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.

Nice: another false flag attack?

Still digesting the confusing info on the Nice massacre but since the very beginning things looked pretty odd: the attacker did not carry any real weapon, how was the truck allowed to enter so deep into the city (trucks that size are not allowed to circulate inside urban areas, much less under emergency law, much less in an area cut to all traffic). 

But something is particularly perplexing: the brother of the alleged "terrorist" says he was not even religious at all:

We are depressed, no one from the family believes media reports. Mohamed couldn't have done it. He has not prayed, he is not religious and has not practiced religious rituals. I do not think that he has committed it on religious or extremist grounds.

So we have a "terrorist" that probably spent all Ramadan feasting, who did not bow before Allah? It makes less sense than the "terrorists" of 9-11, who spent all the time getting high and going to discos. He rather looks like a scapegoat, a random person put in the cabin, surely drugged unconscious, to be presented as a "terrorist". 

Who drove the truck then? Well, something we have learned in the last few years is that a modern hyper-electronic vehicle can perfectly be hacked and driven remotely. It seems that all the trajectory was straight, what makes the manipulation much easier. 

So that is my working hypothesis: someone else, someone within the deep French State, did it, blamed "the Moors". 

In any case my condolences to all the victims. 

PD- It has been recently known that six French military police officers deployed near the Bataclan concert hall did not intervene because they had strict orders of only acting in self-defense. What the fuck?!

Macri's Argentina crosses the line into outright fascism

Which is the essence of fascism? Squads of thugs sowing terror with impunity. That's exactly the nature of Mussolini's fasci di combatimento, which eventually put him as Prime Minister of Italy without getting even a single vote.

And that is exactly what happened tonight in Buenos Aires, where a "patota" (squad of thugs) broke into the newspaper Tiempo Argentino, breaking everything under the protection of the police, which impeded workers and sympathizers from defending their workplace.

A Kristallnacht of sorts.

Ahora en Tiempo. Siguen rompiendo todo adentro. La Policía no hace nada. pic.twitter.com/0Y3BAcBs77

— Ariel Cristófalo (@acristofalo) July 4, 2016

Macri's Argentina is now formally a fascist regime. Down with fascism in America or anywhere else!

Related and suspiciously synchronous: the USA will install "cuasi-bases" in both Southern and Northern Argentina in order to control Drake's Passage and the largest underground aquifer on Earth. 

France: Valls demonstrates why he's correctly perceived as fascist

I've been arguing for long that Manuel Valls and his support base at the French PS are true fascists. I admit that, as Basque, I have a vantage point, knowing well the ilk of Valls, who used to be in charge of police, just like Sarkozy, via his repression against my People. 

But now it is apparent before all the French: he has dared to appeal to a seldom-used constitutional article by which he commits his much hated "labor reform" to his own continuity as Prime Minister, forcing the National Assembly to win a motion of no-confidence against him if they want to stop the law. He's not just challenging Parliament but he's challenging nearly every French, many of which have been for a month already protesting in the streets against his outrageous "banana republic" labor project that takes as model a Spain with more than 20% unemployement and below-survival salaries.

Dark Vallsor !! 😂😂 #LoiTravail #NuitDebout #Valls #mdr #sith #CôtéObscurDeLaForce #darksideoftheforce pic.twitter.com/SYamm903M1

— R€VOLT€ (@revolte36) May 10, 2016

This kind of anti-democratic tricks of which the V Republic is full of are owed to the sometimes praised General De Gaulle, the Franco-light of France. As all authoritarian figures, De Gaulle did not like democracy too much, so he made a very authoritarian constitution to fit his ambition. Oddly enough this constitution survived him, deposed by the 1968 quasi-revolution, and has arrived to our times untouched. Obviously it is quite dated, because it embraces an authoritarian scheme of things that is simply inviable under Toyotism, much less in the era of Internet. 

The result is an increased level of unrest through the country and an opportunist motion of no-confidence by the right, to be voted tomorrow, which may well succeed.  

