Catalan elections: 48% for independence, 39% against

Catalans celebrate the independentist victory (La Vanguardia)

Yesterday the Catalan People had the opportunity to vote on national independence, via regular elections, issuing a clear mandate to go ahead with the process. The total votes for independentist options did not reach 50% but those voting for unionist options are less than 40%.

Crucially 12% of the votes went to options that did not have a clear stand on the independence issue, notably Catalyunya si que es Pot (ICV+Podemos+independents), although the Spanish media (all of them militantly unionist) try to count them in the "no" fraction in a futile exercise to manipulate the actual will of the sovereign Catalan People.

In case there is any doubt, the lead candidate by Catalunya Sí que es Pot, Lluis Rabell, declared unambiguously for all who want to hear that his list gathered independentists and federalists and that by no means their fraction of the vote can be considered as opposed to Catalan independence, but rather expressing the will of people who think that there are more important matters such as human and social rights.

The results of the plebiscitary elections are (by blocs):

	seats	votes	%
YES	72	1,952,482	47.80
NO	52	1,599,527	39.16
other	11	512,910	12.56

In detail (source: La Vanguardia):

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	seats	votes	%
JxSí	62	1,616,962	39.57
C's	25	732,147	17.91
PSC	16	520,022	12.72
Cat.Sí que es Pot	11	364,823	8.93
PP	11	347,358	8.50
CUP	10	335,520	8.21
Unió	0	102,594	2.51
PACMA	0	29,685	0.73
Recortes Cero	0	14,324	0.35
Guanyem	0	1,158	0.03
Pirata.cat	0	326	0.01

The result is very clear, even if it could be even more clear if a legally binding referendum was held, something that both Spain and its political brands in Catalonia oppose by all means, knowing that they would lose.  

What lays ahead?

An immediate issue is who will lead the new government. Junts pel Sí has failed to muster a majority of seats and needs a backer. This one can only be the rising star: the Nationalist Left list CUP (Popular Unity List). The CUP has made clear that they will not support Artur Mas nor another conservative government in any case and that may result in a more left-leaning government, with utterly clean hands on issues of corruption, repression and social policies, made up of mostly independents. The very nature of the JxSí list, made up largely of independents may facilitate this, although who exactly will be the new President (Romeva, Junqueras) is an open issue. 

The main and quite important difference between JxSí an the CUP is social policies, although human rights have also been an issue with the previous government, way too ready to use police brutality. However they fully agree on going ahead with an independence schedule within the next couple of years. In fact the CUP was close to join the JxSí list and only the role given to the previous government's politicians (Mas, Junqueras) blocked the agreement. 

My first impression is that there will be agreement and that an independentist government dead set to implement the roadmap to independence will be formed in the next few weeks, unless Spain intervenes militarily, what is certainly a possibility. That should end in an independent Catalonia in a couple of years... or a military dictatorship imposed by Spain. 

It's hard to imagine how these results can produce any other scenario but we will see in due time. 

The independence camp (48%)

The clear winner in the independentist camp is the Popular Unity List (CUP), which has more than tripled their previous results. They have attracted voters from the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), discontent with their right-leaning coalition with Artur Mas (CDC), but maybe more importantly they have attracted much of the leftist vote that in other elections went to not explicitly independentist Left options such as Iniciativa (ICV) or the popular lists that performed so well in the municipal elections, such as Barcelona en Comú of Ada Colau. The ambiguity on the national issue of the other Left list, Catalunya Sí que es Pot (ICV + Podemos + independents), has clearly played in favor of the CUP, which in any case already showed a clear growth and consolidation in all Catalonia. 

Instead Junts pel Sí has not even replicated the previous results of its constituent parties (CDC and ERC, although most candidates are actually independents, coming from socio-political movements for independence). However it has performed relatively well, no doubt owing to the exceptional nature of the list and the national self-determination nature of this vote. 

The unionist camp (39%)

The unionist parties have performed rather well as a whole, no doubt owing to the massive participation, again owing to the plebiscite nature of the election. The clear winner is Ciutadans (C's), originally a xenophobic and extremist unionist party that has however dramatically moderated its discourse on these matters and is instead being presented as the clean option of the Right in order to rally a much larger fraction of the vote, in Catalonia as in Spain. The yuppies' party has more than doubled its previous results and become the main unionist reference in Catalonia. It must be said that they were the only party running with a woman, Inés Arrimadas, as list head (although it is clear in group photos that all other leaders are men) and that in general they are projecting a positive image of youthful, reformist and anti-corruption "new conservatism" that clearly works to some extent.

The PSC-PSOE (pseudo-socialists, Blairites or liberals), after purging its nationalist fraction, has managed to survive in half-decent shape, with clear losses but much less than forecast. Much of this is no doubt owed to the unsuspected dancer qualities of their leader, Miquel Iceta, which went viral. Also from Madrid, the state leader Pedro Sánchez is behaving looking ahead to the general elections (to be held in a couple of months or so) as the true President, while the conservative leader Mariano Rajoy is instead showing an almost total leadership collapse, owing both to the corruption scandals that have revealed his party as a mafia and his own rather shy or near-autistic personality, which combined to the Galician psychological trait of not speaking clear for fear of repercussions, make him a very weak leader.

Adding to all that, the pretense of hard-handed firmness that they wanted to project has not worked and they have collected their worst ever result. 

The other camp (13%)

There were two notable options in the other camp. The least unsuccessful one has been Catalunya Sí que es Pot (Catalonia Can Indeed), which aimed to replicate the municipal success of ample Left platforms, detaching themselves from the independence debate and trying to put forward other issues such as the social emergency, which is very dramatic in Catalonia, largely owing to Mas' conservative policies but also to their lack of a separate fiscality, what makes the country dependent on Spain's good will on financial matters, good will that is invariably nowhere to be seen. 

Many of their potential voters therefore went to the CUP, or even to Junts pel Sí, being both options much more clear on the central issue of Catalonia's national self-rule. 

In any case the list can't be at all considered part of the "no" camp: both constituent political parties, the historical Iniciativa per Catalunya - Les Verts (ICV) and the newcomer Podemos include people who are in favor and against independence (but usually for much greater self-rule) but who consider that other issues are prioritary instead. Their official stand is for self-determination (unlike those in the "no" camp) and in any case for a Federal Republic, and not at all the centralist state with minor concessions that exists now. 

The other remarkable option is Unió, former minor associates with Artur Mas' Convergencia for many years, whose stand on the national issue is rather federalist as well, with recognition of the right of self-determination. On the event of an independence-focused election they decided to try to collect the third option votes but failed to get any representation whatsoever and a meagre 2.5% of the vote.

Among the rest of the undefined options the Animal Rights' platform PACMA is the most notable one. They are clearly very far from getting any representation but they are again in favor of self-determination for all animals, human or not. 

Provincial variation

The only province with some marked division is Barcelona (85 seats). In the metropolitan province, the secessionists got 39 seats, while the unionists gathered 37, the other 9 going to CSP. 

In Tarragona province (18 seats), the independentists won a clear majority of 10 delegates, while the unionists added up to 7 and CSP got just one. 

In Lleida (15 seats), the "yes" camp got 11 delegates, while unionists got 4 and CSP none.

In Girona (17 seats) the independentists obtained 12 seats, the unionists 4 and CSP the remaining one. 

