Status Quo Election in Catalonia

From Raphael Minder's "Catalonia Election Gives Separatists New Lift," which highlights the failure of conservative prime minister Mariano Rajoy:

The three main separatist parties won 70 of the 135 seats in the Catalan Parliament, official results showed. Over all, the separatists won only about 47 percent of the votes, according to the preliminary results, but they benefited from a voting system that favors their dominance in rural areas.

Their victory by no means assures success. The separatists are a fractious group, and they have already struggled in the past to agree on tactics and strategy. In recent weeks, their disagreements have become more profound, after their failed independence push in October.

The separatist parties may now find themselves facing a difficult round of negotiations to decide who should lead Catalonia’s government and how to put their secessionist project back on track.

The leaders of the two main separatist parties campaigned from outside Catalonia — one from prison in Madrid and the other from a self-imposed exile in Belgium — and both face prosecution for rebellion after a botched attempt to flout Spain’s Constitution and declare unilateral independence.

Yet their sense of vindication at the outcome was undisguised.

Speaking from Brussels around midnight, Carles Puigdemont, the former leader of Catalonia who was removed by Mr. Rajoy, said Thursday’s record turnout of about 83 percent had produced “an indisputable result” in favor of the separatists.

[snip]

Mr. Rajoy’s Popular Party earned just three seats and ended up last among the main unionist parties. It was the biggest loser of the night.

Instead, most unionist votes went to Ciudadanos, a rival party on which Mr. Rajoy already depends to keep his minority government alive in Madrid. The advance of Ciudadanos will make it the largest party in the next Catalan Parliament.

Inés Arrimadas, the leading candidate of Ciudadanos, said her party’s win, coupled with the slight weakening in support for the separatist parties, confirmed that the independence movement “doesn’t represent a future for all Catalans.”

“The nationalist parties can never again speak in the name of all Catalans,” she added.

Analysts saw potential losers and pitfalls all around, however, given the narrowness of the separatist victory and the political gulf it indicated in both Catalonia and the country.

The election outcome was “another unwanted result of years of inaction” by Mr. Rajoy in Catalonia, said Jordi Sevilla, a former Socialist minister.

Mr. Sevilla forecast that Catalonia could require another election because of infighting among the separatist parties, while Mr. Rajoy would be forced into an early national election following his failure to solve the Catalan conflict.

Catalan Elections Today

There are elections in Catalonia today. Scheduled by the national government in Madrid as part of its takeover of Catalonia back in October following an independence vote, there appears to be no consensus regarding the outcome of the vote.

The story by Raphael Minder, "Catalonia Votes Again, This Time in a Gamble to Stall Its Secessionists," unfolds in two parts. First, it establishes that no clear outcome is foreseen, which Minder accomplishes by pulling a quote from El País:

“The result looks very uncertain and even once we know Thursday’s result, I expect more uncertainty rather than clarity,” said Kiko Llaneras, a political data analyst and journalist who published a study on Tuesday for the newspaper El País compiling various recent polls.

Part two of the story puffs Catalonia Socialist leader Miquel Iceta as a potential kingmaker. The pro-independence coalition that had governed Catalonia is not running on a unified ticket in today's election. It's every man for himself. Carles Puigdemont is campaigning in Brussels not Barcelona, frightened that prime minister Mariano Rajoy might toss him in the clink if he sets foot back in his own country. Not a profile in courage.

Elections have the potential of producing surprising results. That's certainly been the case in the last couple of years, though in 2017 the neoliberals can crow about the results of the French presidential and parliamentary elections. Emmanuel Macron is the new tribune of TINA ("There is no alternative"). Now that the prevailing wisdom is that Angela Merkel is damaged goods, Macron is puffed regularly in the mainstream media. Macron, like German SPD leader Martin Schultz, is calling for greater European integration, the very opposite of the mood of the street.

The average working man and woman, regardless of ideologies of left and right, have arrived at a place of critical consciousness, I would argue, that disdains greater centralization of political decision making because they can sense -- thanks to a pattern of decades -- that it leads to their own immiseration.

Unfortunately for Catalan separatists, the ambient disdain for greater political centralization does not cleanly translate to a vote for independence. Independence requires courage, while voting is primarily guided by fear. Catalans are no doubt concerned about being punished if they support independence, and rightly so because you know they will be. Look at North Korea.

