Catalonia defeated Spain by sheer will of freedom

Yesterday it was a most important day. You all surely know by now about the brutal repression by the Spanish police forces against the Catalan independence referendum and, most importantly, about the brave popular resistance by millions of self-organized citizens in each and every electoral center. 

2.262.424 Catalans managed to vote and had their vote counted. Electoral centers including other 700 thousand electors were closed by the repressive forces. The electoral census is 5.3 million. Among the votes issued and counted the results were: 2.020.144 (90,09%) "yes", 176.566 (7,8%) "no", 45.586 (2%) "blank" and 20.129 (0,89%) "null votes".

One could get lost arguing on the validity of the vote under such quite obviously exceptional and most difficult circumstances, what really matters is the civic pride and nonviolent power demonstrated by the Catalan People, and, on the opposite side, the blind brutality shown by the Spanish state, determined to defend the francoist concept of "indissoluble unity" of the state no matter what. 

What really matters is that, maybe more than ever before, the State of Spain has been shown to be morally bankrupt, a true failed state in the making. Hopefully the socio-political crisis will extend to the rest of the lands occupied by the residual empire. Some signs of it happened yesterday, with thousands protesting in Madrid and Seville, among other Spanish cities (and also in places like London, and earlier in Bilbao and Amsterdam, etc.) in solidarity with Catalonia and its right to self-determination.

Tomorrow there is a General Strike called in Catalonia in support for this right to choose but, quite obviously, marked also by the rejection to repression and authoritarianism. Even if the unions calling for the strike are relatively small (nationalist union COS and libertarian unions CGT and CNT), the strike is backed by the major civic force in all this Catalan uprising: the Catalan National Assembly (ANC) and its right-wing ally Omnium Cultural, as well as by key political forces like the Popular Unity List (CUP), so it is predictable that it will be a massive walk out. 

However this is only one step and one restricted to Catalonia. In my opinion, what will be critical now is whether Spaniards themselves will begin mobilizing, not just or mainly in solidarity with Catalonia, but on their own platforms such as the demolition of the mafioso authoritarian regime consecrated by the controversial constitution of 1978, which was agreed behind closed doors and backed mostly because anything was better than the Fascist dictatorship. 

The constitution is nearly impossible to reform (needs a wide agreement of all-Spain parties because of a horrible electoral system that massively favors rural Castile and hence conservative forces), so only forcing the hand of the twin party system PP-PSOE will work. It's even reasonable to consider that only a true revolution, a constituent process from below, will do the job. 

Sadly enough, the big political hope of Spain, the novel party Podemos (We Can) has so far limited itself to posturing. They basically seem to restrict themselves to try to form a coalition with the PSOE (center-left?) and only very slowly advance on the path of reforms. Clearly insufficient. Also they are clearly renouncing to resort to mass mobilization, which is happening on its own, and they have growing internal quarrels.

So it is unclear how the situation will evolve. Yet it is clear that it is evolving and very fast. 

Once again my applause and respects to the brave People of Catalonia for daring to defend their freedoms in what is clearly an example for the rest of Europe and the World. Visca Catalunya lliure! Viva the struggle of the Free Peoples!

The day after the OXI

By now I'm sure all you know the results of yesterday's referendum in Greece: 61% no, 39% yes. You can say it louder but not more clear. 

Even in spite of financial terrorism by the Bankster Mafia that rules our pitiful Europe, the Greek people stood proud and sent a resounding message to all Europe: we must resist the exploiters and oppressors of the European People(s), we must not bow, not falter, not surrender because we are on the right path. 

Congratulations, Greece, for standing proud and defiant. Thank you, Greece, for taking up the first major battle of the European People(s) against the decadent financier capitalism, which looks stronger than it really is. 

Varoufakis resigns

Yanis Varoufakis had announced his resignation if he was forced by the will of the people to sign a bad deal that does not substantially reduce the debt. However what nobody really expected is that he would resign also in the event of a "no" vote.

→ Yanis Varoufakis blog: Minister No More!

The logic behind is that other Eurogroup ministers didn't like him, particularly the attitude of the Dutch Finance Minister and President of the informal committee, J. Djisselbloem seems to have been decisive. Mind you that I am of the opinion that it is Djisselbloem the one who should resign for violating the Treaty of Lisbon last saturday, by holding an "Eurogroup meeting" and issuing a communication as such "Eurogroup" after banishing the Greek representative. 

I also demand the cessation of Mario Draghi on grounds of financial terrorism against Europeans. 

Instead I strongly disagree with Varoufakis' resignation because I believe that Europe needs more and not less transparency and that we need of statesmen of the size of the Greek economist and not just a bunch of gray bureaucrats wearing a uniform of suits and ties as sign of their submission to the oligarchs. 

