Why Catalan toffs are the most radical secessionists

CUP leader Dolors Sabater is worth €1.2 million

Curiously, the most radical backers of Catalan independence are the wealthiest members of society. At first sight this may seem counter-intuitive. However, there is a reason. They are an elite who see their privileged position in danger and will take extreme steps to safeguard it. This is not unprecedented; British history of the 20th century shows two examples: the Ulster Loyalists in 1912 and Ian Smith’s white Rhodesians in 1965.

Support for Catalan independence rises with wealth

In 1912 Irish Home Rule (autonomy) was becoming inevitable. The Ulster Protestants feared for their position of political dominance and even went to the lengths of importing arms from Germany with which to fight against the Crown if they were to be forced under what they referred to as “Rome Rule”. The officers of the British army in Dublin made it clear that they would not act against the Loyalists. In 1965 Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) was scheduled for independence under a black majority government. The Prime Minister Ian Smith declared unilateral independence (UDI) and made his country an independent republic.

Those two cases had considerable parallels and similarities. Catalonia is obviously very different, yet there is the common factor of the rich and powerful acting not only illegally but unconstitutionally to thwart the intention of the state. The Ulstermen and the white Rhodesians enjoyed the support of the conservative, imperialist establishment which included parliamentary representation, and of a good part of the media and popular opinion. Now in the 21st century, the Catalan bourgeoisie enjoy the support of the progressive establishment with its power in the Spanish Parliament, as well as support from the media and public opinion of a globalised world. The ethnic hatred of Irish Protestants and Catholics is notorious, and the racial differences in Rhodesia were plain to see. Less well known, but no less real for that, is the ethnic hatred of the Catalan ruling class, with its identifiable surnames, for Spanish “colonisers” with “flawed DNA” who have names that end in “-ez”.

Catalonia is often, and understandably, compared to Scotland. However, it is interesting to imagine that power in Yorkshire is in the firm grip of people called Arkwright, Oldroyd, Sutcliffe and Hardaker while the Joneses, Robertsons, Murphys and Patels are scarcely visible. And a knowledge of Yorkshire dialect is essential for employment. That is a true parallel.

The Catalans have been a pain in the neck for everybody since the Middle Ages, when the Church had to organise a special crusade to bring them to heel. They terrorised the eastern Mediterranean to such an extent that the word “Catalan” is still used in Greece and the Balkans as a bugbear with which to frighten children. In his history of Byzantium, John Julius Norwich describes their actions thus:

“In less than a single decade they had inflicted almost as much damage on the Byzantine Empire as the Turks had done in a century. And they had been paid by the Emperor to do it. In order to find their wages, Andronicus Palaeologus had been obliged to debase his coinage and to impose still heavier taxes on his already desperate subjects. The damage they had done in Thrace was to take generations to repair; the flood of refugees they had driven from their homes was to create near-famine in Constantinople. Had they kept to the terms of their agreement with Andronicus, concentrating on pushing back the Turks and renouncing all territorial ambitions for themselves, they might have turned back the Islamic tide and the whole future history of the Levant might have been changed. Alas, they did not; instead, almost exactly a century after the Fourth Crusade, they dealt the Empire that they had come to serve yet another paralysing blow, from which it would not recover.”

Source
El Catalán
La diputada abtisistema Dolors Sabater, dispone de propiedades por valor de 1,2 millones de euros
(The antisystem Catalan MP Dolors Sabater has property worth 1.2 million euros)

Nationalism makes you immune from covid

A nationalist demonstration in Barcelona on Friday 29 January. Bars and restaurants are closed, a curfew is in place, and travel outside one's municipality of residence is banned.

But of course, none of that bothers the force of independence and the sainted "process".

PSOE and thoughtcrime. The Spanish Inquisition and heresy

The medieval Church knew how to deal with heresy. It called in the Inquisition.

Spain's governing PSOE party also knows how to deal with ideas that it doesn't like. True to the ancient spìrit of the Inquisition it labels them thoughtcrime.

There are ideas that incite hatred.
There are ideas that encourage violence against people who are different.
There are ideas that are threats.

THERE ARE IDEAS THAT ARE A CRIME.

In Twitter, in the street and in any democracy.

Sic, in any PSOE democracy ideas can be a crime.

Grande-Marlaska, a disaster for Spanish politics.

Fernando Grande-Marlaska was once a judge on Spain’s Audiencia Nacional, a very important national court that hears cases involving terrorism, drug-smuggling, money-laundering and other serious crime. In 2017 he fancied a career change and saw his future in politics. His attempt to become the state prosecutor in Rajoy’s PP government failed, though he made the short list, so he turned his attention to PSOE. Pedro Sánchez was pleased to make him Interior Minister.

