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Pro-Independence parties win Catalan elections
Jordi Oriola Folch    Off_Guardian , 17 February 2021
off-guardian.org/2021/02/16/pro-independence-parties-win-catalan-elections/


For the third time in a row, the Catalan pro-independence movement wins with an absolute majority in the Catalan elections. It has won resoundingly with 74 seats, more than the 68 that establishes the majority (in the previous elections it had won with 70). This time also with 51.22% of the votes, making it the majority among the voters.

The elections were due next year, but they were brought forward because the Spanish courts overthrew Catalan President Joaquim Torra for having disobeyed an electoral board that ordered him to take down a banner criticising the imprisonment of Catalan politicians. The President refused, citing freedom of expression, and the Spanish judiciary considered that the contempt was sufficient to force the removal of the President of the Parliament of Catalonia and cause the elections to be brought forward.

Furthermore, after consulting experts on the pandemic, the provisional Catalan executive decided to postpone the elections for five months until the third wave of Covid-19 had subsided. However, yet again, the Spanish judiciary interfered forcing the elections to be held on 14th February.

This is the same Spanish Justice that keeps 9 Catalan politicians and activists in prison, that has issued search and arrest warrants against 7 exiled Catalan politicians (which the German and Belgian courts rejected because they did not see the accusations as justified or because they understood that there were no guarantees of a fair trial in Spain), it is the same Spanish Justice that maintains the search and arrest warrant against a Majorcan musician –exiled in Belgium– for singing against the King of Spain and that is imminently going to imprison another Catalan musician, Pablo Hasel, for also having sung against the King.

In this context, and despite having the entire state apparatus and the Spanish press against them, independence has won again, and has done so obtaining a larger absolute majority than ever and with over 51% of the votes. In front of the pro-independence movement, we have the former Spanish socialist health minister during the pandemic, who has had the full support of the state, the press and unionism in general, and also the Spanish extreme-right of VOX, which has burst onto the Catalan Parliament with 11 seats.

Given this scenario, the Spanish state and the European Union cannot deny the right of self-determination of Catalan society, which must be expressed in a referendum with democratic guarantees, transparency and without foul play.

All in all, democracy is about allowing citizens to decide at the ballot box, not about violating their will with the application of laws that should in fact serve to guarantee there is a framework that respects what societies want for themselves.

Jordi Oriola i Folch is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and founder of Transforma Films. His work has been broadcast on television stations around the world and touches on issues of human rights, sustainability, democratic participation and community work, historical memory and the economic crisis. He has also taught audiovisual classes in the Basque Country, Catalonia, South America and Africa. He can be reached through his website or twitter.



https://english.elpais.com/society/2021-02-08/spain-approaches-end-of-phase-1-of-covid-vaccination-campaign.html

El Pais - PABLO LINDE
Madrid - 08 FEB 2021 
Spain approaches end of phase 1 of Covid vaccination campaign

Spain’s Covid-19 vaccination campaign is entering the final stages of the process of immunizing residents of senior residences, while the majority of healthcare workers have also received their first jab – many have also got the second. Meanwhile, the final part of this first phase, inoculating adults with need for daily assistance even if they are not in residential care, has begun in the Canary Islands, Murcia and Navarre. This process is expected to get going in the rest of the country before the middle of February.

EL PAÍS has collected statistics in an attempt to take a snapshot of where the vaccination process has got to in Spain and these are the principal conclusions. Despite a year having passed since the first coronavirus infections having been detected in the country, the system for collecting data on the health crisis is still deficient. The Health Ministry has not centralized the collection of information on the vaccination process and just 11 of the country’s 17 autonomous regions have supplied sufficiently detailed figures.
The process is both complex and flexible. The first three groups in phase 1 of the campaign overlap in order to optimize the process, and so that it continues without pause. Healthcare workers started receiving the vaccine before the process finished in senior residences, and adults with need for daily assistance will start being immunized before all healthcare staff have had their doses.