On Twitter: #49al3, #loitravail, #nuitdebout.

Merkel's despicable support of Erdogan threatens freedom of speech in Germany

A few weeks ago, a famous political satire program in German TV, dedicated this song to the Turkish dictator Erdogan:

No big deal, right? The same humorist, Jan Böhmermann, has made similar satirical songs on many other political figures, German or otherwise, for example Donald Trump or Yanis Varoufakis (which I liked so much I mirrored in this blog).

Well, the issue has gotten out of control. The Turkish dictator demanded Böhmerman, using a forgotten legal backdoor, section 103, that forbids criticism of foreign leaders. In order to reach the courts, the demand had to be approved by Chancelor Merkel. She signed it, just like she signed, along with all other EU leaders, giving Turkey millions of euros, which will go to the DAESH or to corruption or both, after Erdogan used masses of Syrian and Afghan refugees as a blackmail tool in a well-known development that has been at the forefront of the European and global news in the last months. 

As result, Böhmerman suspended his very successful satiric magazine, asking viewers to watch cat videos online instead. 

The conflict has not stopped there. Yesterday, Pirate Party's regional leader Bruno Krahm was placed under incommunicado arrest after daring to read the lyrics of the song in a public demonstration for freedom of speech at Berlin, which marched behind a banner that read: "No power for Erdogan, freedom against Erdogan". 

It has also been known that the Turkish embassy in the Netherlands is pressing Turkish expatriates to report any online comments against Erdogan or his authoritarian Islamo-Fascist regime.

I am pretty sure however that this story will end with the head of Merkel and that of her beloved friend Erdogan served on a cheap platter for the delight of us all. One head at a time anyhow and Merkel's is no doubt going to be the first one, as she has chosen to protect with her robust body the much weaker one of her Turkish crony. We Europeans are not at all in the mood for fascism. Bye Angela, good riddance.

Update on the ongoing French social uprising (video)

Good synthesis of the latest developments in the ongoing uprising in France:




From LINKS International Journal (a strongly recommended site).

The social uprising continues in France

As predicted last week, in spite of police repression and significant under-reporting by the bourgeois media, the 2016 Spring protests in France continue with much increased strength a week after they began. 

The trigger is the "loi travail" (labor law), which seeks to cut down worker rights to nothingness and get rid of the 35 hour week conquest (also in effect in some other European countries like the Netherlands), taking as unlikely "model" the collapsed economy of Spain, where there are effectively no more labor rights to be scrapped and yet does not recover at all, with unemployment well over 20% (around 50% among young people) and nearly every single new job as precarious as walking over a tight rope. In other words: the consacration of the "precariate".

In such a situation, even if all this began with a symbolic 24 hr general strike, the right to strike is very diminished and the class struggle takes instead the form of street protests (often illegal because human rights are also under heavy institutional attack), square occupations and electoral politics when possible. 

That's how happened in the very authoritarian scenarios of Western Sahara, Tunisia, Egypt, peninsular Arabia and Turkey, but also in the more "liberal" ones of Greece, Spain or the USA. And now also in France, several years later, with renewed vigor. These strong protests, regardless of their success, evidence that repression is useless or nearly so, unless they go the way of Saudi Arabia, i.e. the way of total fascism (and even then it is most unclear how much longer the Arab theocracy can go on without the unavoidable revolution). 

Even if the revolt has been triggered by the labor law, the goal of the protest remains undefined and is clearly much wider, albeit imprecise. The attempt to impose permanent martial law with the pretext of the Islamist terror attacks, for example, has also caused such unease in the Hexagon that it actually failed. There is a very clear and very strong discontent with the falsehood of the "socialist" label in the French Socialist Party (PS), a party that Paul Lafargue, the first ever socialist MP of France, would fight against no doubt. Not in vain Lafargue, Marx' son-in-law, wrote The Right to Be Lazy, demanding a 20 hr week (on average) already a century ago, but also because he was strongly opposed to the reformist (now already markedly reactionary) tendency led by Jaurés.