Rajoy Outmaneuvers Puigdemont

Judging from "Catalonia Leader Turns Up in Belgium After Spain Seeks Prosecution," by Raphael Minder, Patrick Kingsley and Milan Schreurer, it appears that the government of Mariano Rajoy has learned from its mistake on October 1. Rather than react with force, the Spanish government has pinned its hopes of solving the problem of independence for Catalonia with elections in December.

This appears to have wrong-footed pro-independence leadership:

Not least, there was the important decision for separatist parties about whether to take part in regional elections called by Madrid or to risk sidelining themselves.

The two main Catalan parties — including Mr. Puigdemont’s Catalan European Democratic Party — said on Monday they would run in the elections, which are scheduled for Dec. 21, although perhaps no longer as part of the coalition that won the most parliamentary seats in 2015.

Germà Bel, a separatist Catalan lawmaker, said Mr. Puigdemont’s possible hopes of running a government from exile was “symbolic.”

“I don’t know of anyone who’s run a government from overseas,” he said. “Even Charles de Gaulle didn’t run a government from overseas.”

But he argued that it would be hard for Mr. Rajoy’s government to maintain control over Catalonia for an extended period.

The decision by pro-independence parties to take part in the December elections meant that they “at least implicitly” accept they are still part of Spain — no small concession.

“This election has been called by the Spanish government under Spanish law — and it will be an election run within the state,” Mr. Bel said.

When it comes to the polls, fear is usually a stronger motivation than hope. That's why I imagine that the pro-independence coalition of Carles Puigdemont will lose its majority in the regional government.

Either Violence or Servility: Martial Law Coming to Catalonia

Any hope that Mariano Rajoy would pursue a softer response to Catalan efforts to achieve independence from Spain need to be dispelled. A military attack is planned for Monday. According to World Socialist Web Site's Alex Lantier in "Spain prepares military crackdown in Catalonia":

With Spanish military and police units already being deployed, Madrid has signaled that it is preparing a brutal crackdown in Catalonia.

Spain’s Constitutional Court yesterday said that Monday’s planned session of the Catalan regional parliament, at which it was expected that the separatist parties would make a unilateral declaration of independence, must not take place. Coming after failing in a brutal attempt to halt the October 1 Catalan independence referendum, and with Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy rejecting calls for mediation led by the Podemos party and the union bureaucracy, the move lays the basis for bringing in the army against what is now declared an unconstitutional meeting.

The Constitutional Court acted based on a complaint brought by the Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSC)—the Catalan wing of the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE), which is now working openly with the PP to prepare a military clampdown. Calling the PSC’s complaint “relevant and of general social and economic interest,” the Court ruled that any act decided by the Catalan parliament would infringe the rights of PSC MPs and be “totally void, without the least value or effect. It warned that defying this order could mean arrests and criminal prosecutions.

[snip]

Opening debate on the Catalan crisis at the European Parliament, Frans Timmermans, the first vice president of the EU Commission, unequivocally endorsed Madrid’s use of force against the population of Catalonia. “The regional government of Catalonia has chosen to ignore the law in organizing the referendum of last Sunday,” Timmermans declared, adding: “it is the duty for any government to uphold the law, and this sometimes does require the proportionate use of force.”

Yesterday, Spanish Defense Minister María Dolores de Cospedal made clear that Madrid views an army intervention to be a legitimate response in Catalonia. At a meeting at the School for Higher Defense Studies, she insisted that Spain’s army is tasked with “defending its territorial integrity and constitutional order.” After King Felipe VI declared in a bellicose speech Tuesday that Catalan nationalists had placed themselves outside the law and democracy, Cospedal added, “Everything that is located outside of democracy is a threat to our nation.”

Spanish army units are already providing logistical support to police deployed in Catalonia. And after Catalan regional premier Carles Puigdemont indicated after Sunday’s crackdown that he could declare independence on Monday, a measure that Madrid has stated for months is illegal, political maneuvers by Madrid to seize the Catalan government are underway.

