The other budget of the Royal Household of Spain

Today, on 28th December 2011, the Royal Household of Spain has brought its budget into the open. Although it had been often claimed, and contrary to most European monarchies, since 1979 the Royal Household of Spain would not reveal it.
But this is not enough. It is a good gesture, necessary for a real democracy, favouring transparency and allowing citizens to learn how public money is spent by the royal household. But nonetheless, a significant percentage of this budget remains concealed. As we said in a previous post, in the General State Budgets of Spain, there is a clearly assigned item for the Royal Family (8,434,280 euros), but in total the monarchy receives 25 million euros. And this is so because there are other hidden items in other budgets besides the Royal Budget. The government has never revealed the amount of these hidden items, so the total budget remains an unravelled mystery. Just to get an idea, the following list includes some items not included in the 8-million-euro Royal Family Budget, compiled by Iñaki Anasagasti, member of the Spanish Senate:

- Safety (item within the budget of Home Affairs)
- Travelling expenses (item within the budget of Home Affairs)
- Flights (item within the budget of Defence)
- Escorts for Prince and Princesses (item within the budget of Defence)
- Cars: Rolls, Mercedes, Audis, etc. (item within the budget of Public Works)
- Chauffeurs (item within the budget of Public Works)
- Palaces: Zarzuela, Oriente, la Granja de San Ildefonso, Marivent, the prince’s palace, etc. + maintenance, electricity, gas, water, telephone, gardeners, servants and maids, etc. (item within the budget of Patrimony)
- Official and non-official trips abroad (item within the budget of Foreign Affairs)
- Staff of the General Secretariat of the Royal Household (item within the budget of Presidency)

The document issued by the Royal Household talks about transparency and austerity. But the budget is still not transparent at all, and needless to say, not very austere. It’s high time the king should practice what he preaches.

Sources:

1. The Royal Budget of 2011: http://imagenes.publico-estaticos.es/resources/archivos/2011/12/28/1325074553154Desglose%20presupuestario.pdf
2. Previous post at Delivering Data about the hidden items: http://www.deliveringdata.com/2010/08/wich-is-budget-of-royal-household-of.html
3. The list compiled by Iñaki Anasagasti has been taken from the book Una monarquía protegida por la censura (“A monarchy protected by censorship”), published by Foca: http://ianasagasti.blogs.com/mi_blog/2009/06/la-censura-al-libro.html    

Concentration camps in North Korea

In July 1977 Kang Chol Hwan, a nine-year old kid, was arrested with his family because his grandfather was not enthusiastic enough with Kim Il Sung’s regime, the dictator of North Korea for life. His grandfather was not an opponent to the regime. He had returned from Japan to North Korea with his family to witness the revolution and he had given all his fortune to the party, but it seems that it was not enough.
Kang and his family spent ten years in Yodok concentration camps as “relatives of an offender”. Later on, when he managed to flee the country, he eventually settled down in South Korea, after his long voyage around China. He is the author of The Aquariums of Pyongyang, an account of his life in Yodok camp, the first book published in Europe to bear witness of North Korea concentration camps. It is a good example of this horror literature exposing life in concentration camps, be them Nazi, Soviet gulags or in Francoist Spain, among many others. Life at Yodok is worthless. The writer suffers starvation and cold, he survives by eating rats and bugs and he is made to view public executions. He witnessed how a teacher killed another child because the latter dared to answer him back. And most discouraging: Yodok is not the worst concentration camp in North Korea. When Kang talks about other concentration camps in his country (Amnesty International located six camps, but no-one knows how many camps there are), he states: "I feel almost guilty complaining publicly about the life I led at Yodok. Yes, guilty for Yodok is by no means the toughest camp in North Korea. Far worse exist, and they are shrouded in such secrecy that for a long time it was impossible to talk about them with any precision".
Moreover, there is a substantial difference between North Korea camps and soviet gulags or Nazi concentration camps: North Korea camps are still crowded. It is estimated that in North Korea, with about 24 million inhabitants, there are between 150,000 and 200,000 people imprisoned in concentration camps for political reasons. Some of them are dissidents, some others are not, as it was the case of Kang’s family, although the regime considers them opponents too. Most of them are only guilty of being relatives of an offender.
Such organisations as Amnesty International has been fighting for years to publicize this situations and put pressure on Kim Jong Un (Kim Il Sung’s grandson and Kim Jong Il’s son, who died last December 17th) to close down these camps and release prisoners. If you want to help this advocacy campaign, sign this appeal for action. As human beings, we should all be ashamed of such camps as Yodok, Senghori or Guantánamo.

