Spain and the American Indian Nations

Original published on December 18th, 2010 in the St. Augustine Record

By SANTIAGO MARTINEZ-CARO
Largely ignored by the official history, Spain, as the colonial power in Florida in the 1700s, helped American independence in a substantial way, with arms and money.

However, soon American independence became a serious threat for Spanish interests in North America. Its expansion towards the West and the South could only be achieved at the expense of Spanish possessions. The main threat was to the Mississippi River, a crucial waterway then under Spanish domination.

In 1784, barely one year after U.S. independence, the Spanish governor of Louisiana signed a treaty with the Indian nations (Creeks, Cherokees, Choctaws and Chickasaw) which had numerous possessions east of the Mississippi and in Northern Florida.

They were a formidable obstacle that the U.S. would have to eliminate before they could get at the Spanish possessions.

A history of violence and murder between the American settlers and the Native Americans contributed to the atmosphere leading to outright violation of the Indian Nations territorial rights.

Thus started a period in which the pursuit of a strategic alliance Between Spain and the Indian Nations would define Spanish policy in North America. In 1793 and 1794 further treaties were signed, with the objective of creating a Confederation of Indian Nations, committing Spain to military support against the United States. This project envisaged the establishment of a permanent Indian Congress, with three members of each of the four Indian Nations, elected every year, and financed by Spain who would have a delegate present in its sessions, but without a vote. By its Constitution, the four Indian Nations were prevented from waging war or seeking peace on an individual basis, without the knowledge and concurrence of the Congress. Should any nation be threatened by another power, all would take up arms for their common defense and Spain was to supply arms and ammunition.

The Spanish Governor also conspired with General Wilkinson publicly expressed support for the creation of an independent state in Kentucky, seeking to extend the protection of a buffer zone between the Spanish possessions and the United States, further north.

This project shocked the U.S., and a public campaign against Spain started in Philadelphia. A weak Spanish Government, mixed up in succession and alliance issues in the European continent after the French Revolution, chose not to confront the United States and signed the Treaty of San Lorenzo in 1795 and, in 1801, ceded Louisiana to France and abandoned the Mississippi waterway. Nothing would stop U.S. expansion in North America again.

During this period, Spain could not, or would not, prevent Seminole Indian attacks on U.S. territories and properties in Georgia. This led to General Andrew Jackson raiding Spanish possessions in Florida.

The United States finally acquired Florida from Spain in 1821, after the ratification of the Adams-Onis Treaties that defined their borders in North America.

After the acquisition of Florida, Jackson defeated the Creek Nation and forcibly removed them to Oklahoma. The Choctaw Nation had fought under Jackson but was the first to be sent West in the Trail of Tears. Spanish designs for an Indian Congress and for an alliance against the expansionism of the United States, failed mainly due to a weak Spain, exhausted by the War in Europe against Napoleon and problems in the rest of the American colonies which lead to the independence of the South American republics whose bicentennials we celebrate this year. The fate of the Indian nations of the Deep South was sealed. They were left to fare war on their own against the emerging power of the United States and its grand design of expansion to the Pacific Coast.

*

Ambassador Santiago Martinez-Caro, born in New York, is a dual national, U.S. and Spanish. He is a career ambassador in the Spanish Foreign Service, having been ambassador in Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia. He is currently posted to the United Nations Office in Vienna, Austria. He has a permanent home in Ponte Vedra, is working with First America Foundation in St. Augustine and will be lecturing in January at Flagler College. He has a son who attends Flagler College.

European politicians, Islam and Islamism

In one of my flying trips I have recently read an article, I believe it might have been in Newsweek, in which the authors defended that the Western world and its intellectuals should be somehow smarter than Al Qaeda.

They argue that the left in the western world is wrongly defending Islamism, which is an extremist and violent ideology, believing that in doing so it is actually defending Islam.

The Western Right on its side, attacks Islam, believing that in doing so it is attacking Islamism. 

Both are wrong in their assumptions. the left because once again it is uncapable of adapting its thoughts to reality instead of the other way around. The right, even though this case is fortunately until now limited only to the extreme right,  is once again generalizing and calling evil the actions of a minority in society, and blaming those actions on the whole Islamic society. 

The authors concluded that if Western intellectuals do not get rid of this confusion now, we are headed down a dangerous path. Common people in the West will start to bundle all Muslims with Islamists, picking a potentially losing battle with one quarter of humanity. This clash of civilizations is what Al Qaeda wanted to trigger with the attacks on September 11 and the London and Madrid bombings.