Salvador Illa is a philosopher who was Spain’s Health Minister until the other day. Now Sánchez has sent him to Catalonia to head up the Catalan socialists’ campaign for the forthcoming Catalan parliamentary elections.

Such is Grande-Marlaska’s new-found socialist zeal, matched only by his scorn for democratic process, that last year he sacked a Guardia civil colonel who was investigating the government’s decision to actively promote a feminist demonstration in Madrid in 8 March last year, in direct contravention of warnings from the WHO and EU that mass gatherings should be avoided. Now he has used his official ministry Twitter account to send a party-political message of support for Illa in a tweet that was plagued with basic spelling mistakes.

My recognition and thanks to Salvador Illa for his courage and tireless work against COVID and for his serene talent for dialogue.

With my best wishes

Such it seems is the level of political sensibility and of basic education among the bigwigs of Spain’s judiciary.

 

Source

El Independiente
Marlaska, el juez que quiso ser fiscal general con el PP y acabó de ministro con el PSOE
(Marlaska, the judge who wanted to be state prosecutor with the PP and ended up as a minister with PSOE)

 

  

Ethnic cleansing and Catalan nationalism

Josep Sort is a professor of politics at Barcelona University. He is a candidate for Puigdemont’s party JuntsxCat in this spring’s Catalan parliamentary election. He proposes a policy of ethnic cleansing.

“We will cleanse the Spaniards from Catalonia, promise.”

He has form. He has called for the immigration holding centre to be used for the internment of Spaniards.

 

 

Source

Dolça Catañunya
Candidato de JuntsxCat amenaza: “haremos limpieza de aspanyols”
(JuntsxCat candidate threatens: “We’ll cleanse the Spaniards”)
https://www.dolcacatalunya.com/2021/01/candidato-de-juntsxcat-amenaza-haremos-limpieza-de-aspanyols/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Guardian whitewashes its favourite psychopath. Again!!!

We thought that Guardian editor Katherine Viner had learned her lesson about Podemos’s thuggish boss Pablo Iglesias a year ago. Sadly, it seems that she hasn’t. Here’s a reminder.

The Guardian’s chum describes himself as “a perverted Marxist turned psychopath”. This is a man who has said of a TV presenter who asked him an awkward question, “I’d whip her till she bled.”

Now Sam Jones is repeating his whitewash job on his hero and the Guardian’s favourite Marxist psychopath. Iglesias is in deep legal doo-doo over the theft of a mobile phone from a female member of his party when they were MEPs together. In a complicated story, the contents of the memory card ended up on the computer of a dodgy police superintendent. Iglesias claimed that the police had stolen the card and that he was the victim. A judge believes otherwise and now Iglesias himself is under investigation for stealing the phone, keeping the card for over six months, and then destroying it as it contained intimate photos of him and the woman. He claims that he kept the card to protect a vulnerable young woman.

Sam Jones describes these events thus (our emphasis):

Iglesias was handed the original memory card from Bousselham’s phone by a media proprietor in January 2016, and says he held on to it for a few months to protect his colleague from pressure and embarrassment.

On Wednesday, [Judge] García Castellón asked the supreme court to investigate the deputy prime minister for the alleged “offences of discovering and revealing secrets”, filing a false crime report and damaging the card, which was eventually returned to Bousselham.

While the Guardian may describe this as “holding on to the card for a few months to protect his colleague from pressure and embarrassment”, the court took the view that a woman who can be an MEP is quite capable of looking after herself and does not need the protection of a man. Which is why the allegations against Iglesias include an aggravating element of gender abuse, rather embarrassingly for a progressive socialist whose wife is the minister of equality. The wronged woman ended up with her “protector” giving her an online newspaper to play with, a post-modern version of the classic appartement meublé.

The charges that are proposed against Iglesias are precisely:

descubrimiento y revelación de secretos con agravante de género: uncovering (sic) and revealing secrets, aggravated by gender perspective (the Spanish word “descubrir” is defined primarily as “manifesting, making patent, uncovering what was covered” rather than finding something new (one to four years and fine, not including the gender aspect).

daños informáticos: deliberate damage or sabotage to computer data or documents (six months to three years, depending on seriousness)

denuncia falsa: making a false accusation of a criminal offence (up to two years and fine)

This is strong stuff. Iglesias is looking at up to nine years in prison.

The “damage” done to the card before it “was eventually returned to Bousselham”, as Sammy knows full well but chooses not to explain, was its total physical disabling to ensure that no data could be retrieved by any means. It was sent by the court to a company in Wales that specialises in data retrieval from damaged devices. They could retrieve nothing at all. The court found that the damage was deliberate and complete, and appeared to have been caused by microwaving it.

How does the Guardian handle the legal threat to its Bolivarian hero? Like this.

