The Wor(l)d According to Saul: Dictionaries and the Language Wars, Doubt versus Ideology

Posted on November 21, 2019January 11, 2022 by E Curb Nottus

Literary & Linguistics, Media & Communications, Old technology, Politics, Regional History

Canadian political philosopher John Ralston Saul is the secular high-priest of doubters and cynics, a non-believer in “the gospel” of the modern corporate state, constantly debunking the conventional wisdoms offered up as “absolute truths” in Western society✲. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that Saul would produce a guidebook for other secular agnostics. Wedged between his treatises on his personal philosophy ‘superstar’ Voltaire, his studies of modern Canadian society and his excursions into the realm of fiction, is JR Saul’s The Doubter’s Companion, or to give it his full title:

The Doubter’s Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense (Viking, 1994)¹

Although Saul calls his volume “a dictionary”, the term applies more to the book’s format (utilising the standard A-Z form of the dictionary) than to its content or purpose. The Companion goes on to define Dictionary as “Opinion presented as truth in alphabetical order”. And Answers are merely “a mechanism for avoiding questions”. Saul decries the trajectory of modern dictionaries and language (which have been captured by the forces of a rational orthodoxy), yearning instead for a return to the Humanist dictionaries of the 18th century (Voltaire, Diderot, Johnson, etc)².

When I first delved into The Doubter’s Companion (around 1995), my mind took me to that other great cynic’s dictionary of the early 1900s, Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary. Both works, albeit very different books, are idiosyncratically unconventional takes on language and meaning in their respective societies, and both proffer a contrarian view of the established wisdom of the day. Both Saul and Bierce are provocateurs, each with their own personal axe to grind⁌.

The Doubter’s Companion, by its polemical nature is unequivocally meant to shake up orthodox thinking (TDC was described by one reader as “an abecedarium of subversion”). The dictionary form of the book is a device Saul employs to launch into short philosophical essays on topics about modern post-industrial society that concern him—corporatism, individualism, leadership and managerialism, freedom of expression, communication, public relations, advertising and the way language is distorted to control communications (see his definition of ‘ideology’). In so doing, Saul skewers the accepted veracity of many of the words, phrases and terms you will find in today’s dictionaries.

And as it is an instruction manual to help doubters navigate their way through a linguistic maze of (in Saul’s opinion) mis-defined terms, the central tenet is thus affirmed:

Doubt: The only human activity capable of controlling the use of power in a positive way. Doubt is central to understanding.

Wisdom: The purpose of doubt … wisdom is life with uncertainty, the opposite of power or ideology.

Ideology: Tendentious arguments which advance a world view as absolute truth in order to win and hold political power.

The Corporate executive “is not a capitalist but a technocrat in drag”.

Economics is “the romance of truth through measurement”.

Level playing field: An ideological abstraction adopted as a universal value by the management of large corporations.

Saul the provocateur infuses the dictionary with a regular diet of “outrageous statements and provocations”:

Marxist: The only serious functioning Marxists left in the West are the senior managers of large, usually transnational corporations.

Neo-Conservatives are the Bolsheviks of the Right (“the exact opposite of a conservative”).

Modern (that should be “post-modern”) fads of intellectual thinking such as Deconstructionism get short shrift from Saul:

Deconstructionism: Can also be seen as a school of light comedy.

Calm: A state of emotion which is overrated except in religious retreats. Calmness for Saul has a decidedly political connotation today, “it is used to control people who are dissatisfied with the way those in authority are doing their job”✬.

Public relations: A negative form of imagination. In Mussolini’s phrase, “invention is more useful than truth”.

Saul savages that that most universal institution of fast food, MacDonalds:

A Big Mac: The communion wafer of consumption. (It is) not really food but the promise of food.

He goes on sardonically to bracket it with “Perrier, one of the last sacred objects of the leading philosophical school of the late-twentieth century—public relations”…one of Saul’s greatest bête noires.

Elsewhere, in a similar vein, he brands Ronald McDonald as a “Post-modern philosopher”…the “face and voice of consumer culture”.