There are also moves underway by the Spanish judiciary to prosecute Catalan judges and Catalan police, the Mossos d’Esquadra, for failing to crack down on voters and demonstrating sympathy for separatists. The head of the Mossos, Josep Lluis Trapero, is to appear today before a court on the unprecedented charge of sedition, facing a 15-year prison sentence.

The courts are also removing legal restrictions to decisions by banks and corporations to move their headquarters away from Catalonia, amid reports that CaixaBank could soon move to Mallorca.

On Thursday, Rajoy also rejected appeals for mediation from Podemos General Secretary Pablo Iglesias and Puigdemont, supported by the Stalinist Workers Commissions (CCOO) and social-democratic General Union of Labor (UGT) union bureaucracies. When Iglesias phoned Rajoy to discuss the plan, Rajoy thanked Iglesias but declared he had no intention of negotiating with anyone who “is blackmailing the state so brutally.”

This was a direct repudiation of the Podemos leader’s comments the previous evening. Iglesias had told reporters, “A group of trusted people should sit down at a table to discuss as a team for dialog. This is what I told the premier of Catalonia and the prime minister of Spain. I spoke to Puigdemont and Rajoy, and they didn’t say no.” Iglesias added that his conversation with Rajoy had been “cordial,” and that Rajoy had “taken note” of the proposal.

While the leader of Podemos held “cordial” talks with Spain’s right-wing prime minister, far-right forces are organizing anti-Catalan protests across Spain and singing hymns of the 1939-1978 fascist regime of Generalissimo Francisco Franco.

Well aware that a new crackdown could provoke explosive social opposition among workers in the entire country, the Spanish press is agitating for moving to a police-state dictatorship. They are discussing the application not only of Article 155 of Spain’s Constitution, a so-called “nuclear option” that suspends Catalan self-government, but Article 116. This suspends basic democratic rights—including freedom of thought and expression, the right to strike, and elections—and allows for press censorship.

After a quarter century of imperialist war and EU austerity since the Stalinist bureaucracy’s dissolution of the Soviet Union, European democracy is at the breaking point. A decade of deep austerity since the 2008 Wall Street crash, which brought Spanish unemployment to 20 percent, has shattered Spain’s economy and discredited its ruling elite. Amid a deep crisis of the post-Francoite regime in Spain, and as the ruling class savagely attacks democratic rights across Europe, the Spanish bourgeoisie is using the Catalan crisis to return to an authoritarian regime.

Madrid’s plans for a bloodbath in Catalonia must be opposed. The critical question is the politically independent, revolutionary mobilization of the working class, not only in Catalonia but in all of Spain and across Europe, in struggle against the threat of civil war and police-state dictatorship and for socialism.

This requires a conscious break with Podemos and the Catalan nationalists, who have worked over the entire past period to confuse and disarm working class opposition, despite explosive social discontent. While masses of youth and workers participated in a one-day protest strike on Tuesday in Catalonia, the CCOO and UGT, close to Podemos and the PSOE respectively, were careful not to mobilize any Spanish workers outside of Catalonia.

The Catalan crisis has in particular exposed the bankruptcy of Podemos. It ceaselessly promoted illusions in the PSOE, which is rapidly moving to endorse a crackdown in Catalonia since the king’s speech, calling on the PSOE to form a joint government to oust Rajoy. Faced with the PSOE’s capitulation to Rajoy, Podemos is now stimulating illusions in the PP itself—even as a bloody military crackdown looms, and Rajoy indicates that he has no intention of negotiating with Barcelona.

As for the Catalan nationalists, who have run a series of austerity governments in Catalonia that smashed several strikes of transit and airport workers, their reactionary plans to develop ties with the EU and negotiate with Madrid the formation of a Catalan capitalist state are in ruins.

Faced with the prospect of a military crackdown, panic is reportedly spreading among Puigdemont’s supporters. Among Catalan nationalists in Barcelona, the city’s daily La Vanguardia wrote, “A strong feeling of vertigo runs through everyone—undermining militant enthusiasms, revolutionary visions, indignation in capital letters, patriotic ardors.” It added that King Felipe VI’s speech “has accentuated this feeling of vertigo. There is fear that the current escalation will end in catastrophe.”

