Venezuela's Hugo Chavez allegedly helped Colombian, Spanish militants forge ties

Chávez (Manuel Diaz - AP)

By Juan Forero
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 20, 2010; A09

MACHIQUES, VENEZUELA -- For two years, Colombian officials have accused Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez of providing arms and sanctuary to Marxist rebels intent on toppling Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, Washington's closest ally in a turbulent region.

Now, based on documents and witness testimony, Chávez is facing fresh accusations that his government has gone well beyond assisting the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Documents seized from two subversive groups, along with information provided by former Colombian guerrillas, suggest that Venezuela facilitated training sessions here between the FARC and ETA, a separatist group in Spain that uses assassinations and bombings in its effort to win independence for the northern Basque region.

The evidence led Judge Eloy Velasco of the National Court in Madrid to level charges of terrorism and conspiracy to commit murder in March against a Chávez government official, Arturo Cubillas, and a dozen members of the FARC and ETA. Spanish authorities want Venezuela to extradite those accused, but so far the Chávez government has not responded to Velasco's international warrant.

The latest revelations, largely based on information collected by Spanish investigators in Colombia, Venezuela and France, prompted Arturo Valenzuela, the State Department's assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere affairs, to declare in a congressional hearing in March that the Obama administration is "extremely concerned" by the allegations.

With Chávez hamstrung by harsh economic conditions, some in the U.S. Congress worry that the Venezuelan president could increasingly radicalize and forge closer links with subversive organizations or nations such as Iran, Sudan and Belarus.

"As he gets more bogged down domestically by the natural consequences of capricious rule, we are likely to see more troubling relationships," Carl Meacham, senior aide to Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said by phone from Washington.

Chávez strikes back

The new spotlight on Venezuela's alleged links to subversives has been so uncomfortable to Chávez that he has warned that Spain's multibillion-dollar investments here could suffer. Critics in Venezuela have also been intimidated for speaking out about the FARC or ETA.

When Oswaldo Álvarez Paz, an opposition figure here, publicly expressed support for Velasco's investigation in a television interview, he was arrested and charged with spreading false information.

"This government does not endorse nor support any terrorist group," Chávez said in March soon after Velasco's indictment. "We have nothing to explain to anyone."

Chávez critics have long asserted that his government could be aiding groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah. But this is the first time judicial authorities outside Colombia have leveled accusations that link Venezuela's government with terrorist groups.

"There is nothing like this in the world, showing support for organizations that are declared terrorist groups," said Gustavo de Arístegui, a Spanish commentator and author of the book "Against the West," which details the anti-Western stand of Chávez and his allies, including Cuba's Fidel Castro and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Colombian authorities who have sifted through documents seized from three rebel commanders in 2008 and 2009 said they discovered that ETA operatives met with FARC guerrillas in rural camps from 2003 to 2008. Those camps were located outside Machiques, this cattle-raising town in Venezuela's northwestern Zulia state, as well as farther south in sparsely populated Apure state, according to Colombian government documents.

Colombian security service officials say ETA members taught bombmaking techniques to the explosives experts of at least five FARC units. Velasco, in his complaint, said that among those who facilitated the meetings in Venezuela was Cubillas, a Basque exile who had arrived in the country in 1989 and was absorbed by a small Basque community in Caracas. Cubillas, until recently an official in the state's National Land Institute, could not be reached for comment.

Ex-guerrillas speak

Two former FARC guerrillas who disarmed and now live freely in Colombia said in interviews that they saw ETA operatives in FARC camps outside Machiques in 2008.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity because they fear retribution for having cooperated with Colombian authorities, the former rebels described how Venezuelan military officers accompanied ETA operatives to the camps. The training, the rebels said, included how to build rockets and car bombs.

"They would talk about how they use them in Spain -- how they hid them under the cushions in cars," the older rebel, who is 23, said of the ETA explosives.

Colombian authorities said the FARC has in recent years begun activating car bombs with cellphones, a tactic long perfected by ETA. Authorities say they are also increasingly seeing remote-controlled land mines.

"The ramifications of this happening in territory we do not control is that the FARC increased its capacity to get new technology and modernize," said a high-ranking security services official in Colombia.

ETA benefited by taking advantage of Venezuela's isolated jungle camps to test weapons that could not be fired in Spain, said Florencio Domínguez, an expert on ETA in Bilbao, Spain. "They develop new tactics, new mechanisms, share experiences -- that's what ETA's terrorism entails, and it threatens the security of Spanish citizens," Domínguez said.

Velasco's criminal complaint also alleges that the FARC asked ETA to assassinate prominent Colombians in Spain. No one was killed, but the targets included President Uribe and Antanas Mockus, a former Bogota mayor now running for president in Colombia.

Colombian and Spanish authorities say that among those ETA closely tracked in Spain was former Colombian president Andrés Pastrana, who lived in Madrid for more than three years after he left office in 2002.

"President Chávez needs to give us an explanation of what happened," said Pastrana, who now lives in Bogota. "I left Colombia because of security, and now I learn that I was a target of ETA."