A judge at Spain’s highest criminal court, the audiencia nacional, sent a written request to the supreme court this week asking it to look into Iglesias’ actions in relation to a tangled and long-running spying case.

Young Sammy knows exactly what he is doing when he wields the whitewash brush. His disingenuous comment that the Supreme Court has been asked to “look into” the facts by the Audiencia Nacional conceals a basic fact of the Spanish legal system. Under continental civil law the initial investigation is carried out by a judge; if there is apparent cause to take the matter further towards a criminal trial, the judge can make the suspect “imputado”. That is not quite the same as a charge in the English system (“questioned under caution” would probably be the nearest equivalent), but it is a formal process in which witnesses can be subpoenaed and evidence is given on oath, and it is treated very seriously. The Audiencia Nacional wanted to apply that status to Iglesias but was unable to do so for a technical reason: as a senior politician Iglesias enjoys the privilege of proceeding directly to the Supreme Court, skipping all lower courts including the Audiencia Nacional, which performs the instruction (investigation) but has to refer the actual criminal process to the Supreme Court for action. The Audiencia Nacional was simply passing the paperwork to the court that has the competence to handle the criminal process.

But merely for that simple act, the judge of the Audiencia Nacional has found himself on the receiving end of death threats. The police are investigating them. Threaten Podemos and face the consequences. Back Podemos, on the other hand, and a journalistic future with the Guardian is assured.

“Make it look like an accident.” Katherine Viner’s favourite Marxist psychopath has got a judge on his tail. The judge has received death threats.

Iglesias talks a lot about the sewers of the state. As the boss of a party that is itself imputado as an institution for illegal funding by Venezuela and money-laundering through a Caribbean tax haven, as well as for false accounting and embezzlement, a party that has close ties to the Iranian regime, Iglesias knows quite a bit about the politics of the sewer. After all, his party’s legal problems stem from its former lawyer who spilled the beans when his professional advice was ignored. He quickly found him faced with allegations of sexual abuse. He sued the party for libel and won. Yes, indeed, the sewer is the natural habitat for the Guardian’s psychopathic chum.

An expert on the politics of the sewer

The privilege by which politicians are fast-tracked to the Supreme Court is known as aforamiento. Pablo Iglesias is on record as calling for an end to it (“It is not compatible with equality before the law,” he said in 2014) but he seems to have forgotten about that now. Moreover, the ethical code of Podemos adopted in 2014 required, as do other parties, that anyone holding public office who is imputado should resign. When it became clear that this could happen to Iglesias himself, the code was changed to apply only to people actually put on trial.

And it isn’t as if he has anything to worry about anyway. First, his immunity would have to be lifted by the Parliament, and Sánchez will back him. Second, the Bar Council is under review and Iglesias is pressing Sánchez to make sure that the new one will be amenable. And third, even if it does come to trial, the prosecution has already been nobbled by Sánchez’ decision early in his term of office to shunt his justice minister over to be the state prosecutor. She will know what to do.

The Guardian’s view on how Spain should be governed. (They’re going to whip her till she bleeds.)

The EU is beginning to take notice of what is going on. Angela Merkel is concerned.

Poland? Poland! Who said Poland??

 

Sources
(English)

Bloomberg
Spain’s Toxic Politics, Health Woes Have Got Merkel Worried

Guardian
Spain’s deputy PM says call for inquiry is part of attempt to discredit him

(Spanish)

OKDiario
Iglesias exigió a Sánchez diseñar un Poder Judicial que le salvara de la imputación que ahora pide el juez
Iglesias demanded that Sánchez should design a Bar Council that would save him from being made “imputado” as the judge now wants

VozPópuli
El juez imputa a Podemos por la presunta financiación ilegal
A judge makes Podemos “imputado” for alleged illegal funding

El Independiente
El nuevo código ético de Podemos permite a Pablo Iglesias no dimitir de momento
Podemos’s new ethical code allows Pablo Iglesias not to resign at this time

Europapress
El juez García-Castellón denuncia ante la Policía amenazas tras pedir al Supremo que investigue a Pablo Iglesias
Judge García-Castellón reports threats to the police after asking the Supreme Court to investigate Pablo Iglesias

El Mundo
El juez del ‘caso Dina’ denuncia al CGPJ que se siente “señalado” públicamente por Pablo Iglesias
The judge in the mobile phone card case reports to the Bar Council that he feels publicly “singled out” by Pablo Iglesias

El Independiente
Cuando Pablo Iglesias criticaba el aforamiento: “No es compatible con la igualdad ante la ley”
When Pablo Iglesias criticised aforamiento “It is not compatible with equality before the law.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Political control of schoolchildren and police in Catalonia

The Catalan government is officially called the Generalitat. