Well, well, this was hardly unexpected. In fact the reality may well be that this time there is plenty of smoke but no fire, since Siemens has announced it has no concrete plans to move 10,000 jobs abroad. Indeed much of the noise at present may emanate from a threat to move as a negotiating posture in order to try and force changes. But behind this the underlying reality is that the problem is coming. Not only is Germany having a ‘job-loss’ recovery there is good reason to doubt whether it is having a recovery at all. And of course the main course may well be yet to be served since many of the jobs threatening to relocate seem to be in the industrial sector, whilst just round the corner the high-end services issue is surely coming. Still there is one difference with the US: the headlines are not being made by an opposition candidate talking about Benedict Arnold CEO’s, but by a Chamber of Commerce head who seems to be saying he’s Benedict Arnold and proud of it.
Continue reading
Author Archives: Edward Hugh
Privatisation Run Riot
I am normally a pretty staunch supporter of privatisation. I just provide the double pronged caveat: where it is well thought out, and where it makes sense. Juan Cole has a contract tender specification posted which for me defies all reasonable explanation. It is for a private contract force to protect the Green Zone, the headquarters of the American administration of Iraq in Baghdad. This seems beyond comprehension in its absurdity, but I am sure someone out there will be only too willing to try and put me straight.
The threats that the private security force will be asked to meet provide a summary of the dangers facing U.S. and coalition personnel 10 months after President Bush declared the main fighting over. The contractor, according to the bid proposal, must be prepared to deal with vehicles containing explosive devices, the improvised explosives planted on roads, “direct fire and ground assaults by upwards of 12 personnel with military rifles, machine guns and RPG [rocket-propelled grenade], indirect fire by mortars and rockets, individual suicide bombers, and employment of other weapons of mass destruction . . . in an unconventional warfare setting.” To meet that challenge, the bidders’ personnel must have prior military experience, and those involved directly in force protection must have “operated in U.S., North Atlantic Treaty Organization or other military organizations compatible with NATO standards.” ‘
Spanish Troops With A UN/NATO Mandate?
I haven’t much to say about this that I haven’t already said, but the idea of Spain forming part of a NATO contingent which is under a UN mandate would seem to me to represent real progress.
“Yes there is some doubt about the Spanish contingent but otherwise the Iraq force is there,” said one. “It will just be a question of changing their badges and flags to ‘NATO’.”
Continue reading
Six Moroccans Identified in Madrid Bombing
Well, little by little the details are getting clearer. According to the Spanish daily El Pais the police now know the identity of six Moroccans who are thought to have participated in Thursday’s bombing.
According to the newspaper one of those responsible is Jamal Zougan from Tangiers who has been identified from photographs by two passengers from one of the bombed trains. These passengers have also identified two more people who accompanied Zougan that day. These latter two are thought by police to have been combatants in Chechenia and Bosnia. Zougan also shared a flat at one time with Abdelaziz Benyaich who is under preventive detention in Spain for his presumed association with the bombing of a Spanish cultural centre in Casablanca last year.
Oh, what a tangled web they weave!
Continue reading
Fair and Balanced?
Two versions of the Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero story, Fox and Bloomberg, choose for yourselves.
BTW: anyone out there help me: what is the Blair/Labour Government official position right now on the UN and troop withdrawal? Just to put this in some sort of perspective.
Continue reading
How Not To Pick The IMF’s Chief
Trying to get away from the emotionally traumatising, this article caught my eye. Clearly it relates to my earlier post, and does have a Spanish connection, if only a rather tangential one.
I thoroughly endorse what the Financial Times has to say. We need multilateralism now more than ever. We should not simply think ‘Europe First’, and:
The IMF needs considerable reform: its voting structure is out of date; its resources are too small; and its ability to lead the global debate on macroeconomic adjustment and exchange rates is too weak.
Here, here. Especially the point about leading the debate on macroeconomic adjustment and exchange rates. If you want to fight terrorism more effectively, perhaps here might be a good place to start.
Continue reading
Interpreting Spain’s Election Results
By now virtually everyone must know the results of the Spanish elections. I suppose the real questions people are asking involve how to interpret them. I would advise against jumping to hasty conclusions here. I picked up one comment on Crooked Timber to the effect that:
“anybody who decided to vote Socialist after the bombings presumably expected that the Socialists would reverse the government?s Iraq policy and do less in the war on terror than the government was likely to do.?
I think this view is a mistake, and doesn’t reveal much understanding about the dynamic of Spainsh politics over the last decade.
Continue reading
A Videotape and A Recantation
At one o’clock in the morning Spanish time Angel Acebes appeared on TV here to inform Spanish citizens that the authorities were in possesion of a video showing a man who purports to represent Al Qaeda. In the words of the New York Times:
The man in the video, who was speaking Arabic with a Moroccan accent and wearing Arab garb, identified himself as Abu Dujan al-Afghani, evidently a nom de guerre, and claimed to be the military spokesman for Al Qaeda in Europe.
Since nothing here is ever clear, and it is impossible to know at this stage with any reasonable degree of certainty either who this man is, or who he really represents, caution would seem to be warranted.