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Barcelona Journal - Trumpeting Catalan on the Big Screen

Image via Wikipedia

By JOHN TAGLIABUE

BARCELONA, Spain — Here in the principal city of Catalonia, the native language, Catalan, is heard just about everywhere except in the movies. But that may be about to change because the local government is expected to pass a bill requiring that at least half the copies of every film from outside Europe, including all major American productions, be dubbed in Catalan.

That prompted 576 of the 790 movie houses in Catalonia, a region slightly bigger than Maryland, to close for a day last month in protest.

Industry leaders recalled that Catalonia’s government, which enjoys a broad measure of autonomy from Madrid, made a similar proposal in 1998 but backed down in the face of opposition from theater owners, film distributors and foreign production companies. “They say it’s necessary for the government to make a rule, because the private sector doesn’t do it,” said Camilo Tarrazón Rodón, president of the Association of Film Businesses in Catalonia, which opposes the bill.

Film attendance has declined in recent years, he said, with the exception of an uptick last year thanks to the arrival of digital and 3-D. “Banks are not lending, companies have business problems and kids look at films on cellphones,” Mr. Tarrazón said. “How can we pay for it?”

With an influx of immigrants to prosperous Catalonia — about one million of the 7.3 million population are newcomers — the region has been struggling to maintain what it considers its Catalonian soul. The bill is but the latest attempt to assert Catalan culture and its language — similar to Spanish, but also to French and Italian — yet with its own history, poets and prose writers.

By law, schoolchildren are required to receive their education in Catalan. In a further blow to Spanish culture, a referendum before the Catalan Parliament would end bullfighting, another Spanish passion, here altogether.

The draft film law comes at a time of deep uncertainty for the central government in Madrid, which is struggling with a severe economic crisis and high unemployment. But it also highlights Barcelona’s curious role in Spanish culture, even as it seeks to assert its distinctness.

Oddly, Barcelona is the capital of Spain’s publishing industry, and roughly three-fourths of all books purchased in the region are in Spanish, said Joan Manuel Tresserras, 55, a former communications professor who is now the Catalan culture minister. Half of all radio programs are heard in Catalan and a majority of plays in the city’s theaters, with the exception of musicals, are in Catalan.

“We think we need a more diverse cinematic culture, a wider range of opportunities,” he said, seated under two big canvases by the 20th-century Catalan painter Miquel Barceló. Under Franco, the use of Catalan was discouraged, Mr. Tresserras said. That eased after Franco’s death in 1975, but even two years later, Mr. Tresserras, then serving in the army, said he spent three days in solitary confinement after officers overheard him speaking Catalan.

Mr. Tresserras says moviegoers do not go to films in Catalan because so few are shown — about 3 percent of all movies — that they are not aware they might have that alternative. But theater owners and distributors say there are few films in Catalan because moviegoers do not want them.

The magazine Cineytele said that in tests at a multiplex in Barcelona, only 12 of 131 moviegoers chose Catalan when offered the choice of seeing the same foreign film in that or Spanish.

Not everyone is convinced. “Most theater is in Catalan, and there are no complaints,” said Rosanna Rion, 46, who grew up speaking Catalan and teaches English at Barcelona University. “These tests — I’m not so sure about them.”

What major film producers, including American majors, have told the government here is that they fear, in addition to the additional cost, a possible knock-on effect. “They fear that Galicia or the Basque countries, or even the Bretons or Corsica, in France, could be next,” said Joan Antoni Gonzáles, 61, who is secretary general of Catalonia’s Federation of Audiovisual Producers, which last year broke away from Spain’s national organization. The draft law would not affect films that were shot in Spanish, or European films unless more than 15 copies are circulated, so the brunt will clearly be felt by American productions.

Mr. Gonzáles says he believes that Parliament will “make the law sweeter for the majors,” possibly by having the government pay for the dubbing — a task made easier by the introduction of digitalized films. Last year, box office revenue at Catalonia’s film theaters rose by almost 10 percent, thanks mainly to the introduction of digital and 3-D blockbusters like “Avatar,” he said.

He cited a recent film, “Elegy,” by the Catalan director Isabel Coixet, an adaptation of a Philip Roth novel in which a college teacher becomes obsessed with a student, played by Penélope Cruz. “Elegy,” he said, was shown in seven theaters in the original English with Catalan subtitles, and was a total success.

Some visitors to Barcelona feel the city is sufficiently cosmopolitan to absorb any languages. “Most of my courses are in Spanish, though my American literature courses are in English,” said Luigi Suardi, 23, an Italian exchange student at Barcelona University. He said his friends spoke a mix of Spanish and Catalan. “People living in Barcelona don’t have strong feelings” about language, he said, adding, “It’s difficult for small countries.”

Enric Juste, 33, a documentary filmmaker, said that above all, Catalonia lacked original films with subtitles. “There is no tradition here of using subtitles,” he said. “People are not used to such films.”

He favors the draft law, dismissing critics who say films in Catalan do not draw viewers. “But there are so few films in Catalan, you’re talking about a situation that, at the moment, is fiction; you cannot talk about a situation that doesn’t exist.”