More resignation ripples

Curiously enough, the former leader of the current "Socialist Left" in the Spanish twin party PSOE, and member of its Federal Committee, B. Talegón, has also resigned today as member of the party, in this case over disagreement on how her party has managed the Greek crisis, standing against the Greek People. 

She said that this stand should be cause for the resignation of the leadership of the Spanish social-liberal party because they have shown to be "neither socialists, nor democrats, nor Europeists". She also claimed that the true socialists left the party when there was no more "international solidarity, nor republic, nor democracy, nor dignity" left in it.

Beatriz Talegón became quite popular a couple of years ago when she fiercely criticized in a meeting of the so-called Socialist International, the luxury of the meeting and the distance of most leaders from their respective peoples.

Back to the negotiation?

That's what Tsipras has promised to do and is his mandate. However I do wonder which is the point when the Eurocrats are clearly not showing any repentance but rather getting entrenched. 

In spite of the democratic rejection of the proposed deal, I cannot foresee anything even half-decent coming out from the negotiation table. Surely the only way to go is to unilaterally declare bankruptcy and brave the storm with socialist policies.

Transparent Varoufakis blogs out what he told the Eurogroup

The media complained today that Yanis Varoufakis avoided to make comments to the press. However yesterday he did publish at his blog his full intervention in the Eurogroup:

→ As it happened – Yanis Varoufakis’ intervention during the 27th June 2015 Eurogroup Meeting.

Selected excerpts:

What makes it impossible to pass the institutions’ proposal through Parliament is the lack of an answer to the question: Will these painful measures at least give us a period of tranquillity during which to carry out the agreed reforms and measures? Will a shock of optimism counter the recessionary effect of the extra fiscal consolidation that is being imposed on a country that has been in recession for 21 consecutive quarters? The answer is clear: No, the institutions’ proposal is offering no such prospect.

...

At the same time, we do not have a mandate to turn down the institutions’ proposals either, cognizant of the critical moment in history we find ourselves in. Our party received 36% of the vote and the government as a whole commanded a little more than 40%. Fully aware of how weighty our decision is, we feel obliged to put the institutions’ proposal to the people of Greece. We shall endeavour to spell out to them fully what a Yes to the Institutions’ Proposal means, to do the same regarding a No vote, and then let them decide. For our part we shall accept the people’s verdict and will do whatever it takes to implement it – one way or another.

...

The Greek government is now asking the electorate to answer the question you put it to me Jeroen [Djisselbloem, President of the Eurogroup] – especially when you said, and I quote, “you can consider this, if you wish, a take or leave it proposal”. Well, this is how we took it and we are now honouring the institutions and the Greek people by asking the latter to deliver a clear answer on the institutions’ proposal.

...

To those who instruct us to phrase the referendum question as a euro-drachma dilemma, my answer is crystal clear: European Treaties make provisions for an exit from the EU. They do not make any provisions for an exit from the Eurozone.

He also includes a postscript about what I called the Euro-putsch, i.e. when he was forced out of the Eurogroup. He does not issue an opinion though, although it is obvious he does feel offended, as should all Greeks and all Europeans.

Apparently there is only a very shallow legal frame for the Eurogroup (a protocol annexed to the Treaty of Lisbon), which is basically a discussion committee without formal power, but the protocol clearly reads "The Ministers of the Member States whose currency is the euro shall meet informally", this is the definition of the Eurogroup, hence excluding Yanis means that the meeting was not one of the Eurogroup but something else.

The entry also includes a video of the press conference held on Saturday. 

Was June 27 the day the EU began its implosion?

Rally yesterday in Madrid in solidarity with Greece (source)

Often only historians can in a retrospective manner gauge properly the relevance of key events like yesterday's series of door slams at Brussels, but, from the limited viewpoint of someone actively following the developments around Greece's neo-colonial demolition and the Euro-crisis in general, I would think it was: yesterday, June 27 2015, marks the beginning of the end of the European Union as we used to know it. 

Said that, the collapse will be played at slow-motion and the EU will not vanish overnight but it already bears deadly injuries that nobody seems able or even willing to heal, because healing them would imply to challenge the dictatorship of the bankster and other big capital's mafia and would imply also to challenge the national-imperialist attitudes of many of its members, especially Northern ones, worried only about striking a colonial plunder profit rather than about "building Europe".

People's choice

Some 33 hours have passed since Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras announced that he would call a referendum on a still unsigned deal with the so-called "Troika" or "the institutions". Since then, the Greek Parliament has held a 14-hour session which approved by a large majority the holding of such referendum. Also the conservative pro-bankster opposition, the much eroded New Democracy party of A. Samaras, announced a vote of no-confidence against Tsipras that is just a mere show, as it has no chances of success whatsoever. 