Contemporary education doesn’t escape a broadside from Saul, especially the American form:

SAT: A system of standardized American college entry exams designed to nurture and reward functional illiteracy.

Universities find themselves in Saul’s cross-hairs as well. Within the “exclusive territories” of the university that knowledge is divided into, the principal occupation of academics is “to invent dialects sufficiently hermetic to prevent knowledge from passing between territories”.

Happy Hour is “a depressing comment on the rest of the day”.

At different points Saul diverts momentarily from his philosophical musings to give historical clarification on certain pertinent terms of interest to him. Having defined Depression as “a form of economic disaster common throughout history”, he goes on to contend that “in 1973 the word was deleted from all Western languages and replaced by the term recession”, a softer word which in Saul’s mind allows economists to maintain the myth of appearing to “manage real situations”. The author expands his point: “to admit to the existence of anything as uncontrollable as a depression would be to admit failure”.

The book’s dictionary entries allow space for brief commentaries on individuals from the pages of history who attract Saul’s interest. These are usually philosopher-figures but not always. He has an interesting take on the great turn-of-the-century novelist Joseph Conrad, “The essential modern writer…demonstrated that the novel could have a third century of relevance if the story was transformed into metaphysics disguised as reality”.

Sigmund Freud, who in America would be described as the “father of shrinks”, gets a guernsey in the dictionary, albeit a cynical and disparaging reference – “a man so dissatisfied with his own mother and father that he devoted his life to convincing everyone who would just listen—or better still, talk—that they’re parents were just as bad”.

Air Conditioning: An efficient means for spreading disease in enclosed public spaces.

Muzak: A public noise neither requested nor listened to by individuals. It is the descendant of a school of public relations invented by the Nazis.

For one so articulately cynical of human nature, politics, economics, most things in the modern world (except of course doubt), Saul’s definition of that attitudinal standpoint seems contradictory:

Cynicism: An effective social mechanism for preventing communication.

Pessimism on the other hand is “a valuable protection against quackery”. More beneficial than ‘scepticism’ “which slips easily into cynicism and so becomes a self-defeating negative force”.

Whereas Optimism to Saul is double-edged. When applied to oneself it is “a pleasant and sometime useful distraction” to reality, but “when encouraged as a social attitude … it is the public tool of scoundrels and ideologues” (as is patriotism).

World Class: A phrase used by provincial cities and second-rate entertainment and sports events … to assert they are not provincial or second-rate, thereby confirming that they are.

Saul includes in the alphabetical list a number of surprising and disparate entries for a reference book on philosophical common sense. These include Ants (Saul makes the unexpected and unverified statement that the members of the Formicidae family of eusocial insects “do nothing 71.5 per cent of the time”)⊡; Apple (the fruit not the corporation); Armpits (which is curiously cross-referenced to Reality); Nannyism (not sure why this topic warranted nine paragraphs and over 400 words but Saul interweaves a discourse on Margaret Thatcher, bullying and sex appeal into the entry); Urban weather patterns (wtf?); White bread (“the sophisticated product of a civilization taken to its logical conclusion … continually refined until all utility has been removed”).

Among the many asides Saul offers an interesting reflection on the city-state of Venice – he declares it “the original model of modern dictatorship, in which commercial power finds its cultural expression in painting, architecture and music … (but not) language”. And on Benito Mussolini: “the nascent modern Heroic leader (who) combined corporatism, public relations and sport together, while replacing public debate and citizen participation with false popularism and the illusion of direct democracy”.

JRS humorous and glib

The philosopher’s serious message aside, Saul produces a regular line of humorous explanations of terms, some of these are dazzlingly economic epigrams or bon mots:

Museums: Safe storage for stolen objects.

Cosmetic surgery: Cosmetic perjury.

Biography: A respectable form of pornography.

Other descriptors and definitions however are quite glib:

René Descartes is thus presented “gave credibility to the idea that the mind exists separately from the body, which suggests he didn’t look down while writing” [ba-dum-tss!].

Anorexia: A condition aspired to by most middle-class women (a subject taken much more medically serious today!).