I don't feel able to synthesize what exactly is going on in France right now, so I suggest that you check #NoitDebout in Twitter (at a rate of a new tweet every few seconds) or read dedicated media like Paris-Luttes (most is in French though). If you know of other resources (maybe one in English?), please let me know.

Fin de la manif et appel à la #NuitDebout ce soir au Capitole #manif9avril #Toulouse pic.twitter.com/Sok51luual

— Aparté (@ApartePointCom) April 9, 2016

In Britain also

Although newer and triggered by the Panama Papers, so maybe not fully comparable, there are also important protests in Britain, demanding the resignation of the conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, after it was known he had an account in a tax haven until recently. Obviously it is not the only motivation: his policies are also hated by many Britons, who nevertheless in many cases did not want to vote "labor" because the party was perceived then (before Corbyn's election) as nearly the same thing, allowing the Tories to achieve a strong majority. In real terms the support for Cameron's government is anything but mainstream. 

Both countries share a very poor representation problem, having old-fashioned single district electoral systems, which can hardly be considered "democratic" at all. 

See: #ResignCameron hashtag in Twitter.

Police evicts squares in France again, the struggle continues

Paris yesterday evening

The military police (gendarmerie) forcibly evicted those concentrated tonight again against the labor reform law that aims to imitate the "Spanish model" (almost 25% unemployment and nearly all new jobs extremely precarious). 

While protesters sang Moustakis' songs, police employed riot equipment (rubber bullets, tear gas) to disperse the crowds. They later pretended to the media that they only had to ask politely, what is not what the victims of the gendarmes say.

Organizers claim 1.2 million people have taken part in the protests, while police cuts down the number to 400,000. 

Popular assemblies have been called for today at 15:00 (in two hours) and pickets have been called for Tuesday 5 in the high schools (licées). 

With due caution, this looks pretty much like the squares movements of 2011 in Tunisia, Egypt, Greece and Spain, later extended to the USA even. Something to watch closely and aid all we can.

The People takes over the streets in France

Many central squares and other public spaces were occupied tonight by peaceful but angry crowds demanding the total retrieval of the labor reform, that attacks the 35-hour week and promises to capitalists easier exploitation and Spain-style lay-off rules (i.e. no rules at all, resulting in massive unemployment and only precarious low-pay jobs, sometimes no pay at all even with the pretext of getting "experience"). 

The most affected cities in the "Standing Night" (initially called only for Paris) were Paris, Lyon, Caen, Bordeaux and Nantes. In Toulouse a theater was occupied instead. In most cases, the protesters were evicted by the military police (gendarmerie) but new protests are scheduled for today, beginning now (at 18:00 is the main call for Paris' Place de la Republique).

More than a million people took place in the protests yesterday, a 24 hr. general strike. Some opinion polls estimate that the support for the PS government (totally displaced to the far right in all kind of policies) is extremely low, with the Left Front (FdG) almost taking over the hegemony of the French left (although the most benefited are no doubt the right-wing parties). This should come as no surprise since Hollande disowned all his promises and placed a quasi-fascist, former interior minister Manuel Valls, at the helm of his cabinet, who is the main one pushing for far-right policies like the permanent state of emergency or the controversial labor reform that almost make Marine Le Pen look progressive in comparison (but do not get confused please: she's Mussolini with ovaries). 

Is this protest the much awaited reactivation of the worker aspect of the class war in the heart of Europe? Clearly it is to some extent at least, although it is soon to say what effects will have. What is clear is that there is no exit to the crisis within Capitalism, hence sooner or later the socialist alternatives will take over, because there is no other possibility to get things straight. We only need a real non-manipulated, non-treacherous, real left, truly socialist, radical movement that is ready to set things straight. We also need to build it and keep it strong and healthy. 

France: riots against retrograde labor reform

Barricade in Nantes (Público)

It seems that the psychological effect of engineered terror attacks is rapidly declining. People are already back to business and business in Europe means class war.

