France: riots against retrograde labor reform

Barricade in Nantes (Público)

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

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

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

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

Update: info in French from the popular side.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Islamist terror: nobody points to the culprits

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nationalism. How to overcome it?

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

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

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

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

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

Two types of nations and two types of nationalism

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

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

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

I will argue here that the categories are therefore:

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

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

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

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

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

The naivety of anti-nationalism

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

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

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

Democratic Confederalism as only real solution

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

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

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

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

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

____________

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

Wahabi style massacres by Turkish Army in Kurdistan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Arnaldo Otegi walks out of prison

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

Video of his exit from Logroño prison:

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

Translation (boldface is obviously mine):

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

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

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

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

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

9/11: follow the money (excellent documentary)

I watched yesterday this excellent video-documentary by The Corbett Report on the 9/11 money trail, and I can't but strongly recommend it:

For further info on what actually happened in 9/11 (which is not at all what the official version says), you may want to browse Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Pilots for 9/11 Truth or the International Center for 9/11 studies, among other sites (for instance: Voltaire Net has more than 500 articles on the matter, some of which reveal information not available elsewhere).

Saudi road to nowhere: even the EP calls for isolating the theocracy

In an unprecedented resolution, the European Parliament has called for an arms embargo on Saudi Arabia in relation to its brutal military intervention in Yemen. Other issues such as the occupation of Bahrain, its horrible human rights record, the fact that it is a most cruel and totalitarian dictatorship or that it has been for decades behind Sunni Islamist terrorism everywhere, have not been included in the resolution, yet, considering the very conservative and imperialist policies that the EU institutions distill all the time, it is a remarkable vote and a sign that a growing amount of people in the West is getting most annoyed at the Islamist terror chaos unleashed in West Asia by NATO and its local allies: Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel primarily. 

As you may know the EP has, sadly enough, almost no power (only approving or not the EU budget and minor stuff like that) but it still exerts a moral influence on the EU, being the only democratic body of this sui-generis confederation. Therefore we should not undermine its importance. 

Forecast

Personally I feel that all what is happening will soon result in a dramatic socio-political crisis in Saudi Arabia: you can't rule a country of 30 million without other feedback than just police reports. Not for long in any case. The question of democracy is not merely a question of rights and freedoms but, from the rulers viewpoint, primarily one of feedback and cohesion. 

Anyhow, with such low oil prices, the money is running out and Saudia is just rushing forward to nowhere, risking even a World War with its threats of invading Syria. If this happens, the conflict in West Asia will run out of control in no time: Iran will no doubt intervene, backed by Russia and China, and that would be a major event. My opinion is that the West will doubt and finally not intervene directly, largely because there is such an exhaustion of the fictional narrative of "war on terror" and "clash of civilizations" that a lot of people even in key power positions will be tempted to let Iran do the moping instead of risking not just World War but also internal political stability to save a totally despicable regime such as the Saudi one. 

I can only imagine that, possibly, the Turkish intervention (which may be the key WW trigger) will be halted on its heels by a military coup and/or suspension of its NATO membership. 

But I'm trying to be rational-optimistic. It can also all degenerate in an uncontrolled WW-like conflict, whose result may well be the destruction of Humankind. Let's try to avoid this worst possible outcome by all means necessary. 

Turkey intervenes again inside Syria in support of Al Qaeda forces

RT reports that today is the third day of heavy shelling by Turkish (NATO) forces against YPG (Kurdish militias) trying to liberate the town of Azaz from the islamo-fascist terrorists. Turkish PM Davotuglu openly speaks of even greater intervention by the Turkish military if the attempts to liberate the strategical border town, a lifeline to terrorists, continue. Meanwhile the Russian Foreign Ministry denounced the attack as a breach of UN resolutions and called for Turkey to step out of Syria. Damascus also condemned Turkish actions as support of terrorism and has sent an official protest to the UN. Even France issued an ambiguous note rejecting the Turkish bombardment against Kurds.

A more detailed analysis by the independent site South Front shows that Turkey has also been transferring, through Turkish territory, Al Qaeda militants from the crumbling Latakia province front to the embattled town of Azaz.

Turkey embarrassment or battering ram of NATO?

The reckless attitude of Turkey in the Syrian (in-)civil war has brought a growing chorus of opinions (for example) claiming that Turkey should be expelled from NATO, because otherwise NATO members are formally obliged to defend Turkey against attacks, even if Turkey is the one provoking them, as they clearly are.

However these opinions remain low profile and as of now not a single government has formally asked the Islamist regime to be even temporarily suspended of membership in NATO or anything of the like. This has only one possible meaning: Turkey is acting within NATO directives and has more or less full backup from its NATO allies, notably Washington (which is the one calling the shots). 

It also means that we are very close to World War III. Too close: the tensions are there and growing and any miscalculation by either side can be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

Podemos and NATO

Maybe the most criticized program stand of Podemos is that it is not questioning NATO in the short term (they call for a European alliance to replace it but otherwise nothing), unlike for instance Jeremy Corbyn is doing in Britain. Yesterday the new leftist party (which came third in the December elections and may well come first in the upcoming ones that will take place in June if government formation fails, as looks most likely) made public a draft government plan in a last ditch attempt to lure the socialdemocrats into a coalition government. Again the issue of NATO is missing and that is a problem of growing relevance in an international situation like the one that is going on at the Turkish-Syrian border. The least thing that a party with intention of forming government today can do is to ignore the immediate threat of all out international war caused by the aggressive and terrorist stand of Turkey, conveniently protected under the skirt of NATO. This absence of international policy is a major flaw in Podemos' program and political praxis. I understand that there are other priorities but when WW3 comes in force, with nukes raining all over our heads for no good reason at all, all those other priorities will become irrelevant in comparison.

Therefore I argue that NATO must be questioned, for many reasons but right now very particularly for the sole reason that Erdogan's Turkey is a regime we do not want to get bogged into defending, rather the opposite.

The Nazis have been let loose in Calais

While police looks elsewhere, far right armed commandos are terrorizing immigrants in Calais, reports The Independent. The new brown shirts kidnap immigrants, including children as young as 10, and beat them with the most brutal methods, causing life-threatening injuries. The reports have not been just documented from many different victims and witnesses but are also confirmed by NGOs like Médecins sans Frontiers and Médecins du Monde.

Police itself has also been accused of taking part in beatings of minors in at least two cases. The "socialist" government of Hollande and Valls, concerned only with implementing an eternal state of emergency, does not seem to care.

It's totally sick!

My new Spanish-language blog

I recently initiated a new Spanish-language blog titled Bagauda, whose content is intended to be both on politics and anthropology (I just don't have enough to say for two separate blogs), for a more specific readership which often has difficulty using English.

So far all the content is on politics, so I'm only announcing it here. I will announce it in my other (anthropology-oriented) blog when I have produced something of that type of content, which I will no doubt unless utter incapacity stands on my way. 

It will have a European focus anyhow (I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable for most things American), mostly about issues affecting the Iberian Peninsula and whatever is related and no doubt with a Basque focus. Otherwise I'll keep publishing in English primarily.

→ Bagauda ←

Serious erosion of US economic hegemony in two key details

One is that Russia is about to replace the USA as main global wheat exporter. Being an agricultural exporter may seem minor but it is an strategical way to make sure you hold the pan by the handle and that, of course, in case of crisis your state is self-sufficient to feed its own people and maybe also its allies. The USA knows it and that is why agriculture is over-protected, mega-subsidized and systematically exempt from foreign trade agreements. A few decades ago only the USA, Canada and Argentina were global grain exporters. This is changing fast. 

The other one is that Iran is selling oil for euros, not dollars anymore. This is a direct attack against the dollar hegemony and to the ability of the imperial power to finance its own deficit, caused by consumerism and military costs. The US' imperial power heavily depends on the denomination of oil in dollars but sales of oil in US dollars have decayed to just 60% globally. The last one in the OPEC who tried to do that was Saddam Hussein, however Iran is a much bigger and better backed state and therefore invasion is not likely at all.

Did France organize the terror attacks in its own soil?

I would not be surprised at all. In fact it has been my suspicion from day one considering what is DAESH, who arms, leads and equips it, the obligatory "cui bono?" question and the disproportionate reaction of declaring a permanent state of emergency in the Hexagon, just as happened in the USA after 9-11. 

But until now I had no evidence, just reasonable suspicion. Exiled French investigative journalist Thierry Meyssan shares now evidence, first published by the Croat newspaper Slobodna Dalmacija, that strongly supports the case.

The evidence is that the weapons used in the attack, and also the previous one against a controversial magazine and a Jewish supermarket, were bought in Croatia and moved to France through customs officers associated to the far-right National Front (FN) party, Claude Hermant. 

Hermant is a shadowy character involved in what seems to be the so-called Deep State (or Gladio Network, which operates through all NATO and beyond), specifically the security department of the National Front (DPS), a true autonomous mini-army with wide connections with the overall state and not just the FN and, in opinion of Meyssan, directly controlled by the Elysée rather than by the FN:

In summary, Mr. Hermant belonged to a structure which, under cover of the security unit for the Front National, was unofficially charged by the Élysée with secret missions overseas. Today he is paid for freelance work by the Customs and the Gendarmerie, still without any official status. According to Slobodna Dalmacija, he bought decommissioned weapons in Serbia and recommissioned them himself, and that these were the weapons used in the attacks of January and November.

One could naively expect that maybe the police and judiciary would eventually unveil all this but in fact it seems most unlikely when the whole apparatus of the state is involved. Certainly Hermant, who is the weak link, was imprisoned but only because an independent tribunal from Calais got involved and not by the super-judges of Paris on charge of the main investigation: Christophe Tessier, Nathalie Poux et Laurence Le Vert. Le Vert, who is sadly well known to Basques for her many repressive interventions, is incidentally (but surely not accidentally) sister of Gérard Le Vert, the former boss of Hermant in the DPS. 

Meyssan concludes:

In conclusion, either Mr. Hermant was working on infiltrating the terrorist cells who perpetrated the attacks, without their action having been prevented, or else – and this is less probable – his current superiors, probably in the Élysée, themselves participated in the organisation of the attacks. But it still has to be determined why, and in whose name, Claude Hernant’s superiors acted as they did.

Why would it be less probable, Mr. Meyssan? Isn't it apparent that the attacks serve the interest of the deep French state, primarily, against its own population and, secondarily, against the Syrian people and state? Isn't it obvious that the state of emergency, an effective dictatorship with few concessions for free expression and right to protest, is what the regime was looking for?

Another question would be why is France pursuing this totalitarianism right now, when it has no obvious threats (the social conflict arena has been pretty much idle since the general strike of 2010 and the Real Left is making no gains in elections)? My suspicion is that it is part of a wider pan-European plan but that somehow, at least by now, it has not been fully implemented, not yet, not in other states (although the Spanish "muzzle law" is pretty much the same thing, just that with no pretext at all). Why is France of all the European states leading the way to outright fascism?

Curfew imposed on Northern Kurdistan capital of Diyarbakir

Several districts of the effective capital of Northern Kurdistan, Diyarbakir (known as Amed to Kurds), have been put under total curfew by the occupant power, Turkey. People has been forced to leave the area, while those who remain can't go out even to recover the bodies of their dead children.

The situation of North Kurdistan is everyday more similar to that of Palestine: discrimination and genocide under massive military occupation.

Turkey: hands off Kurdistan now!

In related news, several Basque, Valencian and Castilian internationalists, as well as Kurdish exile, were arrested yesterday by Spanish police under the accusation of trying to join Kurdish forces fighting for democracy and socialism. Spain, as usual, joins forces with Turkey and the Islamists against the will of the peoples.

Update (Jan 30): Grand Inquisitor¹ Eloy Velasco has declared the small party Refundación Comunista (Communist Refoundation) illegal for the next year for allegedly aiding the PKK, forcibly closing their sees in Madrid and Valencia. Most of the arrested have been set free but two, including the Kurdish one, have been sent to prison, a bail of 10,000 and 6000 euros respectively are demanded.

¹ Naturally I mean judge of the political tribunal Audiencia Nacional, infamous for all kind of political persecutions and also for aiding the impunity of politicians.

PASOK in Spain

While there is yet not formal announcement, nor candidate, nor anything specific in positive, there are good reasons to suspect that a "great coalition" of the regime's parties has been agreed all the this time and only awaits formal announcement. 

What has happened in the Spain in this last month that has installed that conviction in my mind and soon in that of everybody?

1. Almost every single leader of the PSOE, even those who govern regionally with Podemos, have been vocal against any sort of pact with the rising star of the Spanish political spectrum. Emphasis has been on the issue of the right to self-determination for Catalonia and other stateless nations but it is clearly more than just that. 
2. PSOE and Podemos have barely talked with each other in all this time. Apparently only three short phone calls have taken place between the leaders of the parties, Pedro Sánchez and Pablo Iglesias. Meanwhile it is widely known that Sánchez talks every day with the leader of the, numerically irrelevant, yuppie party Ciudadanos.
3. The PSOE has been consciously dedicated to humiliate, deprecate and sideline Podemos as much as they can:
1. They pacted the composition of the boards of both chambers in a way that Podemos would get minimal representation. They had no problem promoting a member of their regional Basque ally, the conservative EAJ-PNV to the Senate's board however.
2. They lent senators to the Catalan nationalists to allow them to have parliamentary groups but blockaded every attempt by the Podemos and United Left associated coalitions to form groups in the lower house.
3. They have just supported a distribution of physical seats that places Podemos representatives on the back ranks, behind of much smaller groups, against all rules and traditions. 
4. When Podemos made a concise public offer of coalition, all second-rank PSOE leaders booed it, claiming it was a "humiliation" (no specific reason was ever provided). Pedro Sánchez did not openly decline it but his right hand, Luena, later explained to the press that they preferred to govern alone. With 80 seats?! Obviously another provocation and humiliation. 

What do all these signs say? Clearly that the PSOE is committed to a "great coalition". Sure, Sánchez made the empty gesture of traveling to Lisbon to consult with his Euro-party colleague and current Prime Minister there A. Costa, who leads also a coalition government with the real left parties, who have extracted major programmatic concessions, but what has done this side of the border has been absolutely nothing other than posing for the cameras and sabotaging his potential ally. So the writing on the wall is clear and every day more so: there will be some sort of "great coalition" and no second elections. 

Why no new elections? Because it would damage the PSOE and Ciudadanos at the expense of the PP and Podemos. They could in theory allow for a PSOE-Podemos coalition without further supports but the PSOE would be further damaged, something that Sánchez cannot probably afford as the weak leader he is. Anyhow it is obvious by now that this coalition will never coalesce.

Global warming in 30 seconds

Pretty interesting and scary:

Credit: NASA.

Anatolia's Hitler keeps on murdering civilians in Kurdistan

In legal theory all Turkish citizens are equal and the Turkish state should protect them all. In reality if you're Kurdish that does not apply at all.

Video of the latest massacre in the martyr town of Cizre (North Kurdistan), where you can see civilians marching behind a white flag, with the intent of collecting corpses or injured, being shot indiscriminately by Turkish occupation forces. Some were seriously injured, very possibly killed:

The whole series of videos are available at Bilal Gezer's Twitter account and have been also made public by RT.

If you search for Cizre in YouTube, for instance, you will find a lot of other massacres and cold blooded murders by the occupation forces. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Who are the conspirators behind the refugee crisis?