JRS’s extensive catalogue of pet bugbears include ideology (and ideologues), applied corporatism, applied civilisation, conventional wisdom, , economic determinism, technocrats, absolute truth and certainty, dry, sectarian ‘definitions’, rigid scholasticism and structure, superstition, public relations and advertising.

Footnote: it’d be interesting to see an update of the Companion. A chance to find out what the perspicacious John Ralston Saul makes of early 21st century concepts such as social media, iPhones, fake news, drones. climate change deniers and the nanny state, to name just a handful.

╰━━ ⋅𖥔⋅ ━━✶━━ ⋅𖥔⋅ ━━ ⋅𖥔⋅ ━━✶━━ ⋅𖥔⋅ ━━✶ ━━ ⋅𖥔⋅ ━━✶━━ ⋅𖥔⋅ ━━╯

✲ whether that be from the left or right

⁌ though where Bierce is acerbic, Saul is out and out incendiary

✬ adding the rider that “calm incompetence” has risen to become a quality of high professionalism”

⊡ in case this isn’t enough on the subject, JRL follows up with an entry for ant-eaters (Myrmecophaga Jubata)

¹ Amazon‘s “dust-jacket” review summarises the book as full of “renegade opinions”; (it) uses “guerrilla lexicography to reclaim public language from stultifying dialects of modern expertise”

² ‘Doubter’s Companion’, www.freelistbooks.com

⏏³⁴⁵⁶⁷⁸⁹⁰⏏

The Russian Far East: Russia’s Far Flung Territory in North-East Asia 1

Posted on July 31, 2019October 18, 2022 by E Curb Nottus

Inter-ethnic relations, Politics, Regional History, Social History

Vladivostok, the principal city and port of Far Eastern Russia, is nearly 4,000 miles from the Russian Federation’s capital, Moscow, yet it is only some 830 miles from China’s capital, Beijing. That stark fact of geography goes a good way to explaining the Russian Far East’s destiny. The inhospitable remoteness of the wild East from the capital of Russia, be it under empire, union or federation, has in its history never been until very recently❉ in the forefront of the minds of the country’s political leaders.

RFE today: the demographics
Russian: Дальний Восток России/ Dal’niy Vostok Rossi (trslit. Russian), literally “The distant East of Russia”.

Where exactly is it? The Russian Far East is a vast region within the world’s largest single-state political entity; roughly RFE extends from Eastern Siberia and Lake Baikal through to the Pacific coastline.
Area: 6,952,000 kms (comprising 40.6% of all the Russia territory)
Population according to the 2010 Census: 6.3 million (constituting a population scarcity of less than one person per square kilometre).
Composition: the majority are ethnic Russians and Ukrainians, with traditional indigenous and other ethnic minorities – including Mongols and Buryats, Aleuts and Inuits, Chukotko-Kamchatkan peoples, Koryats, Turkic peoples, Korean people (Koryo Saram).
Political division: RFE comprises four oblasts, three krais, an autonomous okrug (Chukotia) and the Sakha Republic⚛️.

Historical background
The Russian Empire, emerging out of its tentative, early Moscovy origins, was not quick to explore (and eventually conquer) the regions to the east of the Russian heartland. Exploration of the area got its impetus and propulsion under the rule of Ivan the Terrible (Tsar Ivan IV) in the late 16th century. Cossack Hetman Ermak’s 1581 victory over the Khanate of Sibir led to other eastern expeditions by other Russian atamans and ultimately to the defeat of the other khanates (the Golden Horde) and the incorporation of their lands under the Russian imperial banner. Aside from empire-building, the Russians were motivated by the mystique that had attached itself to the Asian hinterlands to the east, the reported vast quantities of wealth thought to be on the other side of the Kamen (a traditional name for the Urals)[‘Meeting of Frontiers: Siberia, Alaska and the American West’, (Library of Congress project), www.frontiers.loc.gov].

