Explosion at nuclear plant in Normandy (France) and other nuclear news

A explosion (described as massive or huge by some media) rocked the nuclear power plant of Flammanville (near Cherbourg, Upper Normandy) today around 10:00 CET. The information as of now is still fragmentary but the authorities have been quick in allegedly dispelling any fears of "nuclear accident", claiming it happened in the control room of a non-operative new reactor. 

Several workers have been affected by smoke inhalation and a fire is still burning at the site.  

If the accident would be a true nuclear accident, dominant winds should send the radiation to NW France, South England and the Rhine basin, the very core of European economy. Hopefully it is nothing too serious but that doesn't solve the problem of France being the most likely home to a new Fukushima, if not on Earth at least in Europe. 

I estimate that the next major nuclear accident should statistically happen around 2023, then around 2029, 2032 and since then about one per year or so. This is because nuclear facilities are every day older: they should be decommissioned but that is costly (and where do you put all that radioactive trash?) so they are just seeing their lives extended once and again. 

Green light for Garoña in Spain

The nuclear power plant of Garoña, near the Basque Country, which has a Fukushima-like design (but with a single reactor) and has long passed its expiration date, was given green light by the Spanish Nuclear Security Council yesterday, on condition of heavy investment to upgrade the facility to post-Fukushima new standards. The last word is now on the corporation Nuclenor, who will have to consider if the investment required is worth it, and the Spanish Government. 

All Basque institutions, parties and the popular movement have protested the decision. Absolutely nobody supports the persistence of a nuclear power plant built under fascism that should have been dismantled decades ago. 

Fukushima 2 radiation levels beat all records, big hole in the basement

In the last days it was also known that the devastated Fukushima nuclear power plant, reactor 2, was emitting peak radiation levels, worse even than the original disaster week, above Chernobyl even. Of course the news was pretty much ignored by the "free media" (propaganda outlets of the oligarchy), Trumptweeting seems more important somehow. 

Also a robot discovered the obvious: that the nuclear fuel has penetrated deep in the ground inside a hole of unknown depth. This is what was classically described as the "Syndrome of China", on the fallacious argument that nothing would stop the ever-melting corium from going all the way through Earth until reappearing on the opposite side of Earth, which was not China but nevermind. Actually gravity would stop the sinking at the center of Earth but anyhow the problem is similarly complicated, because it will penetrate slowly but without any possible stop, all the crust of Earth and cause some sort of most serious issues as it goes through layers of water and magma (radioactive volcano anyone?, that's my bet).

So happy Nuclear Catastrophe Week. Enjoy... while you can.

Poroshenko's regime attacked Donbass, breaching Minsk agreement, with no success

The neofascist dictatorship in Kiev launched an attack on January 29th against Avdeeka, a few kilometers north of Donetsk. This attack breaches the Minsk truce so Poroshenko's regime has resorted to put the blame on Novorossiya, accusing them of unspecific "provocations". Seriously? Nazi Germany also did that to "justify" their invasion of Poland but at least they had fake photos with fake "Polish guards", what does Poroshenko have? Nothing at all but words. 

According to the Basque Country-Donbass Solidarity Committee, the attack has been successfully repealed in spite of "severe" initial losses (because of surprise). According to Kiev, Ukraine lost 11 soldiers (4 dead and 7 injured), while the People's Republic of Donbass acknowledges one defender dead and another one injured. The internationalist committee thinks that the figures by both sides are totally unrealistic and that many more people died in the combats. Colonel Cassad (Novorossiya) argues, following the US Department of State, that the Ukranians lost dozens of combatants and he also says that surely the figure is quite high in the side of Donbass. 

The exact short-term goal of the attack is disputed: a water treatment plant just behind the PRD lines is one of the possibilities, or also a coke power plant under threat of closure. However Cassad ponders, on unspecified sources, that maybe the real trigger is an internal dispute among the oligarchs in power in Kiev, trying to retake the former properties of Rinat Ajmetov in the area (after all, what's an oligarch without his property?)

There have also been maneuvering near Mariupol, Volinaja, Donetsk and Popasnaya, but Cassad considers that some of these could be a distraction from actual objectives, as they are too apparent.

What is clear, and Cassad also acknowledges this, is that Kiev is somehow trying to improve their position for the foreseeable scenario of abandonment by the Western, US-led, bloc upon Trump's ascension to power. By triggering war and bloodshed Kiev is using their very limited means to put obstacles between Washington and Moscow. As Cassad says: what matters is bloodshed, not so much whose blood is it. 

