Awake, for morning in the bowl of night has flung the stone that puts
the stars to flight.

And, lo, the hunter of the east has caught the sultan’s turret in a noose of light.

Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable – Christopher Howse: ‘A Pilgrim in Spain.

Cosas de España/Galiza

Mark Stücklin cites an ECB warning on the risks created by the growing housing crisis.

Relatedly, Lenox Napier of Business Over Tapas advises that Madrid and Catalonia are losing their native populations while gaining foreigners. The 2 regions attract the most foreigners, but they also lose the most population to other regions. The high cost of housing appears easier to bear for wealthy foreign immigrants than for the poorer local folk. 

Europe

What unites Greenland, Venezuela and Ukraine? Trump’s immoral lies and Europe’s chronic weakness.

No end in sight for Germany’s economic crisis. Unemployment, productivity and growth challenges face Europe’s biggest economy.

Venezuela

Who is really running the country now?

Iran

Views are divided:-

• Iran is going to attack the USA. [Would this be what Trumps wants?]
• The USA is about to attack Iran.

The USA

Hardly a surprise .. . On January 9, Trump signed an executive order declaring a national emergencyto protect Venezuelan oil revenue held in U.S. Treasury accounts from judicial seizure or attachment. The proclamation, titled “Safeguarding Venezuelan Oil Revenue for the Good of the American and Venezuelan People,” frames this as an“unusual and extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security and foreign policy. [Trump has invoked national emergencies multiple times since his 2025 inauguration, including for border security, energy policy, trade tariffs, and designating groups like Tren de Aragua as terrorist organizations under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. These reflect a pattern of using emergency powers for policy priorities.]

The vile Stephen Miller: Risen from being a ‘joke’ and a ‘true fascist’ in Trump’s first term to be now the 2nd most powerful person in the USA. Click minute 4.28 here.

But . . . . An inspiring story, giving us hope . . . Harun al-Rashid was the 5th Abbasid caliph, ruling 786 to 809, during the Islamic Golden Age’s peak. His court in Baghdad was immortalized in ‘The Thousand and One Nights’. His vizier Jafar ibn Yahya al-Barmaki served as chief administrator, wielding immense influence. In short he was the 2nd most powerful man in the Abbasid Empire. One day, Harun simply – and very suddenly – turned on Jafar, who was killedand his body hacked into 3 pieces. After this pitiless execution, Jafar’s rotting remains remained on display for 2 years on 3 bridges across the Tigris. Jafar had been Harun’s closest friend, adviser and boon companion. Twelve hundred years later, we still don’t know why Harun made this decision. . . . These things happen. But we wouldn’t want Trump to go quite so far with Miller. Sacking would be enough. Possibly.

Much-needed amusement, courtesy of the brilliant Daily Show team.

The Way of the World

A well-timed dose of optimism . . . Trump will not destroy the rules-based world order. Nor even just the US Constitution . . . It takes more than bombastic rhetoric to fundamentally change the American Constitution and international treaties.

AI

In case you didn’t read it . . . From that article: AI will not displace the real kind of intelligence which is inextricably bound up with the human condition. Being “intelligent” in the true sense of the word does not amount purely to the manipulation of information or even the creation of new formulations of that information. It incorporates moral agency, biological inclinations, memory of earlier stages of understanding, and inchoate physical and psychological experience. 

AI has no conscience, sympathy or emotional understanding. That is why a Chatbot confidant could (and has) “rationally” advised people who were depressed to commit suicide. It does not think of this individual as having family or friends for whom the consequences of this act might be devastating. It addresses itself purely to the question that is being asked by this particular interlocutor.

You might object that the system could be programmed to ask appropriate questions of any one contemplating suicide (or any other destructive event): how would this affect those who care about you? But what if those people seriously believe that no one actually cares about them – as depressed people often do? Will the Chatbot respond as another human being probably would, with comforting reassurance? Maybe it could be programmed to do that too. But it could never feel guilt or have doubts about its own advice. 

Nor could it regret making things up (oddly termed “hallucinating”) to satisfy what appear to be the demands made by its user. It regrets nothing because it feels nothing – and feeling and thinking are not, in actual human beings, separate from one another. 

Human reason is inherently social and intertwined with emotion. The great lesson of democracy is that it is real people who must determine who – or what – should hold power. It is entirely for us to decide if or when machines will replace us. For the moment anyway, we are still the ones in charge.

Spanish

• Fichar: Recruit, sign up, book. Join. Clock/punch in/on/out.
• Malva: Mauve. Mallow . Hollyhock.
• Tamarillo: Tree Tomato.

English

• “The power of the narrative”: The process whereby the media encapsulate events into a story-like structure meaningful to their audiences and which then becomes fixed in time as a marketable product, constructing a “reality” which may or may not have any connection with the real world.
• Backgammon: A reference to movement of the counters back and forth, plus the Old English gamen, for ‘fame’.

Did you know?

The board game of backgammon is at least 2,500 years old and is called takhte nard (nard table) in Persian and tawlat(table) or tawilat az‑zahr (dice table) in Arabic The Greeks, of course, have a word for it, too –  τάβλι (távli), or ‘board’. This derives from Byzantine Greek tabula, akin to Arabic tawla reflecting shared Mediterranean board-game traditions.

Finally . . . You Have to Laugh

Aleksandras posted a comment which merits wider distribution . . . It is uncanny how the character of Trump is similar to past authoritarians. By changing the name in the following story, one would swear that this joke from Soviet times had recently been invented in the USA:- In yet another paean to himself, Stalin ordered the printing of a postage stamp bearing his image. He instructed that no expense be spared and that the best materials be used. Soon, however, complaints filtered back that the new stamps were not sticking to envelopes. Stalin was furious and ordered an immediate investigation. After a short time the secret police reported back to him. ‘Tovarish Stalin,’ a commissar said humbly. ‘The stamps are in excellent condition. The glue is of the highest quality. The problem is that people are spitting on the wrong side.'”

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