Constituent Parliament

It is clear to me that the current parliament has a strong mandate to be the Constituent Assembly of an independent Catalonia. And I have little doubt that they will go ahead with the secessionist process, even if the particulars of government formation are still unclear.

However it is clear that Spain will react hard-handedly to any attempt at secession, which is technically "illegal". But how exactly they will manage the separatist will of a nation of 7.5 million people (some 16% of all of Spain's citizens) is yet to be seen. 

The Basque Country lacking

Here in the Basque Country things are moving slow however. While the Basque Nationalist Left (EH Bildu) clearly sees the Catalan movement towards independence as a window of opportunity and would like to join them in the process of secession from the Spanish jail of nations, they are alone on this will. While clearly the Basque Nationalist Left is much larger than the CUP relative to population, being now the largest all-Basque political option, it faces reluctant allies in each territory. 

In the Western Basque Country, the so-called Basque Nationalist Party is clearly spousing nowadays an anti-independence discourse with a federalist tinge. Rather than being the Basque version of Junts pel Sí, they are like the vanishing Unió party... but much much stronger in voter support. Unless voter attitudes change, there is no possibility of pushing ahead with an independence project without them. 

In Navarre the situation is even more complicated, owing to the strength of the unionist camp, which has forced a quadruple coalition between Nationalists and left-leaning Federalists in order to clean up the Old Kingdom from corruption, intolerance and cronyism. 

In the North (under French rule) the advance of the Basque Nationalist camp is still being consolidated after many decades or even centuries of relative absence. The small size and lack of any sort of self-rule of the Northern Basque Country make things even more complicated. 

Critically, if Catalans manage to get ahead with their independence project and we Basques do not, we will be in an even weaker position, without almost any allies in the reduced Spain. That would be very bad, no doubt.

Saber-ratting ahead of Catalan "independence" elections

After the Catalan independence referendum of November 2014 produced a 80.72% in favor of independence, but with very low voter turnout, and this result was flatly ignored by Spain, the Catalan government decided to call plebiscitary elections, which are normal regional elections a bit before schedule and with a twist. 

This twist was initially to gather all pro-independence parties and social movements into a single list that, assuming victory, would manage the declaration and implementation of independence, unilaterally if need be, in two years. Finally the leftist CUP (Popular Unity List) abandoned this plan because it was too much under the control of the two bourgeois parties allied in the current governmet (Democratic Convergence of Catalonia, CDC, and Catalan Republican Left, ERC) and is running on their own ticket. 

The joint list Junts pel Sí (Together for the Yes) is set to win and nearly all polls announce an independentist majority, which must count with the CUP in any case. The key legitimacy question is whether that majority of seats will correspond to a majority of votes. They are close (48-49% in most polls) but not quite there yet. On Sunday night we should get to know, stay tuned because this may be a game changer. 

It must be mentioned that another left-leaning list, Catalunya sí que es Pot (Catalonia Can Indeed, blend of Podemos, United Left and independents), set to be the third group in Parliament, is formally neutral on the issue of independence and tries to focus on social issues instead. Usually the media counts them as anti-independence but they are just not defined and do defend the right to self-determination in any case. The truly unionist parties could get some 38%, mostly around the quasi-fascist Ciutadans (Citizens), while the traditional Spanish twin party is just collapsing to anecdotal irrelevance. 

The latest Diada (Catalan National Day) demo on September 11th, rallied again some 1.5-2 million people in the streets, what is a huge figure in a country of just 7.5 million inhabitants. It may be unclear if they can muster a technical majority but it is very clear that they are a huge force. 

Diada 2015 (ETB photo)

Meanwhile in the military barracks

Yesterday I read that the 22nd Telecommunications Regiment of the Spanish Army, whose base sits right besides the state-owned Spanish Radio-Television (RTVE), has "invited" all workers of this company to swear loyalty to Spain precisely this week. The direction of the entity has backed the offer, which has no precedent whatsoever, not even in Franco's time. 

The poisonous invitation is very symptomatic of which are the state's plans for Catalonia: military intervention and suppression of the autonomy. As the campaign is still ongoing, ministers and other unionist politicians are avoiding this issue and focusing on "how bad" it'd be for Catalonia to become independent, but what will happen after Sunday? 

My expectation is that at some point Spain will just declare the martial law in the secessionist territory and try that way to block their ongoing process of self-determination. The consequences of such development are truly unpredictable. That's how Yugoslavia fell into war: by blocking manu militari the Kosovar process of self-determination. 

Mingled into all this are the all-Spain elections, expected to take place at the latest possible date: December, in which the ruling party PP, as well as the traditional other party PSOE, are set to lose much of their previous support. However a right-wing PP-Ciudadanos coalition or a great coalition PP-PSOE are being speculated about. 

So you are aware of what's going on when the events that will take place. I hope for the best but fear the worst.

Greek elections: a disaster for the European Left

What are you saying? Syriza won! 

Precisely. No means yes and other rape-justifying tall tales seem to have been paid off to Tsipras, who will now repeat coalition with the, more damaged but still alive, conservative party Independent Greeks, now impossible to take apart from their New Democracy matrix. 

On the other hand the consequent leftistsm who Tsipras moped out from the party so easily, have failed to cater enough support even to reach Parliament at all (final results anyone?) 

Greece is a Bundesbank protectorate and the so-called "radical left" will be allowed to manage it once they have humiliated themselves and their country in so many despicable ways.

And the Greek People, defeated and hopeless, have now sanctioned that with their vote. 

They could have stayed with the PASOK after all. This is not different at all. 

Now that Syriza is not anymore within the left, the remaining Left has only managed to gather some 9%, most of it to the old school commies of the KKE (6%). 

Sure, there are still the anarchists, who in Greece are more significant than almost anywhere else on Earth. But what do anarchist do other than complaining and carrying an aura of Utopian holiness?

Abstention was extremely high, almost 50%, but it doesn't mean that those abstaining did so in any "active" way, rather in a gesture of hopelessness and defeat. There were good options after all but the aura of negativeness seems to have defeated them all.

Corbyn's victory offers some hope for Europe

Honestly, I don't know enough about British politics to have a well pondered assessment on Jeremy Corbyn's victory in the Labour Party elections yesterday (with 59% of the votes) but I have enough intuition to understand that, if all the Blairites are angry, then it is probably something very good and hopeful.

Binoy Kampmark at Global Research reports some of the reactions: 

... former leader Ed Milliband, immediately made it clear that they would be reluctant to serve in a Corbyn ministry, shadow or otherwise.

Good sign.

Defence Secretary Michael Fallon, GCHQ’s finest errand boy and rank apologist, chose to congratulate Corbyn with a statement that “Labour are now a serious risk to our nation’s security, our economy’s security and your family’s security.”

Admittedly scarier but also very good sign.

Here's a reminder that back in the 80's David Cameron and Jeremy Corbyn were living in two very different worlds. pic.twitter.com/fO4mCColu8

— J. Ali (@junayed_) September 12, 2015

Good sign as well. And the double photo, which will hopefully go viral, clearly underlines what the real issue is about: lizard or human?, wow, the English can finally make a choice now!

Not like in the last elections, when many of the potential supporters of Labour stayed at home out of anger. Some even asked to be allowed to vote for the Scottish National Party, the only large party with an anti-austerity platform - and a few went even further, asking for the annexation of Northern England (where leftism is more mainstream) to Scotland, preferably an independent one. 