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Key leader of Eta Basque separatists held in France

One of the top leaders of the Basque separatist group Eta has been arrested in north-western France, the Spanish interior ministry has said.

Ibon Gogeascotxea was arrested with two other suspected Eta members in a French and Spanish operation in Normandy.

Madrid said the arrests had foiled a planned "commando" operation in Spain.

A militant group fighting for an independent Basque homeland, Eta has been blamed for more than 820 deaths during its 41-year campaign in Spain.

Eta called a short-lived truce in 2006, but broke it in December of that year.

Guggenheim plot

The Spanish interior ministry said Ibon Gogeascotxea was the "most senior" member of Eta and its military chief.

The arrests took place close to the small Normandy village of Cahan.

The Spanish interior ministry said the three arrested men had raised suspicion after renting a rural home with false identities and using a car with fake number plates.

Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said the operation was "very significant".

The other two men were named as Beinat Aguinalde Ugartemendia, 26, and Gregorio Jimenez Morales, 55.

Mr Rubalcaba said the pair "were part of a commando [unit] ready to enter Spain".

They had come to "say goodbye to the military chief, who gave them their final instructions as Eta has a habit of doing", Mr Rubalcaba said.

Ibon Gogeascotxea was born in 1965 and has been on the run since 1997 after members of the Eta group's Katu cell allegedly tried to kill King Juan Carlos when he attended the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.

The cell is also wanted for attacks on Burgos and Majorca.

French and Spanish authorities have maintained close cooperation to try to track down Eta members.

Four suspected members of Eta were arrested in Portugal and France in January.

Three weeks ago Portuguese police also seized half a tonne of explosives at a house they said was being used as a base by Eta.

Although there have been a number of arrests of leaders, Eta has remained active - the group killed three Spanish police officers using car bombs in 2009.

In December, Spain raised its terror alert level to two on a four-point scale.

Mr Rubalcaba said that despite recent arrests, Spain did "not rule out an attack by Eta".

Eta is considered a terrorist organisation by the European Union and the US.

Americas: International Mother Language Day

Americas: International Mother Language Day

Posted By Laura Vidal On 2010-02-24 @ 15:29 pm In Americas, Arts & Culture, Ethnicity, General, History, Indigenous, Language, Spanish, Weblog | 2 Comments

UNESCO invites the world to celebrate the International Mother Language Day ^[1] annually on February 21 to encourage all communities to “promote linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism.” According to Koïchiro Matsuura, former UNESCO Director-General:

…Languages constitute an irreducible expression of human creativity in all its diversity. Tools of communication, perception and reflection, they also shape the way we view the world and provide a link between past, present and future. They bear within them the traces of their
encounters, the diverse sources from which they have borrowed, each according to its own particular history.”

^[2]

Celebration in front of the International Mother Language Day Monument in Ashfield, Sidney (Australia). Photo by Anisur Rahman and used under Wikimedia Commons

In recent times when many of the world languages are in risk of extinction ^[3], this day reminds many of the importance of mother tongues through the discussion about the need to maintain global cultural diversity as long as possible. Part of these efforts, according to Matsuura, include a primary school in Kosovo that has launched a series of exchanges with students from “different schools and nations”; celebrations with poems, indigenous songs, stories, plays, and a ceremony organized in the Philippines titled, “In the Galaxy of Languages, Every Word is a Star.” This celebration has also been important in Bangladesh ^[4], where they have been celebrating the diversity of languages since 1952.

David Galeano Oliveira, in his blog Café Historia [es] ^[5] supports this idea:

Cada lengua refleja una visión única del mundo y una cultura compleja que refleja la forma en la que una comunidad ha resuelto sus problemas en su relación con el mundo, y en la que ha formulado su pensamiento, su sistema filosófico y el entendimiento del mundo que le rodea. Por eso, con la muerte y desaparición de una lengua, se pierde para siempre una parte insustituible de nuestro conocimiento del pensamiento y de la visión del mundo.

Each language reflects a unique vision of the globe and a complex culture that shows the way in which a community solves its problems around their own relationship of the world. It also shows how these peoples have made up their thoughts, their philosophical system and the understanding of their surroundings. This is why, with the death of a language, also comes the loss of an irreplaceable part of our own knowledge and our vision of the world.

The Ongoing Discussion About What is “Good” Spanish

“We ended up losing…we ended up winning…they took the gold and left us the gold…they took everything and left us everything…they left us the words”

Pablo Neruda ^[6]

Most Spanish speakers are located in Latin America ^[7]; of all countries with a majority of Spanish speakers, only Spain and Equatorial Guinea are outside the Americas. For many in the region, Spanish is considered to be their mother tongue based on the long history with Spain. However, the Spanish language differs from country to country, which brings up discussions and debates about origins, forms and “styles”. In the blog Sacando la Lengua [es] ^[8], I tried to underline the fact that these difference are today a futile matter of discussion:

Hace mucho que nos hemos dado cuenta de que el idioma más que algo abstracto pareciera más bien tomar la forma de un animal salvaje; y como tal, cambia, evoluciona y crece. ¿Se podrá dominar a este animal? Muy buena suerte a los que lo intenten. Una vez preso, cambiará de forma. Observar su belleza traerá seguramente muchos menos cotilleos bizantinos que determinar cuál es la exacta, o cuál es la “correcta” forma de hablar la lengua de Lorca, de las versiones y diversiones de Paz, de la hilarante modestia de Borges y de tantos otros que lo hablan y lo transforman hoy. El español que habla esta inmensa cantidad de gente no es, en efecto, el mismo.