The image many hold of Sibir

Once the explorers and the conquerors had established the territory in the name of the tsar, the trappers, traders and merchants followed in their footsteps, populating the enormous reaches of Siberia. The promyshelenniki typified these pioneers, the frontiersmen who harvested and distributed the lucrative fur trade, much sought after by the European market. Finally, in 1639, the Russians reached the Pacific at the Sea of Okhotsk with Ivan Moskvitin’s expedition [ibid.].

Yakutsk (capital of Yakutia)

Yakutia, a land with a grim past to match its climate
Yakutia in RFE’s north, today the Sakha Republic (Coordinates: 66°24’N 129°10’E), (not to be confused with the Sakhalin Oblast comprising the Sakhalin and Kuril Islands) achieved legendary notoriety during the Soviet era. Described as “a prison without bars”, Yakutia was the location of somewhere in the region of 105 to 165 of Stalin’s Gulags. Between 1930 and 1950 the Soviets operated brutal forced-labour camps where many victims of Stalin’s autocracy were tasked with building the USSR’s infrastructure in conditions that were intolerable harsh and unbearable cold (arctic permafrost, frozen tundra, etc)⊙.

Contemporary Yakutia typifies the dilemma of RFE. The present government’s commitment to developing RFE is viewed with cynicism by most in the Sakha Republic. The town of Mirny (37,000 inhabitants) is the unofficial diamond capital of Russia, 25% of the world’s commercially mined diamonds are found here❂. In addition the region is blessed with ample deposits of gold and coal. Another more niche commodity found below ground in the republic are the bones of prehistoric woolly mammoths – many of which find a ready home on the black market [‘Left Behind in Russia’s Far East’, (Dmitriy Frolovskiy, The Diplomat, 24-Jul-2019, www.thediplomat.com].

Yakutia locals see the development priorities and benefits accruing from the new emphasis on the RFE differently to that of Moscow. In their eyes the increased wealth extracted from the region goes one way only – back to the centre. This has deepened Yukutians’ sense of isolation from “the mainland” (as the locals sometimes call the rest of Russia). Notwithstanding that the Republic of Sakha is critically underpopulated (around 1M residents in an area of 3,103,200 sq km), many locals also express dissatisfaction with the federal government’s recent attempts to bolster the depleted population of RFE with new intakes of migrants, largely from the ‘Stans’ of Central Asia’ [ibid.].

Norilsk, another ‘Gulagtown’ trying to live down its past
Current day Norilsk is overshadowed by a similar back story to Yakutia’s gulag towns…a remote location in Krasnoyarsk Krai, also supra-Arctic Circle, with no roads or rail lines into the city. Norilsk-Talnakh contains the largest-known deposits of nickel-copper-palladium in the world. In the days of Stalin’s “campaign of terror” Norilsk was “a node in the network of similar camps that Alexandr Solzhenitsyn (described) in the Gulag Archipelago” [‘Norilsk: The remote Russian mining town uneasy about its gulag past’, (Tom Parfitt), The Times, 06-May-2018, www.thetimes.co.uk].

Norilsk Golgotha, a monument to the city’s gulag prisoners

Repopulating RFE with Eastern Ukrainians
Ukrainians have been (forcibly) resettled in Siberia and RFE since the 17th century. In the formative years after the Russian Revolution of 1917, Ukrainians resettled in the area known as Zeleny Klyn◚ (sometimes also called Transcathay) tried to secede from the newly established Bolshevik Far Eastern Republic and create their own Eastern Russian entity, Green Ukraine. Fast-forward to 2016, President Vladimir Putin, in the wake of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, launched a Ukrainian resettlement program, voluntary this time with inducements of free land in underpopulated northern towns like Igarka for refugees from East Ukraine [‘Green Ukraine’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org; ‘Meeting of Frontiers’, loc.cit.]. The free land carrot had already been offered to Russians living in the Federation to migrate to the Far East.

The follow-up second part of my Russian Far East blog piece will deal in more detail with contemporary developments in RFE including Putin’s desire and strategy to turn the region into an economic powerhouse, and the vexing question of foreign investment in RFE, especially that of China.