Yves Smith writing this morning in "Catalonia Versus Spain: Conflict Escalates as Constitutional Court Nixes Independence Declaration Pre-Emptively" provides some more detail about what to expect Monday:

If the separatists do not back down (and they have signaled they won’t), on Monday, the central government will at some point apply Section 155 to take over the Catalonia government. It will also, either using the Constitutional Court ruling or Section 155, arrest the leaders of the independence movement, declare the secessionist parties to be illegal, and crack down on protestors. The ones who try to interfere in arrests and try to allow passage of legislators to the parliament building will be roughed up the most.

Readers who know the surrounding area in Barcelona are encouraged to pipe up. Supporters are certain to be massed outside the parliament as the vote is set to take place on Monday. It seems likely as before that the local police will stand aside. The Guardia Civil does not seem to believe in finesse. Even so, the number of people who can mass in the square and streets outside the parliament building can’t possibly be as many as wound up clashing with the Guardia Civil during the referendum. In other words, the total number of people injured (and there are guaranteed to be injuries) is likely to be in the dozens, not hundreds. The flip side is that if anyone dies or is very badly hurt, that will push more Catalonians who have been fence-sitting or only weak supporters of independence into a more radical stance.

 At this point it appears that violence or servility are the options for Catalonia.

Catalan Capitulation?

The reaction to the Catalan independence vote in the mainstream press and European capitals has been to condemn the brutality of the police crackdown while upholding the legal position of Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy (see Steven Erlanger's "For E.U., Catalonia Pits Democratic Rights Against Sovereignty").

For the always-pessimistic take on democratic possibilities, see Yves Smith's "Catalonia Blinks in Secession Staredown." She thinks Catalan leaders are signalling that they are not going to declare independence:

Continued over-the-top use of force could move public sentiment the other way in Catalonia. But the unyielding position of the central government means that Catalonia would need to engage in a sustained campaign, meaning over a period of years, to make it painful enough to Madrid to force it to relent. I’d rather be proven wrong, since Rajoy represents a particularly ugly face of neoliberalism, but the rapid backpedaling by the separatists says they know they don’t have enough support among the public to go toe to toe with Madrid.

I was under the impression that Puigdemont, because of the police crackdown, had a rare opportunity to act. But Smith sees sign of wavering. And Smith's track record of cynical predictions is excellent.

Big Win for Catalan Independence

The independence referendum yesterday in Catalonia was a success. The Catalan government announced that over 90 percent of almost 2.3 millions voters supported independence, this despite the mobilization of the Guardia Civil by the conservative prime minister Mariano Rajoy. Images beamed across the globe showed peaceful citizens attempting to vote being met by black-clad security officers in riot gear administering blows with truncheons and firing rubber bullets.

The old slogan from the streets during the WTO ministerial in Seattle came back to me -- "This is what democracy looks like!" It's a bad day for the Washington-Brussels consensus when Telesur can publish a headline like "Maduro to Spanish President Rajoy: Who's the Dictator Now?" and when The New York Times publishes within the first six paragraphs of its story ("Catalonia’s Independence Vote Descends Into Chaos and Clashes," Raphael Minder and Ellen Barry) that more than 750 people were injured in the crackdown.

Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont is looking for the European Union to condemn the violence, according to this morning's story by Raphael Minder, "Catalonia Leaders Seek to Make Independence Referendum Binding":

Mr. Puigdemont is committed to declaring independence, but he is also pressuring the international community to mediate in the conflict and to condemn the Madrid-ordered police clampdown.

“The European Union cannot now continue to look the other side,” Mr. Puigdemont said around midnight Sunday, although the European bloc has shown no sign so far that it was willing to support the separatist movement.

In a statement, the European Commission — the executive arm of the bloc — called for “unity and stability,” but it showed no sign that it would reverse its position and intervene on behalf of supporters of independence.

The commission described the dispute as “an internal matter for Spain,” and reiterated its warning that an independent Catalonia would not be part of the European Union.

Puigdemont will wait in vain for Brussels to say a cross word about Rajoy's crackdown. I can't help but note the contrast between Iraq and Spain. What would have happened if Iraqi prime minister Haider al-Abadi had sent security forces into Kirkuk -- a city not part of the Kurdistan Regional Government, but one included in Masoud Barzani's independence referendum nonetheless -- to block the the vote? Almost certainly the European Commission would have criticized the use of violence, even though the Kurds illegally occupy the city and siphon off it's oil wealth.