The retrograde French labor reform that aims to put an end to the 35 hours week and destroy employment guarantees, has been challenged in several cities, notably Paris, Rouen and Nantes, with large demos and riots.

Police has reacted violently, with at least 40 people arrested already and denounces of many incidents of brutality. Notably this case went viral (video):

In the first seconds of the Euronews video we can see a gendarme gratuitously punching an arrestee who could barely stand (after presumable previous beatings, not recorded).

Update: info in French from the popular side.

Let's not fall to the official deceit on Islamist terror, please

The DAESH attacks in Paris and Brussels should be a total political scandal, because it is obvious to those who dare to scratch the surface that they are under the command of those who rule NATO, EU and their member states. The exact details may be murky but overally it is clear that we are under attack by our own rulers. 

Sadly enough, almost nobody seems willing to hang the bell from the cat's neck but rather feel more comfortable ranting inside the official discourse, regardless of the exact details of their empty discourses. 

Let's get specific. For example, Toni Cartalucci explains at Global Research:

All of the suspects have been under the nose, on the radar, and in the prisons of Western security agencies on and off for years, yet were still able to carry out at least one high profile terrorist attack – possibly two, and with the vast majority of the suspects involved having traveled to Syria to fight alongside ISIS before inexplicably being allowed to re-enter Europe and rejoin society without consequence – as if inviting them to take their extremism to the next level.

Let's not forget that the supply lines of DAESH are controlled by NATO, specifically Turkey, whose Hitler-loving President Erdogan even dared to predict an attack in Brussels just a few days ago (astonishing "coincidence").

Even the official channels of DAESH in the Internet are apparently run by NATO and allies. Specifically the Twitter accounts of DAESH propaganda have been tracked via IP to the British Department of Work and Pensions. This ministry has rejected any responsibility claiming that they sold a large bloc of IP addresses to two Saudi firms, Saudi Telecom and Mobile Telecommunications Company, but it does not matter the least because Saudi Arabia is a very close ally of NATO (and of DAESH, Al Qaeda, etc.) and it is ridiculous to think that they would operate without Royal Saudi and NATO/Pentagon consent.

Another specific, already mentioned in this blog, is the implication of a French agent, former security chief of the fascist party National Front and akin to super-judge Marine Le Vert, Claude Hermant, in the sale of weapons to the DAESH cells that attacked Paris. Luckily for us Europeans, there are honest provincial judges who dare to investigate these matters, because all the anti-terrorist apparatus of Europe would not.

There are many more specifics but in many cases we would be going back to the origins of DAESH, a schism of Al Qaeda/Al Nusra, and its financing and even training by the USA and allies. But this is something they even dare to admit, as they do regarding the CIA training and equipment of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. They just pretend that the experiment went wrong at some point, that the Islamists have the tendency to bite the hand that feeds them. However nothing suggests, beyond mere words, that anything has changed at all. Obviously Turkey would not be supplying DAESH and buying their illegal oil if NATO was truly at war with DAESH, or, if they did, they would face the rage of the White House, which has the resources to put Turkey back in line easily. Nope. 

The reality is that DAESH, like Al Qaeda before, is nothing but a useful puppet, a convenient fake "enemy" under control in two ways: first, the direct operative control of the Western and allied secret services and, second, the effective control that prevents them from going rogue: that Islamism is a ghetto ideology that can never spread outside very specific cultural groups (unlike what may happen with Communism, a truly universal and genuinely antagonistic ideology) and that every single reactionary ideas recycled from the feudal period are expendable and can't last for long for intrinsic reasons of inviability. 

In fact this recycling of ideas from the Ancien Régime is typical of fascism and conservatism, but their practical function is only to serve as pretext to more practical goals: repression, imperialism and exploitation. In this case it is not even "Muslim" imperialism to what Islamism (at least the Sunni version of it, under tight Saudi control) serves to, it serves only to the imperialism of the West, largely against "Muslim" nations themselves. For example DAESH has been used to threaten key states like Indonesia or Nigeria against their drift towards more independent stances that may favor China and harm US/Western imperialism. 