It’s been long since we realized that the language, more than something completely abstract, actually seems to take the shape of a savage animal, and as such, it changes, grows and evolves. Is it possible to tame this beast? Good luck to those who dare to try! Once in the cage, it’ll change its features. Just observing its beauty will be surely the best way to avoid wasting time splitting hairs by pointing out which is the best and most accurate way to speak the language of (Federico García) Lorca, the same one that (Octavio) Paz used in his versions and diversions and in which (Jorge Luis) Borges showed his clever modesty. It is the same language so many people use and change today. The Spanish that this large amount of people speak is not the same.

This same idea is backed up by Viviana Mejenes-Knorr, who wrote as guest editor on the blog Lexiophiles [es] ^[9]:

Como cualquier otra lengua ampliamente hablada, el español no es uniforme; en cada país hispanohablante y en cada una de sus regiones, se le añaden sazones gramaticales que crean una colorida gama sociolingüística con rasgos léxicos únicos, además de agregarle diversidad a la pronunciación.

Like any widely-spoken language, Spanish is not uniform. In every Spanish speaking country and its regions, new grammatical flavours are added, and this creates a colourful socio linguistic range with unique lexical features and new diversities in pronunciation.

Other phenomena explored in the blogosphere is the Spanish used in United States. From Argentina, Pedro Ylarri writes in his Blog del Medio [es] ^[10] a review of a new encyclopedia of Spanish in USA, which he considers a turning point in the study of this language inside the country. Pedro underlines the study of the influence of youth and its role in this evolution through technology and also gives his thoughts around the expansion of the language through culture, literature and media:

Junto a los medios de comunicación, la producción cultural plasma el empuje del español en todos sus ámbitos: revistas literarias, cuentos, poesía, teatro, música…, toda manifestación artística es rastreada históricamente hasta nuestros días, según distintas nacionalidades y corrientes.

Ante el mundo de la novela, por ejemplo, Mercedes Cortazar y Eduardo Lago nos presentan una perspectiva complementaria, colocándonos respectivamente ante la pista de las posibilidades de la narrativa escrita en español en Estados Unidos, así como ante la existencia de multitud de escritores hispanos que se expresan en inglés.

With the mainstream media, the cultural production captures the force of the Spanish in all its spheres: literary magazines, short stories, poetry, theatre, and music… All artistic expressions are tracked historically to our days, according to the different nationalities and movements.

In the literary world, for example, Mercedes Cortazar y Eduardo Lago (among other Hispanic writers expressing themselves in English) present a complementary perspective and they give us the clue on the possibilities of Spanish narrative in the States.

Posting now from the Philippines, Manolo Pérez ^[11], a blogger from Spain, observes with fascination the presence of his language in what he considered a far away land:

Realmente el español nunca se ha ido de Filipinas, se habla poco pero permanece en las lenguas locales y, sobre todo, en la Historia y en los archivos de este país, en su literatura, etc. Más que de la vuelta del español hay que hablar de la vuelta de la enseñanza del español.

Este sigue siendo un país de sorpresas y para un español más.

The Spanish language never left the Philippines. It’s not widely spoken, but it still seen in local languages and, most of all, in the history of the country and its literature. More than the return of the Spanish, we should discuss more the return of this language in education.

This is a country full of surprises, even more for a Spaniard.

The Conquest of the Spanish Language and its “Adoption” in the New World

For others in Latin America, one's mother tongue is relative. A brief historical review is summarized in Salon Hogar [es] ^[12] about this spread of the Spanish language in a region where many languages had already been present. The diversity of languages in America was -and still is- immense. Some authors point out that this continent is the most fragmented, from the linguistic point of view, with more than a hundred families of languages, inside which there are also tens or even hundreds of dialects and languages. Nonetheless, some of the most important languages coming from indigenous communities are still alive, given the number of speakers or its influence in the Spanish. Languages like Nahuatl, Taino, Maya, Quechua, Aymara, Guarani and Mapuche are some of the most important examples.

When Christopher Columbus arrived to America in 1492, the Spanish language was already consolidated in Iberian Peninsula and it started a new process in the New World with the crossbreeding and the influence of the Catholic Church. The mixture was very complex, given the diversity, not only of the indigenous communities, but also that of the Spanish that settled in the land.