All this in a time when more and more moderate European politicians are making it very clear that Muslims from certain areas are no longer welcome in their countries as they were in the past. German politicians of both sides of the spectrum have been rather outspoken lately on this issue. The election results in the Netherlands and Austria also have influenced other political parties.

The real problem is that Europe is no longer capable of defending its culture and traditions against the Muslims flocking into the old continent and wanting to bring their morals and traditions with them. As I have written before, multiculturalism has never worked in Europe and the different models have, so far, failed miserably. Should the US start looking further away for allies who will still be beside them in two or three generations? I think that in that time frame, Europe will no longer be trustworthy as an ally against the enemies of our values and culture.

Fed up with Flash

For those who know me, I enjoy Mac computers and I am writing this post on my iPad. So it is not surprising for me to actually include one of the best ideas I have seen to decrease my level of frustration with my Macmini and the sluggish performance it has had for quite some time.

The first thing I did was trash all the cache files. That helped somewhat. For months I had the feeling that Flash was actually taking over most of my processing power and grinding my machine to a complete halt.

Then I found the following post by John Gruber in his Daring Fireball blog and have followed it to the letter. I am once again a happy man, and can actually get things done with my desktop computer. I encourage you all to give it a try.

Quote:

Going Flash-Free on Mac OS X, and How to Cheat When You Need It

Thursday, 4 November 2010

Last week I mentioned that, following Steven Frank’s lead, I’d completely disabled Flash Player on my Mac. But I have a cheat, for web pages with Flash content with no non-Flash workaround. I’m really happy with this setup, so I thought I’d document it here.

Previously, I used and recommended the excellent ClickToFlash plugin for Safari. The original ClickToFlash is a plugin, not an extension. That sounds pedantic, perhaps, but bear with me. Earlier this year, Safari 5 introduced a new, officially supported extension API. These Safari extensions are much like Firefox extensions. They’re written using JavaScript (and HTML and CSS for presentation, if they present a user interface). Safari extensions are the things Apple lists here, and which you manage via the Extensions tab in Safari’s preferences window. Web content plugins are not new — they date back to Netscape in the mid-1990s. Plugins are for content formats. E.g., if you have the QuickTime plugin installed, then your browser can play embedded QuickTime movies. Flash Player is a plugin.

The original ClickToFlash was possible before the Safari 5 extension API even existed because it (the original ClickToFlash) is a plugin. It masquerades as a plugin that claims to be able to play Flash content, and overrides the actual Flash Player plugin. So when you load a web page containing Flash, the browser lets the ClickToFlash plugin handle the embedded Flash. Instead of actually loading the Flash content, ClickToFlash instead draws a box with a nice little “Flash” logo. If the user clicks that box, ClickToFlash hands the content over to the actual Flash Player plugin. Thus, Flash Player is there, and works, but it only loads after the user clicks on a Flash content box to load it. It’s a kludge, but it works well, and I’ll bet many of you are using it.

Confusion sets in when you see that there also exists a “ClickToFlash” extension for Safari 5 — a project by Marc Hoyois that duplicates most of the features of the ClickToFlash plugin using the new extension API instead of the long-standing plugin API. It looks interesting, and some DF readers have emailed me to endorse it, but I haven’t tried it personally.

Here’s what I did last week.

First, I disabled the Flash Player and old ClickToFlash plugins. On my system, Flash Player was in the default location: /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/. I moved “Flash Player.plugin”, “flashplayer.xpt”, and “NP-PPC-Dir-Shockwave” out of that folder and into a new folder I created next to it named “Internet Plug-Ins (Disabled)”. All you need to do to disable them is move them out of /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/. I also moved ClickToFlash (“ClickToFlash.webplugin”) to this disabled plugins folder. (ClickToFlash, if you have it installed, might be in the Library/Internet Plug-Ins/ folder in your home folder, rather than at the root level of your startup drive.)

After logging out and logging back in to my user account, Flash Player is no longer available to Safari or Firefox. This is more or less the state Mac OS X is now shipping in by default. To me this is better, and in some way more honest, than using ClickToFlash. Without Flash installed, Safari effectively tells websites you visit, “Hey, I don’t have Flash installed”, which allows the sites to send alternative content. Static images instead of Flash for ads, for example. With ClickToFlash, Safari is effectively telling websites you visit, “Yes, sure, I have Flash installed,” but then not actually loading Flash content. I see far fewer “Flash missing” boxes in web pages now than I did with ClickToFlash.