Sources:

1. Kang Chol Hwan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kang_Chol-Hwan
2. The Aquariums of Pyongyang, Kang Chol Hwan’s account about his life at Yodok: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Aquariums_of_Pyongyang
3. Campaign to take action against Yodok concentration camp: http://www.amnesty.org/en/appeals-for-action/north-korean-political-prison-camps

    
    
    
   

A ship to explore the confines of ethics

The history of ocean conquest and exploration is the history of many famous ships. But not all ships had the same importance. Many a ship is known worldwide and honoured in its country of origin, but it did not mean any advance for humanity. We are talking about ships used to conquer, plunder and colonize new territories. Just ask the Caribbean Indians about the Santa María ship, the New England natives about the Mayflower ship or, not so long ago, the fishermen of the Red Sea about the Spanish fishing vessel Alakrana. However, in the list of famous ships there are some others which deserve greater honour for their contribution to human progress: the Beagle with Charles Darwin on board, the Fram carrying the polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen or the Calypso operated by Jacques-Yves Cousteau.
Today, as it is the 40th anniversary of Greenpeace, we would like to talk about another famous ship, the Rainbow Warrior. Greenpeace named three ships the same to sail the seas and the oceans of the world with the aim to study the impact of human beings on the environment. But contrary to other vessels for scientific research, the Rainbow Warrior not only reports environmental crimes, but also gets involved and tries to stop some atrocities performed in our oceans. Its most well-known actions include the protest against whale hunting, which is indiscriminate and can cause animal extinction, as well as reporting oil spilling or dumping, and the boycott attempts against nuclear testing in the ocean. However, the Rainbow Warrior also performs other actions with less media coverage but nonetheless important, like studying the impact of trawling in New Zealand or the glacier retreat in Norway, playing a very significant role in the fight to protect our ecosystems.
As we said before, the Rainbow Warrior is not one ship, but three, which were not contemporary thanks to the French government. The story is sadly notorious. In 1978, Greenpeace purchased its first ship, a former UK research vessel built in 1995 which was used as a trawler in the Northern Sea. Greenpeace named this first ship Rainbow Warrior after a legend of north-American natives, quite well-known among eco-friendly activists. This ship took part in many environmental actions around the world. In 1985, the first Rainbow Warrior intended to enter French waters to prevent nuclear tests in the Mururoa Atoll, in the French Polynesia. It was anchored in New Zealand, but it could not weigh anchor: agents of the French intelligence service (the so-called General Directorate for External Security) put a bomb on the ship to sink it. A photographer of the Greenpeace expedition, Fernando Pereira, died in this terrorist attack, the first ever recorded in New Zealand. The responsibility for the attack is not a conspiratorial paranoia: the agents of the French intelligence service were judged and sentenced in New Zealand and their names are written down in history.
The wreck of the Rainbow Warrior was refloated, but it was impossible to repair, so Greenpeace decided to scuttle it in Cavalli Islands to serve as an artificial reef of marine life. Four years later, in 1989, Greenpeace bought another ship named Rainbow Warrior II and in 2011 it was given to the NGO Friendship to become a hospital ship. Today, the Rainbow Warrior III has set sail in a presentation tour to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Greenpeace. If you want to meet it, from December 14th to 19th it will be anchored in Barcelona. If you are not living in Barcelona, check the next stopovers at Greenpeace website. And if you see it, you will realise that it is not a huge, spectacular ship, but it is huge for its meaning: it is a symbol of the next step forward of our species. We cannot resign ourselves to knowing what’s going on around the world, we should take action.