Along the same lines, some regions are already planning for the over-80s – who are the first group in phase 2 – to start the process before phase 1 has finished. There are around 380,000 adults with need for daily assistance, and they are a complicated group to vaccinate given that home visits are often needed. It could be more efficient to vaccinate non-dependent seniors at the same time – this group is made up of 2.8 million people and accounts for six in every 10 Covid deaths in Spain. In January of this year, more than 1,300 people over the age of 80 died every week with the disease.

To complicate the situation further, not all of the approved vaccines are going to be administered to everyone. The AstraZeneca vaccines, which will start arriving in Spain this week, will only be given to people aged between 18 and 55, given that this is the group where clinical trials have proved it to be effective. For now, the Health Ministry has decided that it will be used to immunize healthcare workers who are not on the front line, and next week a decision will be made on which section of the population to prioritize – it could be essential workers or young people with underlying health conditions.
This, in effect, is what some regions are already doing. It is not completely clear which healthcare workers are being immunized in phase 1, and in many cases, the authorities have opted to give all staff in hospitals their doses, independently of their role. In Madrid, for example, a higher percentage of healthcare workers have received the second dose of the vaccine than among seniors who live in residences. This is despite the fact that senior residences – where more than half of official Covid deaths took place in Spain, according to the Health Ministry’s figures – were the absolute priority of the central government’s vaccination plan.

That said, the available data suggests that immunity is not far off for residents of the country’s senior residences. With the information supplied by the regions, nearly all residents and staff have got their first dose, and the majority of regions have administered the second dose to more than half of the recipients.

The process in residences is being delayed due to outbreaks in some of these centers. According to regional health departments consulted by EL PAÍS, this is not presenting a problem given that the process is simply being postponed where there is a high number of people infected.
Data supplied last week by the Catalan regional authorities show that the vaccines are starting to have an effect, and that number of new infections is rising less inside such residences compared to outside. Fernando Simón, the director of the Health Ministry’s Coordination Center for Health Alerts (CCAES), also said on Thursday that outbreaks in these centers are falling and that comparisons made by the ministry between the over-65s who live in residences and those who do not show a lower infection rate among the former.

The full protection offered by the vaccines, however, does not arrive until a week after the second dose. With the extreme levels of transmission that are currently being seen in Spain – the 14-day cumulative number of coronavirus cases per 100,000 inhabitants is around 750 – it is no surprise that the virus is finding its way into senior residences during this process, infecting inhabitants, and even claiming the lives of those who have been inoculated. The risk after the first shot is low, but it still exists.
The latest data from the Health Ministry shows that all regions have administered more than 70% of the doses that they have received. The authorities insist that the problem now will not be the capacity to deliver the vaccines, but rather the number that Spain will receive. From this weekend onward, that number will rise, with, for example, AstraZeneca sending 1.8 million doses this month. And it will go up even more in March, which is when a new vaccine – from Janssen – may be added to the list. The vaccination process for adults with need for daily assistance even if they are not in residential care will be a good means to measure the agility of the system.
With reporting by María Sosa, Isabel Valdés and Lucía Bohórquez.
English version by Simon Hunter.









Leftinspain
I am a  bit of an anomaly, a British  migrant, an expat if you like,   living in Spain, who sees life from a left point of view.

The speech of Fidel Castro to the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. As true today as it was then