Many groups are promoting the preservation of their native languages, for example the blog Information Mapuche Chile [es] ^[13]; in which it is underlined the importance of maintaining of indigenous languages:

La oportunidad de utilizar y transmitir el pensamiento y tradiciones en sus lenguas originarias representa no sólo un derecho cultural, sino que una herramienta esencial para asegurar el conocimiento de los derechos humanos. Según datos de la UNESCO, el 90% de todas las lenguas del mundo desaparecerían en los próximos 100 años.

The opportunity to use and transmit thoughts and traditions in its original languages represents not only a cultural right, but also an essential tool to ensure the access and acquaintance of Human Rights. According to UNESCO, 90% of all languages in the world would disappear in the next 100 years.

In the blog Espacio Verde [es] ^[14], a Mexican community working for environmental development, a video is shared in which is seen the linguistic richness of the country.

Also, communities like Jaqi-Aru ^[15], a group of multilingual bloggers in El Alto, Bolivia , are engaged to the promotion of Aymara language in Internet. This group is devoted, thus, to protect the evolution of their own language. Through translation projects and blogging in their native tongue ^[16], Jaqi-Aru looks to contribute with the enrichment of the Aymara language in cyberspace.

In the end, UNESCO's celebration aims to promote the value of each language resulting in the intercultural exchanges. As language represents a cultural door to a new way of thinking and an interpretation of the world. Its main objective is to respect and promote the conservation of such expressions and give them a space in a world that, now more than ever, needs to exchange views, thoughts and grow in its intercultural relations.

---

Article printed from Global Voices Online: http://globalvoicesonline.org

URL to article: http://globalvoicesonline.org/2010/02/24/americas-international-mother-language-day/

URLs in this post:

[1] International Mother Language Day: http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.php-URL_ID=40278&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

[2] Image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Int-mother-lang-day-monument.jpg

[3] world languages are in risk of extinction: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endangered_language

[4] in Bangladesh: http://globalvoicesonline.org/2008/02/21/are-languages-free-thoughts-on-the-international-mother-language-day/

[5] Café Historia [es]: http://cafehistoria.ning.com/profiles/blogs/dia-internacional-de-la-lengua

[6] Pablo Neruda: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Neruda

[7] Spanish speakers are located in Latin America: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_language#Latin_America

[8] Sacando la Lengua [es]: http://www.sacandolalengua.com/2010/01/hispanoparlantes-de-la-cite.html

[9] Lexiophiles [es]: http://www.lexiophiles.com/espanol/el-espanol-neutro

[10] writes in his Blog del Medio [es]: http://blogdelmedio.com/2008/12/23/estadisticas-e-informacion-sobre-la-prensa-en-espanol-en-estados-unidos-instituto-cervantes/

[11] Manolo Pérez: http://blogs.hoy.es/manoloperez/2009/2/8/vuelve-espanol-filipinas

[12] Salon Hogar [es]: http://www.salonhogar.com/espanol/lenguaje/lengua/his_esp_ame.htm

[13] Information Mapuche Chile [es]: http://aureliennewenmapuche.blogspot.com/2010/02/ayer-fue-dia-mundial-de-la-lengua.html

[14] Espacio Verde [es]: http://espacioverdemexico.blogspot.com/

[15] Jaqi-Aru: http://www.jaqi-aru.org/

[16] blogging in their native tongue: http://www.jaqi-aru.org/blog

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Spain's Answer to Unemployment: Go Greener - washingtonpost.com

Leader in Renewable Energy Considers Subsidies, Mandates to Build Industry

By Anthony Faiola
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, September 24, 2009

MADRID -- As world leaders converge in Pittsburgh for a major economic summit this week, one of the biggest questions they face is this: How do you begin to replace the millions of jobs destroyed by the Great Recession, now that the worst of the crisis has potentially passed?

Here on the sun-drenched and windy Iberian Peninsula, Spain thinks it has an answer: create new jobs and save the Earth at the same time.

Green jobs have become a mantra for many governments, including that of the United States. But few nations are better positioned -- or motivated -- to fuse the fight against recession and global warming than Spain. The country is already a leader in renewable fuels through $30 billion in public support and has been cited by the Obama administration as a model for the creation of a green economy. Spain generates about 24.5 percent of its electricity through renewable sources, compared with about 7 percent in the United States.

But with unemployment at 18.5 percent, the government here is preparing to take a dramatic next step. Through a combination of new laws and public and private investment, officials estimate that they can generate a million green jobs over the next decade. The plan would increase domestic demand for alternative energy by having the government help pay the bill -- but also by compelling millions of Spaniards to go green, whether they like it or not.

In the long term, the government envisions a new army of engineers and technicians nurturing windmills and solar farms amid the orange orchards and carnation fields of Andalusia and Galicia. In the short term, officials say, the renewable-energy projects and refurbishing of buildings and homes for energy efficiency could redeploy up to 80 percent of the million construction workers here who lost their jobs in 2008.

Spain's ambitious effort is being closely watched by the Obama administration and other governments forming their own green-job plans. The U.S. stimulus bill is dedicating billions in grants and loans to renewable-energy projects, marking a shift away from Washington's more passive approach to green growth, which relied largely on tax incentives.

But the bid for governments to take an ever larger role in creating jobs in the private sector -- which many leaders gathering in Pittsburgh see as their mission -- is also fraught with risks.

