Video: "The right to die in Belgium: An inside look at the world’s most liberal euthanasia law"

"With the most liberal laws in the world governing physician-assisted suicide, surveys in Belgium show overwhelming support for its legality. Doctors say euthanasia gives terminally ill patients experiencing constant and unbearable suffering a practical and humane way to die peacefully. But even in a country with far-reaching acceptance, controversy still remains."

"Blue Black Friday" - My latest opinion column for Catalonia Today

Just last month we witnessed the latest craze from the USA arrive here.

Without doubt, the Black Friday sales will now be an annual event and will certainly grow in intensity each year.

If anything accurately represents pure, raw capitalism it was the sight of crowds of people surging and barging though department store doors. Some had bulging eyes.

Some were smiling in anticipation or possibly relief at finally being inside the gates of the consumerist's palace. Other people were clearly using their arms and shoulders to shove slower shoppers out of their way.

In the UK police had to restrain mobs at some Tesco stores and arguments and fights broke out in branches of ASDA (owned by U.S. giant Wal-Mart.) Four arrests for violence were made in Greater Manchester alone.
 
One report quoted a 56-year-old hairdresser on an overnight trip to a Sainsbury supermarket saying that the scenes were "crazy" and "disgusting". "I got a Dyson [vacuum cleaner], but I don't even know if I want it. I just picked it up," she said.
 
This pandemonium is aside from the online sales that also form part of the Black Friday marketing push.
 
Amazon was the first to introduce the trend into Europe in 2010 and this year in Germany and France a number of major retailers (including FNAC) publicised the day and offered claims of reductions.
 
In Spain, El Corte Inglés went even further than its rivals and hosted a four-day fiesta of supposed discounts.
 
Naturally, it was in the US where the day went to it's animalistic extremes of riots and frenzied stampedes.
 
Last year there were separate incidences of a shooting and a stabbing and this year five injuries were recorded, along with three arrests.
 
The website BlackFridayDeathCount.com has kept records of relevant news stories and has documented at least seven deaths and ninety six injuries in the U.S. since 2006. (Somewhat ironically, the website also sells T-shirts with the words "I survived Black Friday" on them for $18.00.)
 
Of course, I'm all in favour of a real bargain and I love a bit of a haggling at a market stall.
 
I would think that many of the people who buy in store or online on Black Friday are genuinely wanting to save money on something that they may not have been able to afford without a drop in the sale price or they simply believe that they are getting a product that will in some way enhance their lives.
 
I just question whether a lot of the buying is in any real sense, needed.
 
Having grown up in an Australian city where the shopping mall was the focus of social life for the easily-influenced young, as well as plenty of retired people, I have a fundamental disagreement with spending money as a major free time pursuit.
 
Europe is full of parks, beaches, squares and even ramblas: all public spaces not specifically made for commercial activity.
 
Anyone is free to be in theses places without thinking of them self as a consumer first.
 
In a shopping mall there are usually almost no seats that are not part of some kind of cafe or food joint. To be there is to be a buyer.
 
Simply put, I just want to live in a part of the world that continues to value things that don't have a money value.

[A version of this article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, January 2015.]

Another season of Australian film in Barcelona

Following on from the successful ASBA-RMIT Australian Film Season, the Australian Embassy and Casa Asia are presenting an Australian Film Season at Cinemas Girona [C/Girona, 175, 08025, Barcelona] starting this Saturday, 10 January, and running each Saturday night until 14 February.

Entry price: 2, 50 Euros.

See link here for more details.

My review of "An Englishman in Madrid" by Eduardo Mendoza

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

"Look, I'll tell you how things really are," says one of the author's characters (speaking in 1936) "whatever they say, this is not a poor country. This is a country of poor people."

And it is the elements of social class, poverty and inherited wealth that I most enjoyed in this book, and not just those about Spain.

The Englishman of the title is Anthony Whitelands, a middle-class, Cambridge-educated art specialist who meets a seemingly generous and affable police officer on a train to the capital.

Before long though, we learn that he is being closely watched.

Whitelands has arrived in an atmosphere of public demonstrations, protest marches, strikes, beatings and sometimes fatal street violence between the forces of the right and the left.