30/11/2016

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* * *An important biological species ― humankind ― is at risk of disappearing due to the rapid and progressive elimination of its natural habitat. We are becoming aware of this problem when it is almost too late to prevent it.It must be said that consumer societies are chiefly responsible for this appalling environmental destruction. They were spawned by the former colonial metropolis. They are the offspring of imperial policies which, in turn, brought forth the backwardness and poverty that have become the scourge for the great majority of humankind.With only 20% of the world's population, they consume two-thirds of all metals and three-fourths of the energy produced worldwide. They have poisoned the seas and the rivers. They have polluted the air.They have weakened and perforated the ozone layer. They have saturated the atmosphere with gases, altering climatic conditions with the catastrophic effects we are already beginning to suffer.The forests are disappearing. The deserts are expanding. Billions of tons of fertile soil are washed every year into the sea.Many species are becoming extinct. Population pressures and poverty lead to desperate efforts to survive, even at the expense of nature.Third World countries – yesterday's colonies and today nations exploited and plundered by an unjust international economic order – cannot be blamed for all this.The solution cannot be to prevent the development of those who need it the most. Because today, everything that contributes to underdevelopment and poverty is a flagrant rape of the environment.As a result, tens of millions of men, women and children die every year in the Third World, more than in each of the two world wars.Unequal trade, protectionism and the foreign debt assault the ecological balance and promote the destruction of the environment.If we want to save humanity from this self-destruction, wealth and available technologies must be distributed better throughout the planet. Less luxury and less waste in a few countries would mean less poverty and hunger in much of the world.Stop transferring to the Third World lifestyles and consumer habits that ruin the environment. Make human life more rational. Adopt a just international economic order.Use science to achieve sustainable development without pollution. Pay the ecological debt. Eradicate hunger and not humanity.Now that the supposed threat of communism has disappeared and there is no more pretext to wage cold wars or continue the arms race and military spending, what is preventing these resources from going immediately to promote Third World development and fight the ecological destruction threatening the planet?Enough of selfishness. Enough of schemes of domination. Enough of insensitivity, irresponsibility and deceit. Tomorrow will be too late to do what we should have done a long time ago. ​
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Owen Jones suggests Podemos can be a model for the European left

22/11/2016

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​I hope Catalonia stays with Spain, but I support its right to leave
​Though the Catalans cannot say they are a colonised people, at stake is the basic democratic principle of national self-determination...
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After Donald Trump's election victory

12/11/2016

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I find Donald Trump appalling and I think he presents a real and present danger to the world.
I thought the governments of Obama, Bush and Clinton before were also appalling and most certainly presented a huge danger to the millions of people who have died in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen following American interventions.
And yet many people find this difficult to understand, claiming that Hilary Clinton would have been a better choice and Trump is much much worse.
But what is about past American policy that has not been offensive and a danger to humanity?
The endless invasion and destruction of other countries?
The billions of dollars given to the Egyptian military after the military coup that overthrew an elected government. The payment of billions of dollars to the Israeli government, illegally occupying Palestine and parts of Syria, but who give oil drilling rights to American companies on this land?
Hilary Clinton’s comments about acting in Syria to help Israel?
And in the United States, the fact that it took the Guardian newspaper to collect the national statistics to prove how many black men were being shot dead by the police?
That in states like West Virginia life expectancy for men is falling? Or that the perinatal death rate in some of the southern states is higher than in sub Saharan African countries. That Cuba has a higher literacy rate than that of the richest country in the world.
Trump’s victory offers a chance for the world, for all of us, to openly say these things, things that many appear to have feared to say, particularly during Obama’s presidency.
 So for the countless millions in other countries, peopled by “others” less fortunate than we prosperous westerners, beneficiaries of America’s rapacious policies, perhaps it offers the hope that “ we “ will take their side for once,  because we all have the same someone to hate.
​ But I doubt it. 
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More Leonard Cohen

11/11/2016

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Leonard Cohen - The Partisan
A song with pictures of the Civil War in Spain and the second World War in France.
It shows the power of the artist to tell stories, in words and in pictures.
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Leonard Cohen 21 September 1934 - 7 November 2016

11/11/2016

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News of Cohen's death came today 11 November.
For people of my generation it is a huge loss.
Cohen told our lives. 
He helped us to understand our lives.
This song is based on a poem by Frederico Garcia Lorca, the Spanish poet who was murdered by nationalist forces  in 1936. His body has never been found