Though the Spanish government estimates that the alternative-energy sector generates about 200,000 jobs here, about double the number in 2000, critics contend they have cost taxpayers too much money.

In some instances, the government's good intentions have distorted the energy market.

Take, for example, the recent Spanish solar bubble.

Though wind power remains the dominant alternative energy here, the government introduced even more generous inducements in recent years to help develop photovoltaic solar power -- a technology that uses sun-heated cells to generate energy. Lured by the promise of vast new subsidies, energy companies erected the silvery silicone panels in record numbers. As a result, government subsides to the sector jumped from $321 million in 2007 to $1.6 billion in 2008.

When the government moved to curb excess production and scale back subsidies late last year, the solar bubble burst, sending panel prices dropping and sparking the loss of thousands of jobs, at least temporarily.

"What they're talking about now -- creating a new sustainable economic model through alternative energy -- is going to be exactly the opposite of sustainable," said Gabriel Calzada, a Spanish economist and critic of the government's alternative-energy policy. "You're only going to create more distortion, more bubbles. It isn't going to work."

Like Building the Internet

In 2007, only one in 20 working-age residents of advanced economies was without a job. By next year -- when the International Monetary Fund expects global unemployment to peak -- that number will have jumped to one in 10.

The job market is often the last to recover after a recession. But some economists predict a years-long stagnation in job creation and wages in developed countries, including the United States, Britain, Ireland and Spain.

At the same time, governments are trying to hash out a deal by December that would establish new cuts in emissions by 2020 in an effort to stem global warming. One of the most obvious ways for nations to meet their goals, experts say, is through alternative-energy projects.

"This is going to be like the building of the Internet," said Carlos Mulas-Granados, director general of the Ideas Foundation, a Spanish think tank associated with Prime Minister Jos? Luis Rodr?guez Zapatero's ruling Socialist Party. "We're going to use this crisis as an opportunity to rebuild the economy with clean, green growth."

The multibillion-dollar investment is a gamble Spain is willing to take because, more than any other nation hit by the crisis, it is desperate for jobs. The unemployment rate here is now one of the highest in the developed world.

The streets of Madrid and other cities are being dug up and repaved in a short-term government effort to offer temporary work to the unemployed. For most, the work will last only a few months.

"And what do we do when the roadwork runs out?" Jos? Luis Salazar Garc?a, 32, said as he installed terra-cotta tiles on a Madrid sidewalk in a government-funded job. "There are no other jobs in Spain."

The country's answer is to go greener.

Spain now exports more windmills and solar panels than wine. An armada of Spanish companies has invested heavily in the United States, with one buying up an old steel mill a few dozen miles from Pittsburgh and turning it into a wind turbine plant.

Though still undergoing final touches before being presented to parliament next month, Spain's new Economic Sustainability Law would effectively create more demand for renewable fuels. All new homes and commercial buildings would require higher levels of energy efficiency, including solar power sources, leaving their owners no choice but to adopt green habits.

Government-backed loans to green companies would allow them to offer generous terms to homeowners and corporations for the installation of solar and other alternative energies.

A Jump in Energy Costs?

A new $300 million thermo-solar plant in the arid mining town of Puertollano, about 100 miles south of Madrid in the Don Quixote country of Castile-La Mancha, offers a glimpse into Spanish hopes. The partnership between the large corporate utility Iberdrola and a national energy agency employed as many 650 workers to build the plant over the past two years. The huge plant was like manna from heaven for a host of companies stung by the recession. A maker of car mirrors retrofitted its assembly lines to produce the plant's massive reflective panels, for example.

But Calzada's recent study -- which has come under fire by green advocates here and abroad -- suggests that the government's cost to create one job in leading alternative-energy sectors has averaged $855,000. It notes that although hundreds may be temporarily employed to build plants, a far smaller number gain permanent positions.

Because alternative-energy plants are more expensive than traditional power plants that burn fossil fuels, the government here has made green generation profitable by promising big subsidies for years to come. Though most Spaniards have so far seen only modest increases in their electricity bills, even government officials are warning that prices might suddenly jump in the coming years as more of the real costs are passed on to consumers.

In the meantime, some power distributors in Spain have converted their government guarantees for higher-than-market energy prices into complex financial instruments, then sold them off to the highest bidders in a manner similar to the repackaging of subprime mortgages in the United States. If the government doesn't make good on those guarantees, critics fear, the securities could suddenly devalue, soaking the investors who hold them.

"There are going to be people who say we're doing this wrong or that wrong," said ?ngel Torres, Spain's secretary general of economic policy. "But the reality is that government needs to help create a critical mass in alternative energy to make it sustainable in the long run, and that's what Spain is doing.

Spain must end incommunicado detention | Amnesty International

Image by publik16 via Flickr

15 September 2009

Spain must end the practice of incommunicado detention as it violates the rights of people deprived of their liberty, said Amnesty International in a report published on Tuesday.