What now? Puigdemont will declare independence in the next two days. Rajoy, joined by the feckless Socialists, will counter that the declaration is meaningless since the referendum was fraudulent -- unverified, illegal, its list of registered voters based on a contested census.

But with the number of injuries Catalans sustained, they will be united, at least in the near term, in the defense of their independence.

Referendums on Independence for Catalonia and Iraqi Kurdistan

UPDATE: Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's move to arrest Catalan officials is being panned. See Raphael Minder's "Catalonia Showdown Tests Spanish Leader’s Instinct for Survival." According to polls the independence referendum was headed for defeat. But those polls were conducted before the arrests. I suppose Rajoy wanted to look tough for his conservative base; plus, post-Brexit and post-Trump, who can bank on opinion polling anymore?

****

The independence referendum for Iraqi Kurdistan is Monday. The Catalan independence referendum is the following Sunday, October 1. Spanish police are raiding offices of the Catalan regional government, arresting its officials, while in Erbil, high-priced American advisers are holding court. Quite a contrast, but also a clear signal of the likely results.

In "As Catalonia Referendum Nears, Tensions Rise in Spain," Raphael Minder reports from Madrid that

With the backing of the constitutional court, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has been stepping up efforts to prevent the referendum, scheduled for Oct. 1.

The police raided the offices of the Catalan regional government early Wednesday and arrested at least 14 people, including Josep Maria Jové, secretary general of economic affairs. The arrests were not expected, but hundreds of mayors and other officials in Catalonia had been warned that they would be indicted if they helped organize a referendum in violation of Spanish law.

Hundreds of supporters of Catalan independence immediately took to the streets of Barcelona to protest the arrests. Jordi Sanchez, the leader of one of the region’s biggest separatist associations, used Twitter to urge Catalansto “resist peacefully,” but also to “come out and defend our institutions.”

Speaking before the national Parliament, Mr. Rajoy defended the detentions and accused separatist politicians of promoting civil disobedience and escalating the conflict, using methods he described as “profoundly antidemocratic.” [!]

[snip] 

Madrid seized control of Catalonia’s finances this week, seeking to ensure that separatist politicians could not spend further public funds on the referendum. Under the guidance of public prosecutors and Spanish judges, the police conducted raids across Catalonia to confiscate ballots and campaign materials from printing shops and delivery companies. Spain’s judiciary has also taken measures to stop advertisements related to the referendum in the news media.

Still, the Catalan government says it can hold the vote, and recently announced that it had stored about 6,000 ballot boxes in a secret location.

“The referendum will be held and is already organized,” Mr. Romeva said. “Clearly the conditions in which it will be celebrated are not those that we wished for.”

As the referendum date nears, Mr. Rajoy, who leads a minority government, finds himself under increasing pressure in Madrid to explain how the conflict over possible Catalan secession spun out of control.

Recent opinion polls have shown support for Catalan independence waning, but they also show that most people in the region want the right to vote on Catalonia’s future.

Catalonia is led by a fragile coalition, and its government has struggled to maintain unity at times as it pursues a unilateral path toward independence. On Wednesday, Miquel Iceta, the leader of the Socialist Party of Catalonia, called on the regional government to abandon plans for the October referendum and stop fueling a secessionist conflict, “which will lead us all toward disaster.”

Podemos Performs Well in Spanish Elections + 50th Anniversary of U.S.-Backed Genocide in Indonesia Goes Unmentioned in Democrat Debate

Good news out of Spain this morning. Both the ruling conservative Popular Party and their mainstream opposition, the Socialists, lost seats in yesterday's parliamentary elections, setting up a situation like the one in Portugal in October where the governing conservative party won the most seats but in a diminished number and ended up being unable to piece together a majority.

As Raphael Minder reports in "Spain’s Governing Party Loses Majority in Parliamentary Election," the big loser is the mainstream duopoly -- a paradigm where there is a conservative Tweedledum and a liberal Tweedledee that both suckle from the same corrupt corporate neoliberal tit -- while the big winners are Podemos and Citizens, new party formations:

Mr. Rajoy’s Popular Party won 123 of the 350 parliamentary seats, down from 186 seats in the last elections, in 2011, according to the results with nearly all of the votes counted. The Socialists won 90 seats, compared with 110 four years ago, when they were ousted from office after an economic crisis hit Spain. The emerging parties Podemos and Citizens will enter Parliament for the first time after winning 69 and 40 seats. 