Towards the end of Thatcherism?

It is not yet the end of Thatcherism, Babyface Cameron still rules in London with an iron grip, always at the service of his financier dark masters. But it seems it is at least the end of Left-Thatcherism (so to say: not much "left" in it), alias Blairism. 

And that is clearly very good news. These three and a half decades, all my adult and teenager life, have been a very dark time, even if masked by the mega-bubble that the ice-cream chemist began to inflate herself. The tide was set to march firmly to the right, to deregulation, to privatization of social capital, to the demolition of human and social rights, to something way too similar to outright fascism to be comfortable in. Every other day I consider if I should get myself exiled to Latin America... so dark is our Europe these days. 

So it is good to feel some refreshing wind of change. We'll see what it can do and how far it dares to reach but it is no doubt a sign that finally the mega-crisis has began opening the eyes of the people and that some spark of working class consciousness is arising again. And it is not the only such sign. 

As for the Labour Party... it had no other choice: it could never hope to win in the current context with a bourgeois program.

Anti-NATO

The anti-militarist curriculum of Corbyn is quite impressive, as Stephen Lendman, mentions (again at Global Research):

He’s a member of the Socialist Campaign Group, the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, Amnesty International, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and chairs Britain’s Stop the War Coalition.

He calls himself a democratic socialist, advocating renationalizing Britain’s utilities and railways, making business pay its fair share in taxes, ending austerity, reversing public welfare cuts, abolishing higher education tuition fees, nuclear disarmament, and quantitative easing for ordinary people, vital infrastructure and renewable energy projects.

He said “(w)e need to strongly challenge NATO supremacy and oppose its exercise in Ukraine.” He opposes Britain’s membership in the US-dominated Alliance.

His web site jeremyforlabour.com says “(o)ur timeless task in the Labour Party is to stand up against injustice wherever we find it. That notion has driven me throughout my political life – and it’s what drove me to stand for Parliament in the first place.”

In mid-August, he said “(s)urely it is high time that we had a serious debate about Britain’s overall defense and foreign policy. More than 60 years of Nato membership has brought us enormous levels of military expenditure and by our close relationship with the US through NATO and the Mutual Defence Agreement involved us in countless conflicts.”

“In a world beset by conflict, often around the grab for natural resources and fueled by the greed of arms and defence manufacturers, surely it’s time to reassess our priorities for a foreign policy based on human values, peaceful development and not exacerbating military aggression.”

This is potentially very important because if some state can effectively challenge NATO from inside those are Britain and France. Their might is a mere shadow of what it used to be a century ago but their military budgets are still very impressive, ranking just behind the three major powers, and their recent role in causing trouble in the Mediterranean and Africa is way too big. 

It was a bit notorious these days, in the midst of the refugee crisis in the European Union, that Britain, the European state most involved in causing the crisis by stirring the pot in Syria and in the wider region, infamous for selling weapons to horrible tyrannies like Bahrain or Saudi Arabia, for profiting from the cruelest wars in Syria and Yemen, for closely collaborating with the Washington hawks in creating these very wars, as well as the one in Ukraine... was not accepting a single refugee. 

So it would be indeed quite a change to have an anti-NATO government in London. That naturally explains the stark comment of Minister Fallon, who was maybe just being a bit too honest, but the prospect looks good, much better than with the Tsipras treacherous government in Athens and their preferential agreement with Israel. Surely someone with Corbyn's curriculum cannot betray us as Tsipras did, can he?

Even if he has held political offices in the past, he seems not quite your usual "caste" politician but someone with a social movements' background, a pretty solid one. Sure: I don't expect Corbyn to lead the takeover of Buckingham Palace or the City but rather to, hopefully, turn Britain into a beacon of home in Europe much as Venezuela or Bolivia are in America. They are not "communist" countries, just serious old school social-democracies. Not my ideal type... but still much better than what we have now. 

Anyhow... almost four year to elections in Britain. If they allow elections at all.

Cizre: the new Kobane

Solidarity demo in Paris on Thursday

Dozens have been killed by the Turkish armed forces in the Kurdish town of Cizre, which is being cruelly besieged with the silent complicity of the Western media.

Much like when the Zionist forces march onto Gaza Strip, Turkish police just shoots down everyone who attempts to go out, people are dying for lack of access to medical care and the dead cannot be buried even. 

The victims: "Turkish citizens" (on paper only), their murderer: the Turkish state. 

The town has been gripped by persistent fight between the YDG-H (young organization akin to the Kurdistan Workers' Party) and the Turkish armed forces who try in vain and criminally to retake control of a town that just does not want them. 

According to Ankara some 30 people had died, many of them children. The situation is becoming extreme for the 100,000 inhabitants, as food and water are becoming scarce quickly. 

Telephone communications have been cut, as well as electricity and water supply, at least three European journalists attempting to report have been expelled from Turkey. 

Kristallnacht

The conflict between the Kurdish nation and the Turkish state, under Fascist-Islamist control, advanced yet another step to the worst possible scenario as pro-Erdogan militants attacked, crying "God is Great!" more than 300 sees of the multi-ethnic People's Democratic Party (HDP) on the night of September 8th to 9th, in what has been called the Night of Broken Glass of Turkey, and surely implies the end of even a semblance of democracy in the bicontinental state. The fascist attack did not just took against the HDP offices, some of which were burned to the ground without Western media reporting at all, but has also attacked historical secularist media like the popular newspaper Hürriyet (Freedom), whose central Ankara offices were totally destroyed. 

The situation of growing and widespread war in all Kurdistan and extremist violence backed by the state in Turkey proper makes impossible that the upcoming elections can be considered fair at all. In fact, it is very clear that Erdogan wants to use the violence to secure a comfortable majority for his fascist party and that way reform the constitution in order to grant himself even greater power and destroy the safeguards for secularism, turning Turkey into a Saudi Arabia of sorts... without the oil.

Source: Diagonal[es].

If someone still doubts the Basque Country is occupied...

... that one only has to look at what happened yesterday in Altsasu (Navarre).

Every year the Sovereign People of Altsasu attempts to celebrate a fiesta-protest known as "Ospa Eguna" (Go Away Day), demanding the evacuation of the Spanish Military Police (Guardia Civil) from the town and valley, and more in general from the whole Basque Country, because they are disruptive, abusive and unwanted occupation forces.

And every year the occupation forces try to demonstrate they are the ones in command and not the People. That's what I call a dictatorship.

This year it was painfully obvious:

The "logic" for the military aggression was that "we don't like it". Not even using and abusing the law and the judicial system, just absolute arbitrariness from those who know that they won't be ever challenged in their own legal and political system. 

Yes, Franco won the war and his ghost is still very much alive.

Syriza's Left wing organizes new party: Popular Unity

Laiki Enotita (Popular Unity or People's Union) is the name of the new party that will fight for the most genuine Syriza vote. There are no opinion polls yet on how this new party may fare but it is clear that, judging on the June and July data, Syriza as a whole gathered more than 40% of popular support, twice or more what the conservative New Democracy has, and seven times what smaller parties can gather. 

Within the former Syriza's bench in Parliament, they have at least 25 seats, being formally now the third largest party of Greece (displacing the much smaller nazi party to fourth position). Their presence withing the crumbling Syriza middle and low ranks is or was no doubt much stronger but Tsipras manipulated the party's institutions to delay decisions and now has forced elections before a congress can be elected and meet. 