"It is inadmissible that in present day Spain anyone who is arrested for whatever reason should disappear as if in a black hole for days on end. Such lack of transparency can be used as a veil to hide human rights violations," said Nicola Duckworth, Europe and Central Asia Programme Director.

In its report, Out of the shadows: End incommunicado detention in Spain, Amnesty International illustrates how Spain has one of the strictest detention regimes in Europe which is in breach of the country's obligations under international human rights law.

Spain's law of criminal procedure allows for a detainee to be held incommunicado for up to five days in all cases and for up to 13 days if suspected of terrorism-related offences. The 13-day period consists of up to five days of incommunicado detention in police custody, which can be extended by a further five days incommunicado in preventive imprisonment. An additional three days of incommunicado detention may be imposed by a judge at any time during the investigation.

"While held incommunicado, detainees cannot talk to a lawyer or a doctor of their choice. Their families live in stress not knowing what has happened to them and many detainees held incommunicado report that they have been tortured or ill-treated, but such allegations are rarely investigated," Nicola Duckworth said.

"Incommunicado detention denies detainees the right to fair trial. Such detention in itself may constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. It does not comply with international human rights standards."

International organizations have repeatedly expressed concern about the risk of torture and other ill-treament during incommunicado detention. Such is the case of Mohamed Mrabet Fahsi who was arrested on terrorism-related charges on 10 January 2006 in his home near the city of Barcelona. During his detention incommunicado he was not able to call his own lawyer. Mohammed Fahsi told Amnesty International that he was tortured and ill-treated but both the doctor who examined him and the investigative judge ignored his complaints.

The Spanish government has justified the use of incommunicado detention on grounds of national security and public safety.

"Incommunicado detention must be relegated to the past. No other European Union country maintains a detention regime with such severe restrictions on the rights of detainees," Nicola Duckworth said.

Amnesty International has called on the Spanish authorities to:

• Scrap legislation allowing incommunicado detention;
• Allow all detainees to speak in confidence with a lawyer without police officers present;
• Allow all detainees to have a lawyer of their choice who will be present during questioning;
• Allow all detainees to be examined by a doctor of their choice;
• Allow all detainees to have their families notified of their detention and location;
• Make compulsory in all cases the video and audio recording at places where detainees may be present, except where this may violate their right to private consultations with their lawyer or doctor;
• Investigate promptly, thoroughly and impartially all allegations of torture and other ill-treatment made by detainees.

Spain: Out of the shadows - Time to end incommunicado detention

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Index Number: EUR 41/001/2009
Date Published: 15 September 2009
Categories: Spain

Amnesty International considers that the incommunicado regime in Spanish law is a violation of Spain’s obligations under international human rights law. No other European Union country maintains a detention regime with such severe restrictions on the rights of detainees. The continuing allegations of torture and other ill-treatment demonstrate the grave consequences detention in this regime may have. Amnesty International calls on parliament to abrogate the existing legislation and to ensure the effective protection of the rights of all persons deprived of their liberty.

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Spain on High Alert after Bombs

Police in Spain are on heightened alert after two bomb attacks in 48 hours blamed on the Basque separatists, Eta.

On Thursday, two Civil Guard officers were killed when a car bomb exploded outside a base in the resort town of Palmanova on the island of Majorca.

Another car bomb blast on Wednesday destroyed much of a police barracks in the northern city of Burgos and left more than 50 people slightly wounded.

The attacks coincide with the 50th anniversary of Eta's founding.

They also come at a time when police resources are stretched because of the start of the holiday season.

Map of where the bomb struck

Following Thursday's bombing, the authorities temporarily closed ports and airports on Majorca as part of a security operation to prevent those responsible from escaping, causing travel chaos for tourists.

Eta has been held responsible for more than 820 deaths during its campaign for an independent homeland in Spain's Basque region.

'Vile murderers'

The two Civil Guards who were killed in Palmanova - Carlos Saenz de Tejada Garcia and Diego Salva Lesaun - had been inside a patrol car parked outside the El Foc barracks when a bomb planted underneath exploded it, security officials said.

Several people were injured by the powerful explosion on the busy road, which sent the vehicle flying through the air and set it on fire.

Police later defused a second explosive device placed under another civil guard vehicle at a different base on Majorca, officials said.

There has been no claim of responsibility for the attack yet, but Spain's Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said it bore all the hallmarks of Eta.

A memorial ceremony has been held at Palma's cathedral for the two officers

"I want to condemn this new low blow with much rage and pain, but also with much determination," he said in a televised address.

"The criminal attack comes at a time when the civil guards and national police, with the co-operation of French security forces, are striking against the terrorist group as never before," he added.

Mr Zapatero said Eta members were being "arrested earlier and in greater numbers, and this is the way it will continue to be".

"The government has given orders to the security forces to be on maximum alert, to double their work, to increase even more their efforts and to protect themselves from these vile murderers," he added.

"They have absolutely no chance of hiding. They cannot escape. They cannot avoid justice. They will be arrested. They will be sentenced. They will spend the rest of their lives in prison."

