The future direction of Catalunya can be said to be at stake today, as over three and a half thousand delegates of CUP gather at an indoor athletics stadium to hammer out their position on the shape of a Catalan government.
What I said in this post immediately after the Catalan elections of 27 September has proved to be true: that nothing much was going to happen until after the Spanish election which took place just before Christmas. If that election had yielded a decisive result, there might now be a clear way forward. But it didn't; so in effect the Catalan situation is just as much up in the air now as it was three months ago.
The problem is that the Catalan parliament has to elect a new President of the Government within three months of its first meeting (i.e. before 9 January) because if they fail to agree on one, new elections must be held. Junts pel Sí (the coalition of pro-independence parties) have stuck to their position that Artur Mas should be President; CUP has refused to accept him. But neither side wants new elections because they already have what they both really want: namely enough seats between them to carry through the independence process in the Catalan Parliament. They would not put that in jeopardy.
So it is only a question of who leads the Catalan Government rather than what that Catalan Government does.
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After months of negotiations, a proposal has been put forward by Junts pel Sí, and at today's meeting the CUP delegates will choose one of four options: Yes to the proposal with Mas as President; Yes to the proposal without Mas as President; No to the proposal, but Yes to Mas as President; or No to both. They'll have several rounds of voting with the least popular being rejected in each round.
My guess is that they'll choose the second. But CUP are unpredictable, and deciding these options by secret ballot can only add to that unpredictability. It may well be that for all their vehement public posturing against Mas, they might privately hold their noses and say Yes because independence is more important than who leads them to it.
We'll know by this evening.
Update - 20:50, 27 December 2015
Well, I wouldn't have thought it possible, but the result is an exact tie. After two of the options had been easily defeated (neither of which had more than 4% support in the first round) the last two options received exactly 1515 votes each.
Round 1
Option A: Yes to proposal, Yes to Mas ... 45.17%
Option B: No to proposal, No to Mas ... 47.14%
Option C: No to proposal, Yes to Mas ... 3.62%
Option D: Yes to proposal, No to Mas ... 3.42%
Round 2
Option A: Yes to proposal, Yes to Mas ... 48.71%
Option B: No to proposal, No to Mas ... 49.80%
Option C: No to proposal, Yes to Mas ... 0.92%
Round 3
Option A: Yes to proposal, Yes to Mas ... 50.0%
Option B: No to proposal, No to Mas ... 50.0%
A final decision is now going to be made by CUP's Grupo de Acción Parlamentaria (a sort of executive committee) on 2 January.
I can usually ignore the vacuous stupidity of some of the posts made by the LibDems on Freedom Central, but this morning's offering was so bad that it deserves to be highlighted.
William Powell is calling for the Labour Government to commit to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Wales by 100%, supposedly to "meet Wales' obligations on the world stage".
Does he, or do the LibDems in general, really think it is possible for Wales to have a "zero emissions target"? Do they have the faintest idea what this would mean?
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The two major greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide and methane. CO2 emissions are produced by burning hydrocarbons as fuel, generally to generate electricity, for heating, for transport, and for various industrial processes.
Yes, it would certainly be possible to generate all our electricity from renewable sources without the need to burn any hydrocarbons; that's quite an easy target to hit, and much sooner than by 2050. It's also quite feasible switch from gas to electricity for general heating and cooking, supplemented by solar thermal panels and ground source heat pumps.
Transport is slightly more problematic. Trains can easily be electrified, and I would expect most road vehicles to be powered either by electric batteries or hydrogen fuel cells far sooner than 2050, but air travel won't be so easy. It's hard to imagine any real alternative to burning hydrocarbons for long distance air travel.
Fireflash was powered by six atomic engines but nuclear was never a very clever idea, then or now. To quote the Wikia entry:
"the shielding around the reactor requires servicing at the end of every flight, limiting its flight time to around 3-4 hours before everyone aboard is exposed to lethal levels of radiation."
Then, when it comes to industry, it's again hard to imagine how we could produce something like steel without burning hydrocarbons. But perhaps the LibDems are not expecting countries like Wales to manufacture things like steel in the future.
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The absurdity of the LibDem's aims is even more apparent when it comes to methane, which is a very much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. In order to achieve this "zero emissions target", we would need to completely abandon livestock farming in Wales, since the natural processes of farm animals account for some 14.5% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, according to the FAO.
So perhaps Carwyn Jones shouldn't be so worried about the UK's potential exit from the EU destroying farming in Wales ... the real danger to farming in Wales is going to come from the LibDems instead.
And of course, humans are subject to the same natural processes, so to avoid the release of any anthropogenic methane, we would have to completely depopulate Wales.
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More seriously, climate change is important, but the aim is to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to limit the global rise in temperature ... not to do away with them completely. The LibDems are making what they know, or at least should know, is an impossible demand. It's an old political trick. They're probably saying it because they think it makes them look "green", but over-simplistic statements actually detract from any meaningful discussion of how we live sustainably.
With depressing predictability, the House of Commons voted yesterday to launch air attacks in Syria. I watched the first few hours of the debate, although debate is hardly the right word, as MPs were largely explaining their own reasons for voting one way or another without engaging in any form of dialogue. But that is quite understandable.
One point that I would like to record is that the majority of both Welsh and Scottish MPs voted against these air strikes. Getting dragged into unwanted wars by a consistently belligerent England still remains one of the most important reasons why Wales and Scotland should become independent.