_____________________________________________

❉ the current and greatly enhanced interest shown by the ultra-nationalistic Putin government in Russia’s Far East will be more thoroughly addressed in Part 2 of this blog

⚛️ oblasts, krais and okrugs are terms for administrative divisions with a fair degree of elasticity, although okrug is sometimes rendered as ‘district’ (raion)

⊙ known to get down to temperatures of -70° Celsius

❂ the ALROSA group of companies accounts for 95% of the country’s diamond production and dominates the Russian Far East’s economy

◚ literally “the green wedge”

Marsha Hunt, Century Call for an American Progressive and a Global Humanitarian

Posted on October 19, 2017June 26, 2021 by funambulator@live.com

Cinema, Performing arts, Politics

Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.

~ Søren Kierkegaard

㊗⎋㊙⎋㊗

On the 17th of this month US film actress with a social conscience Marsha Virginia Hunt turned 100, joining the illustrious company of Olivia de Havilland and Kirk Douglas – a trio of Hollywood film centenarians all still alive! (Libby and the dimpled Kirk both reached their triple figure milestones during 2016).

(Photo: Mansfield News Journal)

Adulation for Marsha’s momentous achievement haven’t reached the stratospheric fanfare, the hype and media attention of Kirk Douglas’ 100th bash last December or of that of another Hollywood mainstay, Bob Hope. Of course it would not be expected, Marsha has never achieved the limelight that those other centenarian luminaries demanded in their Hollywood careers. She was a serious actress but never got the star ‘creds’ that others in the business did☸…but the elusiveness of stardom for Marsha wasn’t down to a shortfall in her acting ability – rather the explanation for this lay in the intervention of external factors which were to impact on her career.

Ms Hunt’s film career from its start in the Thirties looked promising, but in the super-charged, competitive stakes for the glamour female roles she came close without ever quite clasping the big prize…especially in 1939 when she tested impressively for the much sort-after part of Melanie in Gone With The Wind but narrowly lost out to (fellow centenarian) Olivia de Havilland. The following year Hunt did score a supporting role in the prestigious period movie Pride and Prejudice starring Laurence Olivier.

After World War II the grubby, gutter politics of McCarthyism dealt a savage blow to Marsha Hunt’s career…as it did to numerous other Hollywood liberals during that time when it was the fashion de jour in America to go full-throttle after citizens who were merely alleged or implied to be communists (truly a “Dark Age of guilty until proven innocent” witch-hunts!) For a fuller account of Hunt’s story see my earlier blog on this site (June 2014) Marsha Hunt, Lifelong Social Activist: Not your Average Hollywood Role Model .

With her reputation unfairly besmirched (tantamount to no more than implicit guilt by association!), Hunt was punished by being inexorably squeezed out of the Hollywood film mainstream. Potential parts in A-movies disappeared and the public saw her relegated to B-pictures and eventually to television and theatre (few good roles in theatrical movies came her way after 1947, the 1948 film noir Raw Deal and the much later Johnny Got His Gun (1971) were rare exceptions for the Chicago-born actress).

After being blacklisted by HUAC in 1950 after having made around 50 films since 1935, Hunt only featured in three films during the next eight years [‘Marsha Hunt (actress, born 1917)’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. By the Fifties and Sixties Hunt was finding work only easy to find in television – in a minor-note series Peck’s Bad Girl and in numerous guest roles on Zane Grey Theater, The Twilight Zone and so on ad infinitum.

Marsha Hunt: Life lived forwards…
After her semi-retirement in 1960 Hunt stepped up her active involvement in progressive causes including support for same-sex marriage, ending global poverty, raising awareness of climate change and promoting peace in Third World countries [Memos, Roger C. (October 17, 2014). “Honoring Actress – Activist Marsha Hunt on her 97th Birthday!”. Sherman Oaks, California: Patch.com. Archived from the original on August 10, 2017. Retrieved May 14, 2016]

In a series of interviews last week in honour of her 100th birthday Miss Hunt reflected on her career and on the missed stardom, which seemed to have touched her but only lightly. Hunt merely remarked of her Hollywood years that she was grateful for being allowed to be an actress and show her versatility on the screen✳…or as she put it in her characteristically humble, unassuming way, she is “a grateful girl of 100!” [J Kinser, ‘Marsha Hunt at 100: The Actress Recalls the Blacklist, Film Noir and Being Cast in Gone With a The Wind‘, Movie Maker, 13-Oct-2017, www.moviemaker.com].