The enigma is how will the vote split in the snap elections of September: will most Syriza supporters back Tsipras for his alleged "charisma" and "doing the best he could" (so he claims) or will them demand a clear-cut anti-Troika program, much as they did in the July referendum? 

My impression is that former Syriza voters may well be roughly evenly split, between the fearful, who will back Tsipras as "lesser evil" and the outraged, who will not want anymore of him, his lies and his betrayals. If this hunch is correct, then Tsipras will only be able to form government with the conservative New Democracy (and some lesser partners), intiating a four-year term of surely catastrophic third pro-Troika coalition cabinet, with very reinforced left-wing opposition (but opposition nevertheless). 

A key issue will be which of the three contenders will get the first post, which, by grace of the Greek electoral law (otherwise very proportional), gets 50 extra seats (out of 350). However, unless Popular Unity manages to get most of former Syriza backers, it will be unable to form government and pro-Troika parties, now possibly led by Tsipras, will have to form a colorful coalition in order to lick their masters' boots properly. 

As for Yanis Varoufakis nobody knows yet, not even himself possibly. He has repeatedly stated that he meant to be in politics for long but it is unclear if he will join (and be accepted) within the ranks of the new party (whose members probably feel he is way too moderate, even if respectable). He won't be included for sure in the Tsipras list because he broke the party's discipline. Clearly Varoufakis would be an asset for the new party in terms of attracting votes but it is not so clear if the Popular Unity program, which seems now persuaded of the need to evacuate the Eurozone and even the EU itself maybe may fit with the Europeanist feelings of the former Finance Minister.

Tsipras cheats Syriza again

The Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is calling snap elections without allowing its own party, Syriza, to debate on his controversial surrender to the global banksters, on his PASKOization. Earlier the schedule was a Syriza Congress on September and, afterwards, elections, but now, obviously fearing to lose the party's support, he has changed the order of things, forcing dissidents to rush to create a distinctive list and that way probably break the party's discipline, resulting in mass expulsions and the retaining by the traitor PM of the brand and the assets of the party. 

Double traitor he is: to Greece and to Syriza.

Black shirts in the streets of Ferguson (USA)

They call themselves "Oath Keepers" but are a heavily armed paramilitary group ("militia"), 100% white, issuing electoral support for the extremist and racist presidential candidate Donal Trump and made up of former soldiers, police agents and other paramilitary structures. Police is allowing them to walk heavily armed in the middle of the demonstrators. Let's not forget that Ferguson is a municipality with a black majority but effectively controlled by the white minority, particularly the bourgeoisie, thanks to the very anti-democratic US electoral system, which actively works against actual popular participation and strongly favors the twin major parties.

Armed white men now walking down #Ferguson. No problem. Can you imagine armed blacks doing same? pic.twitter.com/74lOXPiLha

— Grace Lidia Suarez (@gracels) August 11, 2015

When I read this yesterday night, I could only think in Mussolini's black shirts and how similar armed far right squads brought Italy to 25 years of dictatorship after just crushing all working class organization and resistance, serving always the demands of the bourgeois oligarchs.

Of course that there are many other cases, today's Ukraine notably, backed by the same extremist oligarchs from the USA, but post-WWI Italy is archetypal.

And I don't care if their shirts are mottled or pink, nope.

What happened to Tyrone Harris?

Two days ago, when there was this huge march in commemoration of the murder at the hands of police of Michael Brown, just when the police chief was talking to the press and saying how tolerant and patient they were trying to be with popular protests, there was a mysterious shooting that left the chief open mouthed.

As result another African American young man was shot and severely injured, shot in the back by police officers who alleged that they were responding to fire. Strange to say the least.

Some footage has become available recently on this matter. Notably a surveillance camera caught a key fraction of the events:

We can see how people is walking around normally, relaxed, when they suddenly run all around and look for cover. Someone was shooting.

One of them, plausibly Tyrone Harris, pulls out a gun and heroically attempts to face out the attackers, moving out of camera towards them afterwards. 

According to the police version, Tyrone was shot (in the back!!!) when he was firing against plainclothes police officers. 

What is clear from the video is that, no matter how the racists want to put it, he was exerting the right to self-defense. He could not know that the attackers were police agents because they were in plainclothes (according to the police version). But in any case, why would police agents shoot to a peaceful crowd like the one we see at the beginning of the video?

That is the big question. The question is not if Harris' gun was legally owned (it was not) or if he had played the piano at the police station before (who hasn't?), the real question is why he felt the need to pull out the gun and attempt self-defense?

And the answer is very apparent in the video itself: someone was shooting from that direction. Were the shooters plainclothes' police officers? Probably but it is the Ferguson Police Department who has to explain, again. 

My impression is that some of those racist cops tried to cause an incident, shaming their own chief precisely when he was speaking to the press about how peaceful and tolerant everyone was. That it was a mini-coup consistent with the power dynamics in the beleaguered US town, which has become the epicenter of the much wider conflict between a police state in which the repressive system systematically attacks minorities, very particularly Blacks but even more so Native Americans and also Latinos, and these minorities, and in general the working class across racial and ethnic divides, who oppose it.

The intrusion of the black shirts is only another step in the restoration of the KKK order by racist terror. 

It may also be of interest this video on how Tyrone Harris was being denied an ambulance after the shooting and how the ones protesting that were eventually arrested. These are not the only peaceful protesters arrested these days in Ferguson, hundreds have been. Meanwhile racist white crackpots with guns are allowed to walk around fully armed.

Erdoğan = Islamic State terror

From Voltaire Network:

Sümeyye Erdoğan

President Erdoğan has set up a secret hospital on Turkish territory at Şanlıurfa, outside of the combat zones, to look after wounded Daesh jihadists.

The town also shelters a secret al-Qaïda training camp [1].

The wounded are transported in military vehicles by the MIT (Turkish secret services).

The supervision of the hospital is coordinated by Sümeyye Erdoğan, the daughter of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (photo) [2], who is also responsible for the international relations of the AKP (Islamist party).

Apart from that, according to the spokesman for the CHP (Socialist party), Gürsel Tekin, the crude oil stolen by Daesh is now being exported by BMZ Ltd, the maritime company of Bilal Erdoğan, the son of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in violation of resolution 2170 of the United Nations Security Council [3].

Western bloc infighting in Syria

More details and analysis are provided in other articles by the Thierry Meyssan, the persecuted and exiled French journalist who leads the site. The most relevant one is dedicated to analyze the convoluted relations between Erdoğan's Islamist Turkey, the USA and other regional powers such as France, Israel, Russia or Saudi Arabia. 

According to Meyssan, initially Erdogan was against the neo-colonialist intervention in Libya and Syria that was orchestrated as offshoots of the so-called Arab Spring. However in 2011, Alain Juppé (Foreign Minister under Sarkozy, involved in several corruption scandals and eventually turned into US-style Neoliberal Hawk), persuaded the Turkish government to change course with promises of favoring their entrance in the European Union. In a secret document signed by Juppé and the Turkish Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, the outline of the partition of Syria and Iraq was defined. 

France intended to reconstitute a colonial empire in Syria. Moreover, it had connections within the Islamist terrorist movements and anticipated the creation of Daesh. In order to guarantee the Juppé plan, Qatar agreed to make massive investments in eastern Turkey, hoping that the Turkish Kurds would then abandon the PKK.

Apparently the Turkish role in agitating Misrata Libyans was crucial for the overthrown of Gadafi. 

However Washington and London seem to have for some time abandoned the intervention plan, which remained pretty much a French and Turkish project. That explains why the situation in Syria has remained relatively stagnant all these years. 

Turkey however insisted on it and organized the plundering of the Syrian economic assets, be these machinery from Aleppo's industrial belt or archaeological treasuries to be sold in a black market set ad-hoc in Antioch. They also set a false-flag chemical attack in the outskirts of Damascus in an attempt to trigger NATO's unilateral intervention. 

The progress in negotiations between Washington and Teheran also weakened Turkey's gamble, so Turkey looked to Russia and signed in the Southern Stream pipeline project. However last month Washington (with support of London) blackmailed Turkey with threats of excluding it from NATO. Turkey backed but began direct dealings with the US emissary for Syria, the strongly anti-Iranian General Allen, who is a close ally of Gral. Petraeus (former US "prefect" for the Middel East) and Senator Clinton (main candidate to be the next US President and a well known Zionist Hawk).

According to Meyssan, the Franco-Turkish plan also met another new obstacle as the Tel Aviv-Riyadh axis changed their stand and positioned themselves against the Islamic State and the partition of Syria and Iraq, even reaching to the extreme of supporting Kurdish militias, and not just those sanctioned by Ankara (basically the puppet autonomous regime in Iraqi Kurdistan). 

Meyssan thinks that Israel is particularly wary of Erdoğan's policies and that explains their recent reinforced alliance with Greece and Cyprus, traditional enemies of Turkey. Yes, after signing the third memorandum, the Tsipras government signed a preferential military treaty with Israel of the kind only the USA has. If anyone remains doubtful about how treacherous is Tsipras for the European and global Left, this speaks volumes. 

In any case the exiled French journalist concludes that Erdoğan has chosen to remain in power by means of forcing Turkey to a civil war, by which he hopes to attract the support of the secularist fascists (MHP) and contain the advance of the left, which has rallied around the multi-ethnic HDP, with a large Kurdish and crypto-Armenian support base but also significant backing in the big Turkish cities. 

Internal problems in Turkey

In another only slightly older article, Meyssan reviews the internal developments in the Turkish state: its economy is collapsing, its army has been weakened by political purges, the fabric of society itself is deeply divided by the Islamist policies of Erdoğan, etc. He also explains how the Islamic State is controlled by Turkish agents (West Asian Turkmens and Muslims from the former USSR).  

He also explains that Obama's threat of excluding Turkey from NATO would surely mean the formation of an independent Kurdistan in what is now official Turkish territory. The threat meant to force Turkey to drop its cooperation with Russia (Southern Stream) and with the Islamic State. 

Erdoğan has appeased Washington but uses this anti-IS rhetoric to actually attack the PKK and its allies south of the Baghdad Railroad (the artificial border between the Turkish and Syrian states). According to Meyssan if the AKP-MHP coalition fails to form in the next few days, new elections will have to take place but these will not help Erdoğan the least, so in Meyssan's opinion Turkey is bound to collapse into civil war. 

We'll see. Because while I strongly respect Meyssan's knowledge and research ability, I am not so sure about his forecasting powers nor I necessarily see the complexity of the conflicts on his light (i.e. the position of Tel Aviv and Riyadh is not as clear as he thinks). 

Importantly, the USA is holding presidential elections this Autumn and Hillary Clinton is expected to win them. Nearly all other options (Trump for example, or Jeb Bush too) are not even slightly better (all are very aggressive hawks). One can presume that Erdoğan will be able to hold up until then one way or another and then relaunch his project with full Washington's blessings.

Of course we can all dream with the victory of Bernie Sanders but that's not likely to happen and, if it'd happen, it'd be such a game-breaker that everything would have to be reconsidered, and not just in West Asia.



Counterpoint: Petras thinks Israel and Turkey are in fact allied

James Petras, another brilliant analyst, does not seem to believe that Israel and Turkey are actually at odds, in spite of the appearances. His analysis (published at Global Research) may be less nuanced than Meyssan's but it is clear to me that there are many things that unite Israel, Turkey and Saudi Arabia in a common strategy.

First of all there is Iran: none of these three Western-aligned regional powers is happy with the signature of the Washington-Teheran treaty that effectively recognizes Iran as a regional power with some "rights". The emphasis may be different but all three are united against Iran and its allies (Syria, Iraq, Lebanon or parts of it and the Palestinian cause).

Petras agrees that Erdoğan mainly intends to ban the People's Democratic Party, an inter-ethnic leftist alliance that has managed to establish itself as the fourth political party of Turkey with good prospects. The other front of Erdoğan is to undermine Syria's sovereignty.

Meanwhile Netanyahu aims to consolidate the anti-Iran alliance, which also includes undermining the sovereignty of Syria and Iraq (Israel has been known to heal and support Syrian guerrillas of the same type that Turkey most openly backs, namely Al Qaeda).

According to Petras, all these anti-IS coalitions are actually meant against other players. That is quite obvious in the case of Turkey attacking the Kurdish militias but also in the case of intervention in Iraq, where the main goal seems to be the weakening of the Shia militias.


This explains why all anti-IS action is producing no fruit, nor will ever do: because the actual targets of such operations are never the IS but rather other actors who can undermine the interests of Israel, Turkey or Saudi Arabia (and therefore those of the USA and NATO).

Erodoğan (sic), like, Netanyahu, wants a ‘pure’ ethnic state – one Jewish, the other Turkish!   Both leaders have no regard for the sovereignty of neighboring states, let alone the security of their civilian populations.   Both depend on the military support of the US.   Both are in the process of igniting wider and more destructive wars in the Middle East.   Netanyahu and Erodoğan want to reconfigure the Middle East:   Turkey seizes Kurdistan and Syria; Netanyahu expands military dominance in the Persian Gulf through the destruction of Iran.

These two leaders appear to hate each other because they are so similar in arrogance and action…   But according to Professor Zelikow, the US will step in ‘god-like’ to ‘mediate’ the different power grabs among what he mindlessly refers to as the ‘partners of the coalition’.

Tsipras moves to take full control of Syriza

From Left Voice:

Tsipras defeats the Left Platform at Syriza’s CC meeting

At a meeting that lasted for 14 hours, Tsipras defeated a motion presented by the Left Platform of Syriza. The Central Committee decided to hold an extraordinary party congress in September, after the third bailout has been completed.

This meeting has been awaited with great suspense. The Left Platform and other critics within the party had been demanding such a gathering for weeks.

The debate revolved around the demand to convoke a party congress before signing a new bailout package with the representatives of the Troika, or whether to wait for September, as Tsipras proposes.

The Left Platform and other internal opposition groups proposed an ordinary congress in the coming days, made up of the delegates elected for the founding congress in 2013, which would favor the opposition. Tsipras in contrast proposed an emergency congress in September, after the bailout has been approved, with new delegates based on more moderate party members.

Having not reached an agreement after hours of debate, Tsipras proposed to hold a referendum next Sunday to consult Syriza members, in order to circumvent the party’s leadership bodies.

During his speech at the Central Committee, Tsipras asked what Syriza’s strategy should be after losing it’s parliamentary majority, given the "blockade" by dissenting members of parliament who voted against the austerity measures. Tsipras noted it was "absurd" to have two opposing factions within the same parliamentary group.

On Wednesday, Tsipras underlined in a radio interview that even if he would prefer not to hold early elections, he would be forced to if he lacked a parliamentary majority. Referring to lawmakers who hadn’t supported the "third memorandum", Tsipras also stated, "You cannot vote against the government’s proposals and say you support the government; this is surreal." And he added that the victory of the "NO" in the July 5 referendum had been misinterpreted and was never a mandate for abandoning the Euro.

In an unending session with more than 90 interventions, memebers of the Left Platform responded to the prime minister.

"How many referenda are we going to hold? We’ve already done one, and we won with 62 per cent of the vote", said Panagiotis Lafazanis, the Platform’s leader. He added, "This country no long has democracy, but a peculiar type of totalitarianism — a dictatorship of the euro."

The President of the Greek Parliament, Zoe Konstantopoulou (who also voted against third memorandum), questioned the party leadership and said, "SYRIZA did not get the people’s mandate to shackle the country with a bailout memorandum." She added, "Protecting the Constitution is not surrealism," paraphrasing Tsipras’ words.

During the session, 17 members of the Central Committee resigned, claiming they had profound ideological differences with party’s current orientation. All of them belong to the Maoist current KOE within SYRIZA.

Finally, after hours of rhetorical confrontations, Tsipras won the vote and the meeting accepted his proposal of holding the congress in September. He played the "card" of threatening to let the government fall.

"Anyone who wants a different government or a different premier should say so," said Mr. Tsipras. "Those who believe this is the worst memorandum of all should say so now."

With this "squeeze" of the Central Committee, he was able to divide the "circumstantial majority" that had emerged in the previous weeks on the basis of rejection of the memorandum. The Left Platform had converged with a centrist faction of the party, known as the "group of 53", the majority of whom now voted with Tsipras.

The Left Platform left the meeting defeated. Their main goal in the previous weeks had been to convoke a Central Committee meeting, where they hoped to win the vote against Tsipras. They demanded a change in the government’s policy, breaking with the Troika and implementing a "Plan B" to exit from the Eurozone and "recuperate the spirit" of Syriza.

The Left Platform’s strategy to pressure Tsipras, based on parliamentarianism and opposed to the class struggle, has been revealed as completely impotent. Despite its criticism, this "left-wing" remains being part of the government and of Syriza, a government of class collaboration that openly betrayed the people’s will, in order to accept the agenda imposed by the Troika… and is ready to impose that agenda with repression, as shown by the penalties given to the demonstrators who were arrested on last July 15.

Next Sunday there will be no referendum, and Syriza won’t hold its next Congress until September, after the third memorandum has been completed. In the coming weeks, during the summer break, the conditions for a third bailout will be negotiated. The reorganization of the working class and the fighting sectors who are independent of the government in order to resist the new austerity measures of the Troika is an urgent task.

(Translation: Celeste Murillo and Wladek Flakin)

Erdogan's anti-IS attacks fake, pretext for big offensive against Kurds

Yesterday I was quite surprised reading in the news that the Turkish Islamist President had suddenly decided to take action against the so-called Islamic State (IS). After all Turkey has been its most adamant, even if covert, supporter after its invasion of Iraq and proclamation of the Caliphate appeared to have officially alienated other supporters like Saudi Arabia (big question mark) and their common Kafiri allies, the USA, Israel and your usual suspects in Europe (again all with huge flashing question marks). All these, as well as Turkey, still openly supported Al Qaeda and its array of satellites so-called "Free Syrian Army", magically turned into "moderates", of course.

But why would Turkey turn against the IS? It was obviously not because it had massacred 32 "Turkish" Kurds in a social center in Suruç. If there was any doubt the brutal repression of the subsequent protests in Istanbul and other cities underlined that the only interest Erdogan has on Kurds is to keep them under his boot. Not at all.

The 32 Kurdish comrades massacred by the Islamist-Fascists (source: BGD!)

But (oh, wait!) Erdogan did get an ethnic-Turkish pretext as well: an officer was killed yesterday in a shooting at a crossing point in the artificial border, so artificial that runs along the Istanbul-Baghdad railroad. Well, it was probably engineered somehow but it seems that just killing "Turkish citizens" is not enough for Erdogan if these are Kurds, even as a pretext. 

So what has he done so far?

Well, actually mostly attack Kurds inside three states: Turkey, Syria and Iraq. 

Inside Turkey they have made massive raids against suspects of sympathizing with the outlawed (but in a long-lasting unilateral truce) Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) and allegedly the IS as well. However not a single arrested (out of 590) is identified (as of yet) as IS member or sympathizer, most however are clearly labeled as sympathizers of the PKK, i.e. Kurdish Revolutionaries of any type, surely mostly civilians like you or me. 

Only one person, who was killed in alleged shooting, was identified as member of an illegal Turkish communist group, the DHKP-C.

Outside the Turkish official borders, nine positions of the PKK were bombed in lands under Iraqi formal sovereignty, while unspecified "Kurdish and Islamist" targets were also attacked in Syrian territory.

After these attacks, the PKK said that the truce with Turkey had "no meaning anymore". 

No-fly zone to protect the IS?

An intriguing development of this new stage is the agreement by the USA and Turkey to establish a no-fly zone in a very specific zone of the Aleppo province of Northern Syria. Of course this is a violation of Syrian sovereignty but the bullies of the World don't seem to care. 

The no-fly zone goes between the towns of Mare' and Jarabulus and 90 km south of the Turkish border. In other words: almost exactly the territory controlled by the Islamic State in the province of Aleppo.

Detail of control zones in Northern Syria. Credit: (CC: محک)
[yellow: Kurds, red: Syria, black: IS, green: Al Qaeda et al.]

The no-fly zone as described by Press TV (approx.) - based on the previous map

Naturally a question arises: does the IS or even the Kurdish militias have airplanes? Not at all. The only airplanes in the Syrian war, other than the occasional US incursion, are those of the Syrian state. So what's the point of establishing a no-fly zone over the lands controlled by the IS? Necessarily to protect them against the Syrian operations, and maybe those of their allies such as Iran. 

We must notice that in the last year the Kurdish control zone of the border region has been growing and I guess that the Turkish state is concerned that they might also manage to gain control of the remaining border strip, disconnecting the IS from its main provider: Turkey. 

Reigniting the Kurdish war to 'save Turkey'?

The Turkish Islamist regime must also be worried that the Kurdish backed all-Turkey party HDP made important gains in the last elections, not just in Kurdistan but also in many other provinces, denying the Islamists their much coveted absolute majority in the Turkish Parliament and weakening Erdogan's decade-long tight control of the state apparatus. 

It seems apparent to me that the actual goal of all this performance is no other than to declare the HDP illegal at risk of expanding the Kurdish armed struggle back to Turkey after several years of difficult but continued peace. 

These years, particularly the latest ones, saw the Kurdish population take a much more active presence in the all-Turkey politics hand-on-hand with ethnic Turks, not just via the HDP, but more importantly maybe in the many protests that shattered the bicontinental state in 2011. Surely Erdogan believes that by reopening the Kurdish front in terms military he can make political gains inside Turkey. I just hope he is wrong and that he will pay dearly for this criminal miscalculation.

Shameless Syriza MPs represent nobody

Only 32 of Syriza's MPs voted "no" to the horrible Troika impositions (here in detail annotated by Varoufakis himself, who was among the dissidents), 6 other abstained and one was absent. All the others (110) voted "yes", doing what can only be described as "PASOKism". 

The threshold of dignity was well below the speculations of recent days that talked of more than 50 dissidents. This puts the situation very bad for the Left Platform to reclaim Syriza, as they have claimed to intend, even if the majority of Central Committee has signed against the deal. 

The People of Greece voted already a resounding "no" to measures less severe than these but they have been betrayed by politicians who have absolutely no shame nor bravery.

In essence this situation leaves the country without any legitimate government or representation. The Tsipras regime has become a mere protectorate of Germany and the People of Greece owes loyalty to the state no more. 

It is a very sad night for those who believe in democracy. The coup has been formalized by people who have no right to claim any representativity, much less call themselves "radical left" and are only a bunch of cowards and traitors. 

Shame on you.


Appendix: list of honorable Syriza MPs who stuck with the Greek People and voted "no" or abstained:

NO:
A.Kyritsi, Z.Konstantopoulou, G.Varoufakis, N.Valavani, D.Stratoulis, D.Kodelas, E.Sotiriou, V.Chatzilamprou, I.Stathas, I.Skoumas, Th.Kotsias, K.Lapavitsas, M. Kritsotakis, D.Charalampidou, I.Gaitani, L.Amanatidou-Paschalidou, I.Ioannidis, E.Diamantopoulos, St.Samoilis, R.Makri, E.Ouzounidou, I.Zerdelis, K.Delimitros, Th.Petrakos, St. Leoutsakos, P.Lafazanis, Z.Zannas, V.Kyriakakis, M.Psarea, K.Dermitzakis, K.Isychos, K.Zacharias

ABSTAINED
V.Katrivanou, D.Mpaxevanakis, N.Michalakis, The. Diotis, V.Leva, Ch.Karagiannidis

ABSENT
M.Tsanaka

Source: a commenter HERE.

Update:

#Syriza MPs who voted NO/abstained/were absent https://t.co/6C4vQ1wFRq

— Ane Irazabal (@AneIrazabal) July 16, 2015

In synthesis: voting "no" were:

• The 2 MPs from the Trotskyist International Workers' Left (DEA)
• The 4 MPs from the Maoist KOE (formerly a distinct party)
• 15 MPs from the Left Platform, including minister Lafazanis, vice-minister Stratoulis and Spokesman Petrakos
• 10 non-aligned, including former minister Varoufakis, President of Parliament Konstantinopoulou and vice-ministers Valavani and Isychos
• there seems to be one missing because the total count of Syriza's "no" vote is actually 32

Abstentions ("present") 6 non-aligned MPs. An MP from the Left Platform, Tsanaka, was absent.

Honor gallery:

να τους βλέπουμε να τους καμαρώνουμε #greekparliament #Syriza pic.twitter.com/5H0nq31WZ7

— ALExit (@Christos_Fyt) July 16, 2015

Update:

Podemos' leader, P. Iglesias backs Tsipras in his worst day: "it is the only thing he could possibly do".

Iglesias is demonstrating in these last months that he really really really wants to lose the upcoming elections by not forming popular union alliance with other parties and by being a control-freak on his own party and that way renouncing to its identity of participative democracy. These declarations really shows him as totally clueless (or worse).


Update: sign to kick Germany from the EU and save Europe from Merkel and Schäuble.

Majority of Syriza's Central Committee rejects Tsipras' surrender

109 of the 201 members of the Central Committee have signed a document rejecting Tsipras' terms of surrender, which has been labeled as "unbearable", "humiliating", "catastrophic" and even as a "coup". 

This will probably not have decisive weight on today's vote but it effectively underlines how much Tsipras, and Dragasakis' right wing that supports him, is isolated within the party and how the challenge that yesterday placed Kouvelakis (Left Platform) about reclaiming the party by the Left may well succeed. 

Among the dissidents is Tasos Koronakis, Secretary General of the Political Committee. The list of prominent dissidents has been growing also with Finance Secretary Nadia Valavani, who resigned as member of the government. Former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, who is not member of the party, has also been fiercely critical of the agreement and said that it will not materialize because of IMF opposition (it is true that the IMF has in extremis attacked the deal, demanding a haircut - Washington seems very worried about European stability). It is also apparent that current Finance Minister Euklid Tsakalotos opposes the deal as well.

Stathis Kouvelakis explains Syriza's drift and unavoidable break-up

S. Kouvelakis (source)

In an absolutely must-read interview at Jacobin magazine, Stathis Kouvelakis (Left Platform of Syriza) explains from an insider viewpoint the how Syriza became trampled in its own naivety, the key role played by Yannis Dragasakis (vice-prime minister), the turning point of the referendum and the intention by the Left Platform to reclaim the party in a situation that is one of absolute breakup. 

The interview is way too long to be pasted here in full but I will quote some key passages re-sorted according to my best criterion:

The referendum

... the Left Platform’s leader and minister of energy and productive reconstruction, Panagiotis Lafazanis said that the referendum was the right decision, albeit one that came too late, but he also warned that this amounted to a declaration of war, that the other side would cut off the liquidity and we should expect within days to have the banks closed. Most of those present just laughed at this suggestion.

... what is absolutely clear is that [the referendum] unleashed forces that went far beyond those intentions. Tsipras and the government were clearly overtaken by the momentum that was created by the referendum.

... it is a complete illusion to pretend that the referendum didn’t happen. It did happen, and it’s clear to both international public opinion and Greek society that Tsipras is betraying a popular mandate.

Revelations from the referendum: class, youth and nation

Even relatively mainstream commentators recognized that this was the most class-divided election in Greek history. In working-class districts you had 70 percent and above for “no,” in upper-class districts you had 70 percent and above for “yes.”

This is the first moment since the crisis that the youth in its mass actually made a unified statement. Eighty-five percent of those from eighteen to twenty-four voted “no,” which shows that this generation, which has been completely sacrificed by the memorandum, is very aware of the future ahead of it and has a clear attitude with regards to Europe.

... the third dimension is certainly that of national pride. This explains why outside the big urban centers, where the class lines are more blurred, in the Greece of the countryside and small cities, even there the “no” vote won a majority.

The post-referendum suicide

At that meeting [with all the bourgeois pro-Troika opposition parties, freshly defeated in every single province] you saw an extraordinary thing happen: the head of the victorious camp accepted the conditions of the defeated camp. This, it has to be said, is something that’s unique in political history. I don’t we’ve ever seen this before.

... the government immediately took those initiatives to deactivate the dynamic that was emerging with the referendum. And this is why hours after the announcement of the final resort, this meeting of all the political leaders was called, which fixed somehow an agenda entirely different from that expressed by the “no” vote.

The content of this new agenda was that whatever happens — that was of course already there in moves inspired by Dragasakis made the week before — Greece had to stay in the eurozone. And the most emphatic point of the joint statement signed by all the political leaders — with the exception of the Greek Communist Party (KKE), who refused to sign, and the Nazis, who were not invited to the meeting — was that this referendum was not a mandate for a break but a mandate for a better negotiation. So from that moment onwards the mess had been set.