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However that is not the main point I want to make in this post. One of the repeated claims that particularly struck me yesterday was that the UK had been responsible for no civilian casualties in its air strikes in Iraq. Indeed on the BBC news at 1pm today, Group Captain Rich Davies, the RAF spokesman, even went so far as to claim that "with over 400 strikes that the RAF has carried out in Iraq, we have had absolutely no civilian casualties reported ... and I am absolutely confident that will continue to be the case with operations in Syria".
This demonstrably untrue. For those who aren't aware of it, Airwars.org is a website dedicated to publishing a detailed database of all air attacks against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. It has a section on civilian casualties, and this is an extract from it:
Summary findings on Coalition airstrikes:
August 8th 2014 to December 1st 2015
To December 1st 2015, an overall total of between 1,592 and 2,104 civilian non-combatant fatalities had been reported from 267 separate incidents, in both Iraq and Syria. However, some caution is needed given the significant challenges of casualty verification at present.
It is our provisional view at Airwars that between 682 and 977 civilian non-combatants are likely to have been killed in 115 incidents where there is fair reporting publicly available of an event, and where Coalition strikes were confirmed in the near vicinity on that date.
Some 42 of these incidents were in Iraq (332 to 498 reported deaths) and 73 events in Syria (with a reported fatality range of 364 to 498).
Across both nations, 24 alleged incidents have in our view been disproven, i.e. are highly unlikely to have involved Coalition aircraft (154 to 243 claimed deaths). An additional 30 to 48 civilians reportedly died in eight events where the reporting appears fair, but where it remains unclear whether the Coalition carried out any attack in the vicinity on the date in question.
A further 479 to 506 claimed deaths are attributed to 82 alleged Coalition airstrikes which are presently weakly reported or single-sourced. And an additional 224 to 298 asserted fatalities resulted from 36 contested events (for example, claims that the Iraq military might instead have been responsible).
In addition, 126 to 200 ‘friendly fire’ deaths of allied ground forces have been attributed to the Coalition from 13 incidents, with varying levels of certainty.
To date, the international coalition has only conceded two “likely” fatality events. The first was an event in Syria in early November 2014. The second event, which took place in Hatra in Iraq, was publicly conceded eight months after the event in November 2015.
To mid-November 2015 the Coalition had provisionally investigated 74 alleged casualty incidents in total. Of these it reports further investigating seven incidents of concern; carrying out credibility assessments on a further 13 cases; and has concluded three more investigations – having found no ‘preponderance of evidence’ to support civilian casualty claims.
So, to be clear, between 1,592 and 2,104 civilian deaths from 267 air strikes have been reported and, according the Airwars, just under half of these reports are likely to be true. But the international coalition has only conceded two of these air strikes as even being "likely" to have caused civilian casualties. There is clearly a very wide gulf between what our political and military leaders would like us to believe and reality.
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Turning now to the detail, it is of course more difficult to determine which of the individual coalition partners might have been responsible for the reported civilian casualties. But a brief search through the details on this page shows that the UK was involved in at least three reported incidents:
March 13th, 2015: Hatra, Kirkuk province, Iraq
Summary: An internal CENTCOM assessment found “likely credible” evidence to suggest that a Coalition strike had killed civilians at an ‘ISIL checkpoint’ at Hatra near Kirkuk.
According to the FOIA’s document, a woman who may have been the source for the information had put in a claim for her destroyed car. The report went on to say that “CAOC CIVCAS assessment determined that the allegation of CIVCAS was likely credible. CAOC SJA indicated that a command directed investigation would be initiated.” The outcome of that investigation is not presently known.
While the nationality of the aircraft responsible for the strike is not yet publicly known, the British MoD has reported carrying out two or possibly three strikes near Kirkuk that day (see below).
While Airwars researchers have identified no public claims of civilians killed that day, there were widespread reports of Coalition strikes on Islamic State positions in the area.
Civilians reported killed: 2 or more Reported injured: Unknown
April 3rd, 2015: Al Waeliyah, Mosul, Nineveh province, Iraq
Summary: Abdarahman Alloizi MP, a deputy in the Iraqi parliament, claimed that as many as 26 civilians from one family died when the coalition struck a house near Mosul, in the village of Al Waeliyah.
Summary: In a likely US or British drone strike, a truck was inadvertently hit during an airstrike at Ar Rutbah, according to a declassified CENTCOM report. “2 seconds prior to weapon impact, a large truck inadvertently arrived at the checkpoint. The back section of the truck was possibly damaged during the strike.” The driver was observed fleeing.
The weapon used was an AGM-114 Hellfire, most typically used by Reaper drones and by Apache attack helicopters. Britain has confirmed carrying out a drone strike on the date in question “in western Iraq.”
The outcome of any investigation at the time the document was collated (most likely early May 2015) was not known.
Airwars researchers have not identified any public claims of civilians killed or injured for this date. though news reports did note the very heavy bombing in Iraq that day – with 26 airstrikes by “fighter and bomber aircraft, and unmanned aerial vehicles against Daesh.”
This blog has been set up to complement the Syniadau Forums.
Much of what will appear on this blog will also appear in the Syniadau Forums, but the emphasis on this blog is slightly different. The forums are focused more on the structures and institutions that Wales will need to develop in order to become a successful independent nation, arranged on a subject by subject basis, but the blog will have more of an emphasis on day to day political news and developments.
People are welcome to reply or leave comments either here or on the Syniadau Forums. If anyone wants to initiate a new subject they are very welcome to do so there.
