quarta-feira, 26 de setembro de 2012

Muita Atenção


Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has covered world politics and economics for 30 years, based in Europe, the US, and Latin America. He joined the Telegraph in 1991, serving as Washington correspondent and later Europe correspondent in Brussels. He is now International Business Editor in London. Subscribe to the City Briefing e-mail.

Be Very Careful, Beloved Spain

Two weeks ago I was interviewed by the Catalan newspaper El Punt Avui. I said it would be unthinkable for the Spanish state to stop Catalan secession by military force.
Such action would violate EU Treaties and lead to Spain’s suspension from the European Union. You do not do such things in the early 21st Century.
"No pots ser membre de la UE si utilitzes la força" was the headline.
I may have underestimated the vigour of the Spanish officer corps.
First we have the robust comments of Colonel Francisco Alaman comparing the crisis to 1936 and vowing to crush Catalan nationalists, described as "vultures".
"Independence for Catalonia? Over my dead body. Spain is not Yugoslavia or Belgium. Even if the lion is sleeping, don’t provoke the lion, because he will show the ferocity proven over centuries," he said.
Actually, it is not remotely like 1936. I spent part of the weekend rereading Paul Preston’s magisterial biography of Franco, a worthwhile refresher for all of us.
Franco’s military uprising/coup in 1936 was directed against the newly-elected Popular Front, seen by army commanders (though not all of them) as the start of a Bolshevik take-over of Spain. The Franco revolt was a defence of The Catholic hierarchy against Communism and French subversion (in their mind).
Spain now has a Right-wing nationalist government with Opus Dei links, the Partido Popular. The roles are entirely reversed.
Yet Col Alaman is in a sense correct. The mood is becoming dangerous.
Is case you think he is an isolated case, former army chief Lt-Gen Pedro Pitarch said his views reflect "deeply-rooted thinking in large parts of the armed forces".
Gen Pitarch said Catalan independence is out of the question, though he also said Madrid had bungled the crisis of the regions disastrously. "Are we looking at a failed state?" he asked.
Now we have an explicit threat from the Asociación de Militares Españoles (AME), an organisation of retired army officers, warning that anybody promoting the break-up of Spain ("fractura de España") will face treason trials in military courts.
This from El Mundo:
The attitude of the Catalan government and members of its parliament is inadmissible.
The Armed Forces are guardians of the Spanish state and its territorial integrity under Article 8 of the Constitution.
They will carry out this role "scrupulously and strictly" to defend the sovereignty and Carta Magna of the Spanish nation.
AME said any flicker of secession "must be suppressed". Violators must bear in mind that they "will have to respond with all rigour to the grave accusation of high treason under the jurisdiction of military tribunals".
Do they speak for the Armed Forces? One assumes not. One awaits a categorical denial from King Juan Carlos, from premier Mariano Rajoy, and from the cupula of the Armed Forces that such a course action is being considered.
The use of military courts to try civilians is forbidden in democracies (pace Guantanamo). The alleged conspirators in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln were tried and hanged by a US military court, setting off a long legal battle. In the end, the US Supreme Court ruled that such practice was unconstitutional. Never again must this happen, it ruled.
Be that as it may, what we have in Spain is a disturbing turn of events. It is not of course for a Pirata Ingles to suggest how a great nation like Spain should organise its affairs.
(My own bias, by the way, is that I am a Welsh supporter of the British union, so in Spanish terms I would perhaps be a Catalan supporter of Spanish unity… but only by democratic means. Force changes everything).
Events in Europe are now moving fast. Portugal has been in havoc for the last week. Spain is in ever greater havoc. Much of southern Europe has become unpredictable.
Is it the fault of the monetary union and the euro? Yes, of course it is. While large parts of the world are in deep economic crisis – including Britain – the damage is concentrated with lethal intensity in the EMU victim states. Spain’s unemployment rates is already 25pc, and the full austerity has yet to bite.
It is made much worse by the unpleasant discovery that elected governments can do nothing to escape the trap. They have lost control over their own destinies.
Spain and Portugal are trapped in chronic slump with over-valued currencies. While they have clawed back some lost labour competitiveness by cutting wages, this has merely – and necessarily – compounded the debt-deflation disaster. It has pushed them closer to bankruptcy.
The Draghi bond plan can certainly put off the day of reckoning. It can lower borrowing costs across the board and cushion the slump. But it cannot in itself stop the slow asphyxiation of these societies.
We are moving from the financial phase of this crisis to the full-blown political phase. It really is playing out like the 1930s.
People sometimes ask when I became a pessimist. The answer is the summer of 1991 when I accompanied Serb troops into the Baroque city of Vukovar – shattered by howitzer shelling within a comfortable drive from Vienna, and strewn with the bodies of dead children – and watched 300 wounded prisoners taken from hospital. I assumed they were at last safe. We learned later that they were machine-gunned shortly afterwards at a collective farm nearby.
The unthinkable was happening before my eyes, though it was small in scale compared to the slaughter of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica, which I later covered at a trial in The Hague.
When things go wrong, they really go wrong. Cuidado, Querida España
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3 comentários:

miguel vaz serra....... disse...

Dr. Santana Lopes
A Catalunha foi a grande vítima de 1640.
Castela tinha que tomar uma decisão.Ou enviava forças para Portugal ou Catalunha. Os dois revoltaram-se ao mesmo tempo.Catalunha pensou mal, uma vez mais como o tem feito ao longo dos séculos! Nós também!!!!!!!!
Se és fraco, junta-te aos fortes, não te isoles....Teve a "sorte" de não ter sido desanexada aquela vez.Castela decidiu enviar as tropas para a Catalunha.Afinal eles eram realmente "Espanhois" e nós não.
Azarentos como sempre,o ADN "portuga" inventou um plebeu e fê-lo Rei, "ai foi uma alegria muito grande"...ficámos muito contentes. A história diz o resto.O caminho está aí, bem escrito ( ou mal ) e o final está perto e traçado. Em vez de Espanhóis somos Alemães mas com a ilusão de livres,pois a Alemanha deixa-nos pensar que somos independentes. Como fez Filipe II de Espanha
( Filipe I de Portugal ).
Se não fosse o estúpido neto, Filipe III de Portugal a querer anexar monetária e politicamente os territórios, hoje seriamos uma Península forte.
"Este gajo enlouqueceu" dirão muitos.
"Onde estará o orgulho Luso"? Dirão outros. "Patriotismo?" Se assim tivesse sido já ninguêm se lembrava disso.
Ora amigos, ninguêm come orgulho e eu preferia ser Espanhol a Alemão à força e "governado" por um punhado de multi-milionários anónimos e especuladores marginais que chamamos de forma hipócrita de "mercados".
Se fossemos práticos e disséssemos as verdades, e isto é boca para o "moribundo" PM, o povo não saía à rua a pedir contas ao Estado ladrão.
Eu vou gostar de ver a Catalunha independente, assim como a Madeira de Jardim. Onde vão eles financiar-se.Quem lhes vai dar dinheiro para engordar os políticos corruptos de turno.
Como diz uma boa amiga, vai ser de gritos.
Mas Ambrose não escreve só sobre a Catalunha.......E aqui deixo um troço sobre Passos Coelho e a sua fatal política económica: "Unemployment has reached 15.7pc (36.4pc for youth). Citigroup expects the economy to contract by 3.8pc this year, a further 5.7pc next year, and yet again by 1.3pc in 2014. (and even then the current account will still be deficit – proof of the absurdity of EMU)
The slump will be so severe that the budget deficit will rise, not fall. Shrinking tax revenues will outweigh gains from cuts. Lisbon is chasing its tail. Citigroup says the deficit will be 5.1pc of GDP this year, 4.9pc next year, and 5.4pc in 2014.
This will play havoc with debt dynamics. Public debt will explode to 134pc of GDP by next year. At which point there will have to be debt-restructuring.
If Citigroup is right – and views differ on this – Portugal is going into the same sort of self-feeding downward spiral as Greece. Debt-deflation is choking the country.
As readers know, I have never believed that Portugal is fundamentally healthier that Greece. Its total debt level is over 360pc of GDP (Greece is nearer 260pc). Its international investment position is over 90pc of GDP in the red.
Portugal cannot recover under the policies in place. The government is asphyxiating the Portuguese economy for no useful purpose. It is pain without gain."
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ambroseevans-pritchard/100020306/patience-snaps-in-portugal/
Venho a gritar tudo isto há um ano.
Alguns riem.Chorarão depois.
Nenhum empresário faz dinheiro num País paupérrimo.
Todos, repito, TODOS, ficarão pobres!!!
Como diz e bem "MUITA ATENÇÃO".

Anónimo disse...

Don't worry beloved spain, all will be solved with federalization... including the beloved Madeira island...

Anónimo disse...

Sem comentários!