As per Frank’s recommendation, I’ve installed the excellent YouTube5 Safari extension by Connor McKay. With this extension installed, embedded YouTube videos are modified to use the HTML5 video tag rather than Flash Player for playback. This is possible because behind the scenes, all YouTube videos are encoded using H.264.

For the vast majority of my surfing, this new setup works great. I prefer it over my previous setup using the ClickToFlash plugin because Flash Player is never left running in the background because of a background Safari web page on which I clicked to load Flash content hours (or even days) ago. It also means that the Flash plugin never gets loaded into other non-browser apps that happen to use WebKit — eliminating the number one source of crashes for many of these apps.

CHEATING WITH GOOGLE CHROME

But that doesn’t mean I never run into Flash content I wish to view but for which there is no HTML5 alternative. Google Chrome offers a workaround — Chrome includes its own self-contained Flash Player plugin. Removing Flash Player from /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/ prevents Safari and Firefox (and almost all other Mac web browsers) from loading Flash content, but not Chrome.

So, whenever I hit a page with Flash content I wish to view, I open that page in Chrome. As soon as I’m done watching it, I quit Chrome, which ensures Flash Player isn’t left running in the background.

I’ve also added a shortcut for opening the current Safari page in Chrome quickly. First, if you haven’t done so already, enable Safari’s Develop menu. (It’s a checkbox in the “Advanced” panel of Safari’s preferences window.) The Develop menu contains an “Open Page With” sub-menu, which lists all the web browsers you have installed on your system. Using the Keyboard Shortcuts section in System Preferences, I set a custom menu key shortcut for the command to open the current page in Google Chrome. Whenever I’m on a page in Safari with Flash content I wish to view, I hit that shortcut, and boom, Chrome launches and loads that page. (Hint: when you create the custom shortcut, and are asked for the name of the menu item, just use “Google Chrome” or “Google Chrome.app” (whichever appears in your Open Page With sub-menu).)

THE COMING OF HTML5 ANIMATED ADS

Whenever I mention the performance and battery life gains to be had by disabling Flash Player (like this eye opener from yesterday), I get a few responses via email and Twitter pointing out that if advertisers switch to HTML5 from Flash for obnoxious animated ads, those performance gains may vanish, and, perhaps worse, it won’t be as easy to block unwanted HTML5 animation in this hypothetical future as it is to block unwanted Flash animation today, because HTML5 isn’t rendered through a specific plugin.

My answer: We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. As of today, there are significant performance and battery life gains to be had by disabling Flash Player on Mac OS X.

Unquote.

It's all in the soup!

It's all in the soup!

I have recently read an interesting piece about one of my favourite foods, Campbell's soups. I consume them nearly on a daily basis, unless I have homemade soup around.

It seems that its Canadian subsidiary has rolled out a line of soups certified as halal,  meaning that they are prepared according to Islamic dietary laws, thus broadening the market to consumers of that faith.

Blogger Pamela Geller started calling for a boycott on her blog which is titled Atlas Shrugs. And other bloggers have followed and joined in the call for a boycott of such products.

All the fuss seems to be that the products are certified by the Islamic Society of North America ( ISNA) an organisation that US government prosecutors linked to the terrorist group Hamas in a 2007 conspiracy case. Hamas has been named a terrorist organization by the US State Department, and the Islamic Society of America could have funneled money to them. It also seems that it has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, a fundamentalist political movement founded in Egypt in the 1920s, and that is not included in the list of foreign terrorist organizations.

In any case Geller and the other bloggers seem to have an issue with who is doing the certifying and are not suggesting that Campbell pull their line of halal foods, which are not going to be sold in the US anyway. The controversy has come in the wake of the Muslim prayer center near Ground Zero from a few weeks ago.  

This controversy also highlights the problems of perceptions. Muslims tend to come over to Western democracies and try to impose their habits and " cultural" ways of life, instead of adopting the values and rules of the societies that host them. This has been a constant with Islam since its foundation. As a matter of fact, if one reads certain passages of the Qran, it clearly states that Muslims should do what it takes to prevail in the society in which they live.

Multiculturalism, one of the "brand" policies of the socialist left, does not work, as we can see in Europe. Two different models have gone miserably wrong. In the UK and the Netherlands, it has meant isolation for immigrants in their own neighborhoods, with their own media and satellite TV, promoting hatred towards the societies that host them, and possibly leading to violent episodes like the terrorist attacks in July 2005.