The victims are largely the young and politically undeveloped but Whitelands is at first ignorant of all the friction and tension that was gripping so much of the country.

Increasingly, the protagonist is caught up in a number of situations outside his control and he is also snared by his own appetites: both carnal and his desire for greater recognition and fortune in "the narrow world of academia, with its tedious research and sordid rivalries."

He sees himself as just a small fish but is convinced that a newly discovered (privately-owned) Velazquez painting could be exactly what he his hoping for.

Whitelands goes on to find himself "in somewhat of a pickle," as his compatriots might say - everyone in the big, small town of Madrid wanting a piece of him for their own particular reasons.

He appears in many senses to be an "English gentlemen" but he eats like someone else. I find it hard to accept that he would sit down to a breakfast of "squid and beer."

Amongst other things, what really comes through in the pages of this jaunty, lively tale is Mendoza's sensitive and intuitive reading of art.

This book reads like a longish short story though it has a pace that is clearly Mediterranean. After ninety pages very little has happened.

It's a kind of slow burner with the characters regularly spouting extended "speechifying" monologues or digressing into unconnected anecdotes.

The reader gets a good feel for their personalities, facial expressions and other mannerisms and this all gives the narrative the feel of something written almost in the period in which it is said. That's not something easily achieved by a writer sitting at a computer in the 21st century.

The author is also astute enough to point out the existence of masons in Azaña's government of the time and, with an eye for detail, draws what he must think is a distinction between the British upper class with their apparent love of ceremony and the Spanish upper class who opt for simpler, less formal social situations and meals.

One of his more observant characters knows the necessity of explaining to the Englishman that "it's not just money that the proletariat wants. They want justice and respect."

In fact Mendoza drops comments on the hesitancy, contradictory decision-making and general malfunctioning of public administration that surely also apply to many companies and to the excesses of today.

"The Spaniard's keep wages low," says a English diplomat "while at the same time making social hierarchies plain. Workers earn half what they should and have to thank their employers...That way, their social position is reinforced."

On the other hand, one of the Spanish toffs makes the absurd statement that England has an "egalitarian society based on social relations that satisfy everyone," as if the trade union members and socialists in Britain did not exist.

Ultimately, the author entertains and occasionally informs while giving a relatively favourable portrait of the Spanish "nobility" of the day. He provides an explanation for their inaction on social progress that lies somewhere between a reason and a weak excuse.

"Peaceful, but menacing: German xenophobia"

"Calling themselves Pegida, or “patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the Occident”, since October they have marched through Dresden every Monday. Their numbers are growing: on December 15th 15,000 protested. Their slogans of xenophobic paranoia (“No sharia in Europe!”) seem bizarre in Saxony, where only 2% of the population is foreign and fewer than 1% are Muslim.

The marchers make no attempt to explain their demands. Convinced of a conspiracy of political correctness, they do not speak to the press. Few bear any signs of neo-Nazism. They have eschewed violence. What they share is broad anxiety about asylum-seekers (200,000 in 2014) and immigrants."

Read more from source here.

UPDATE - 23/12/14: 17,000 people attend rally against Islam and immigration in Germany

Putting down Orwell

It's a genuinely encouraging development to see that with Hispabooks there is a new publisher for works from Spanish authors because the English-language world benefits from this.

I dislike the title of this article though. 

To put down Orwell is a mistake. Yes, his book "Homage to Catalonia" is now dated in a few small parts but it and his other writing, especially his non-fiction essays are still insightful and highly relevant. I do agree that it's absurd to build up a picture of Spain only from people like Hemingway.

Chris Finnegan mentions a number of books I'd like to read. He could just as easily have also mentioned two fine authors originally from Barcelona - Eduardo Mendoza and Juan Goytisolo, whose autobiography I finished reading recently and highly recommend on a number of levels.

"The best of times?" - My latest opinion column for Catalonia Today magazine

Has there ever been a better time to be alive in the history of our tortured, super-intelligent species? 

At the press of a few buttons we have virtually all the accumulated knowledge of the last several hundred (or is it thousand?) years available. And it is available fast.

