees but this language is vague - exactly as they want it to be. 

In fact, Spain is taking less than half the EU request. The truth is that ninety five percent of Syrian refugees are in just five main host countries: Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt, which Amnesty International says are "struggling to cope."


Even just this kind of discussion about numbers of people to a certain extent makes the crisis more remote from reality. Public debate on this issue has been marked by language that is not only intentionally vague. 

Much of it uses terms that suck out the humanity of the desperate lives of many people who are living through hours and days that most of us can barely imagine. 

Cold, clinical terms like 'dislocation' and 'displacement' are used along with the insulting tag of 'boat people' - popular in Australia for a long time.


A country like Australia was built from migrants and plenty of them were refugees. Israel was also built by migrants and Britain is still being built by people from across the globe. European countries (and just as importantly Asian countries) will have to embrace migrants as an important part of their future. 

Apart from the clear humanitarian reasons, it is actually in the interests of ageing populaces in these parts of the world to take in and welcome the kind of younger, fit men, women and children who have been able to survive long sea journeys, for example.


More importantly, I care about the lives that wait for Europe’s latest arrivals. It is heartening to see Germans welcoming some of them at train stations. That is a much better alternative than attacking refugees in the camps where they were put, as German neo-Nazi’s recently did. 

But while we are considering what is good for different societies across Europe it is vital to think about the refugees themselves. 

Many will not be able to speak the language of their new locations. Many will feel alienated by the surroundings, wishing they could still be at home, despite the individual and collective tragedies unfolding there. It’s probable that the violence in their homelands has meant they have lost loved ones: survivor guilt can be a result.

But to feel that you are accepted as an equal - even in a land where you may not really want to live - that may be a source of solace and consolation. 

After your world has been turned upside down it is the least that anyone deserves.

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, October 2015.]

Paying now...or not all

Temporarily ignoring today's election in Catalonia - obviously an extremely important event - I found this little gem of an editorial on a completely different subject:
More from this very well-informed source here.

The films of Fred Ménier

The superb short films and documentaries made by my friend Fred Ménier.

"Land of Hope & Fury"

In honour of the election of Jeremy Corbyn to the leadership of Britain's Labour party (and in answer to my own rhetorical question in this previous blog... where I asked "Where have all the sad and angry songs gone?)
"a collection of 16 contemporary protest songs, including 10 BRAND NEW RECORDINGS, available from http://bit.ly/lohaf_sampler(with proceeds to 38 Degrees:" a progressive, people-power organisation for social change.)

Where have all the sad and angry songs gone? - My latest opinion column for Catalonia Today magazine

I heard a French song on the radio the other day. It sounded like one of those lovely ballads from around the time of the Second World War and it had a melody and lyrics that were sung with just enough melancholy to somehow have a tinge of hope to them as well. Just as with some songs in languages that are not in our native tongues, it was exotic enough to alter my mood and get me thinking of very recent English language comparisons. I couldn’t think of any.
This French song had the flavour of a kind of protest song. Not a politically militant song but you could tell that it’s world weariness came from the destruction that the singer had seen or possibly even lived through. You could almost hear the hunger for a good steak or a roast chicken in her voice. In fact, it could have been hunger for love but I got the impression from her frustrated tones that it was something more than a private, personal anguish that was eating at her. She had blame in her voice - accusation and the fire of (dare, I use the word) indignation.“How had things got to this point?” she seemed to be demanding to know.
This is a question too for our current era . As Europe convulses with doubt about its own existence as an entity, I have my own queries about popular culture. I want to know why I don’t hear songs on mainstream radio that reflect the temper of the time. Today, who is singing about society’s ills?
According to Guardian newspaper music journalist Luke Morgan Britton, “most bands regard social commentary as career self-sabotage [and] alternative artists are increasingly silent about about activism.” While it's true, as he argues, that in the charts “there have been hits reconfiguring female sexuality, videos promoting positive body image, as well as LGBT anthems” I have heard nothing that reflects the range of social movements working against government austerity, poverty, homelessness or justice for tax-avoiders and rogue bankers.
It wasn’t always this way, of course. In the last half century alone, popular music has given us the honest power of Bob Dylan’s early career and a host of other music-industry civil rights campaigners. They must be listening to the egotistical prattle and posturing of this century’s brand name sponsored hip-hop/R&B acts - who claim to speak for the oppressed - and the older activists would have to be wondering when it all went so wrong.
In the more affluent years of the 1980’s and 1990’s social problems were represented with sharp urgency through well-known singers like Bruce Springsteen, Billy Bragg, Sinéad O'Connor, Elvis Costello, Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel. Even bubble-gum pop duo Wham did a benefit concert for striking miners back then in the Thatcher years.
I am probably out of touch with some of the more underground sides of the cultural landscape but one of my interests is music as a source of social change - especially changing the minds of ordinary people, beyond just preaching to the converted. To do this mainstream media is necessary.
When I again hear music on the car radio that gets me questioning things I will be (for a few minutes) a happy man once more.

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, Sept. 2015.]

"The Spectre of Democracy haunts Europe"

Yanis Varoufakis in absorbing conversation with [that rare creature, an Australian public intellectual] Phillip Adams, on the former Greek finance minister's favourite radio program: Australia's ABC radio Late Night Live. 

They talk about his Frangy address/manifesto for a campaign to Democratise the Eurozone as well as the forthcoming snap Greek election.

Dinner "Withlocals" Barcelona - a review

This week I was fortunate enough to have a free dinner courtesy of Withlocals (in exchange for writing this blog post.)


 

In a small apartment near Barcelona's Plaça d'Espanya my wife Paula and I met a home cook who uses the name Yosuzand a Finnish friend of hers. We were immediately served glasses of homemade summer white-wine sangriaand started nibbling on fried pastry triangles which we dipped into a lovely smoky, roasted baba ganousheggplant dip.

We all soon sat down to get know each other over a wonderful home-cooked meal of salty Portuguese clams, simple "Spanish-style" mussels and a seafood and pasta stew. The food was exceptionally fresh, not at all overcooked and I greatly enjoyed the difference from Spanish food in that coriander leaves were used rather than parsley.

For dessert we tucked into another homemade delicacy - this one pistachio ice cream served with an unexpected dab of tahini paste on the side which beautifully accented the nuttiness of the dish (see picture.) Yosuz had lived for some time in Egypt (as well as in Venezuela and England) and this was also reinforced in the perfumed hibiscus tea we drank before saying our thanks and goodbyes.

If our experience was indicative of what a curious, hungry person usually finds using Withocals then I highly recommend it to anyone visiting a foreign country or even living in one. It struck me as a great way to try international food of your choice and meet new people.