France on the other hand, advocated integration, disregarding origins, culture and religion and promoting a new " citizen" denaturalized and extracted from their roots, causing tensions leading to the episodes if recurring street violence. Spain, which has no real immigration policy or strategy, also suffered from terrorist attacks in March 2004. So doing nothing to curtail cultural imposition by immigrants doesn't work either.

Multiculturalism can only work both ways: host societies should be prepared to accept those who come to us looking for a better life, and respect religions, culture and traditions; but those who arrive, should not try to impose their habits and culture on the societies they now live in. Promoting gender equality is not something decadent and racist. Defending our individual rights, not limited to women of course, is something we should do every day. And we must be vigilant with those who, in the name of respect and tolerance, demand from us a change in our way of life.

Campbell's soup probably will not change much now that they have a halal line of products. I can live with that. Halal foods, with the possible exception of turkey salami, can actually be rather tasty and even healthy. I will still enjoy my soup, and they will make more money by broadening the customer base. As long as I have a choice, I am prepared to accept that others also have theirs.

 

Obama's foreign policy

Jackson Diehl has published an article in the Washington Post a few days ago in which he reflects about Obama's foreign policy and titles it " Diplomacy by timetable". He argues that in the President's world, the clock rules all. I will lay out some quotes from this article which merits reflexion.

His conclusion is that the timetables of this administration are disconnected from a strategy. Process is always important to good policy, and yes, the Bush administration sometimes demonstrated what can go wrong when there are no deadlines. Yet in the Obama administration, the timetable is becoming an end in itself. The current Administration's most notable product has been the establishment of deadlines. He argues that the President's biggest achievements so far are not results but the would-be means to deliver them.

He then sets out a number of examples: Iraq was Obama's first timetable. His plan to withdraw troops in 16 months put him into contention in the 2008 Democratic primaries. By the time he took the office as president two years later, Iraq had changed utterly, and Obama's 16 months had come and gone. He then proceeded nevertheless to adopt  a similar, 18-month timetable, for ending US combat operations. He stuck to it despite Iraq's political impasse and it's increasing instability causing some Iraquis to question whether US policy amounts to  anything more than a mere timetable. And next comes the December 2011 date for full withdrawal. If Obama sticks to it, he will put the new US strategic partnership with Iraq at risk, and hand another advantage to Iran.

He then goes on to say that one clock is measuring whether US troops will be ready to begin handing off security to Afghanistan's army by July 2011, when the first withdrawal of American troops is to take place. Another clock faces Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as they try to conclude a framework agreement by next September, when the one year timetable Obama encouraged them to establish will expire. Yet another clock follows Iran's nuclear program. The administration has said that Iran is 2 to 5 years away from producing a nuclear bomb. If serious negotiations with the United States and its Security Council allies do not start soon or if Iran does not take some confidence-building steps away from producing weapons, that time frame will begin to overshadow the sanctions policy.

So, in all the major international issues: Iraq, Iran, the Middle East and Afghanistan, the timetable is becoming an end in itself.

And here comes the damning conclusion: it reflects a president who is fixed on disposing of foreign policy problems and not so much on solving them. 

Zapatero, what a disaster!

Spain has woken up to the news that it is no longer one of the first ten economies in the World. So one more of the country's dreams goes down the drain. President Zapatero, true to his alleged commitment, is proceeding with his policy of reducing Spain's importance and level in world affairs.

It will be recalled that, after his surprising win in the 2004 elections, after the brutal Madrid bombings induced his countrymen into cowardly believing that ousting the Partido Popular goverment would buy them a reprieve in terrorist attacks, he inherited a prosperous country and an economy with a sustainable growth model, which he then quickly set off to destroy, financing all sort of policies meant to change the traditional structure of the country, and making it one of the most "progressive" in the world.

The only reason Spain, under Jose Maria Aznar, did not make it into the G-8, even though its economy was larger that Canada's, is because the US and Japan refused to open the door of the exclusive club to yet another EU country. Once again in international relations and politics, " beware of your friends!".

Paying for the party, however, is a different matter. Zapatero invited his voters ( he has never, rightly so, been given credit or hope by his adversaries) to an orgy of fun, good times, social welfare and few obligations. He also promised "his" Spain had overtaken Italy, and would soon be at the same level as France. He also refused to accept and challenge the economic crisis, which has hit Spin harder than other European neighbors precisely because the structure was much more fragile.