But, beyond being a pretext for imperialist intervention or a tool in the Cold War II, islamo-fascist terrorism serves another key purpose inside the West: to sow fear that serves to justify repression and a drift towards a quasi-fascist political system, towards a totalitarian police state. Fortunately Europeans are showing to be less gullible in this aspect than their North American "friends" and attempts to enshrine a permanent state of emergency, as already happens in the USA, are being stopped. However that is the agenda of the NATO Empire and its key oligarchic shadow leaders: to consolidate itself as true formal and authoritarian empire, Roman style, and therefore it is likely that we will suffer more attacks until we either break free from NATO and Capitalism or we bow to the designs or the dark "masters of the universe", whose only real power is the control of token money (i.e. nothing too real, nothing that cannot be destroyed by democratic legislative action, because only law backs, or not, the dark magic of money).

I want to close this entry to an appeal to the real left: comrades, please, stop being so gullible and "good-ist", no real leftist, progressive, socialist alternative can be construed on the acceptation of the falsehoods of the official discourse. I know that it is not easy to challenge the mainstream discourse, built mostly by the bourgeois media at the service of their wealthy masters, but nothing is easy in the class war, so please, do your homework, document the many many inconsistencies in that official discourse and denounce them with all the loudspeaker power you can muster. What else?!

Islamist terror: nobody points to the culprits

First of all my condolences and solidarity with the victims of the Brussels attacks. Nobody surely deserves that but much less random civilians. 

But then I must say that, when Hollande and others talk of "war", they are not declaring "war" to the perpetrators but to the victims. Because the only victim of the police state is the common citizen, just as the victims of the terror attacks: the police state, the emergency laws are not any solution but exactly what the terrorist bosses intend. 

Even more bewildering is that nobody is declaring sanctions, war or whatever other punitive measure against those states who support DAESH. Turkey and Saudi Arabia are the most prominent and unrepentant ones, with lots of evidence pointing to them in spite of the discourse: the DAESH could not exist without them: Turkey controls its supplies routes but only feigns to "attack" DAESH as a pretext to murder Kurds, Saudi Arabia is not only the main human source of the terror group but also the principal financier and has been moving many of them between Syria/Iraq and Yemen, according to their priorities. Saudi Arabia has been in fact for four decades already behind Sunni Islamist terror worldwide, initially (1980s) in Afghanistan and Algeria primarily but then worldwide. Of course neither of these two could have ever done anything without the support of the United States and its local colony: Israel. While Israel has hidden better its own trail, the USA is well known to have created DAESH and equipped it. To this day it has done nothing to stop Turkey and Saudi Arabia from keeping the terrorist monster alive, on the contrary, it seems that "the problem" for them is only the legitimate governments of Damascus and Baghdad. 

So when are the sanctions and blockade against Saudi Arabia begin? When will Turkey be expelled from NATO and denied any kind of credence by the European Union? If you guys want to make "war" against DAESH terrorism, that's the way to go: attacking, not necessarily by military means, the states that support it, namely Turkey and Saudi Arabia (as well as others, but primarily these two rogue regimes). 

As far as anyone knows neither Iran, nor North Korea, nor Syria, nor Russia, nor any of the capricious victims of US-orchestrated imperialist sanctions supports the DAESH in any way, instead "our allies" do, "we" do. Why are "we" bombing ourselves? Should not we declare "war" on "us" (or should I capitalize "US")?

Let's get real: this is not a time for hystery nor for rallying the masses around those who support DAESH against a ghostly threat. The threat is within NATO, it controls state and even imperial level resources, and therefore the only possible "war" is internal within the imperial alliance against all those who feign outrage but actually allow or even promote this kind of senseless terror. We must wake up, this is just the burning of the Reichstag at another scale and, as soon as we scratch the surface, we can't but know it. 