Ukranian soldiers: turn around and march on Kiev. It's about time! But it's also about your lives, and your hopes as nation.

Main source: Euskal Herria - Donbass Elkartasun Komitea: Avdeeka, génesis y desarrollo [es].

See also: RT: BBC reporter films Kiev tanks in residential area on E. Ukraine frontline.

Europe is bound to become a colony (or worse) with Trump

Trump's policies may mean that Europe will have to become a colony of the USA, to transfer even more wealth to the core of the Empire. Let me explain...

Geopolitic irrelevance

This is a real story I was told in the Montenegro of the early 90s, in first person, by a liberal (center-right) politician who had a friend in the US embassy, whom he believed was probably a CIA spy. They had the following conversation (from memory):

-- Your country [Yugoslavia] has lost its geopolitical relevance -- said the diplomat.

-- I'm glad to hear that -- replied the politician.

-- I wouldn't be happy if my country became irrelevant, honestly. 

The narrator ended the story saying that this is why, he understood, the federation was broken and war took over just a few months after that chat. 

A bit of history

Of course Europe, the European Union and associated states, is much much bigger and therefore the loss of geopolitical relevance cannot be so extreme but there is something like that going on anyhow. After World War II, Europe was pampered (Marshall plan, etc.) rather than outright exploited by the Western co-victor, the USA, because of two reasons: 

1. It was required to prevent a "communist" or "real socialist" takeover by the desperate and disgruntled masses, which had already been leaning very strongly to the left in the pre-war period (this was countered by engineering fascist coups but in the end these caused too much trouble anyway, so some alternative was needed).
2. A relatively wealthy Europe could then buy the excess of production of the USA, helping to keep the transatlantic hegemon affluent and happy. Later the USA would evolve towards becoming a market itself, rather than a producer and exporter, via perma-debt and dollar hegemony but that is a second phase beginning in the 1970s, when the gold standard was definitely abandoned (largely to prevent excessive independence of European powers like France, which had been hoarding gold and dumping the dollar).

Well, the USSR fell in 1991 and the likes of Thatcher had been successfully attacking the power base of the Fordist working class (mass workers) since a decade earlier. Public investment (partial "socialism") was replaced by easy credit, a lifeline for short-term prosperity without which the system would have imploded, creating the infamous bubble that burst in 2007. 

Without a "real socialist" power in Europe and with the labor unions pretty much dismantled, there was almost no resistance to the "Washington consensus" (also known as Neoliberalism), while workers were individually bribed with way-too-easy credit, credit that they would eventually pay in blood and flesh, like in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, thanks to endless small print provisions in laws and contracts nobody paid much attention to... until it was too late. 

Anyhow this "easy credit" lifeline lasted for much longer than it was probably expected to. It was meant to keep people content while the last remnants of socialist dreams were dismantled but it ended up caught in its own autonomous dynamics (those of a pyramidal scam) and persisted for maybe a decade after it was actually necessary. For more than 15 years Capitalism seemed triumphant thanks to it: "communism" had been proven wrong and Capitalism right. It was a mirage but a mirage that lasts some 16 years (or more depending on when you start counting at) is as good as hardcore reality for the short lives of people, right? 

Europe's growing irrelevance

Anyway, the USSR has been out of the picture since 1991, when a maverick politician named Boris Yeltsin declared the "independence" of Russia from its "socialist" empire, go figure! For most of the 16 year period, Russia was an ally of the Western Imperial regime, even after Putin took over (since 1999). The alternative bloc, the BRIC (later BRICS) was, quite curiously, formed between 2006 and 2009, coincident with the structural crisis that began in 2007-08 and has yet to end, and Russia was not suspended from the G8 (former G7) until 2014. 

For all this time, until this very day, Europe was an integral part of the core Western Empire, even if it was clearly subservient, growingly so, towards Washington in all the spheres. Europe did pay some hard tribute to the USA in form of a way too rigid and clearly over-valued euro, relative to the US dollar, what helped to make the mega-crisis more bearable for the North American hegemon, but otherwise the transatlantic solidarity of the 1% and their regional or "national" interests was clearly unbroken. 

This is what is changing now with Trump. Sure, people focus on the most obvious aspects of his vocal foreign policy plans: Russia, China, Iran, Mexico, etc. But in what regards to Europe only one aspect matters: Russia. If Russia is not anymore a rival for the USA and particularly if Russia is not the main rival, then Europe's strategic relevance is greatly diminished. 

This is not really something new: it has been that way for the last quarter of century in fact but the sheer size of European economy, the strength of the historical alliance, the globalist "free trade" doctrine and the Russian nukes have somehow kept Europe in the loop long past the expiration date of the realistic need. It is even plausible that the Ukraine conflict was engineered with this "need" for Europe of a "Russian foe" in mind, although the inertias of Mackinderian geostrategy must have also played a role from the "insular" viewpoint of the USA, which greatly exaggerates the "threat" of Russia, a country with the GDP of Spain or Australia (although a much more independent policy and national self-respect), in spite of being much larger in size and population. 

And since the Maidan putsch it has become obvious that Russia is relatively impervious to trade sanctions and that all that Western pressure only has served to strengthen the Kremlin's alliance with China and give a determined push to "silk road" overland trade and pipeline projects China is very interested in. Trump and his advisors know that and want to reverse the trend because, after all, Russia is just a secondary power, while China is the real threat to US global hegemony. 

So Europe now has no role: keeping it affluent appears meaningless for great capitalists who do not fear revolution anymore (overconfidence can be very dangerous) and who consider that is much better to have Russia on your side (or at least neutral) than on the side of China. Worse: Europe is not that important as market for US products (other than "cultural" and computer-related ones) and instead, notably the regional power: Germany, it exports a lot to the USA, while buys from China and also invests there (transferring technology and know-how). This deal, especially now that the dollar is stronger and the euro a bit weaker, is bad for the USA: Europe must pay serious tribute or suffer the consequences.

Europe has become weak and divided

And the last decade of persistent systemic crisis, with absolute lack of statesmanship, let alone continental leadership by the regional main power, Germany, has been extremely bad for Europe: it's not just broke, it's broken, what is much worse. While in the early 21st century Europeans looked at each other growingly as almost equals, since the crisis broke up, we see each other with extreme distrust, distrust that is particularly strong towards the European institutions, which have burdened the masses and gave all kind of advantages to the mega-rich (all within the Washington consensus, it must be said). 

The European Union is so weak right now that it can easily break at any moment. Brexit may be not enough but it is a stern warning: any day now it can be Italexit, Frexit or even Spaxit (although deep inside we all hope for Germaxit, that will not happen while Germany is the main beneficiary of what some call "the postmodern IV Reich"). It may of course linger for five years or whatever but it is very severely wounded, with the camps divided between the ones who can't think of anything less bad (Grosse Koalition) and the ones who can't imagine anything worse ("nationalists" or "populists" of all kinds). Nobody is able to imagine anything better, at least within the "realism" of mere reform. 

Such a broken Union is unable to resist any pressures, especially those coming from the USA, more so if backed by covert action (Gladio is alive and kicking and it serves the Pentagon). And if anything brings together Trump and Putin is strong disrespect for the role played by European "leaders" in the global scene, something that I must agree with: it's absolutely pathetic, lackeyish, short-termist and very hostile towards European citizens, whom they have almost completely alienated from the economic redistribution and therefore from he socio-political consensus of power.

Not sure if it was Chirac or Miterrand who said: "after me they will all be petty merchants". And it was quite prophetic. And those "petty merchants", those ink-stained accountants, those swindlers who pretend to "rule" Europe only to serve global banksters and other great capitalists, without the slightest regard for the well being of Europeans ourselves, are destroying the very dream of European unity they once managed to sell to us as a great hope. 

Expectations: from bad to worse

Just wait and see: this extreme fragility of the European Union will pay into the hands of Trump soon. And it will be for the worst, because Trump main goal here is to get rid of what he considers a useless burden and an economic competitor, which just doesn't pay enough tribute (economic flows towards the USA in general) to be worth "protecting" (protection racket it is: there's no actual threat to Europe but it can be groomed if need be) and worse: it is suspect of conniving with "the enemy", China, to whom it buys trinkets and sells technology (for a profit, of course). 

So Europe, and particularly Germany, had to cut its business with Iran first, then with Russia and now it is probably expected to do the same with the remote but growingly powerful China. Furthermore, it will be now expected to prove itself useful for the USA by means of enriching it. This will not pave out well: Europe will break apart catastrophically, what will not solve anything anyhow but will be even worse almost certainly. 

There is an alternative: European socialism, real socialism of one variant or another, but Europeans are not psychologically ready for that in most cases. In fact what we see in most states is the growth of far right nationalisms, which are basically the European version of Trump and Putin, or worse, and cannot solve anything at all: they serve the rich and the rich always want more and that can only be extracted from either the masses or some neo-colonies, these extremely competed for nowadays. 

Britain, Spain and Greece are rather exceptional and look like they could actually lean towards socialism but, as we see in Greece, the road to emancipation is paved of all kinds of obstacles: external pressures which can be most extreme but also internal weaknesses when the very leaders are pretty much in the dark about what needs to be done, flirting too much with a reformism that is nowadays impossible.

Killed in "mysterious circumstances" the judge that scared Brazilian putschists

The Brazilian neo-colonial coup that aims to put the South American giant back into square one of corruption and submission to "western" corporations has gone one step further into the achievement of its goals: Supreme Court judge Teori Zavascki (pictured) died in "mysterious" airplane accident, along three other people, near Rio. 

Zavascki was investigating the so called Lava Jato scandal, which deals with corruption in state-owned Petrobras. This upcoming week 77 executives were going to be interrogated, enjoying partial immunity for reporting on corruption of high officers, many of whom are believed to be supporters of putschist "president" Temer, and quite possibly most of the cabinet and the "president" himself.

Interestingly it is Temer the one who is supposed to chose his successor in the investigation, what basically means the end of the case. There is an exception in case of "conflict of interests" but it is unclear if it will be used at all. 

Once again evil wins, wake up people, sharpen the pitchforks! Or do you really want your sons and daughters to become slaves in the hell-on-earth that is being forged by the oligarchs?

Source: Público[es].

Letter to a US-American: the very sad Obama legacy and the perilous new 'Trumpland' regime

This is a real letter (well, e-mail to be precise) that I wrote the other day to a friend in the United States and then thought maybe worth publishing. She was so kind as to even provide some corrections to my spontaneous and sometimes exotic English, some of which I'm adopting in this version (for the rest, I like to believe I'm just anticipating future English -- nothing remains static, everything changes and we should proudly accept the fact that we are agents of such change):

Obama looks like a human being: he has presence and charisma but he has lied at least as much as any other and he has been involved in as many wars, most of them very dirty and destructive, as the worst president you can imagine:

1. Libya: toppling an authoritarian regime with Islamist militias only to leave a chaos and redistribute oil concessions to the Anglo-Saxon companies. This happened under Hillary Clinton's direct and quite scandalous "leadership".

2. Yemen: systematic drone-bombing of alleged "terrorists" (often civilians in fact) and later support of Saudi-led absolutely terrorist intervention, still ongoing and unlikely to succeed.

3. Ukraine: artificially creating a "fake revolution" with the use of armed fascist militias, which ended in a full fledged coup, only to put brutal pressure on Russia (Ukraine is just some 800 km away from Moscow, closer to the Russian heartland than Cuba ever was to the US one). This resulted in the Russian-speaking Crimea autonomous republic declaring independence (with a perfectly democratic referendum) and requesting incorporation to Russia afterwards, which was swiftly granted, as the territory is not just historically Russian but also a key naval hub. Other Russian-speaking regions attempted to do the same with two succeeding, out of sheer determination and in spite of strict neutrality from Russia. Elsewhere it was terror by the fascist militias and political persecution for any dissident, from communists to independents, with many brutally murdered. All this was used as pretext for sanctions and war-mongering against Russia.

4. Syria: the USA and allies (European powers, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Israel) used Al Qaeda (the very same Al Qaeda which allegedly attacked the USA in 9/11/2001) to create a very artificial civil war in Syria. Maybe at the beginning there were some more or less legitimate groups but soon only the Kurdish communists remained as such, in unstable alliance with "the regime". "Regime" that was moving swiftly towards greater democratization and held widely respected elections in the midst of the war in which Assad was reelected by massive majority (also among the refugees who could vote, mostly in Lebanon, as Europe and Turkey forbade the elections in their territories). Even Qatari opinion polls agree that Assad has a massive backing inside Syria. Later a splinter group of Al Qaeda, the so-called Islamic State (DAESH) invaded Iraq in what many see as an attempt to weaken its pro-Iran and pro-China elected government (the very same government imposed by the USA, shit happens) and soon became infamous for their unprecedented acts of terror and slavery that could almost shame even the worst of talibans. DAESH is officially rejected by everyone but also effectively backed by everyone (Turkey beyond any doubt, Saudi Arabia has transported many of their cells to Yemen, the USA has definitely financed their equipment and Israel buys their dirty oil). The ceremony of confusion has gone many steps in the zone of total excess and probably farce with the attacks against civilians in France and Germany, probably in order to rally the masses around the banners of war and the police state, but the worse affected are definitely Arabs and Kurds (Turkey has used the "Syrian" jihadists as death squads in the genocidal repression in North Kurdistan, and also indirectly in the South).

5. Latin America: if under the Bush administration the focus was so exclusively in the Middle East that Latin American more or less "leftist" experiments could thrive rather unmolested, since Obama arrived it has been one indirect intervention after another. It began in Honduras in 2009, with the country being given to the "Libertarian" mafiosi (free trade nazis), continued with a coup in Paraguay and growing pressure against the Venezuelan "bolivarian" social-democracy, only to culminate this year with a "soft" coup in Brazil that is clearly a major blow to the BRICS and to Latin American sovereignty.

6. Persecution of dissidents and whistleblowers at home and abroad. The very fact that Snowden had to find refuge in Putin's Russia and that the presidential airplane of Bolivia was forced to undergo a search by European NATO allies (France and Spain notably) because of slight suspicion that Snowden could be traveling in it, says it all. The situation of Assange is not a bit better after five years besieged in Ecuador's embassy in London just because the USA wants him extradited on most unclear charges (the Swedish case is just an intermediate pretext: persecution for having consensual sex without condoms, go figure!) And then of course the Manning case, to whom Obama did not even given a full pardon but only a partial one.

7. The police state has been reinforced: not only do all the practices against privacy in communications remain untouched but Obama just signed a decree allowing the NSA surveillance to be shared with other intelligence agencies (CIA, FBI, etc.) upon request. Guantanamo torture camp was never closed.

8. Monopolistic concentration of power in way too few hands has remained absolutely unchecked, affecting all sectors but most visibly the mainstream media, which has become today a mere propaganda mouthpiece of the imperial regime. All that power is of course being transferred to Trump or whoever holds the oval office throne, because they need those oligarchs as allies.

In brief: the USA under Obama has been extremely aggressive outside and inside. All he can claim as achievement is "Obamacare", and even that is so mild and oriented to private profit that those who criticize it have it very easy.

Yes, he has style, manners and charisma but that's not enough to make a statesman, much less to claim he has honored even slightly his "Change" campaign. Unlike him or Hillary, Sanders was really for some real change and he would have beaten Trump, no doubt, but the regime would not allow him to run, he never had a chance. And they are still doing it: with Sanderist personalities being pushed out of the Democratic Party apparatus as we speak, just for being serious about social-democracy and change, about social and civil rights.

I would even dare to forecast that the Democratic Party camp is going to head internally divided into the next Presiential elections because of this, with the "Sanderists" creating a new party even because it is obvious that the Dem apparatus will not give them any room whatsoever. And,  barring a surprise victory (everything can happen when the window of chaos is open but I feel it's a bit too early), that will allow Trump (or Pence if Trump gets removed) to get a second term, because of the winner-takes-all and voting restrictions system.

Furthermore, it can be even worse: it can be as Moore forecast in his documentary that there will be no more elections until a revolution topples the new "Trumpland" regime. But I doubt it will turn out that way: elections can be easily manipulated in the USA (electronic voting is totally opaque to begin with), so they can keep the pretense for the time being. This slow-motion coup is totally like what happened in the Roman Republic some 2000-plus years ago: the Empire was never officially inaugurated, just someone became way too powerful and the old institutions (more or less representative) were just gradually displaced, step by step.

However it is at the same time that transition from Republic to Empire and the late Empire's transition to feudalism (corporate post-industrial feudalism it is now, they call it "libertarianism"). So it is like repeating all Roman history packed in just a few decades or even years and in totally unrelated conditions of a highly educated and connected population with actual power to disrupt everything if they do ever get serious. It just cannot work: it is a mirage, it is just the last attempt ever to resurrect the Roman Empire and, as all the previous attempts, it will fail strenuously.

The bilionaire behind Trump's sucess

So much noise, fake news, about Putin and then we find out that the real guy behind Trump's success is 100% made in the USA, as everything behind the blondie elderly far-right decadent phenomenon.

From The Real News:

Also it seems already that all that spam about "getting along with Russia" was just electoral propaganda: his appointees are now clearly saying that Russia is the enemy to beat. So once again there was no choice in foreign or imperial policies in this US election, the Deep State always wins:

→ Finian Cunnigham (op-edge at RT): 'Deep State' wins… Trump is being tamed to toe the line.

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].