Now, he stubbornnly refuses to step down and call for early elections, thus allowing the people who voted him into power, to make the final choice. This is the democratic way, but Spanish socialism has a long history of being democratic only if it suits their purpose. So he has managed to agree on a budget for next year with the Basque Nationalists, who represent less than 3% of the total electorate and who are not even in power in their region. As a matter of fact Zapatero's own party is in power in the Basque region enjoying parliamentary support from the Partido Popular.

He seems to be losing the internal control of the party, and voices are asking for early elections in the first months of next year, because local and regional elections are due in May 2011 and every poll leads to a disastrous, for the Socialists, turnaround in favor of the conservative Partido Popular. PSOE could end up losing regions in which it has been in power for over 20 years. The only hope for them seems to be to call for general elections before then and let the electorate focus their frustration and hatred on Zapatero, and wish for a change in the general attitude by mid-2011.

The first test will be the Catalonian regional elections in late November. The socialists already accept that they will be voted out of power. The big question remains by how much. It could be the worst defeat for them since the first elections in the 70s.

But in the end, all this might well be positive for Spain. Maybe the electorate will get in line with other advanced Western democracies and vote with their wallets and not based on ideology. Revolutions and socialism do not garantee prosperity. Serious work and honest government do. Spain today has a government full of men and women with less qualifications than those posted in job opportunities advertisements for floor personnel in the local equivalent of Home Depot or Walmart. A substantial number of them don't even hold a High School Diploma and only two have the prospect of a job outside of politics. So democracy for Spain has certainly not meant the government of the best. Thankfully, democracy is well consolidated in the country and no looking back is opossible in 21st Century Spain. Not even Zapatero has been able to get this result. At least not yet, because given time this chap is capable of anything....

The US in the Middle East

 


Middle East experts Robert Malley and Peter Harling have published an article entitled " Beyond Moderates and Militants" in the Foreign Affairs, September/ October 2010 issue. The subtitle of the essay is " How Obama  can chart a new course in the Middle East". 

For those of us interested in the region and in foreign policy matters, some of the most thought provoking statements in the article are quoted here.

" Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union: US policy makers stuck to a cold war era approach to foreign policy: dividing the world between faithful friends and well-defined foes, anchoring diplomacy in a relatively stable bilateral relationships, and relying on allies to promote clear-cut interests and contain enemies". 

" Ironically, the United States has proved far more successful over the past decade in reinforcing the cohesiveness of its foes than it has in maintaining the unity of its allies". 

" The West's tendency to adopt the Middle East policies that have already outlived their local political shelf lives is occurring once again today: despite its laudable attempt to rectify the Bush administration's missteps, the Obama administration is hamstrung by flawed assumptions about the regional balance of power. Washington still sees the Middle East as cleanly divided between two camps: a moderate, pro-American camp that ought to be bolstered and a militant, pro-Iranian one that needs to be contained. That conception is wholly divorced from reality".

" In the absence of a more forceful US leadership, the Middle East is fast becoming a region of spoilers, nations whose greatest imperative - and sole possible accomplishment-   is to prevent others from doing what they themselves cannot do. Egypt is trying to thwart Turkey's efforts to reconcile the rival Palestinian groups and get Israel to lift its blockade of Gaza. Syria hinders peace efforts that come at the expense of its allies. Saudi Arabia is intent on blocking Iranian advances  in Iraq. Practically no country has a positive agenda or is in a position to successfully advance one. Of course, despite the rise of its rivals, the United States still enjoys veto power over virtually all significant regional initiatives. But that is small consolation. To be spoiler in chief is a sad ambition for Washington and would be a depressing legacy for Obama".  

Finally, on an issue that I am touching frequently in Vienna in the IAEA, this quote on Iran's influence in the region: 
 
"The George W. Bush administration's approach to the middle east and it's response to the 9/11 attacks fundamentally altered the region's security architecture. By ridding Afghanistan of the Taliban and Iraq of Saddam Hussein, Washington unwittingly eliminated Tehran's two overriding strategic challenges, thus removing key impediments to Tehran's ability to project power and influence across the region".

Nuclear capabilities in the Middle East

Another long and tedious week at the IAEA Board of Governors. I have already commented on Iran, and the same goes as far as the Middle East and Israel. Deja vu! There is however, something developments worth noting. Those countries who lead the Third World are questioning the independence if the Agency and its new Director General, Amano.