The enemy is inside, the war, the only possible war, the only logical and fruitful one, is against those who control DAESH inside our very own states and imperial alliance.

Nationalism. How to overcome it?

Often people talk about nationalism with generalizing negativeness. For many people: one word equals one simple meaning, or at least that's how they use it. However the simple meaning attempted to convey is as subjective as the speaker. Let's try to clarify.

Since the 1930s and 40s, the word nationalism has become negatively loaded in English, while its synonym patriotism is instead preferred, as it conveys more positive connotations. This seems to come from the use in English journalism of the word "nationalist" to refer to fascists, notably Franco's, when actually he and his followers hated that word, which they associated with Basque and Catalan independentism, calling themselves nacionales, that is: nationals, without the "-ism". In Spanish it is the other way around: it is the word patriotism and its root patria (fatherland), which is loaded with negative connotations, precisely because Franco and his mind-slaves used and abused it, while nationalism has for many positive connotations, precisely because democrats and socialists used it with preference. It's all very capriciously loaded on 20th century historical accidents.

The Basque language case is different: Spanish borrowings follow the Spanish cultural rule but Basque lacked originally for any word for nation, let alone fatherland, different than herri (people or country). So back in the late 19th century, when the Arana brothers reinvented Basque Nationalism in terms that have gone mainstream, they also invented many neologisms of their own, quite arbitrary, thought, one of them being aberri (fatherland, from Sumerian and/or Semitic aba = father, in funny amateurish linguistic exercise¹). The derived word abertzale, now fully consolidated, would then translate as patriot but, as this term is seen as negative in the Iberian Peninsula, it is translated as nationalist instead This may sound odd for native English speakers but that's how the subjectivity of meanings go, depending on cultural specifics. Specifics that have a very shallow history in any case.

In addition to that fatherland and patriot have clear patriarchal connotations (they directly appeal to the father and the father's line), while nation and nationalist do not (they appeal to the place and community of birth instead: natio = birth). This may also weight for some in their choice of words and one can well argue that they are indeed more neutral etymologically speaking.

All these arbitrary, subjective and slippery concepts associated with words are not useful for the analysis I intend to make here. I will therefore consider patriotism and nationalism as the synonyms they actually are, and just use nation and nationalism, avoiding hence the patriarchal load of the word patriot.

Two types of nations and two types of nationalism

What is a nation? For many it has become synonym of an established state. However that's not the original meaning and is only a forced recycling imposed by those so-called nation-states in concert, particularly those who fear their own minority nations' rightful claims to sovereignty, to self-rule.

As I said before, nation comes from a Latin word natio, meaning birth. Traditionally and often also in modern speech it refers to a distinctive ethnic community (Greek: ἔθνος = nation). As nation and state were often dissociated in ancient times, at no time this concept meant state (Lat. res publica = public thing, the word state does come from Lat. status but with a modern evolution in meaning) nor polity (Greek: πόλις = city). Only with the invention of modern nationalism, which is the idea that state and nation should be the same, either by giving a state to each existing nation or by forcing all people in each state to be assimilated into the core nation (or sometimes even exterminated or expelled, i.e. various forms of genocide). 

We see in the very definition of nationalism that it has two contradictory implications. In fact this means that there are two types of nationalism: defensive nationalism, that of stateless nations striving for self-rule, possibly in the form of a new nation-state, and aggressive nationalism, that of states and its core nations, trying to absorb everybody in their boundaries into the core nation or even expel/mass-murder them. 

I will argue here that the categories are therefore:

1. People-nationalism: a nation is formed naturally (historically, ethnogenetically) and it deserves its own self-rule, sovereignty, independence and possibly state. 
2. Imperial-nationalism: a nation is only those that control a state and everybody who falls out of the line must be punished. This one has two variants:
1. Roman style: the outlier nations must be assimilated.
2. Racist style: the outlier nations must be exterminated and/or expelled.