We have the answers to a billion conceivable questions and we can communicate almost instantly with the majority of people on the planet, language barriers excepted. 

For many of us, our taste buds can be stimulated by the food from dozens of cultures who, just a few short years ago were out of reach, either geographically or economically. 

In this increasingly mixed European society, young people have started to grow up sitting next to others from Asia, Africa and assorted parts of the wider continent and for them this is as natural as mother's milk.

On top of all this, there is a gentleness that in so many senses did not exist just a generation ago. 

A man can be intimately involved in the care of his baby or child without automatically being a figure of gossip or ridicule. He can be the main cook for his family and not be thought of us somehow suspect. 

Finally too, homosexuals are more accepted or at least tolerated in the majority of circles, rather than being chemically castrated as some were less than seventy years ago (in the UK for example.)

Today too, there are increasing numbers of people who are not only acknowledging their own depression or mental illness but are speaking openly about it in public forums and in the media. 

Such a development was virtually unthinkable merely a decade ago. 

Equally though, the average women in the developed world has a wider horizon than ever before. Her place in the workplace is now barely questioned at all, though she may still be paid less than a man or have trouble getting a full-time position or promoted according to her ability.

Yet despite this progress, despite the modern mind being freer from superstition and religious dogma than probably any time in history, what do we also have?

Underneath the shiny towers of vanity there is a great, putrid sewer stench of injustice. 

There is the distinct sensation of a nausea without relief and that comes from having both your eyeballs open and your ears unblocked. Anyone who chooses to not be ignorant knows, as Leonard Cohen wrote, "the deal is rotten." 

And all those signs of enlightenment that came to view in the the first half of the 20th century now have a faded quality and there is a hollow ring to the chants, songs and poems of social movements.

Throw into this mix the fact that the warming of the earth continues at pace. 

It is only those who genuinely don't understand or politicians who have been bought out by the polluting industries that do not accept the truth of the overheating globe that we walk on. 

Or think of the wealth that flows through financial systems. Shockingly, the 85 richest people on the planet now have as much money as the poorest 3.5 billion. 

And what else?

There's the vacant look of history's books

Slave labour and murder thy neighbour

Greed as a virtue and carers that hurt you

This is the present we have

We see the limp hand of the state and rape-a-date

The power of one at the point of a gun

And the good times are back with daily Prozac

This is the future that right now we have

See that liar's smile when the truth's on trial?

This is the justice we have.

Living and laughing in ignorance bliss

We have fashioned a world exactly like this.

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, December 2014.]

New English language theatre in Barcelona

http://oshev.ipage.com/tremayneco/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Marie-poster.jpg

"Marie’s Crisis Cafe is a new play. It’s set in a piano bar run by Marie with help from her friend Beauridge. On the surface the bar is just a regular place where people, like Grainger, drown their sorrows – and tourists sing to fit in. 


Dig a little deeper, and it’s also a place where troubled souls are fixed. And so life continues day in day out, until Thea shows up out of the blue… Drama, humour, despair and hope with a touch of the surreal in the modern age."

See poster for details.

"The Australian Dream...or Nightmare:" A talk by poet Rod Usher at the University of Barcelona

As part of the Tricontinental Lecture Series 2014, this Monday and Tuesday there will be talks by Extremadura-based Australian poet and writer Rod Usher, with readings from his new collection, Convent Mermaid.

Details:

Department of English and German Studies

Australian Studies Centre

Faculty of Philology

University of Barcelona (UB)

Gran Via, 585

08007 Barcelona, Spain

1st December, at 8.00 in Room 2.2 and at 2.30 in Room 3.1.

2nd December at 12.30 in Room 3.1.

Video: talking and listening on "Our Finest Hour"

http://www.elpuntavui.tv/video.html?view=video&video_id=112411970

This Thursday I was a guest on Matthew Tree's new English language talk show, "Our Finest Hour," on El Punt Avui TV. 

Also involved were academic and musician Roger Evans and author Simon Harris.

"'Swindler' Gypsies slam Spain's new dictionary"

 

[Two members of Spain's Gypsy community cast their ballots in European Union elections in 2009. 