Sources
Santa María: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Mar%C3%ADa_%28ship%29
Mayflower: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayflower
Alakrana: http://www.elpais.com/articulo/english/Pirates/trial/reveals/Alakrana/payoff/was/made/elpepueng/20110503elpeng_11/Ten
Beagle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Beagle
Fram: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fram
Calypso: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RV_Calypso
Greenpeace 40th anniversary: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/about/
Rainbow Warrior:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_Warrior
Sinking of the Rainbow Warrior I: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior
Fernando Pereira, the Greenpeace photographer killed by the French intelligence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernando_Pereira
   
    
   

Light pollution

Light pollution is the emission of artificial light at night with unnecessary intensity, direction, hours and spectral ranges. In other words: illuminating more than necessary. It may seem a minor problem if compared to other types of pollution, but just take a look at this picture of northern Italy taken from the International Space Station (ISS) to realise that it is an issue. If you still have some doubts, take a look at this spectacular video taken from the ISS again showing our planet by night.
What’s the problem with light pollution? After thousands of years living in the dark, electricity allows us to have as much light as we need, and even more, to the point that some people complain of the poorer lighting in some cities, especially in newly-rich countries like Spain. Lately, letters to the editor of most newspapers in Barcelona are about the “poor lighting” in the streets, revealing that we are not aware of the consequences of over-illumination. Let’s analyse this problem in depth.
First, night ecosystems are harmed: light pollution disturbs the night rest of diurnal animals, hinders camouflage and reproduction of nocturnal animals, and disrupts hunter-prey relationships. Secondly, excessive light reduces the visibility of stars to the point that the UNESCO is thinking to declare starlight as World Heritage in order to preserve it. If you have ever seen the night sky in the desert, you know what we mean: it has nothing to do with the night skies you have seen so far. There is an international campaign advocating for the right to see the stars called Starlight Initiative 2007 with the support of some governments and international organisations.
If you are not convinced with such environmental arguments, there are other mundane yet forceful arguments. Artificial light is also directed upwards, towards the sky, which is pointless, and it costs a fortune. Catalonia, for instance, with just 1 out of every 1,000 inhabitants in the world and only one urban area of more than one million inhabitants, spends 30 million euros every year to light the clouds. Do your sums worldwide. In times of social budget cuts, let’s put this figure in context: 30 million euros is more than the cut for international cooperation in Catalonia (from 49 million euros in 2010 to 22 million euros in 2011).
Anyway, we are not only wasting money, but also energy. In 1998, Germans calculated that the energy wasted to light clouds was equivalent to the energy produced by a small nuclear reactor. And bear in mind that Germany is one of the most efficiently-lit countries in the western world! If calculated in terms of fossil fuel, the figures are staggering: according to the Department of the Environment of the government of Catalonia, the amount of wasted light means burning 14,000 tons of fuel and emitting 50,000 tons of CO2 to the atmosphere. It’s worth considering, isn’t it?
How can we end up with such a waste of money and energy and, incidentally, make nocturnal animals, astronomers and poets happy? Basically, we should give priority to lighting downwards (we do not need to see the clouds while driving or walking down the street), use energy-saving lights and be common-sensed to understand that we do not need to have a daylight night. 

Sources

1. Image of northern Italy from the International Space Station showing light pollution: http://twitpic.com/76n28p
2. A spectacular video of our planet as seen from outer space, showing light pollution: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqicgKpqVUk
3. International Dark-Sky Association web site:  http://www.darksky.org/
4. Starlight Initiative web site: http://www.starlight2007.net/
5. International cooperation cuts: http://www.elpais.com/articulo/sociedad/cooperacion/causa/perdida/elpepisoc/20111122elpepisoc_1/Tes