Imperial nationalism is intrinsically genocidal, either in the "soft" cultural way or in the "hard" murderous one. To some extent every single established nation-state falls into this category. It may be latent but it is there and sooner than later it will become a problem. Even nations that have not yet achieved independence and that are therefore victims of others' imperial-nationalism face this reactionary risk if they ever manage to succeed in their legitimate fight for freedom. 

Of course people-nationalism is invariably legitimate, as long as the people-nation historically holds a territory. By this I mean that, for example, it does not apply to Israel, which is an artificial colony on other people's territory, i.e. falls into a sui-generis variant of imperial-nationalism of the racist and genocidal type, the worst type of all. 

But it can perfectly happen and does happen that a successful people-nationalism turns petty imperial-nationalism once statehood is achieved. For example the very legitimate Norwegian or Finnish nationalism, turns out as problematically genocidal, at the very least in the cultural way, towards the Sámi nation; the very legitimate Dutch or Portuguese nationalism turned out imperialist against African, American and Asian nations. 

I guess that's why many people dislikes the very concept of nationalism. However this stand is utterly naive and, almost invariably, turns out as accomplice of imperial-nationalism. 

The naivety of anti-nationalism

Anti-nationalism cannot exist. It can be, I guess, subjectively imagined but it is an error of concept. Nations do exist naturally (historically) and often come into conflict with other nations. You cannot just erase them, just like you cannot erase history, customs, languages, etc. Doing so could only be done by assimilation, always unfair for the new arrivals, into a larger nation. 

For example we may imagine a single unified Humankind that only speaks English and holds not anymore any customs, even the calendar may be redesigned to be religion-neutral, proclaiming next year as "year one" of Human Unification. However this would indistinct from an overwhelming success of English imperial-nationalism. Same thing, mutatis mutandi, if the chosen language is Chinese, Arabic or Spanish. One can be passionately humanist but one cannot be naive. It is almost impossible that an artificial language like Esperanto could succeed but, even in such case, it would still be loaded (Esperanto is heavily Latin and other Indoeuropean-based, not neutral at all). 

Anti-nationalism is therefore, as such, heavily utopian in concept and camouflaged imperial-nationalism in practice. In fact most anti-nationalists I know are just Spanish-nationalists with a very poor pretext and/or a most worrisome confusion. 

Democratic Confederalism as only real solution

The concept of Democratic Confederalism is a quite new one by that name, one proposed very creatively and wisely by Kurdish nationalists aiming to overcome this profound problematic. How? Going beyond the concept and praxis of the state, proclaiming in theory and practice the states obsolete and illegitimate: only the self-given democratic institutions of each community have real legitimacy but none of them is legitimate to interfere into the internal affairs of any other democratically self-ruled community. Common affairs will be taken care of via freely established confederate institutions.

The concept by that name may be new but we do have a historical model for something very similar to such solution in Switzerland. A model that, in general terms, has withstood the test of time, with a record longevity of almost 800 years, something that no other democratic polity can claim. It is a system that is not only based on very radical decentralization, even in its current more centralist form, not just for the cantons (states) but also for the municipalities, but also on a democracy that is far more real than that of any other state I know: with referendums being a regular way of establishing or challenging laws, something that in nearly every other democratic (?) country is rejected as chaos and anarchy, populism and what not! 

Switzerland is not a nation-state but a multi-national federation, exactly what we need at larger scale, world-wide even. 

Of course our Kurdish comrades go a step or two further but the basic idea is the same one. This is the only way out of the nationalist quagmire: one that respects, on democratic and confederal basis, the differences as something that makes us better, not that attempts to suppress everything and everyone that is different and wants to remain so. 

The issue is not being not-nationalist or anti-nationalist, that's just a stupid ill-thought or outright hypocritical stand, the issue is going beyond the state. The problem is not in the nation but in the state, whose greater or lesser lack of democracy is nothing but tyranny.

