NATO's Auditor General murdered while investigating finances of terrorism

Chandelon and NATO flag

Yves Chandelon probably step a bit to deep into the shadow government of NATO, loosely known as Gladio Network, never dismantled nor properly investigated and seemingly each day more aggressive and totalitarian.

The high accountant was found over 62 miles from Lens, the city where he lived — and nearly 87 miles from his place of work in Luxembourg. Chandelon also owned three registered firearms, but an unregistered weapon was discovered near his body, reports Global Research, echoing the Free Thought Project.

... more bizarrely it has been reported locally that the gun which killed him was found in the glovebox of the vehicle, says the Daily Express. 

It is a clear case of murder with a poor pretense for "suicide". 

Most likely the Auditor General found who was actually financing the terror attacks in Germany and France that have shattered Europe in the last months, and probably these were the very same "deep state" of NATO that finances DAESH and Al Qaeda terrorist networks in Syria and fascist criminals in Ukraine. And quite probably he was ready to report, to speak out, else he would have been spared (no need to call attention unless you must... or are a lousy criminal). 

Of course, these conclusions are provisional and speculative but we do have hints in strange circumstances surrounding the terrorist attacks on French soil particularly, and we also know for sure that it has been NATO and its satellites who have financed the terrorist in Syria and Iraq, as well as in Ukraine and the almost forgotten Yemen war. He might know too much about who ordered the murder of the Russian ambassador in Turkey this week, we can't be sure of what exactly he found but it's a clear case of destroying evidence, of silencing a potential whistleblower, as has happened way too often in the past, from Petra Kelly to Michael Hastings.

We live in a dictatorship with a pretense of "democracy", a pretense that is every day shallower and less credible, because the "deep state" is precisely pushing hard in favor of a police state at all levels, of monolithic mass media and of everything being subservient to the NATO-ist imperial project.

Millions negated the right to vote in US "democracy"

I often contend that non-proportional electoral systems are extremely anti-democratic and that, of course, electronic vote is almost certainly a scam: the perfect way to rig an election. All that is present in the US so-called "democracy" but it gets even worse: the system is intently chaotic allowing for governors to dramatically limit the ability to vote of people they suspect may support their opponents (in essence more left-leaning options: democrats when republicans but also real lefties when liberal democrats are in control). This particularly affect poorer neighborhoods, minorities, etc., who have to endure an obstacle race in order to exert their most elementary right: the right to vote.

And gets even darker: millions, mostly minorities, are just slashed out of the voting rolls with pretexts. All this is explained in detail in this interview (two parts) with investigative journalist Greg Palast, courtesy of The Real News Network:

Don't panic: that's how the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie actually works, part of it at least. Just please let's not be naive anymore about the supposed quality of US "democracy", let's face reality instead.

EU probably not competent to sign international trade agreements on its own

The Europe I dream of

The legal dispute has arisen on the Singapur-EU treaty, a precursor of the CETA, TTIP, TISA and similar totalitarian treaties that aim to demolish the capability of sovereign institutions to regulate a lot of things. The contention is that, while the EU (Commission, Council and Parliament) has the "exclusive" power on trade issues, it does not have it on so many related issues (work conditions, environment, transportation, public contacting, etc.) that it seems legally impossible to sign such "trade treaties" without the individual approval of all member states (their governments and parliaments). 

The issue is right now at the EU's Court of Justice, as the Commission (the EU's executive branch, presided by tax-heaven native Adolf Whatshisname Nobody Junker) has been forced to request such an assessment, as more and more eyebrows were being raised. 

The stand of the Commission is that they do have the exclusive competency because it is all "trade", an exclusive EU competency, the rest being just shades of it. But it's quite apparently not the case. It is no minor matter because even the EU's Court of Justice has limited competences and state-level courts could perfectly decide that their own sovereign legal frame, including their interpretation of the EU treaties, is above EU's vertical totalitarianism on these matters. 

But worry not, Junker and his eurocrats won't resign no matter what. The EU will collapse and Hell will freeze before the Eurocrats surrender their power. 

Source: Lola Sánchez & Jorge Conesa, op-ed at Público[es].

Kafka in the land of the Basques: five arrested for destroying ETA's arsenal

Five people were arrested in Luhuso (Labourd) on Friday night for the "crime" of destroying the arsenal of Basque guerrilla ETA, which "definitively" abandoned armed struggled five years ago but is unable to find an interlocutor to proceed to disarmament and dissolution. 

The five arrested are Jean-Noël Etcheverry, “Txet” (nonviolent ecologist), Michel Berhocoirigoin (farmer union activist), Béatrice Molle-Haran (journalist and owner of the house where the activity took place), Michel Bergougnan (member of Irulegi) y Stéphane Etchegaray, “Etxe” (cameraman in charge of filming the police op). 

Also Michel Tubiana, Honorary President of the Ligue des Droits de l'Homme, is involved in the group of peace activists but he could not arrive to the scene of the police operation in time, so he remains free so far. 

Solidarity march in Donibane-Garazi

The team, self-named "Bakea EHn" (Peace in the Basque Country) in the Twitter account they used as improvised press office on Friday night, and renamed "Artisans for Peace" by the popular protests that have taken place yesterday, had been destroying 15% of ETA's arsenal since October 3rd, in what was intended as a first batch of a longer process, now aborted by Spanish and French police forces. 

Their equipment seems to have been a workbench with a radial saw and some other tools. 

The Artisans for Peace declared themselves as members of civil society, without any link nor subordination to ETA, who had decided to begin the disarmament process with the destruction of a first stock of weapons. 

This process, initially intended to be more open and under supervision of the international mediator group, including half a dozen global personalities, was once and again aborted by the Spanish and French states and five years have passed since ETA famously declared the definitive end to armed struggle without any progress. 

It is quite symptomatic that members of the Basque civil society eventually decided to take upon their shoulders the burden of ensuring the end of ETA in spite of the French and Spanish authorities, and even more hard to believe, truly kafkian, that these two occupant powers of our country, have stopped it via repression, repression that has not ceased anyhow in these five years. 

I presume they will be accused now of "collaboration with terrorist organization", and be labeled by the Inquisition and their parrot media as "ETA members", as so often happens when you are Basque and do not think like they command you to think. In fact we are before prisoners of conscience trying to do the job that the occupant powers, which seem to desire a return to war, are not doing not allowing others to do. 

But they will once and again repeat in a choral fashion: "what ETA must do is to disarm itself and self-dissolve". How when Madrid and Paris are doing everything to impede it? How?

See also:

• ETA declares a "permanent" cease-fire
• New ETA communication: would accept informal verification of the cease fire if that helps to overcome Spanish veto to talks
• Again on the Basque Peace Process... or whatever it is
• Former British minister to Spain: 'If they want ETA's dissolution, they must make compromises'
• ETA communication demands Spain and France to do their part for peace
• ETA communication underlines that the peace process is feeble in spite of the determined commitment on the Basque side (only)
• ETA dissolves its operational structures
• Spain attacks the verifiers of the unilateral Basque "peace process"
• 10 lies on the end of armed struggle in the Basque Country
• Some thoughts on the Spain-ETA negotiations (or lack of them)

What does a Nazi make?

I was pondering this morning, you know: the kind of ideas that float in the mind after a good sleep, about what makes a Nazi. 

There is some people who argue that fascism is a very specific kind of state or political project, but I was just considering this guy I met at a job decades ago, who said he supported the Iraq War because that was good for oil prices (a fallacy probably but irrelevant anyhow if true or false, what matters is the reasoning itself). So basically this guy was arguing that, say, ten thousand dead Iraqis were worth his lesser saving of a few cents in the price of gasoline, a most selfish and brutal logic. 

In fact it is exactly the same way of thinking as that of Heinrich Himmler:

Whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our culture: otherwise it is of no interest to me. Whether ten thousand Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch interests me only in so far as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished.

So this is the same selfish and brutal logic that drove Nazism: for Hitler and his ilk, the deaths of thousands or millions "others" (Jews, Slavs, whatever) was irrelevant, as only the well-being and prosperity of ethnic Germans mattered. So basically I had to conclude in my morning blurr that this guy, whose name I don't recall and who may even vote "left" (unsure), was (is?, he's surely still alive) a Nazi. And he's just an example, there are many more people like him (or even worse), so we have a Nazi psycho-sociology in many people, just out of selfishness identified with the "nation" or similar.

Hence is Trump a Nazi? Sure, at least as I see it. But also was Obama, Bush (both), Clinton (both), etc. It's all Nazism with a thin varnish, as long as the motivation for war is not justice and the improvement of Humankind (this may be misleading and even a scam but at least the heart is in the right place), as long as it is to profit on others' suffering, it is Nazism. Not sure if it is "fascism" but it is definitely Nazism.

Trumpinsomia

The idea of "President Trump" (or similar, if he falls down a balcony and Mike Pence takes over it won't make any difference) is beginning to affect my emotions and therefore my sleep. Yeah, the USA is far away across the Atlantic but, it's not just the main superpower, but also it is very plausible that the same will happen across Europe, with Le Pen maybe winning the French presidential election or the equally fascist Hofer quite likely winning the republic's top post in the repetition of the Austrian polls next month. The prospect of Beppe Grillo (another professional buffoon, like Trump) maybe becoming the next Prime Minister of Italy is not the least comforting either, as the unusual 5 Star Movement aligns with the Far Right beyond the Alps and is also penetrated by many neofascists inside.

Sure the Great Coalition parties are not comforting at all either but we all know that outright Fascism is much much worse, notably because it is much much more difficult to revert once in power.

And the brown shirts are beginning to show up very clearly in the upcoming US government. For example Trump has appointed the well known extremist Stephen K. Bannon, a total psychopath, as his chief strategist.

He is not just a racist bigot, he is an extremist misogynist, confirming the worst suspicions about Trump's sexism. Just read his own articles at his own site (link1, link2), which could well have been signed by the self-appointed Caliph of Raqqa. He's also the best known leader of the so-called "alt-right", the modern version of Fascism in North America.

I watched yesterday this fragment of Michael Moore's last film, which is so well told an clairvoyant, that the very supporters of Trump used it, cutting off the last part, for their campaign. But the last part is where the panic sets on, because the foreseeing Moore states unmistakably that Trump will be "the last President of the United States".

Truly scary but it is happening right now.

And, thanks to the authoritarian complacency of his predecessors, Trump will have a lot of legal mechanisms to make his Fascism unstoppable: many emergency laws that dramatically increase presidential power, a heavily militarized police, an ultra-conservative Supreme Court, etcetera. Just as Hitler used in 1933 the emergency provisions that the pre-existing legal system allowed for emergencies, it seems very likely that Trump will do the same, even if he needs to fabricate a pretext, as Hitler did with the Reichstag fire. 

It looks very bad, because there are no legal emergency breaks for a situation like this, only a true revolution could change things but I seriously doubt that the USA is mature for such a critical scenario, really.

The rain dance is broken

Unimaginative "more of the same" after eight years of THE CRISIS? Seems it does not work anymore just pretending that old school methods will work and that somehow miraculously there will be light out of the tunnel just out of the blue. 

A medicine man, or woman, who is unable to call the rain won't be respected, a superstitious doctrine that promises rain but only produces drought again and again will lose support sooner than later. That is what is happening and that's why Hillary More-of-the-Same Clinton could not beat Trump: her doctrine is spent, less and less people can believe in the old magics because they just don't work and credulity is limited. 

Of course nothing guarantees that a new medicine-man with new pretentious rituals will produce the so-desired rain. Almost certainly he won't but there is a good logic on trying something new when the old method is so clearly broken. And that's why opinion polls predicted better chances for victory to Sanders than to Rodham-Clinton, because he at least promised something not so clearly demonstrated to be wrong, something innovative enough to raise the hope of the masses.

That's the logic of these elections and probably many others: more of the same doesn't work and people is not anymore believing in it, they want and really need to try something new, because just repeating a clearly failed routine is clearly not a reasonable option. 

With the beginning of the Trump presidency, after all, we will be entering the 10th year of THE CRISIS, if we count from the Lehman Brothers affair: that's just too long of not getting things straight. No, Trump won't solve anything: THE CRISIS is here to stay sadly enough and his methods are even worse; for example he is a climate warming negationist, what is as good as negating the deep causes and effects of the crisis, which goes well beyond the mere economy into the ecology. Actually there is no possible exit within Capitalism but it seems that more frustration and even desperation is needed before most people realizes this basic truth.

But I guess that in terms of symptoms it is a positive note that people is willing to experiment somewhat and that they are not taking anymore proven inefficacy. All the rest that comes in the package I don't like and I do fear but, well, history is complicated, dialectic, convoluted and contradictory. What is clear is that the unimaginative "center" of "the lesser evil" does not work as it used to. One does not need to be radical or leftist to be outside of the "center", it is enough to be provocative and extremist -- even if that is empty posturing. And it is the time when to be at the center, to be pseudo-moderate gathers more hatred than love, because the system is so broken that it does not rally support anymore. 

And that's why Sanders could have won: because he is not just "more of the same" but much less of the same than Trump, who in most ways is also "more of the same"... just pretending not to be.

Too close to call yet but it seems it's gonna be Trump

Well, not really surprising for me but seems that it was for most. Apparently a dull ultra-Zionist hawkish corporatist and right-leaning candidate presented to the left should have been able to beat a dynamic blunt provocative and somewhat anti-system far-right candidate presented to the right and whoever in the grey zone was tired of more of the same. Seems that the prognostic was not correct at all.

Clinton could not appeal to her supposed voters (too far to the right, too rich, too corporatist, too establishment, too hawkish and too Zionist), Sanders could have won (so said early polls) but the establishment was not willing to accept a self-proclaimed socialist as candidate (and I guess Sanders himself was not as good tactician as Trump, so he could not beat Clinton at her own game in the Democratic Party, while the madman did instead beat each of his opponents one by one in a masterful game of power).

So the devil won, the witch came close second but almost doesn't count. What now?

The truth is that nobody seems to know but here there is a clue, courtesy of The Real News: his vice president Pence wants to be like Dick Cheney:

And I guess that if Trump falls out of a balcony accidentally, he would like to be like Caligula, right?

Dick Cheney was not a bit less hawkish than Clinton, I'd say he was even more aggressive, and particularly creative at rallying the nation around the false flag attack of 9-11. Are we set for another Hollywoodian staged self-attack? One that will bring the USA against China after securing the neutrality of Russia? Just saying, I really don't know but I guess it fits with what Trump has mumbled so far: Russia cool, China bad, Mexico scum.

Over here a lot of left-leaning people (the right, the center and the center-left are all with Hillary) has been speculating about whether a Trump victory could be relatively "good" (maybe he dismantles NATO with his weird ideas about everybody paying their share, even those who are totally uninterested in NATO and are only in by inertia, maybe he makes friends with Putin delaying WWIII, it can't be worse than more-of-the-same-but-even-worse Hillary, right?) But I don't think it will be any good: it's debatable if he'd be worse than Rodham-Clinton but he's not clearly going to be any better at all. 

Maybe good for Syria and the real Ukraine, as he's said he will respect Putin's Russia. And that is also good for Europe in principle, at least for most of us (all those who are not crazy ultra-nationalist and ultra-catholic Poles or similar). But the dangers seem to lay everywhere else, particularly I would be quite unhappy in the position of China (although they will probably outsmart the New Yorker, they have done before). I would also be very unhappy in the position of the Eurocrats, who are just totally in the role of being self-interested subservient cogs of NATO, which he may well dismantle, almost accidentally, when he demands protection money to totally broken economies. And I would be absolutely unhappy in the shoes of Mexico, of course, because the colonial status quo forged by the Coca-Cola boy, Fox, is suddenly being questioned in its entirety. 

Actually the uncertainty is so extreme that Japan's Nikkei has collapsed and Mexico's financial bodies have called a press conference later today. The Mexican peso is sinking relative to the US dollar but the imperial currency is also falling severely relative to such a Frankenstein currency as is the euro. Good for US exports to Europe, I guess, bad for Gringo imports from places other than Mexico.
Currency falls, inflation, are bad for importers and consumers but good for exporters. 

Anyhow: will Trump victory be a brown shirts' march towards Washington, sort of, as many fear in the USA? I can't say but we know already that French fascist Marine Le Pen has been the first European leader to congratulate Donald Trump on his apparent victory, and also that the Canadian immigration service online page has collapsed tonight because of excess visitors. Canada is not far enough and anyhow you can't really run away from the main global superpower, with military bases and occupation contingents all over the World, with the NSA so actively spying the Internet and with laws that allow the Government to assassinate anyone anywhere, including of course US citizens. Look at the difficult situation of several better known US and allies' dissidents: Manning in jail and apparently attempting suicide once and again, Assange for several years refuged in the Ecuador Embassy in London, Snowden fled to Moscow, Meissan (French investigative journalist) had to find refuge in Syria, Assata Shakur has been refuged in Cuba since the 70s, etc. Maybe rather than looking for refuge in Canada, you should consider places like North Korea, really - at least they have nukes and a crazy chubby leader mad enough to threaten the USA itself, he may like you, who knows?

Well, so far my improvised opinions. Which are yours?

USA elections: only option is to vote for Jill Stein

Jill Stein and Ujamu Baraka
(Green Party candidates for President and VP)

The mad man and the mad woman, the witch and the devil. Clearly US citizens tomorrow will have a non-election in which whoever win will be bad and even worse. 

Why to bother voting then? Because it's not just about these elections: it is about building hope for the future and the more votes that Green Party candidate Jill Stein, the only decent candidate, gets is a brick on the rampart of a better democracy tomorrow. 

Do not choose the lesser evil, there's no such thing, choose the reasonably good one. It's not better the devil you know than the devil you don't: they are both horribly bad. 

Stein backed Sanders for the Democratic nomination but old Sanders and his illusion of a Democratic Party relocated to the left (rather than clearly to the right, as it is under Rodham-Clinton) is out of the contest (he didn't even get the post for Vice-President). There is no realistic option but voting for Stein. Abstaining will not help, building up percentage will instead. There is a future after 2016 and you have to look forward to it.

Also voting Hillary will make you accomplice of her heinous war crimes in the Middle East, past and future, among other stuff. Please don't do that.

Erdogan arrests MPs in a new phase of his totalitarian coup

The Islamist President has launched a new offensive against what may remain of "democracy" in the Turkish Republic. Tayyip Erdogan, self-proclaimed admirer of Hitler and one of the main backers of Islamist terror in Syria and Iraq, has taken yet another step forward in his career to become an absolutist tyrant, ordering the arrest of many leaders of the Democratic Party of the Peoples (HDP), including its two co-presidents, which are both MPs. In order to do that he has decreed the end of Parliamentary immunity. 

Among the victims of Erdogan's fascist repression are Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag (photo), Turkish and Kurdish, male and female, co-presidents of the internationalist and socialist party that was in the last half-transparent elections (the last ones were a partial fraud) the third largest in the Turkish state and, by far, the largest one in Northern Kurdistan and some other "less Turkish" areas of the East. Also arrested have been the co-mayors of Diyarbakir, Gultan Kisanak and Firat Anli, who have been replaced by some guy directly appointed by Ankara. Many other HDP MPs have been arrested as well.

Connection to Internet in North Kurdistan and possibly other areas of the Turkish state has been severed. In the rest of the state access to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. is extremely difficult. 

Coverage of what is happening, in Western as well as in Russian media, is scant at best, very distorted at worst. 

Erdogan's slow motion coup recap

Right after the (staged?) military putsch attempt of July, Erdogan began purging the state from everyone who disagreed with him: public officers, judges, teachers, etc. were expelled en masse. This was the real coup, something Erdogan had prepared beforehand. A new phase of the coup is happening this week: first he jailed key progressive journalists of the main independent newspaper Cumhuriyet, now he's frontally charging against the HDP. If someone blinks, as Merkel just did, he says that they are "aiding terrorism", by which he means not the terrorism of his Islamist paramilitary dogs nor the one perpetrated by the Turkish state against Kurds recently as well, but the armed struggle of the Workers' Party of Kurdistan (PKK). 

Incidentally the very first part of Erdogan's coup was to break the years-long truce with the PKK (using, as the Nazis did so often, a false flag attack as pretext) in September 2015. This change of Kurdish policy awaited almost exactly until the arm of Syriza was broken in the Greece-EU standoff of early 2015. Why? Because earlier he was ready to stage a war against Greece if Athens dared to disobey the Troika's mandate. Only once the "western front" was clear, he turned to the "eastern front" with all his might and cruelty. That is because the petty dictator knew that Turkey would have a very hard time fighting in those two fronts simultaneously, plus the still not healed internal Turkish class front (remember the widespread 2013 protests). 

But why would Turkey attack Greece? Because the Western powers asked them maybe? Well, I can't say for sure but most probably yes. It was mainly because of the unspoken but known Turkish threat that Greece could not afford to challenge the Troika, exactly the same reason why Cyprus could never incorporate the British colonial bases because, well, Turkey invaded the north of the island back in the day.  

So when Erdogan now, after the mysterious military coup of which we know almost nothing, appears to have pushed him towards Russia, I just have a very hard time believing anything. Putin is here behaving very naively, in my opinion, unless he has some hidden cards that I am unaware of. It would not be the first time the retorted maneuvers of the Western secret services catch the Kremlin off guard anyhow, look at what happened in Ukraine! 

Russia is tough in the military aspect no doubt but when it comes to intelligence they seem to be always behind NATO and particularly Washington. It is not the first time that Russia plays unwillingly the West's game: a lot of UN Security Council resolutions that gave the USA pretext for war against small countries, from Afghanistan to Syria itself, were passed with the approval of Moscow and Beijing. Putin is not that smart, really: he's been conned too often. Maybe this Turkey's flirting is just another instance of the same NATO convoluted power games, or maybe is just Erdogan on his own tricking Russia into not backing the PKK (a well funded Kurdish guerrilla would be a nightmare for his totalitarian aspirations), only to backstab Moscow later again when he feels stronger.  

In any case Erdogan, Hitler's 21st century apprentice, is clearly consolidating his totalitarian power in the Turkish state, without making any major concessions to anyone, blackmailing the EU into submission by manipulation of refugee flows and quite possibly terrorist attacks signed by his loyal DAESH puppet, making peace with Russia after shooting down their airplane and keeping the very all-powerful USA unwilling to make any sudden move against him. 

One could say it's masterful, I say it's devilish. 

Must watch: Di Caprio's "Before the Flood"

The documentary, sadly confirming that we are already immersed in the ecological catastrophe of Global Warming, is very good and is freely available at NatGeo.

Erdogan continues with his nazification of Turkey

The Turkish admirer of Adolf Hitler continues with his rampage towards a fully totalitarian "neo-Ottoman" state in which he is to be the sole Sultan and dogmatic extremist versions of Islam would become the only law. Maybe like Iznogoud he wants to be Caliph, not instead of the Caliph (because the only self-appointed Caliphate, Erdogan's terrorist puppet, is collapsing as I write) but to occupy a long vacant throne. 

I was to put a link to Iznogoud's famously comical sentence, "I want to be Caliph instead of the Caliph", but I just realized that the English version was censored and the word Caliph replaced with that of Sultan, how lame! I guess that you can listen to this cool and provocative song in Spanish by Def Con Dos, which uses the sentence once and again. Anglosaxon cultural repression: lame, lame, lame!

Anyhow, let's focus: Erdogan has recently persecuted "pro-Kurdish" media, fired not less than 10.000 public officers (again) and even imprisoned journalists of the very popular Cumhurriyet newspaper, almost the only one that opposes him today and the oldest of the republic.

How many steps left until he becomes the Turkish Hitler in full? How much time?

It is just another reason to leave NATO, but a very good one: Erdogan sucks and we don't want to have anything to do with him, rather the opposite.

IMNSHO: Spain is about to collapse

*IMNSHO = "in my not so humble opinion"

Where do I begin at: Catalonia?, the irreversible PASOKization of the centenary labor party PSOE?, the upcoming reelection of the boss of the mega-corrupt and reform-fascist PP?, Greece?, Yugoslavia?, Haiti maybe?

Maybe I will begin better with the infamous lapsus linguae of the Secretary General of the People's Party (PP), María Dolores de Cospedal:

We have worked very hard to loot this country

This lapsus linguae or betrayal of the subconscious happened to Ms. Cospedal not once but twice in two separate speeches in two different years. She is the second highest ranking officer in the PP, just after President Mariano Rajoy, she has been President of her region, Castilla-La Mancha, and she is most likely to be appointed minister, maybe even vice-president in the new government to be formed in the next few weeks. 

As top commander of the PP, she is of course involved in all kind of corruption scandals, of which it seems only the tip of the iceberg is known and under trial, including the destruction of key evidence.

Their discourse is almost far-right: strongly in favor of the privileges of the Catholic Church, against human rights (for example they passed the "muzzle-law" by which police can arbitrarily impose huge fines, without any judiciary supervision, on anyone protesting or filming police repression, journalists included), high taxes for the poor and extremely low for the rich, austericide (massive cuts and privatization of social services), histrionic pseudo-patriotism in order to rally the dumb around police, the army, the king and the monuments to Franco and his minions) and lackeyish serfdom towards the banksters, local or international, including their extremely irregular dictatorship on the European Union, the so-called Troika. 

Their real intentions are not always obvious, typical politicians are illusionists after all, but sometimes they do commit revealing errors like this one, stating what they are really about: to keep Spain as a Banana Kingdom they can plunder at whim, as their ilk has done always, since at least Roman times, when the colonial entity named Spain (Hispania) was first established. 

They have a problem though: the younger generations are having nothing of it, they have been deceived so much with the "European dream" that they truly believe they are entitled to be like Germany or Denmark, and not as Greece or Haiti, are they are scheduled to be by the powers that be. And, unlike some Eastern Europeans, they have absolutely no ill feelings towards "communism", even the Soviet-style one, which they acknowledge at least provided jobs, homes and progress, and a quite loved sister country such as Cuba. More moderate versions of radical social-democracy like those experimented with in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia or Ecuador are seen with even more sympathy. Language and personal connections do help with that, naturally.

However the bourgeois-owned media and, critically, the older generations are much less adventurous: often they have their lives solved (and theirs may well be the only income supporting several unemployed or underemployed younger relatives) and, as most older people, don't think that taking risks is a good idea. Because of high unemployment and low natality in the last many decades, the demographic pyramid is almost reversed and the old are way too many voters. This delays change but cannot impede it in the mid-run, also it prevents the reactionary forces from forming shock squads, as the retirees are not really for that kind of action (and when they are, they rather take the other direction: that of protests and solidarity with the younger generations). Their only force is in an ever shrinking voter power, not just shrinking because of the unavoidable deaths but also because even they are every day more aware of being deceived. 

They have another problem: separatism, particularly strong in Catalonia and the Basque Country, with Catalonia set decidedly in the course of unilateral separation. This the Spanish nationalists are trying to use as rally point for the rest of the peoples of the state and also, as they have always done, as distraction from the other much more serious problems, which are the forced application of the Troika's designs, of austericide, in all the state and not just in Catalonia. 

The latest development, with the "opposition" PSOE (literally Spanish Socialist Worker Party, often shortened to "Spanish Party" to make justice to their real policies) shooting itself in the head in order to allow the right to govern for the banksters, is that these will "abstain" in the relevant vote. In practical terms it means that the party has been kidnapped by a, mostly Andalusian, authoritarian provisional administration, whose aim is to delay sine die any form of internal democracy (the militants are very upset) while allowing the PP and Brussels to do what they will. They will try to posture maybe but they most likely will do almost everything that the Troika and the local oligarchs demand. 

If you hear "Susana Díaz" these days in relation to the political situation in Spain you can translate it as "Venizelos", same thing.

So Spain is like Greece in its sad fate by design of the Big Capital, like Yugoslavia in its complex and hardly solvable inter-ethnic conflicts, that can go extreme at any moment now, and like South Korea in population and GDP. It is much bigger than Greece and much more "strategically relevant" than Yugoslavia, holding two key US/NATO bases that control the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea and the British enclave of Gibraltar. 

It is very large in size (one of the largest European countries, after Russia and France) but its army, not popular at all, after ruling the country in successive coups for most of the last two centuries, is quite small however: 50,000 army troops (half of them officers) and other 50,000 military police, plus some navy (one aircraft carrier, 11 frigates, 18 patrol ships) and air force (138 combat airplanes). It used to be much larger in times of Franco and up to the mid-90s, with up to 300,000 forced recruitment soldiers, but we made sure they would not be able to count on us anymore by a long and very successful campaign of civil disobedience. 

So how is post-military Spain going to be able to impose itself and the Troika against millions of people (more than five million, most of them young, have voted to Podemos and their allies; the pro-independence demonstrations in Catalonia have gathered sometimes almost two million people). Are 25,000 soldiers enough? It depends on how brutal they are willing to go, I guess, but the more brutal they are the less legitimacy they will have left, both inside and abroad. 

So, while it is conceivable that they can occupy Catalonia (just as Serbia did with Kosova for more than a decade -- but with a much larger army, total control of the media and widespread use of state terrorism, all of which are not available for the Spanish case), they are only bringing themselves to a cul-de-sac which they cannot control. Much more likely is that Catalonia effectively establishes its effective independence, maybe with some difficulty at first, and remains unrecognized like Somaliland for some time (too important to be ignored forever). 

But we will see now, because Rajoy has declared that his first goal will be to impose "the law" in Catalonia and that means "war" (not necessarily outright open war, not yet surely, but a situation of unsolvable conflict which can only evolve perilously). 

This is of course the main pretext for the PSOE to shoot themselves dead in support of their alleged "rival": intransigent nationalism. The real reason however is to keep the "cordon sanitaire" around Podemos and allies so the international bankster mafia and the Troika remain in charge and continue applying their austericidal policies in all the state of Spain, as well as elsewhere in Europe. 

Spain has never gone through a successful revolution but I have the strong feeling that now is going to experience one: with 50% of youth unemployment (and the other half in precarious jobs or emigrating) and no light at all at the end of the tunnel (actually the global crisis is going to explode again any day), and no constructive reforms whatsoever being done, there is just no other option, no other way ahead. Only inertia keeps it from exploding in ways even more radical than Greece but the Catalan conflict is a keystone, not in restoring the power of the corrupt and decadent "regime of 1978" but in accelerating the process of change in ways that, as in all revolutionary processes, are too unpredictable. 

And it is a process that is going to affect heavily the rest of Europe. Maybe right now, north of the Pyrenees, the tendency is towards demagogic authoritarian and racist nationalism of the worst kind (Le Pen and the likes) but that is no solution at all, only mindless scapegoating. It may remain relatively strong for some time, it may even make a breakthrough in some particularly backward states like Poland or Austria, but there is absolutely no future in that, they offer no solution but more of the same (but worse: more violent and stupid even). If Europe is going to survive this crisis it needs a totally different attitude: one that is daring to experiment and that is willing to make sure that those that are responsible and cooperative are not the victims of the heartless psychopaths that make up the ranks of the oligarchy.

In Spain the parties of the regime have cut all links with common sense and are heading ruthlessly towards the increase of the conflict at all levels (both against Catalonia and against Spain itself, against its own core population). And they lack the legitimacy nor the real forces for doing that, so it's going to be a major implosion sooner than later.

Let us brace ourselves because it's going to be really harsh.

Catalonia nullifies Franco's "justice"

Companys in prison

Believe it or not, in Spain the illegal totalitarian actions of the Fascist dictatorship of Franco are still within the law. The Parliament of Catalonia, in the process of active secession from Spain, has been the first one to declare some of them null.

Specifically the Catalan Parliament declared yesterday all military trials under Franco to be null and void of any juridical effect. Better late than never, I guess. 

One of the most infamous such military trials was the one against Catalan President Lluis Companys (ERC), who was killed as result. 

In spite of some 40 years passing since the (way too peaceful) death of the tyrant, almost nothing has been done in Spain to counter the effects of the fascist tyranny. Only now, under the cover of a very limited Law of Historical Memory, local governments have begun to rename streets that were apologetic of fascism, remove statues of Franco and other fascist icons, unearth the remains of some of the victims of Fascist terror, scattered by the roadsides of the country, etc. However resistance is not trivial, mostly from the ranks of the ruling "Christian-Democratic" party PP and the Catholic Church (which in Spain is extremely conservative and has been losing adepts without remedy since decades ago).

Source: Nueva Tribuna[es].

War and chaos in the Spanish "Socialist" Party

English leftie intellectual and columnist Owen Jones asked in Twitter about the chaotic situation in the so-called Spanish Socialist Worker Party (PSOE), he was answered mostly with images, sometimes in crude Spanglish, by a crowd of enthusiasts, as reported by the online political humor section of the also online newspaper Publico, Tremending Topic.

One of the best ones was by musician Nega (Los Chicos del Maíz):

. @OwenJones84 pic.twitter.com/LOpfXU3WJk

— Nega [Oficial] (@Nega_Maiz) September 28, 2016

In case you miss the political clues, that guy is Felipe González, former leader of the PSOE and also President of the Government (i.e. Prime Minister) for more than a decade back in the Pleistocene, I mean... in the 20th century.

Like most weeds and bloodsuckers he is still alive and messing around, also getting paid millions for doing nothing at some mega-company (revolving doors and all that).

He has been photoshopped in the place of Chile's tyrant, Augusto Pinochet, clearly recognizable by the perennial black glasses (and also because it is a well known historical photo), in the day of the bloody coup against sincere socialist and democratically elect President Salvador Allende.

While I don't expect Owen Jones to read this I thought that I may give a clue or two to my readers because the issue is no doubt important.

We have to go back indeed to Felipe González and what he did to the PSOE and to Spain back in the 1980s. First he blackmailed his party, back then self-proclaimed Marxist (as all socialdemocrats used to be once upon a time) into giving up that label, then he conspired with others from the right in the (not really failed after all but failed in appearance) 23-F military putsch of 1981, then he said "no" to NATO only to say "yes" a couple of years later. He got Spain in the European Union and proceeded with the dismantling of the historical but public and arguably not competitive heavy industry, as well as many other business that had to adapt to the stringent demands of the EU, which are kind of colonialist. He also led by all accounts the infamous death squad GAL, which murdered many Basques.

He's like the godfather of the modern PSOE and the only truly competitive leader it ever had in modern times. Some people say he works for the CIA, others that the CIA works for him. He is no doubt very influential in any case and he has been actively supporting some sort of arrangement with the conservatives, which are not just conservatives but also incredibly corrupt and fascistoid, in the hung parliament that Spain's got after December and again after June elections. 

Many of the so-called "barons" (regional presidents) of the PSOE back this idea, which is akin to political suicide, to PASOK-ization. But all for the good of the Troika and the banksters, I guess. Every other "Chinese jar" (i.e. former relevant politician of the party) has been coming back from the dead to support that political suicide, from Corcuera to Zapatero and Rubalcaba. It's like The Living Dead. 

However the current direction of the party, even if not significantly progressive, is aware of the outrageousness of the demand, both for the party and for their own positions of power. This is particularly true for the current Secretary General Pedro Sánchez, initially looking like a pretty face sockpuppet of the party's apparatchkik but gradually more and more determined to become a real boss. 

The other bosses are not happy at all in most cases. Particularly vocal have been those of Southern Spain, where the PSOE is traditionally stronger and holds regional power with no or very limited support by third parties. These regional leaders are usually called "barons" in Spanish political slang although they are rather like dukes, to be historically reasonable. 

They are generally opposed to Podemos, maybe not in their regions, where they do borrow their votes in many cases, but certainly in the Spanish central government, and they are fiercely opposed to any dialogue with the Catalan separatists in nearly all cases. This again is particularly true in the rather underdeveloped South, where the PSOE is stronger. Regional leaders in the North are generally more sympathetic to Sánchez but as they do not in most cases hold their corresponding regional government, they are not considered "barons" but rather like sidekicks. The only "baroness" supporting Sánchez is Balearic President Francine Armengol. 

However it is not the "barons" who rule the party but its "national" (state-wide) institutions, which are mostly made up of directly elected representatives of the party members. They may or not be akin to the barons but they are definitely much less influential individually and wield less vested interests in the aparatchkik. Sánchez himself was directly elected in so-called "primaries". 

So the critics were pressing Sánchez for a concession to the conservatives, maybe just abstention in the election of the President (Prime Minister equivalent) when he had poor results in two "regional" (national of stateless nations) elections. This is not arguably only or even mostly his fault but of the previous leaders, who pushed the party so far to the right in the past, that have caused total loss of credibility, provoked the 15-M civic uprising in 2012 that kicked out of government his predecessor Rodríguez Zapatero and ultimately triggered the formation of Podemos, which has eroded their vote base very importantly. They have also tied his hands so tightly that he can't really attempt to negotiate seriously any alternative government to the conservative one. 

Finally, under growing not-so-friendly fire, he decided to call for an express congress, so long postponed, because he believes (rightly it seems) that he has anyhow the backing of the grassroots militants. His enemies seem to know they don't have it and therefore they decided to trigger a putsch, sort of, with the always valuable backing of the bourgeois media. The mechanism chosen was to resign in large numbers from the Federal Executive Committee (executive organ of the party) before the Federal Council could be gathered on October 2nd. 

They claim that this should automatically cause the whole remaining executive to be null and that a provisional committee should be appointed instead. By whom if there is no remaining authority? Today it has been clarified, the president of the Federal Council (internal parliament of sorts) has declared that she is the only authority remaining (really?) She had to do so in the street anyhow, as the premises of the party were not at her disposal.

An interesting key point is that the dissidents claim things about how the party's statute is supposed to work but do not provide quotations at all. Instead the Secretary of Organization César Luena provided yesterday a clear and concise quote of the relevant article, which says that in the event of semi-desertion of the executive, then the Federal Council must meet and call for an extraordinary congress to elect a new one immediately. 

This almost exactly what Pedro Sánchez had planned to do anyhow, just that the congress was to be ordinary instead of extraordinary. 

There is of course an ultimate "judiciary" power to sort out the discrepancies, but it can only be called by its own president and this one, Isabel Celaa, is a backer of Sánchez, so she said today that it won't happen today. Tomorrow? A formal complaint has been filled anyhow. The question is that this organ has a precarious balance between both factions: according to analysts, two are pro-Sánchez, two are anti-Sánchez and the fifth one is unclear and the other three are apparently against him and have even claimed to be able to summon themselves. This explains why the putchists were calling all the time for the Committee of Guarantees to take over, they knew they had a majority of backers inside.

So in practical terms the party is split in two and both sides deny legitimacy to the other, however this split is probably not real at all at grassroots level, where support for Sánchez seems in spite of all rather strong. 

The most direct implications are mostly relative to government formation and institutional impasse, which looks now that is going to be extending for a year, barring a split of the "Socialist" parliamentary group, with some of the deputies backing conservative Mariano Rajoy outside of party discipline, as demanded by Brussels, the banksters and such. 

It may indeed produce a split in the party, of course, but there is little doubt that the dissidents have limited grassroots and voter backing, so if there are elections in Christmas Day (yeah, love the idea, who doesn't?), as scheduled if no government is elected (again), they will lose most of their seats in benefit of Sánchez' faction. 

But the long term implications (unless somehow Sánchez manages to survive, not yet ruled out) are that the historical PSOE, essential part of the twin-party system will be dead for good. With the main right wing party, PP, also in a very delicate situation after so many corruption scandals and gathering most of its votes among pensioners (a very large sector of voters but set to die soon in any case, more so with pensions and healthcare being slashed in the so-called "austericide"), the regime of 1978 is deadly wounded.

So somehow it is good news, although it is not immediate good news. It is probably very bad news in the short term with a faction of PSOE's deputies probably voting for conservative Mariano Rajoy for their own personal survival in politics for the next four years. A parliamentary coup. We'll see.

I'm going to watch the soap opera now, I mean: the news. It is hilarious at times, although also terrifying.


Update (Sep 30, 2:30 am): It seems it will be all resolved (???), one way or another in the Federal Commission of Saturday. It's going to be a mess in any case, with Sánchez partisans calling it an extraordinary meeting with a single possible point: the calling of an extraordinary congress and his opponents calling it an ordinary meeting with an open agenda (the previous call).

The main alternative candidate, pro-Felipe, pro-Rajoy and pro-banksters Susana Díaz, leader of the very large Andalusian federation, has spoken in very soft "constructive" and clearly hypocrite language. She's clearly planning to be elected secretary general herself, but it is unclear by whom of how.

On the other hand the Catalan federation is fleeting buses of militants to demonstrate in support of Sánchez in Madrid this Saturday, all while the Catalan Parliament has set a definite date for the referendum of independence on September 2017.

The situation clearly spills a lot outside the PSOE and is actually a fight between democratic institutional change and godfather style corrupt politics at the service of the banksters, represented by Mariano Rajoy and the putschists in the PSOE.

If the putschists win, as seems likely, this may lead to another 15-M style popular insurrection of some sort, although with a fascist law that fines you several salaries worth for any minor offense, even if imaginary, it is unclear how the protests will take place. It is in the end a whole state-level putsch against democracy, be it internally at party-level or externally. No more elections are scheduled until 2018 (European Parliament) anyhow and with the current circumstances (Catalan secession, EU's moral and physical collapse, people starving, a deeply rotten party system in both PP and PSOE) it seems likely that the powers that be will want to impede them forever. Another thing is how, because I doubt there's many youth willing to fight for their own imminent death at the hands of starvation and homelessness.

Finland: nazis murder Jim Joonas Karttunen

Nazis of the SVL organization attacked and severely injured Antifascist activist Jim Joonas Karttunen on September 10th. Today 20th, he died of his injuries at hospital.

Joonas was protesting the presence of a SVL propaganda stand near the train station of Helsinki when he was brutally attacked by the Nazis, who beat him brutally on the ground, causing him a major concussion which eventually killed him.

Days later the Nazi organization uploaded a video to YouTube claiming responsibility and stating that "counter-protesters must be disciplined". 

It is not the first time that the SVL is involved in criminal attacks: in 2013 they already stabbed a protester in Jyväskylä. In that occasion one of the attackers was found a pen-drive with detailed information about more than 300 "political enemies", including antifascists, greens, socialdemocrats, conservatives and Jewish personalities. 

In 2011, Anonymous revealed the details of many SVL militants and sympathizers, including a prominent member of the True Finns party (xenophobic fascistoids, currently partner in the Finnish government), Juho Eerola, who eventually resigned. This implies that the SVL, part of a wider Nordic and Nordicist network, led by the Swedish SVR, are not a mere marginal and minor group but actually a violent shock squad satellite of the other fascists, who pretend to be a "normal" party, just like Le Pen in France. 

Beware because all those fascists, not at all different from Islamic Fundamentalists, are gaining positions in most of Europe very dangerously and we can too easily slide into a new version of 1933 in no time. 

Thanks Jim for fighting against Fascism to the very last of your forces. If we are to overcome this horrible threat, it won't be for those who sit in the sidelines watching but for true heroes like you. Let Mother Earth be gentle on you as you were to Her.

Source: Kaos en la red[es]

Russia accuses USA of actively backing DAESH, UN Security Council called

We already knew, we knew that all the blah-blah about fighting DAESH (Islamic State) was just propaganda and that neither the DAESH nor Al Nusra/Al Qaeda would be there without the very active backing of the USA and its allies (Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel, France, Britain). 

But recently we had become a bit less certain: some US actions backed the Kurdish-centered Syrian Democratic Forces, Turkey and Washington seemed to have fallen apart on the issues of the military coup and the Kurds and even there were some poses about the USA backing a possible attack against Raqqa, the main Islamist capital. 

We can forget about that now: US air forces attacked the Syrian Army at Deir ez-Zor, an enclave at the Euphrates that Damascus has managed to hold free and safe for all these years of war in spite of being surrounded by DAESH forces. The attack killed 62 Syrian soldiers and injured at least one hundred. Russia says that it was meant to pave the way for the Islamist takeover of the town and that only their own counter-strikes allowed for the loyalist enclave to resist. 

The attack, along with the disdain by other US-backed "rebels" (Islamists affiliated to Al Qaeda) for the recently agreed ceasefire, puts in jeopardy any attempt to bring peace to the beleaguered Arab country, something we already knew would not happen: what we did not know was that the truce would be definitely destroyed by US open support of the terrorist forces of DAESH that so many people have murdered, tortured, raped and enslaved, in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. 

If you are reading this and are a US citizen, please vote Jill Stein (Green Party) this autumn, because she is the only one who holds a reasonable stand in internal and external affairs. All the rest are just crazy war-mongers of the worst kind, who should considered for what they are: class A war criminals. She may not win but it is important to set some good bases for the future in any case if this World has to have some hope. 

Source and more details: RT.

Does 82% efficiency in hydrogen production from water signal a new renewable energetic era?

The news is from a year ago but I only got to know about it yesterday:

→ Single-catalyst water splitter from Stanford produces clean-burning hydrogen 24/7 (Stanford University, press release).

Basically the team led by Haotian Wang managed to produce hydrolisis of water into hydrogen with 82% efficiency, four times what was available until recently. It is important that the source is water and not natural gas (for environmental reasons) and that the catalysts are cheap nickel-iron oxides.

There are other details of technical interest that you can read about in the link. 

For me this technological revolution implies that the "utopy" of a solar/wind+hydrogen-powered world is already available, that there is no objective reason to continue using fossil sources of energy other than the limits of transition itself (and maybe lesser monetary pretexts, which should be quite negligible in any case). 

No more need to rely on expensive and foreign sources of oil, we can produce all energy needed locally with renewables and water. What are we waiting for?

Catalonia moves one step closer to independence, challenging Spanish tribunal

Yesterday the Catalan Parliament moved the stateless nation one step closer to independence by approving eleven conclusions of the Commission for the Constituent Process, step that had been explicitly forbidden by the Spanish Constitutional Court, court that had been explicitly declared irrelevant by the Catalan Parliament as well.

The eleven points were passed with 72 votes in favor (in a few instances with 83 as the 11 members of Catalonia Can Indeed, akin to United We Can, supported or abstained here and there). They are (my aproximate translation from the Catalan original):

1. Right now there is no room for the recognition of the right to decide of the Catalan People inside the constitutional juridical frame of the Spanish state. The only possible way of exercising this right is via the disconnection and the activation of a distinct constituent process.

2. The People of Catalonia has the legitimacy to initiate its own constituent process, that is also democratic, based on the citizens, transversal, participative and legally binding, with the recognition, support and backing of the Catalan institutions.

3. The compared experiences of other countries back the road taken by Catalonia to build a singular model of constituent process according to our own social, cultural, political and economic circumstances.

4. We must take care that the methodological frame of the constituent process remains consensual, known, transparent and shared by all society and the institutions backing it. The constituent process must have the capability of including all ideological sensibilities since the very beginning and also at the time of fixating the indicators, the calendar and all other questions that affect the method to move forward.

5. The constituent process will have three phases: a first one of participative process, a second one of disconnection with the state and call of constituent elections in order to conform a Constituent Assembly, which will redact a project of Constitution. In the third phase, it will be ratified at popular level through a referendum.

Puigdemont and Gabriel, leaders of the independentist movement

6. The preliminary participative process will have as main organ a Constituent Social Forum (FSC) made up by representatives of the organized civil society and the political parties. The FSC will debate and formulate a set of questions on specific contents of the future constitution that will be answered by the citizenry via processes of citizen participation. The result of this citizen participation will make a binding mandate for the members of the Constituent Assembly, who will have to incorporate them in the redaction of the project of Constitution.

7. After the citizen participation phase, the disconnection with the legal frame of the Spanish state will be completed through the approval of the laws of disconnection by the Parliament of Catalonia and a unilateral mechanism of democratic exercise that will serve to activate the call of the Constituent Assembly (AC). The laws of disconnection are not susceptible of control, suspension or impeachment by any other power, court or tribunal.

8. The Parliament of Catalonia backs the constituent process that has to be carried to term in our country. To that effect it urges the Government of the Generalitat to give to the citizenry the resources needed to be able to carry a grassroots constituent debate that remains transversal, plural, democratic and open. To that effect, the Parliament of Catalonia will create a commission for the following of the constituent process.

9. Once it is called, elected and constituted, the Constituent Assembly will enjoy full powers. Its decisions will be of compulsory fulfillment for all other public powers, as well as for physical and legal persons. None of its decisions will be either susceptible of control, suspension or impeachment by any other power, court or tribunal. The AC will establish mechanisms to grant the direct, active and democratic participation of individuals and the organized civil society in the process of discussion and elaboration of proposals for the project of constitution.

10. Once the AC has approved the project of constitution, a constitutional referendum will be called so the People of Catalonia approves or rejects in peaceful and democratic manner the text of the new constitution.

11. Since the beginning, a gender perspective must be incorporated in a transversal manner and with a dual strategy, in order to address the historical inertias of our society and that the constituent process will also be for all, women and men.

Spanish nationalists got very angry

The eleven points were backed by the coalition "Together for the Yes" (JxS, backed by the Catalan Party of the Democrats and the Catalan Republican Left, but with most seats occupied by independents, 62 seats) and the People's Unity List (CUP, a revolutionary left-wing grassroots independentist party, 10 seats). The coalition "Catalonia Can Indeed" (akin to all-Spain United We Can) voted in favor of points 2, 4 and 11 only, abstaining for points 3 and 8, while voting against the other six points, the ones that directly challenge the Spanish legal corset. They have 11 seats.

The People's Party (PP, 11 seats), which controls the caretaker government in Madrid, voted against all 11 points, while the Socialist Party (PSOE, 13 seats) rejected to vote altogether and the Spanish ultra-nationalist "Citizens" (C's) party (20 seats) stormed out of the building in anger. 

Spain has been without a functioning government for months

The timing of the Catalan step forward does not only seems to serve to mend wounds in the rather unstable pro-independence coalition between JxS and the CUP, whithered by disagreements on the budget, which was not approved (not "social" enough for the CUP), but also affects the stagnated negotiations for the formation of a government in Spain, in which the Catalan Nationalists may be decisive.

There are five possible coalitions with pure mathematics (176 seats are needed):

1. PP-PSOE or grand coalition of the two major parties, hampered by the subjective "need" of the PSOE to remain as "leader of the opposition" (otherwise leaving that role to the leftist upstarts of Unidos Podemos). Another major obstacle is the insistence of Mariano Rajoy, besieged by endless corruption scandals and rejected by every single other party, to be the candidate.

2. PP-UP: unrealistic, as they represent polar opposites.

3. PP-C's-PDC: they are all center-right parties but the former two are Spanish nationalists while PDC (former CDC) is Catalan nationalist, and they are in clear crash course these days. Hypothetically PP and C's could make very major concessions (a federalist reform of the constitution) in exchange of the latter deactivating the independence process but it is very hard to see how this could happen, much less after the new step towards independence taken in Barcelona and the declarations of PDC speaker, Mr. Homs, that they will not support neither Rajoy nor any other candidate of the PP. 

4. PSOE-UP-C's: seems most unlikely, as UP and C's are also polar opposites (socialism vs ultra-capitalism, federalism vs. ultra-centralism). The PSOE tried to do something like this (but with them governing solo, without seriously negotiating with UP) in the recent past and was rejected.

5. PSOE-UP-PDC-ERC-PNV, where PDC and ERC are Catalan nationalist forces (center-right and center-left respectively) and PNV is a Basque nationalist (or regionalist) one (center-right). This one used to be the coalition most favored by United We Can (UP) but has been harmed by the abstention of the peripheral nationalist forces in the formation of the board of Congress, which has been interpreted by some as flirting with the PP. For the PSOE, which is much strongly Spanish-nationalist, it is rather undesirable, particularly with the Catalan challenge going on.

There is a sixth possibility that adds up to 175 seats, exactly half of the Spanish Congress, which would include PP, C's, PNV and the small regionalist Canarian party PNC-CC (1 seat), which has already declared their intention to help in government formation, but it is a nightmare scenario for the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), because there are regional elections this fall (late October in principle but may be moved forward to September) and for them allying with the rotten and rather extremist PP would be a major burden, no matter what they get in exchange. It would still be one seat short of a majority anyhow. 

The PNV has already said that Rajoy is a no-no and that they will demand a solution to the issue of ETA (disarmament, prisoners, etc., today blocked by the intransigence of the PP) but it has been rather ambiguous otherwise. In any case it is very difficult to imagine the PNV backing a government that represses the Catalan push for independence, it would be a major shame for them and could even start an internal rebellion: too much. 

So the conflict Spain-Catalonia is seriously affecting governance in Spain, although it is not the only issue: the irruption of Podemos (now Unidos Podemos, after they merged with United Left) and the endless spat of corruption scandals affecting the conservative PP also add up.

Turkey's coup: Erdogan is doing it right now.

Who was behind July 15th coup has become less important than what is going on after it in Turkey. For all we know, Erdogan himself may have staged or induced the failed military coup (whose structure is still unknown) in order to make a much hardest putsch from the government. About one third of all state officers at nearly all levels are being purged (either arrested, dismissed or ordered to resign), including not just military officers but police, judges, civil servants and lots of teachers. Right in the aftermath of the putsch, massive purge lists, obviously prepared long before, were issued so Erdogan and his islamo-fascists can take full control of the state, beginning by the judiciary. 

The fact that the military putsch failed to achieve anything of note, not capturing a single minister or taking any institution other than, briefly, a few media outlets, strongly suggests that the coup was staged or induced by the Machiavellian Hitler-loving Turkish President, although direct, definite, evidence of this has not yet surfaced. 

In any case, real or fake, the military uprising has led to another much more clear type of putsch, a self-coup by Erdogan himself against the last remnants of democracy and secularism in Turkey. The first stage, that of taking full control of the state apparatus is well under way, while a second stage is foreseeable and will begin with the illegalization of the multiethnic, left-wing federalist party HDP, which represents the spirit of the 2013 popular uprising against Erdogan's islamo-fascism. As happened with the rise of Hitler, openly admired by Erdogan, the social-democratic (and Kemalist) CHP, the largest opposition party, will be left in limbo, boiling in internal contradictions, until the final decree of dissolution is issued in due time. The secularist fascist MHP will be in turn forced into assimilation to the AKP, purging any dissidence. 

Alternatively a soft fascism will be implemented instead (as in Iran, Russia or Hungary), allowing token democracy and only illegalizing the HDP, whose legal fate is surely sealed. This option would allow for Turkey to remain in NATO without causing excessive scandal (not that outright dictatorships have been absent of NATO in the past but it seems harder to defend nowadays). In any case Erdogan's hold on power and the political islamization and fascistization of Turkey can be taken for granted. 

Whatever the case, it seems that Erdogan's islamo-fascism is becoming entrenched in the Turkish state and that this failed coup is serving his totalitarian pursuit as the Reichstag's fire served his admired precursor Adolf Hitler.