What is clear, however, is that the whole course of events has turned from Thursday (and remember this is still only Sunday). It now appears reasonable to assume that this is the work of an Islamic fundamentalist group, probably one with links to Al Qaeda. Even if it seems strange to use this expression in the context of a terrorist organisation, a presumption of innocence in this atrocity must now hang over ETA and all its splinters until such time as evidence to the contrary appears on the table.
This being the case you all deserve an apology from me. I read it wrong. Whether this was a reasonable reading given the events and the background or not I leave to you.
I would also like to indicate that commentors Factory and Talos have both had their initial instincts confirmed. Does this suggest that being closer to the events is not always an advantage?
Whatever the rights and wrongs of what we all thought two things seem clear. Firstly the dimension of the problem just changed: this is no longer a ‘local’ Spanish affair, but is now something which concerns the whole of Europe and our relations with the Unites States. Secondly the problem of Eta is still there. Maybe Eta is ‘innocent’ this time: but how long will it be before we are burying the next victim of an Eta inspired assasination or bombing?
I therefore ask you to truly have sympathy for the Spanish citizens today. Especially for the most humble and least sophistocated of them. Their world has just been shattered in a way which must seem to many of them irreperable. Many have have found themselves in recent years hovering between fear and indignation in the face of Eta terror. They now find themselves parachuted without warning into the front line of a battle with the most important terrorist menace on the planet. They have just lost 200 innocent fellow citizens. Think of them this day, and let your hearts go out to them.
Five Detentions in Madrid
Ok, it’s 8:20 on Saturday afternoon. I’d promised no more posts, but now there is some real news. Interior Minister Angel Acebes has just informed a press conference that 5 people have been detained in Madrid.
They have been detained in connection with a mobile phone and phone card which accompanied a pack of explosives that failed to explode.
This information needs to be treated with the utmost caution, since they have been detained for the fraudulent fabrication and sale of the phone card. We thus do not know the extent of the implication. It is better to await more details before jumping to too many conclusions.
What can be said is that three of the detainees are Morrocan and two have Indian nationality. This tends to suggest there may well be an Islamic fundamentalist connection, but until we know more about the extent of their involvement it would be better to remain prudent.
Of course the implications of this detention on election eve are quite important. There is already a significant demonstration of young people (convened by mobile phone nets) outside the PP headquarters in Calle Genova. The atmosphere generally is very tense. I will report and update as and when there is something worthwhile to say.
Update 1: 8:50 Saturday afternoon. Demonstrations of young people outside PP offices around Spain are increasing. In the Basque Country tensions are also rising: news has just arrived that a policeman has shot dead a 60 year old unarmed baker for refusing to hang a ‘crespon’ of mourning outside his shop. TV here has just shown images of police truncheon charging radical nationalists waving Basque flags at the doors of the mortuary where the dead bakers body was taken. More updates as necessary: it may be a long night.
Metis, Bie and Kerdos: Some Thoughts On Defeating Terrorism
Maybe it’s the presence of Talos in the comments section, or maybe it’s the arrival of the Athens Olympics on my personal horizon, but something this morning is carrying me back to the world of the Greeks, and to some early ideas of how best to secure objectives in the face of adversity.
First metis and bie:
What Does Metis Mean?
The history of the word goes back more than 28 centuries to the time of Homer around, 850BC. To the ancient Greeks, metis represented a particular type of cunning intelligence used if success was to be won in the most diverse fields of action. In the Iliad and the Odyssey, Odysseus is the hero most commonly associated with metis. The most famous strategem (metis) is the Trojan Horse, by which the Greeks finally managed to conquer Troy. This is a good example of metis for it represents a solution to a problem not resolvable by conventional means.
Metis is often contrasted with the word, bie, which means brute force. All through the Iliad, the big question is, will Troy fall by metis or bie – by wiliness or brute strength? The answer is by metis.
In the intellectual world of the Greek philosopher, there was a radical dichotomy between being and becoming, between the intelligible and the sensible. On the one hand there is the sphere of being, of the one, the unchanging, of the limited, of true and definite knowledge; on the other hand, the sphere of becoming, of the multiple, the unstable and the unlimited, of oblique and changeable opinion. Metis is characterised by the way it operates by continuously oscillating between the two opposite poles. Within a changing reality with limitless possibilities, a person with metis can achieve.
So metis is a type if intelligence and of thought, a way of knowing; it implies a complex but coherent body of mental attitudes and intellectual behaviour which combine flair, forethought, resourcefulness, vigilance, pragmatism, opportunism and the wisdom of experience.
When art and science unite, extra possibilities and opportunities are made resulting in innovation that can be driven by creativity. Metis is about finding elegant solutions to difficult problems instead of relying on brute force.
Now are you with me? What is lacking in our war with terrorism today, and all too often woefully lacking, is the component of metis. It is as if 2,000 years or more of history did not lie behind us, as if we had to learn every day anew the painful lessons of yesterday. Why am I saying this now? Well look what happened in Spain yesterday, what is happening today, and what will happen in the elections tomorrow.
Continue reading