ANALYSIS Steve Kingstone, Madrid correspondent The charred wreckage of a patrol car in Majorca, and the shattered facade of a police barracks on the mainland represent a grim birthday message from Eta, as the Basque militant group marks the 50th anniversary of its founding. In the wake of the Mallorca killings, a stern-faced Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero again spoke of defeating ETA "definitively". But after the bloodiest week in months, Spaniards may wonder whether he was speaking more out of hope than expectation. Eta's anniversary calling card Majorca bomb: Your stories

On Friday morning, Mr Zapatero and members of the Spanish royal family attended a memorial ceremony at Palma's cathedral for the two civil guards, during which he placed medals of honour on their coffins.

Thursday's attack was the deadliest since two Spanish undercover policemen were shot during an operation in south-western France in December 2007.

The BBC's Steve Kingstone in Madrid says that for many months Spaniards have been told by their government that Eta is historically weak, following the arrest of a string of alleged commanders of its military wing, but the past 48 hours have provided chilling evidence to the contrary.

Exactly 50 years after it was founded by a small group of radical Basque students, Eta appears to be making a statement - that it has the capability to strike anywhere, our correspondent says.

With the country in its peak tourist season, and with thousands taking to the roads this weekend for their holidays, police resources will be stretched - amid genuine fears of more attacks, he adds.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8177839.stm

Europe's Jobless Youth

By Mark Scott

London, July 23—On paper, Jerome Delorme seems like a pretty desirable job candidate. The 23-year-old has a master's degree in European studies from the prestigious Sciences Po university in Grenoble—once a sure ticket to a top company, even in hard times. And he spent a year studying in Dublin, speaks fluent English, and has already had several high-profile internships. But in three months of looking for work, Delorme has been able to land only another internship, at a nonprofit organization. "The crisis has made getting a real job very difficult," says the native of the southern French city of Valence.

Delorme is typical of Europe's Gen Y these days. Most of his friends are also pounding the cobblestones in search of employment—as are about 5 million other young Europeans, or about 20% of the under-25 population, the European Union estimates. That's nearly a third higher than a year ago and well above the 8.9% unemployment rate for the EU as a whole. In some countries the situation is far worse. Nearly 37% of Spain's Gen Yers can't find work. In France, it's 24%, vs. 17% in the U.S.

Policymakers worry prolonged unemployment will hurt an entire generation's ability to compete in the workplace. When the economy finally recovers, many of the under-25s will have become over-25s, and younger rivals will be nipping at their heels for entry-level jobs. The big fear: Europe's Gen Yers will suffer the fate of Japan's Lost Generation—young people who came of age in the recession-wracked 1990s but lacked the skills to find good jobs even after the economy started to pick up steam.

Government Schemes

If that happens, the Continent would struggle to cope with large numbers of jobless young people. Violent protests over lousy job prospects earlier this year in Eastern Europe made politicians acutely aware of mounting social problems. "Most countries are moving in the right direction, but there's still a risk that unemployment will last for years," says Stefano Scarpetta, head of employment analysis at the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development in Paris.

Governments are spending billions to keep the young busy via college grants and vocational courses until the economy recovers. On June 29, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown unveiled a $1.6 billion scheme to create 100,000 jobs for young people, with a special emphasis on helping those who've been out of work for more than a year. And on Apr. 24, French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced a $1.9 billion plan to find work for 500,000 young people by June 2010. That includes grants to companies that employ Gen Yers and a 12% increase in new government-funded apprenticeships in plumbing, carpentry, and other trades.

Some wonder how much good those programs will do given the severity of the downturn. "There's pressure on governments to find employment for young people, but I don't see how that's going to happen in the short term," says Giorgio S. Questa, a professor at City University's Cass Business School in London.

Business groups, meanwhile, fret that new apprenticeships could take jobs away from older workers and may prove unsustainable if government funding dries up. Neil Carberry, head of employment policy at the Confederation of British Industry, says similar programs in the 1980s failed because they simply kept young people busy without giving them sufficient skills to land more interesting work when the economy recovered. "People digging ditches and painting walls just doesn't add value," he says.

Spain's Setback

Lavish welfare systems ease some of the strain for Europe's Gen Y. With state-sponsored health care and ample jobless benefits, Europeans have fewer worries than unemployed twentysomethings in the U.S. And young Europeans are more likely to bunk with Mom and Dad than their American counterparts are, so it's easier for them to make ends meet while looking for a job. In Spain, for instance, more than half of people under 30 still live at home.

But that has done little to ease the pain of the crisis for many Spaniards. When the country's construction and real estate industries were booming, under-25s often skipped college to go straight to work, cashing in on the credit-fueled bonanza. Since 2007, though, the economy has imploded and may contract by 3.2% this year. Many young people were on short-term contracts, so they were first to be laid off when times got tough. And skipping further education in favor of employment, they often lack such skills as foreign languages, IT know-how, and advanced math that employers demand. Says Carlos Serrano, a 25-year-old electronic engineer from northern Spain who has been looking for a job for a year, with no luck: "The crisis has trapped us graduates at the worst possible time."

Scott is a reporter in BusinessWeek's London bureau .

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