File photo: Cristina Quicler/AFP]

"Roma rights groups are to protest against the decision by Spain's Royal Language Academy (RAE) to include a definition of a 'gypsy' as a 'swindler' in their new official dictionary..."

Read more from source here.

Video: Matthew Tree interviewed on new English language TV programme

http://www.elpuntavui.tv/video.html?view=video&video_id=111721186

Catalonia Today Editor Marcela Topor interviews prolific British Catalan author Matthew Tree for a new English language programme on El Punt Avui TV.

Next Thursday (the 20th) I will be a guest on Matthew's new chat show, "Our Finest Hour," also on El Punt Avui.

The things we eat (and how social class decides)

"Do the rich and poor eat the same? Do our incomes determine our diet? Today, who is overweight? 

Although often, and from certain quarters, the call for healthy and wholesome food is viewed with disdain, as “a fad” “posh”, “hippy” or “flower power” the reality is rather different than these short-sighted comments imply. To defend ecological, local, peasant food is most 'revolutionary'. "

Read more from this article by Barcelona journalist and activist, Ester Vivas here.

"When government is sport" - My latest opinion column for Catalonia Today magazine

I don't often think about Australia.

I was born there, grew up there and, until 15 years ago, I lived there. It's almost become a (very) foreign country to me but recently it has crept into my thoughts again.

This remaining ember of interest in a place, which many people here in Europe tell me is "very far away," hasn't been prompted by anything in particular.

I've just noticed that some of the reasons that made me want to leave it are still very much alive.

In Australia, there is compulsory voting in "federal" elections and you are likely to be fined if you don't go to vote.

Twelve months ago this island continent of almost 22 million people elected a new government with a leader named Tony Abbott, who is without any doubt the most conservative individual to ever take up the office of Prime Minister in the history of the nation.

The odd thing about this is that Australians themselves have not typically been thought of as conservative.

Historically, the best of the traits that generally marked the average "Aussie" were tolerance and fair-mindedness with an anti-establishment streak. If the men and women of any area of the world can accurately be said to have particular characteristics (and I often doubt that) it is probably in Australia where it is less likely to be the case, given that it is a country that has always been populated from immigrants.

Aside from that, you'd expect that in a nominally democratic country the national government would reflect both the wishes of the people and the broad values of its people.

From a distance, it seems to me that in the last few decades many Australians have in fact become more money and property obsessed, more dismissive of the "unproductive" arts industries, more inward-looking and more easily manipulated by politicians scare campaigns.

In other words, they are now more conservative than ever before.

In this, Australians are not unusual though. The same accusation could be made against many other societies.

I think that a big part of the change in Australia is that interest in social and political causes is now terribly low across the populace. This partly comes from being a relatively new country with only a century or so of homegrown history but, even more so, it comes from the way politics is reported in the mainstream media.

Whenever I visit Australia I am struck by how much the governing of the country is portrayed as merely a battle between the two leaders of the two major parties - a kind of boxing match or two-horse race.

Sport in almost all its forms is easily the biggest element of culture across the land.

There is nothing that comes close to it for prime time attention or public discussion, so it is probably not surprising that Australians are drip fed poll-driven, ultra short-term political issues (often tax-related) that all turn on how they affect the leaders popularity or approval ratings.

In a former life (for a few months) I worked for a local Canberra politician - that rare creature, the principled and independently-minded one - and it was clear to me even back then that in the months of actual election campaigning the only figure who really mattered was the party's chief candidate for the highest office.

When newspapers, TV, and radio are all in the hands of only two major companies this problem is made worse.

This has been the situation in Australia for more than two generations and the dominant, apathetic attitude towards any public concern that does not affect the hip-pocket nerve means that minor parties stay minor.

Combine all this with the fact that, just like the USA and UK for example, both the two major groupings are as conservative as the majority of their voters.

We have ended up with a situation where politics is a game.

The name of the game is getting your hands on the levers of power and keeping them there, at any cost.

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, November 2014.]

"9 year old Spanish boy becomes Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year"

"Since 1964, the National History Museum in London has been organizing their annual Wildlife Photographer Of The Year contest.




This year, the Grand title winner in Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year, which includes photographers up to 17 years of age, was Carlos Perez Naval – a 9-year-old boy from Spain."