JE Smith seems to have summed up the essence of Marsha Hunt and the paradoxes in her movie persona and career fairly well in the title of his interview with the centenarian, “American girl, Un-American woman, upstanding centenarian” [JE Smith, ‘Marsha Hunt: American girl, Un-American woman, upstanding centenarian’, Sight & Sound, 17-Oct-2017, www.bfi.org.uk].

(Source: Alt Film Art)

Once vilified by HUAC along with other progressive Hollywood actors as “Un-American”, Hunt’s longevity and achievements are testimony to all that is good about American society – an authentic patriot but also a defender of freedoms for all citizens – whilst repudiating all that is bad about American society. At the same time we have Hunt’s unceasing activism as a humanitarian concerned for the world as a whole and its future well-being, a tireless advocate for peace and progress, and for a more fair distribution of resources and safeguards for the environment.

๑๑~๑๑~๑๑~๑๑~๑๑~๑๑~๑๑~๑๑~
☸ IMDB proffers an interesting take on why she never scored the plum roles that other lauded Hollywood female stars were given: “Perhaps her work was not flashy enough, or too subdued, or perhaps her intelligence too often disguised a genuine sex appeal to stand out among the other lovelies” [Marsha Hunt biographical entry, www.imdb.com]

✳ the unstated inference is clear…rather than being factory-made into (an overhyped) star!

A Tale of Two Enclaves: Contested Sovereignty in the Mediterranean – Gibaltrar and Ceuta

Posted on March 31, 2017May 4, 2020 by funambulator@live.com

International Relations, Politics, Regional History

They lie on different continents, just a shade over 28 kilometres from each other, on either side of the Straits of Gibraltar, and the common denominator for both is Spain. Their situations are in some ways the mirror image of each other – one, Gibraltar, is a tiny piece of the United Kingdom within the natural geography of Spain, and the other, Ceuta, is a tiny piece of Spain within the natural geography of Morocco. Geologically, both landscapes are physically dominated by a large chunk of limestone rock, viz. the Rock of Gibraltar and Monte Hacho (both probably are heavily fortified). Another thing they have in common is that the sovereign state in possession of each enclave is fiercely determined that its unilateral hold over the territory is not negotiable.

href=”http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/image-18.jpg”> Spain’s Places of Sovereignty[/

In discussing the tiny, controversial entities of Ceuta (known as Sebta in the Arab world) and Gibraltar, it is necessary to introduce a third entity into this binary equation – Melilla, because this territory located 225km east of Ceuta is linked to it by circumstance. Melilla, although overshadowed by the higher profile of Ceuta, shares its peculiar status – both are minuscule Spanish territories incongruously appended to the Moroccan state, which in turn claims sovereignty over both enclaves. And certainly, when it comes to advocating sovereignty over Ceuta and Melilla, both sides treat them as a “job lot”❈.

The following table is a snapshot of the comparative basic data on the three enclaves:

🌐 🌐 🌐

Gibraltar
Walking through the streets of Gibraltar it’s hard to miss the very visible signs of ‘Britishness’ or ‘Angloness’ in the territory … red telephone boxes, Leyland double-decker buses, fish-and-chips shops, “English atmosphere” pubs, British bobbies, Union Jacks and the like. It is after all a BOT, a British Overseas Territory – and there are scarce few of those left on the world map! To the residents of the Rock these trappings are an unequivocal testimony to the loyalty of Gibraltarians to the United Kingdom and the British Crown.