____________

¹ It was then en vogue for every other language to claim relatedness to Sumerian and Basque was no exception. There are two basic words in Basque vocabulary that have an ab(a)- root: one is apaiz (priest), which clearly evolves from romance for abbot, having in turn a recent Semitic (Hebrew) root aba=father; the other is "abere" (domestic animal or livestock) much older and quite possibly related to Sumerian "ab", meaning cow, as well as some other words scattered in West Asian vocabulary. In this case it's probably a very old Neolithic term and has nothing to do with the idea of "father" or "parent".

Wahabi style massacres by Turkish Army in Kurdistan

Burned alive, beheaded... Sounds familiar? Sounds to DAESH. And that is exactly what "our NATO friend" Turkey is doing against its own (forced) citizens in Kurdistan:

→ ‘Burned to death, beheaded’: Cizre Kurds accuse Erdogan’s forces of civilian massacre (RT EXCLUSIVE)

Between 45 and 50 people were burned alive in one of the buildings, according to a local woman speaking to Whiteman. What is worse, many of the victims appear to have been cold-bloodedly beheaded by the Turkish troops, she said.

It's not just Cizîr‎ (Cizre in Turkish) but everywhere, also in the Northern capital Amed (Diyarbakır in Turkish), with a population of almost a million people:

→ Chilling revelations: Diyarbakır, city of the dead and missing (RT EXCLUSIVE)

Is this a new Armenian Genocide? A Kurdish Genocide in the making? Quite possibly, let's not forget that Erdogan has openly expressed his admiration of Hitler. 

“The objective of the Erdogan government is to completely have a genocidal campaign against the Kurds, because that’s what’s now occurring,” said Gregory Copley, editor of the journal Defense and Foreign Affairs. “This is now genocide, because the Turkish government has denied that there is any major military operation underway there.”

Erdogan and his growingly totalitarian Islamist regime are a terrorist force that is causing utmost grief in the territories of Syria, Iraq and Turkey itself, either via his puppet militias (Al Nusra, DAESH, etc.) or directly with the Turkish Army. He must be removed and made to pay for his crimes.

Arnaldo Otegi walks out of prison

Today, after six years of the most unfair imprisoning, precisely for impelling peace, even unilaterally, Basque independentist leader Arnaldo Otegi finally could walk free.

Video of his exit from Logroño prison:

Before traveling back to his hometown of Elgoibar, he issued a brief but, to my eyes, passionate and hopeful discourse. Video with the Spanish-language version of it:

Translation (boldface is obviously mine):

As the French say, in this occasion "bref",  we will have time to continue talking. 

There are those who claim that there are no political prisoners in the Spanish state, they say it with fruition, some with animosity, but we only need to look at all those cameras that are recording us to confirm that indeed there are political prisoners in the Spanish state. All these cameras are not here when, from this very prison, the social prisoners walk out, all these cameras are not present when immigrants are expelled from these prisons, all these cameras do not exist when humble, when working people are evicted from their homes. That's why we say, for those of us who are Marxist: evidence is what can be contrasted with facts. And fact is that there would not be here all those cameras if they would not know that today, as in many other occasions, a political prisoner walks out from a Spanish prison. 

More than six years ago, they tried to imprison us and actually got us into prison, for making a bet for peace. And I want to congratulate you all for having kept that bet against all provocations. Indeed peace is the way but, on this way, the bet has to be carried on until the end. And that is what I mean to do with all of you. When we were imprisoned, we went in as Basques and as Basques we come out, as independentists and as independentists we come out, as socialists and as socialists we come out. That is why the only thing I want to tell you to finish, because I know that there's a lot of morbid interest in all this issue, that the best President and the best Mayor: the People. Viva you!

Otegi has been banned from holding public office until 2021, however he will certainly run for Lehendakari (Western Basque President) in the elections to be held by the end of the year. 

Many political prisoners, a growing number of which are, like Otegi, prisoners of conscience, punished for their peaceful political activity and/or opinions, still remain in prison. Maybe the most notorious one is Rafa Díez, former secretary general of the Basque worker union LAB, sentenced in the same case as Otegi, for promoting the abandonment of armed struggle by ETA.