I say conspirators because at least two key events in this sequence of events were clearly organized, at least so it seems for the trained eye. One was the sudden wave of migrants from Turkey, which would have never happened without the blatant complicity of the Turkish government, which is also the main direct backer of Al Qaeda and DAESH in Syria and Iraq. This one was more or less "explained" when the EU made some concessions but is it enough explanation?

The other event was the alleged mass attack on New Year celebrations in Cologne, which remained unreported for days, only came to light (or is it darkness?) via Anglosaxon media and has so far been accompanied by not a single video or even photo evidence, something most strange when every other person goes around with a camera-equipped phone. Reports of an aborted similar episode in Finland have also surfaced but are equally dubious.

Interestingly, Voltaire Net discusses not these but the side effects: the campaign against specifically Angela Merkel, whose pro immigrant attitude (not at all out of altruism but of interest of the German national bourgeoisie, who expects to exploit as many immigrants as possible) has earned her a decline in popularity. 

After analyzing the Tweeter accounts behind the campaign, the author, A. Fomin, concludes that they are several Tweeters (probably bots) operated apparently from the Western USA. Anglosaxon media, Western USA Tweeter bots... you get the idea, right?

Early January the notorious speculator and confessed sponsor of the refugee traffic to Europe George Soros gave an explicit interview to Wirtschafts Woche where he bitterly critisized Merkel’s stricter European and refugee policy suggesting that it would “cost her chancellorship” [2]. Simultaneously the hashtag #ArrestMerkel and “Merkel Has To Go” motto appeared in Twitter and gained an impressive circulation.

Fomin concludes that it is George Soros and far-right agit-prop bots which are the ones behind this strange campaign that may well cause the collapse of EU, regardless of Merkel's political destiny. 

Why is Soros so angry at Merkel? It may well be because Germany has never been a genuine ally in his policies for Ukraine and against Russia, where the ultra-liberal capitalist has worked closely with European and Islamist fascists. But would it suffice to oust Merkel? Can Soros impose a German government that is sheepishly complacent with Anglosaxon bourgeoisie's policies? What do they gain if the EU collapses? Wouldn't such a chaotic situation push many European states into the arms of Russia or into outright independent socialism?

Massive booing of EU hymn in San Sebastian

Donostia seems not anymore what used to be: the bourgeois hymn of the bourgeois European Union was booed in that noisy parade that Donostiarrak hold every year the day of their patron, i.e. yesterday.

Borroka Garaia Da! explains why this makes sense and why it bothers so much to the Basque bourgeoisie. For example Basque workers have a productivity 27% above the European average but get paid 30% below the average, never mind the massive unemployment figures. 

Basque companies invest most of their capital outside of the Basque Country: more than 60 billion euros are invested outside the country, while only 13 billion are invested inside. 

The European Union as we know it and Capitalism in general does nothing for us at all, only supporting the imperialist occupation and colonization of our little country. We need another radically different framework, with or without the rest of Europe.

New planet in the solar system

Description of the orbit of the new planet and associated objects (Batygin & Brown)

This kind of stuff does not happen every day: a new planet 10 times the mass of Earth has been inferred to exist in the outer reaches of the solar system, but has not yet been directly observed. Or has it?

Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown have deduced (press release, study) the existence of this object from the trajectory of several anomalous transneptunian bodies of the type of Sedna, whose trajectories seem to orbit both the sun and a distant "super-earth" type planet, so remote that it takes 20,000 years to complete an orbit. 

The Caltech team has not directly eyed the object. However...

A Swedish-Mexican team led by R. Liseau pre-published last month a study where they claimed to have directly spotted a possible outer solar system planet. After some controversy the second version of the pre-pub was withdrawn until further data was collected but the first version is still available online. Another pre-pub paper on the same issue was also authored by W. Vlemmings et al., co-authors of the previous one. 

Direct observation of an object that might be a new planet (Liseau et al.)

I do not know yet if the two studies are convergent or rather they refer to different objects. Neither is fully confirmed as of now in any case but something is almost certainly out there lurking in the depths of the Oort cloud.