Brexit for Gibraltar?
The vote last June by Britain and Northern Ireland to leave the EU was nowhere more momentous in the United Kingdom than in Gibraltar. Gibraltar, in contrast to most elsewhere in Britain, voted 96 per cent to stay in the Common Market[1]. Energised, the Spanish government seized on the Brexit opt-out to push the Gibraltar sovereignty issue again, calling for joint sovereignty of the two countries. With the unpalatable prospect for Gibraltar of being denied vital access to a single European market thanks to the British decision, Madrid believe (or hope) that they can leverage Gibraltarians into a rethink of their future options.

Like Ulster (Northern Ireland), Gibraltar is bracing itself to feel the full impact of what Brexit means for it, once the separation takes effect. Gibraltar for its part has argued for a special relationship post-Brexit with the European Union (as has Scotland)[2]. Madrid however has turned up the heat on Britain and its Iberian BOT, initiating tighter border controls, a deliberate go-slow affecting all vehicles and persons crossing into the British Overseas Territory from Spain. Already in 2013 the Spanish government threatened to charge motorists €50 to cross the border, restrict flights as well as investigate the tax status of 6,000 Gibraltar residents who own investment properties in Spain[3].

Gibraltar Chief Minister Picardo stressed that the implementation of a ‘hard’ border by Madrid would impose hardships on both sides, pointing out that 12,000 workers cross daily to work in the construction and services industries on “the Rock”[4]. But the stalemate persists and border-crossers continue to endure (up to) six-hour delays into and out of Gibraltar⊛.

The simmering tensions have aggravated underlying issues between the two European disputants in recent times … the Brits in 2014 asserted that there had been over 5,000 unauthorised incursions of Spanish ships into Gibraltar’s waters during 2013[5]. Local fishermen from Spain have complained that the construction of an artificial reef in Gibraltar in 2013 has imperilled the livelihoods of Spanish fishermen by depleting local fish stocks[6]. Spain has also objected to the presence of British warships in Gibraltar’s port as an unnecessary provocation[7].

*The Rock-cum-Fortress*
A minor incident involving a US nuclear submarine and warning flares in the Port of Gibraltar in April 2016 also drew Madrid’s displeasure (notwithstanding the fact that the port is a frequent maintenance stop for US subs)[8]. Some suspicions seem to be fed by prolonged antagonisms. Spaniards have expressed disquiet about the 1,400 foot high limestone Rock, a fortress-like structure in itself, hinting darkly at the possibility that the Gibraltarians may have fortified it[9]. Another point of Spanish aggravation on the frontier has been the issue of smuggling. A recurrent problem since the 1990s, Spain sees Gibraltar as the conduit for an estimated 1½ billion contraband cigarettes as well as drugs, mainly hashish (from Morocco) coming into Spain each year … resulting in a massive loss of customs revenues for Madrid who accuse the British and Gibraltarian authorities of turning a blind eye to the illicit activities[10].Gibraltar – the historical issue
❝The Catholic King (Philip V of Spain) … yield to the Crown of Great Britain the full and entire propriety of the town and castle of Gibraltar together with the port, fortifications and forts thereun belonging … the said propriety to be held and enjoyed absolutely with all manner of right for ever❞.
[Article X of the Treaty of Utrecht, 13 July 1713]
(Note no reference in the legal document of Spain ceding the territorial waters of Gibraltar to the English victors).