The exact content of the matter to be put to vote is unclear to me, as no deal was ever reached in the end. 

In any case it is clear that Tsipras cannot force, as Venizelos first and Samaras later did, the Greek People to sign something they are not willing to accept, even if reluctantly. The referendum is a must and it ends with half a decade of one-sided anti-democratic impositions by the bankster mafia and its bureaucratic puppets. 

It is not an easy decision but it is one that nobody can take in place of the sovereign Greek People. 

Euro-putsch!

The real sign of the incipient collapse of the European Union was not the referendum however. It was the illegal and putschist decision of excluding Minister Varoufakis from the Eurogroup meeting yesterday. 

The exact details are unclear but by all accounts Yanis Varoufakis was impeded from access to the second trench of the Eurogroup meeting yesterday. This is simply illegal and underlines the lack of democracy and transparency that plagues the European Union.

Tsipras qualified this episode as "a black day" in the history of the Eurozone. I would rather describe it as a full-fledged coup. 

Spain's Finance Minister Luis de Guindos instead watered down the relevance of the incident considering that the meeting was "informal" and that "nobody contemplates the exit of Greece from the Euro" (that would be illegal as well, of course: only Greece can legally take that decision on account of its sovereignty). 

However the maimed Eurogroup issued a communication as such institution with a mere footnote noticing that the Greek minister was absent and did not ratify the decision. So it was indeed a Eurogroup meeting, even if an illegal one: the Euro-putsch has begun!

Ripple effect

The underlying problem of all this is that the official "austerity" policies are totally rigged and do not work. In the case of Greece, it is being demanded to once and again to kill their hens, destroying the egg production altogether and making recovery impossible. 

Instead of taxing the wealthy and capitalist profits, the whole plan is about taxing the common people for their daily needs, while at the same time cruelly slashing their income sources such as salaries and pensions. Instead of cutting in wasteful expenditures such as the military, the burden of austerity is totally placed on social expenditure. Instead of taking from the profits of public companies, the Greek state is being forced to suppress that source of income by underselling its property to greedy speculators.

But it does not only affect Greece: it affects every other EU state. A major collateral risk, five times the size of Greece, in all this crisis is Spain, where the situation is also very bad, with extremely high unemployment and destruction of the productive fabric. And all to pay the bailout of some stupid bank that was managed in a most corrupt way and which is engaged, like the rest of its mafioso ilk, in the criminal activity of evicting people from their homes and other scams.

A takeover of power by the "radical" Left is still unlikely to happen in this case but some of that is already taking place at local and regional institutions, putting upside down the corrupt power schemes of the pro-Troika Spanish Right. Key in this matter will be the stand of the Spanish equivalent of the PASOK, the PSOE. So far it has mostly chosen (with important exceptions) to cut deals with Podemos and popular unity lists in towns and regions (implying important programmatic concessions) but at state level, when the real substance is being decided, I bet they will rather choose to form a "great coalition" with the conservatives, following the suicidal example of the PASOK but also a model that has been worked out in Germany and, briefly, in Italy, with varied results.

But, considering that the greed of the bankster mafia knows no bounds, and that "loot while you can" is the only plan that Global Capitalism has, the situation in Spain and other EU states, probably most, will only worsen in the next few years, so I would forecast the full collapse of the EU by the end of the decade. 

It won't be simple but one thing is clear: there is nothing substantial they can do to impede it other than foster civil war via terrorist mercenaries as in Syria or Ukraine. Not a very productive plan if you ask me, really. And such developments within the core of the US Empire (i.e. Western Europe, which is about the last meaningful solid holding it has overseas) can only spell the end of the Western World Order as we have known it for the last five centuries or so. 

We are going to witness and very possibly be part of major dramatic changes in no time, that is for sure. Get ready!

Greece will hold a referendum on debt deal

Mind you that at the time I write this the deal is not even signed yet. 

Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis warned that "every time we make a concession and we walk three fourths of the road, the institutions do exactly the opposite". But even then he did hope to reach an agreement today.

Unspecified "Troika" speakers also agreed that an agreement today is likely. 

The referendum will be held on July 5th. 

Varoufakis tweeted in this regard:

Democracy deserved a boost in euro-related matters. We just delivered it. Let the people decide. (Funny how radical this concept sounds!)

The official stand of Syriza is to ask for a "yes" "NO" (see update) vote. Right-wing nationalist coalition partners Independent Greeks (ANEL) have asked for a "no". PASOK considered the move "irresponsible". 

I'd personally vote "no" myself (because I believe unilateral bankruptcy and a socialist praxis is the way to go) but I do think it is not just important but a fundamental democratic need that the Greek People is the one to decide in such crucial matters. If they would have been asked five years ago, maybe we would not be where we are now. 