Egipt, Cuba, Algeria and others are leading the pack in subtle attacks to reports and actions undertaken by Amano and his staff. Now, it is clear there are obvious loops in the new administration of the Agency. The choice by the countries who proposed and defended Mr. Amano as Director General to succeed the very political Al Baradei,was and is to have a mediocre leader, perhaps to reinforce the technical role of the IAEA. But the trend to question his ability to be independent is of concern.

And at the end of the day, if a country is sincere in its policy of non proliferation, and has nothing to hide or will never have nothing to hide regarding nuclear weapons, there should be no dispute about the role of the Agency and its procedures. So the question remains, do Arab countries really want to leave the door open to the future development of a nuclear bomb? If that is so, they are definitely doing a good job, with the help of Cuba, Venezuela and others.

Iran, the nuclear weapon and the World

What is going on this week at the IAEA in Vienna has a distinct flavor of "Deja vu". Nothing I can see has changed after the latest resolutions of the UN Security Council, or of other international and regional bodies.

The West is demanding Iran to comply with international law. The leaders of the Third World, either real or self proclaimed, are putting into question the international verification system. The silent majority of moderate countries still have not built up the courage to side with the cause of non proliferation.

But the reality is difficult to hide. If Iran has no intention of building a nuclear weapon, why defy the international community and contribute to the legitimate concerns of whole sectors of the world population who believe that further nuclear weaponry only endangers the world as we know it and what we are trying to construct for future generations.

And there is no denying that Iran is worried with the new sanctions it has to suffer. Monies and banks are targeted this time round. This really will affect not only the people of Iran,but also their leaders. This is a whole new matter.

There is something else I cannot understand. Why does the Arab world side with Iran? If nuclear proliferation by Iran is a threat to someone it is first and foremost to the Arab countries. Not to mention Pakistan and other far eastern Muslim countries. As a matter of fact, if Iran manages to finally get the nuclear weapon, the Arabs will, in turn, scramble to get theirs as soon as possible. They have the financial capabilities to buy it from any willing seller. That would really be a danger to the world we live in. That would be a real disaster.

More on Air travel disruptions in Spain.

Now, after 11 months I finally get around to writing a post on my blog, and it resulted rather sympathetic to the Air Traffic Controllers in Spain who are disrupting air travel with a stealthy undeclared strike, in which most of them don't show up to work allegedly for medical reasons, and thus reduce the number of flights that can be handled by the system.
A bit like traffic police who have nearly quit fining drivers ( some reports say that the number of fines has gone down 85% lately).
Having experimented a 5% decrease in my salary, because the government needs money to keep on paying for all the political appointees ( not one such position has been eliminated, it is only professional civil servants who see their grades reduced arbitrarily), a few hours ago my sympathies were with the Controllers. However, I am now stranded at Madrid airport where my connecting flight is only 2 hours late, hopefully. That is after a scheduled 8 hour stop because it was the cheapest option for the government.
Of course a top politician who was also on my inbound flight this morning, but in business class, has long left in a previous but more expensive flight than the one I got booked by the powers that be.
So I am having a difficult time maintaining my sympathy for those guys who are supposed to get us all home safely. My respect for our politicians is also lower than it was it this morning, if that were possible. So I have decided to keep both posts on the blog. 11 months without activity and two posts today! And at 11 pm I guess the night is still young....

Air Traffic control stealthy strike in Spain...

Here I am, blogging for the first time in months, yes in months! And I am doing it on my brand new iPad and on a plane. A delayed plane flight to be precise. I am trying to get to Madrid from Vienna, and we have been informed that we cannot start the engines because lof flight restrictions in Madrid. The press in this slow time for news, but heavy times for air travel, are having a ball criticizing flight control operators who are rumored to be on a " stealth strike".
Fact is that an unusually high percentage of them are turning sick without enough time to cater for substitutes, so the rest are working over time and cannot manage the demand from scheduled holiday seasonflights.
Fact is also that when a medical inspection has been ordered by the authorities, 7 out of ten controllers on sick leave have been ordered to return to work, or else...p
So it seems that there is some sort of a protest agreement going on and it is the travelers and holiday makers who are suffering the consequences.
But the fact remains that as a government employee whose salary has been cut illegally by the same government who has got us into this economic disaster due to reckless measures and excessive spending, I cannot but feel a sensation of solidarity and admiration for those controllers who are, in their own way, standing up to our socialists who spend our money on themselves and their trips and perks and who have done nothing to remedy our situation until it was too late.
Keep it up guys, wish we could do the same in our department.