​En Viena hay diez muchachas,
un hombro donde solloza la muerte
y un bosque de palomas disecadas.
Hay un fragmento de la manana
en el mueso de la escarcha
Hay un salon con mil ventanas Ay, ay, ay, ay,
Toma este vals con la boca cerrada Este vals, este vals, este vals,
de si, de muerte y de conac
que moja su cola en el mar Te quiero, te quiero, te quiero,
con la butaca y el libro muerto,
por el melancolico pasillo
en el oscuro desvan del lirio,
en nuestra cama de la luna
y en la danza que suena la tortuga. Ay, ay, ay, ay,
Toma este vals con la boca cerrada En Viena hay cuatro espejos
donde juegan tu boca y los ecos,
Hay una muerte para piano,
que pinta de azul a los muchachos.
Hay mendigos por los tejados
Hay frescas guirnaldas de llanto Ay, ay, ay, ay,
Toma este vals con la boca cerrada Porque te quiero, te quiero, amor mio,
en el desvan donde juegan los ninos,
sonando viejas luces de Hungria
por los rumores de la tarde tibia,
viendo ovejas y lirios de nieve
por el silencio oscuro de tu frente. Ay, ay, ay, ay,
Toma este vals con la boca cerrada En viena bailare contigo
con un disfraz que tenga
cabeza de rio.
Mira que orillas tengo de jacintos
Dejare mi boca entre tus piernas,
mi alma en fotografias y azucenas,
y en las ondas oscuras de tu andar
quiero, amor mio, amor mio, dejar,
violin y sepulcro, las cintas del vals.

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November 10th, 2016

10/11/2016

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Twenty four hours after the election.

Twenty four hours after the election.
I think that Donald Trump is a truly appalling man. 
But he is only a little more appalling than the majority of Republican politicians.
And they are only a little more appalling than the majority of Democrat politicians.
Trump will be the President of a rotten society. As was Barack Obama.
I see that people in West Virginia, in Alabama, Mississippi and more states live lives of poverty not dissimilar to the lives of the peasants in Czarist Russia. The rich in America today are rich beyond the dreams of the Czar and his friends. 
Perhaps Trump will light up this horror to those who may have been beguiled by the American of TV sit coms and Hollywood movies
That would be a positive from this election.
I think that we on the left must support those in America who are fighting to change the system and to take care that in the UK and other European countries rich are not permitted to copy the American model.
Hilary Clinton and the Democratic party machine give a terrible warning to the right wing of the UK Labour party and to PSOE in Spain, among others.
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Le Chant des Partisans

6/11/2016

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Ami, entends-tu le vol noir des corbeaux sur nos plaines? 
Ami, entends-tu les cris sourds du pays qu'on enchaîne? 
Ohé! partisans, ouvriers et paysans, C'est l'alarme! 
Ce soir l'ennemi connaîtra le prix du sang et des larmes! 

Montez de la mine, descendez des collines, camarades! 
Sortez de la paille les fusils, la mitraille, les grenades... 
Ohé! les tueurs, à la balle et au couteau, tuez vite! 
Ohé! saboteur, attention à ton fardeau: dynamite! 

C'est nous qui brisons les barreaux des prisons pour nos frères, 
La haine à nos trousses et la faim qui nous pousse, la misère... 
Il y a des pays où les gens au creux de lits font des rêves; 
Ici, nous, vois-tu, nous on marche et nous on tue, nous on crève. 

Ici chacun sait ce qu'il veut, ce qu'il fait quand il passe... 
Ami, si tu tombes un ami sort de l'ombre à ta place. 
Demain du sang noir séchera au grand soleil sur les routes. 
Sifflez, compagnons, dans la nuit la Liberté nous écoute. 



Ami, entends-tu ces cris sourds du pays qu'on enchaîne ? 
Ami, entends-tu le vol noir des corbeaux sur nos plaines ? 
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh...

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    Picture
    I am a  bit of an anomaly, a British  migrant, an expat if you like,   living in Spain, who sees life from a left point of view. 

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