Sources: RT, Público[es].


Update:

The actual stand of Syriza and the Greek government is to ask for a "no". In other words: they feel that they are conceding too much and that they won't go ahead unless the Greek People demands them to do so. 

Brussels warns that the call of a referendum means the end of negotiations. It's plausible that Tsipras et al. already expected that and it may be the way to break useless negotiations in the most democratic and transparent possible way.

In effect it seems to mean that the Greek default is a fait accomplí and now begin the legal squirmishes on whether the Bank of Greece can print euros or not, whose fault is it, etc. Depending on the details it may result on formal suspension of Greece's membership in the EU (although a single country other than Greece could veto that decision even with an abstention, as it requires a yes vote by every single other member state).

Another legal squirmish may take place in the Greek parliament if the conservative opposition demands a no-confidence vote, which Tsipras will no doubt win, delaying the referendum process by maybe 3 days.

In any case the moment of truth has arrived.

Sources[es]: Principia Marsupia (Twitter), Público.

Millions vote in Catalan independence referendum: 81% support independence

2.3 million Catalans (updated figure) voted yesterday in the independence referendum organized by Catalan institutions and declared illegal by the residual Spanish Empire. The worst fears of military intervention did not materialize and Catalans could vote on the future of their country in spite of all, although with most unionist forces not recognizing the vote. 

The figures are still provisional but reflect 96,8% of the votes, with the following results:

• 80.72% voted for an independent Catalan state
• 10.09% voted for a Catalan state but against independence (i.e. federalism)
• 4.45% voted against a Catalan state
• The rest include blank ballots and irregular choices like yes to independence but no or no choice regarding the concept of "state". This "other" category gathered more than 3% of the votes, suggesting that there is a sizable number of independentists against the state format.

The controversy now is on whether the referendum has any bearing at all, as it is "illegal" by the Imperial dictate of Madrid, and, more subtly if the turnout is enough to legitimate the vote. Obviously this is the burning nail of unionists, who want to somehow count the indifferent in their side this way, even if opinion polls show that the unionist option is much weaker than the independentist one.

For comparison: 

• The 2014 EU elections had a 2.5 million voter turnout
• The 2012 Catalan elections had a 3.7 million voter turnout
• The 2011 Spanish elections had a 3.5 million voter turnout
• The 2006 new statute referendum had a 2.6 million voter turnout

It is obvious that the majority of those who oppose independence did not vote but rather attempted to sabotage the vote with their abstention, supporting that way the Spanish Imperialist doctrine of negation of the right to self-determination of Catalonia and other nations imprisoned within its borders. But how many these abstaining unionist are? 300,000 or 1.5 million? Almost certainly the real figure is somewhere in between, say 800,000, judging on past electoral behavior and opinion polls. 

So while they may be willing to cast doubt on the result of the referendum, their argument is extremely weak and can only resound in the ears of the ignorant and those who are already persuaded. The reality is that at least 2/3 of Catalans who take a stand strongly support independence.

Figures' source: La Vanguardia[es]


Update: Spanish and even Basque institutional media is just ignoring the vote, as if it never happened.

Catalonia is voting its independence

Large queues, a clear sign of popular enthusiasm, are the main thing to mention at noon. In spite of all legal prohibitions, the People of Catalonia is voting massively in this journey of democratic hope. 

The main incident so far took place in a polling station of Girona, where a group of fascists attempted to violently sabotage the vote. Two of them were arrested. 

The spirit of disobedience is riding higher than expected and even the Catalan police corps have declined to identify those in charge of opening the polling stations, while the Catalan Government has assumed all responsibility in this act of democratic empowering and defiance. 

Catalan citizens decide today on the following double question: Do you want Catalonia to be a state? If so, do you want this state to be independent?

Unionists therefore can vote no to the first question, federalists yes to the first one and no to the second one and independentists (expected to win the vote by landslide) yes to both questions.


Madrid: damned if you do, damned if you don't

The Spanish authorities, extremely weakened by extreme loss of legitimacy of both of the twin parties of the post-fascist pseudo-democratic regime, sunk in corruption scandals and social-economic collapse under EU-orchestrated anti-social policies, seem powerless. Legally they could even order the establishment of martial law and what not but that would only escalate the conflict and debilitate the already weak state even more.

Spanish President Mariano Rajoy has claimed that he will stay in government for the whole year that he has left, what he can force because of the technical but non-representative majority his party has in Congress. However reality is tough and his position is every day weaker.

In this sense he recently acknowledged that sending the military police to impede the vote would be so terribly shaming for Spain that can't be actually done.

The journey has not finished yet but the first half of it has been so far a total success for democracy and for the demands of the stateless peoples of Europe. Congratulations Catalonia, thank you Catalonia.