Before Sunday’s vote, the leaders of Spain’s main parties had hinted at possible coalition partnerships, without firmly committing to any.

Mr. Rajoy celebrated the results on Sunday, but gave a cautious message to his supporters, saying, “I will try to form a government, and I believe Spain needs a stable government.” 

Podemos and Citizens wanted the elections to mark the end of Spain’s bipartisan system, and they came close to achieving that goal, despite a Spanish system of proportional representation that did not favor them. 

Mr. Rajoy’s conservatives and the main opposition Socialists together won 50.7 percent of the votes, their lowest combined total and down from 73.4 percent in 2011. 

The elections showed an erosion of support for Mr. Rajoy and his party, but also for the Socialists. Even with their worst election results, they maintained their status as the largest left-leaning party in Parliament thanks to votes in their longstanding regional stronghold of Andalusia in the south. 

Podemos was formed early last year as a far-left, anti-austerity party, modeled in part on the success of Syriza, the governing party in Greece. Citizens transformed itself last year from a regional Catalan party, fiercely opposed to the Catalan secessionist movement, into a national party with a liberal economic agenda.

***

One of the main challenges facing Spain’s next government is Catalonia, where separatist parties are struggling to form their own regional coalition government. According to Sunday’s results, Podemos made the clearest gains in Catalonia, apparently benefiting from a promise by Mr. Iglesias to hold a referendum on Catalan independence if he became Spain’s prime minister. Mr. Rajoy’s government, with the support of Spanish courts, has repeatedly blocked any Catalan attempt to hold such a referendum. 

“Spain has voted for a change of system,” Mr. Iglesias told supporters on Sunday night. We’re very happy that the two-party system has ended.”

Mr. Rivera, the leader of Citizens, told his supporters, “Spain is starting a new political era and is doing so because millions have decided that Spain will change.”

In the United States it is much harder to change the duopoly because the barriers to third parties and independent candidacies are so enormous. But Bernie Sanders' robust challenge to the anointing of Hillary as the Democratic nominee is a sign that there is just as much voter dissatisfaction with the neoliberal two-party system in America as there is in Spain.

Watching the Democratic debate Saturday, when I wasn't remoting over to the UFC on Fox, I was struck by the left-progressive dominance of the candidates' messaging. Both Sanders and O'Malley demand the break up of the big banks and the return of Glass-Steagall. All Hillary can try to do is obscure the issue by saying that her financial prescriptions, which don't include breaking up the big banks, are actually more extensive than her rivals.

Part of this left-progressive dominance are the withering attacks Hillary absorbed because of her defense of the longstanding U.S. policy of regime change. We have come to a place in this country where the sordid, criminal nature of U.S. interventions can be discussed on national television during a presidential debate. Here is a sample of from Saturday night:

SANDERS: Look, the secretary is right. This is a terribly complicated issue. There are no simple solutions. But where we have a disagreement is that I think if you look at the history of regime changes, you go back to Mossaddegh (ph) in Iran, you go back to Salvador Allende who we overthrew in Chile, you go back to overthrowing Saddam Hussein in Iraq, you go back to where we are today in Syria with a dictator named Assad. 

The truth is it is relatively easy for a powerful nation like America to overthrow a dictator but it is very hard to predict the unintended consequences and the turmoil and the instability that follows after you overthrow that dictator. 

So I think secretary Clinton and I have a fundamental disagreement. I'm not quite the fan of regime change that I believe she is.

Sanders has said this before. The former Sixties radical that he is, he'll mention CIA-engineered coups in Iran, Guatemala and Chile. But what about Indonesia?

It is 50th anniversary of the rise of Suharto, the fall of Sukarno, and the genocide of communists in Indonesia, something, as Sanders' coup list makes plain, that we don't really track in the United States, despite the fact that the bloodbath was carried out with extensive U.S. involvement.