The British secured the tiny enclave of Gibraltar during the Spanish War of Succession, having (with the Dutch) captured the peninsula from Spain early in the war and then been granted ownership of it as part of the spoils of war in the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. The longevity of Britain’s occupation of Gibraltar is one the arguments used to validate possession of this remote, non-contiguous part of the UK. Spain counters that the English takeover in 1704 was as interlopers in a conflict provoked by a Spanish dynastic dispute, and the English claims on Gibraltar were limited by the Treaty and did not include the isthmus, the area of the current airport and Gibraltar’s territorial waters[11].A choice of principles: Self-determination Vs territorial integrity
Britain argues that its right to retain Gibraltar rests primarily on the issue of self-determination, pointing to the fact that the citizens of Gibraltar twice voted by massive majorities to remain part of the UK (1967 and 2002)¤. Despite being embedded in an Hispanic milieu, the people of Gibraltar culturally self-identify as British.The Spanish counter-argument has been that the validity of its sovereignty lies in the realm of territorial integrity. In support of this Spain has cited UN Resolution 1514 (XV) (the UN principle of territorial integrity): “any attempt✥ at the partial or total disruption of the national unity and the territorial integrity of a country is incompatible with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations”. Spain also argues that the passage of UN Principles of Decolonisation resolutions in the 1960s [2231 (XXI) and 2353 (XXII) ‘Question of Gibraltar’] affirms that the principle of territorial integrity prevails over Gibraltar’s right to self-determination[12].Ceuta y Melilla
As already mentioned the parallels between Britain’s Gibraltar and Spain’s Ceuta in particular, are stark … two small but strategically positioned enclaves, one almost on the southernmost tip of Europe and the other on the north-western point of Africa, both tacked on to the end of a foreign state. The seeming irony of Spain’s passionate advocacy of its right to absorb Gibraltar into the nation-state is not lost on Morocco who has pointed out that the presence of Spanish military on Ceuta and Melilla poses a threat to Moroccan national security (and territorial integrity), and argues that its existence contravenes the UN principle of decolonisation[13].

Faro de Ceuta

Spain’s basis for retaining its hold over Ceuta and Melilla rests on a number of criteria – longevity of occupation, right of conquest, the doctrine of Terra Nullis (historical justifications); national security and the territorial integrity of the state. As well Spain, like the UK, contends that the great bulk of its residents want to retain their Spanish status[14].

*North Africa: Boundary disputes the way of the world*
In North Africa, and in Africa generally, disputes between neighbouring states are legion (a 2015 estimate put it at close to 100 (active or dormant) border conflicts across the continent). And Morocco has had its fair share of them … with Spain over control of Western Sahara until Spain withdrew in 1975; and subsequently over the same territory embroiled together with Mauritania in a conflict against the **Polisario Front** (militaristic pro-independence group representing the Sahrawi people); in the 1960s contesting its border with Algeria[15].

(image: www.geo-ref.net)

A Spanish double standard?
Spain has gone to great pains to play down any perceived similarity that might be drawn between the situation of Gibraltar and that of its North African enclaves. Madrid portrays Gibraltar (officially a British Overseas Territory) as no more than a colonial remnant (“ripe for decolonisation”) … Gibraltar it argues should rightfully be politically reunited with Spain which it was part of until taken by force three centuries ago.

Map of Melilla (note neutral zone encircling city)

Ceuta and Melilla on the other hand, Madrid says, are integral parts of Spain and have been since the formation of the modern Spanish state, long predating the existence of modern Morocco as an independent, sovereign political entity (1956). The enclaves are semi-autonomous with the same status as the mainland (described by Madrid as “autonomous cities”), and under pressure Spain has hinted that it will offer Ceuta and Melilla greater autonomy[16]. Spain’s longevity argument could be countered by Moroccans who can point to an Arab presence in Ceuta and the other North African enclaves since the 8th century[17].

Melilla (photo: www.lonelyplanet.com)

UN Committee 4: Non-Self Governing Territory status
Morocco’s claim on the Plazas, from a legal standpoint, is generally thought to be a weaker case than Spain’s on Gibraltar. Whilst the UN includes Gibraltar in a list of non-self governing territories (international entities whose eligibility for decolonisation the UN investigates each year), Ceuta and Melilla is not. This is because of the Barajas Spirit (Espiritu de Barajas), an agreement reached in 1963 between Spain’s General Franco and Morocco’s King Hassan II … Morocco agreed to deal with the Ceuta and Melilla issue bilaterally, with Spain separately, rather than submit it to the UN to be raised with other territorial disputes of the day such as Gibraltar. And because Morocco was preoccupied in the 1960s and ’70s with the recovery of southern territories (Sidi Ifni and Western Sahara), it delayed any action on Melilla and Ceuta and missed its chance to register them on the NSGT territories list for the UN to debate their future[18].

Just blogging away … doing the hard blog

Continuing the search for signs of Intelligent Life in the University.

Politics