Varoufakis plan B and Dragasakis' veto

... Varoufakis says that a small team of people around him worked during the week leading to the referendum on an alternative plan including state control of the banks, issuing of IOUs and disconnection of the Greek central bank from the Frankfurt ECB, so on a sort of gradual exit. But that clearly came too late and was rejected by nearly all the rest of the economic team of the cabinet, by which he essentially means Dragasakis. And Tsipras, of course, validated that decision.

Tsipras' poser strategy

[Tsipras] thought that by appearing as a loyal “European,” deprived of any “hidden agenda,” he would get some kind of reward. On the other side, he showed for some months a capacity to resist to the escalating pressure and made some unpredictable moves such as the referendum or travelling to Moscow.

He thought this was the right mix to approach the issue, and what happens is that when you consistently follow this line you are led to a position in which you are left only with bad choices.

Behind Tsipras: Dragasakis

... we have to distinguish two elements within the government. The first is the rightist wing of the government led by two of the main economists, essentially Dragasakis but also Giorgos Stathakis. And then the core leadership, Tsipras and the people around him.

The first group had a consistent line from the outset — there was absolutely no naïveté on their part. They knew very well that the Europeans would never accept a break with the memorandum.

This is why Dragasakis from the outset did everything he could not to change the logic of the overall approach. He clearly sabotaged all the attempts for Syriza to have a proper economic program, even one within the framework that had been approved by the majority of the party. He thought that the only thing you could get was an improved version of the memorandum framework. He wanted his hands completely free to negotiate the deal with the Europeans, without himself appearing too much at the stage, he succeeded in controlling the negotiation team, especially once Varoufakis had been sidelined.

(...)

... [blocking any 'Grexit' style option] was the obsession more particularly of Giannis Dragasakis — he made it impossible to make any moves towards public control of the banks. He is the man of trust actually of the bankers and sectors of big business in Greece and has made sure that the core of the system would remain unchanged since Syriza took power.

(...)

And then you have the other approach, that of Tsipras, which was indeed rooted in the ideology of left-Europeanism. I think the best illustration of that is Euclid Tsakalotos, a person who considers himself a staunch Marxist, someone who comes from the Eurocommunist tradition, we were in the same organization for years.

(...)

What we also clearly saw in that period is that the government, the leadership, became totally autonomous of the party. That process had already started (...) but now it has reached a kind of climactic level.

And the academics:

Tsakalotos said he was very disappointed by the low level of the discussion [in the European institutions]. In the interview to the New Statesman, Varoufakis says very similar things about his own experience, although his style is clearly more confrontational than Tsakalotos’s.

From this it is quite clear that these people were expecting the confrontation with the EU to happen along the lines of an academic conference when you go with a nice paper and you expect a kind of nice counter-paper to be presented.

I think this is telling about what the Left is about today. The Left is filled with lots of people who are well-meaning, but who are totally impotent on the field of real politics. But it’s also telling about the kind of mental devastation wrought by the almost religious belief in Europeanism. This meant that, until the very end, those people believed that they could get something from the troika, they thought that between “partners” they would find some sort of compromise, that they shared some core values like respect for the democratic mandate, or the possibility of a rational discussion based on economic arguments.

The whole approach of Varoufakis’s more confrontational stance amounted actually to the same thing, but wrapped in the language of game theory. What he was saying was that we have to play the game until the very, very, very end and then they would retreat, because supposedly the damage that they would endure had they not retreated was too great for them to accept.

But what actually happened was akin to a fight between two people, where one person risks the pain and damage of losing a toe and the other their two legs. 

Death trap

... this whole negotiation process by itself triggered passivity and anxiety among the people and the most combative sectors of society, leading them to exhaustion. Before the referendum the mood was clearly, “We can’t stand this kind of waterboarding process anymore, at some point it has to end.”

This is something personally I hadn’t foreseen. I thought the pace would be quicker. I hadn’t foreseen that this process of being increasingly trapped in this absolute deadlock lasting for so long, limiting enormously our own room for initiative.

Today's vote

... all the MPs of the Left Platform will reject the new memorandum in the next vote, this has already been announced.

The most symbolic and crucial vote will happen now. Last week’s vote was a vote on the proposals for the negotiation. The next vote, which will determine the future of Syriza and the country, will be the vote on the agreement signed on Sunday. And I think the information I have so far is that the vote will be absolutely clear, and in the popular memory will be the real parallel with the famous May 2010 and February 2012 votes, when everybody was looking at each individual, each individual MP, to see how they would vote in this occasion.

Syriza is breaking up

At this stage, what I can say is that the decision of the Left Platform is to reclaim the party and demand a party congress. I think it’s quite clear that this U-turn of Syriza has only minority support within the party.

Of course, we all know that bureaucratic manipulations of party procedures are endless and display infinite capacity to innovate. However, it is very hard for me to see how the majority of Syriza members could approve of what has been done. Essentially the leadership will ferociously resist the call for a congress. We’ll see what happens, because the statutes allow us to call for a central committee meeting and so on.

But objectively, the process leading to the disintegration of Syriza has already started. Syriza as we knew it is over and splits are absolutely inevitable. The only issue now is how they will happen and what form they will take.

(...)

There are all kinds of initiatives from beyond the ranks of Left Platform to react to what is happening. Already we know that the tendency of the so-called Fifty-Three (the left wing of the majority) has disintegrated, and there will be major realignments on that side. The key thing is for us to act as the legitimate representation of the No camp, the anti-austerity camp, which is the majority in Greek society and which has been objectively betrayed by what is happening.

Some lessons learned

A comrade sent me a message saying it is true the Syriza government has succeeded in making the EU much more hated by the Greek people than anything Antarsya or KKE has been able to accomplish in twenty years of anti-EU rhetoric in that field!

(...)

Obviously the strategy of the “good euro” and “left-Europeanism” collapsed, and many people realize that now. The process of the referendum made that very clear, and the test went up to its extreme limits. This was a tough lesson, but a necessary one.

Self-criticism

Clearly, the Left Platform could have done more in that period in terms of putting forward alternative proposals. The mistake is even clear because the alternative document itself was there, there was just internal hesitation about the appropriate moment to release it.

We had been neutralized and overtaken by the endless sequence of negotiations and dramatic moments and so on, and it was only when it was already too late, in that plenary meeting of the parliamentary group, that a reduced version of that proposal was finally made public and started circulating. This is clearly something we should have done before.

(...)

We could say, in hindsight, that some sections of the Greek left that were less tied to party politics could have taken a Podemos type of initiative, or perhaps more realistically, a Catalan CUP-type of initiative with sectors perhaps of the far left but of the more movementist tenor.

But, once again, there were no such sectors ready to do that. Everyone was much too linked to the limitations of the existing structures, and the only attempt to redistribute the cards failed to materialize, in this case because the weight of traditional ultra-leftism proved too strong.

But what else?

What was the other option? Having passed the test of that decisive period, both KKE and Antarsya have proved, in very different ways of course, how irrelevant they are. For us, the only alternative choice would have been to break with the Syriza leadership sooner. However, given the dynamic of the situation after this crucial bifurcation of the late 2011 to early 2012 moment, that would have immediately marginalized us.

The only concrete result I can see would be to add a couple more groups to the already ten or twelve groups constituting Antarsya, and Antarsya instead of having 0.7% being at 1%. That would mean Syriza would have been offered entirely on a platter to Tsipras and the majority, or at least to those forces outside the Left Platform.