The current issue of the Monthly Review is devoted to the Indonesian genocide of 1965-1966. As explained in Notes from the Editors:

In this issue we feature two articles on the 1965–1966 mass killings and imprisonments in Indonesia. The army-led bloodbath was aimed at the near-total extermination of members of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), then a highly successful electoral party with a membership in the millions.… In all, an estimated 500,000 to a million (or more) people were murdered. Another 750,000 to a million-and-a-half people were imprisoned, many of whom were tortured. Untold thousands died in prison. Only around 800 people were given a trial—most brought before military tribunals that summarily condemned them to death.… The United States…was involved clandestinely in nearly every part of this mass extermination: compiling lists of individuals to be killed; dispatching military equipment specifically designated to aid the known perpetrators of the bloodletting; offering organizational and logistical help; sending covert operatives to aid in the “cleansing”; and providing political backing to the killers.… [T]he mass killings…[were carried out with the active] complicity of the U.S. media.

The duopoly is wobbling. But there is no exit, no place for citizens to turn. New party formation is basically banned in the United States. We live in an irrational, closed society based on consumption. Eventually something is going to burst.

Shocks to the European Union

The European Union is facing a wide array of challenges, and not just the blow back from the cracking apart of the Middle East. Several developments this past week point to a series of shocks ahead for the continental union.

First, I should say that I think that the EU is an institution that serves the United States. The way it works is that you create a political union that is subordinate to the economic union, and the economic union answers to Germany. Germany answers to the United States in foreign policy matters. So in a series of short steps you have a huge continent-sized economy that eclipses the U.S. but is politically supine at its feet.

The left has to give up for the time being on its European Dream of progressive government in Brussels. It is not going to happen before several shocks shake the shack.

Shock #1: Anti-austerity government is coming to Portugal.  Despite headlines early last month touting the first-place finish of the coalition of Portuguese prime minister Pedro Passos Coelho as a great vindication of austerity, the conservatives were unable to form a government. Now it will be up to the left anti-austerity bloc, led by the Socialists but also including the long-resistant-to-left-leaning-coalitions Communist Party, to form a government, assuming that conservative president, Aníbal Cavaco Silva, allows them to. He might ask Passos Coelho to remain at the head of a caretaker government until new elections can be held next year.

Waiting until new elections is likely the preferred outcome for the elites who preside over governance in Brussels. Despite the object lesson that Greece was supposed to provide for all the restless natives who didn't wanted to accept a pauperized future of ever-increasing austerity, it is apparent the citizens of another European nation are ready to tilt again at the neoliberal consensus.

As Raphael Minder pointed out last week, "Rising Left Bloc in Portugal Could Threaten Austerity Drive," if the left bloc is successful at forming a government in Portugal, this points the way to a fall of the conservative, pro-austerity Popular Party in Spain:

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy of Spain, who champions austerity, hopes to get re-elected, but most polls show his Popular Party falling short of keeping its parliamentary majority. That raises the possibility that the Spanish could end up in a similar situation to that of the Portuguese. 

“The Iberian left is forming alliances against those in power and trying to create governments of losers,” said Pablo Casado, a conservative lawmaker who is spokesman for Mr. Rajoy’s Popular Party. “This could also happen in Spain.” 

At the very least, Portugal’s political deadlock has signaled the deep divisions the austerity debate continues to generate. 

“You can have an election where there is no winner, only losers,” said Mr. Cabral, the economics professor. “Which is an odd situation in a democracy.”

Shock #2: Spain Splits Over Catalan Independence. Despite a ruling from the Spanish constitutional court, the parliament of Catalonia is moving full speed to independence. How is that for a shock to the system?

Shock #3: Greece Burns. Today the first general strike directed at the once "great leftist hope" Syriza government shows that Alexis Tsipras' capitulation to the troika bought Brussels maybe six months.

Shock #4: Brexit. Cameron published the list of demands that Conservatives need met in order to support remaining in the EU. Wishy washy and ready-made for fudging is how I would characterize them. The main item garnering attention is reduced welfare payments for immigrants. I don't see how the referendum on remaining in the EU passes.

Shock #5: Walls Go Up. Slovenia is the latest country to erect a border wall in Europe. So much for the promise of an "ever closer union."