Read more from source here.

With no comment...

It would be interesting to see a similar map of Asia, wouldn't it?

[Source: http://jakubmarian.com/map-of-the-percentage-of-people-speaking-english-in-the-eu-by-country/]

"Eyes wide shut? Will the future of journalism mean we are better informed?"

"At 18:30 GMT on Wednesday the 22nd October 2014, Index on Censorship and the Frontline Club will host a debate on the future of journalism.

This debate will be in English and will take place at 13 Norfolk Place, London."

Click here to go directly to the live stream (between c.18:30 and 20:00 GMT on Wednesday)!

"Why Does Spain Have the World's Highest Concentration of Elevators?"

Marcelo del Pozo/Reuters

An article that answers this question [Franco is a big reason] but also so much more...

Europe's secret trade deal

One of those moments when our European Parliament members are actually crucial to the future of both the UK and wider Europe...

"A shady deal is being negotiated in secret right now. It could permanently privatise the Britsih public health system and allow big corporations to sue European governments if they don't like our laws (such as simply raising the minimum wage.)

It's called the Transatlantic Trade Investment Partnership, or TTIP for short, and this EU-US trade deal is one of the most dangerous ever written.

Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have the power to scupper it. But first they need to feel the pressure from the people they represent - us, the public. Can you add your name to a huge EU-wide petition and help convince them? Click here to sign or just read more."

"Poor doors" - My latest opinion column for Catalonia Today magazine

When I was a kid and just starting to try and understand the adult world I used to hear my parents and other grown-ups make what seemed to be jokes about the "tradesman's entrance." 

I eventually learned that these words were a kind of sexual slang for the anus but were also more literally "the side or back door of a large house, used, especially in the past, by people delivering goods who were not allowed to use the main entrance at the front of the house."

Now though, another somewhat similar kind of entry/exit is becoming common in new apartment blocks in those two western-world trendsetters cities of New York and London. Tenants in these buildings must use two different entrances, depending on whether they live in the cheaper flats or the expensive part of the accommodation.

New York mayor Bill de Blasio has stated his opposition to what some of the city's residents have called "poor doors" although his administration has approved a number that have already been planned and built. 

Arguing in their favour, David Von Spreckelsen, senior vice president at US property developers Toll Brothers was reported as saying "You have politicians saying how horrible these back doors are. I think it’s unfair to expect very high-income homeowners who paid a fortune to live in their building to have to be in the same boat as low-income renters, who are very fortunate to live in a new building in a great neighborhood." 

The mayor of London, Boris Johnson is refusing to ban poor doors despite an increasing number of developments in the English capital having so-called "alternative access." Even bicycle storage spaces, rubbish disposal facilities and postal deliveries are also being separated in some residential complexes. 

One argument has been that doing so keeps construction costs down but in New York there are financial incentives to include "affordable" flats in the same location as luxury ones. So it is now apparent that architects are too often entirely at the mercy of owners and investors and will do whatever is necessary to keep them happy.

In central London there is another phenomenon that is becoming more publicised. 

Outside several housing buildings and supermarkets, sharp metal spikes have been put into the concrete in the corner of the doorway outside, clearly as a way of preventing homeless people from sleeping there. One charity says this has actually been a common practice for over a decade and I recently saw a photo of a progressive activist pouring liquid concrete to cover over these metal studs.

It's no coincidence that at this very same time the UK Border Agency has recently admitted that it is working on plans for fast-track passport lanes for travellers of "high economic value" (ie. rich) at British airports. 

Supposedly this is needed so that they do not have to wait in the queue like the rest of the species. 

I'm not pretending that there are not more significant problems in our world at this moment but poor doors, anti-homeless studs and immigration lines that divide people according to the size of their bank balance are all symptoms of a sickness, a backward habit of mind.

After all the public talk is done and the justifications have been made, these things end up encouraging lesser treatment of those without the good fortune to be wealthy. 

When the smaller details of life of are changed - doors, queues, public places - it creates less public resistance to the idea of changing bigger details. 

In this way, schools or health services can be separated along class lines, without us really noticing.

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, October 2014.]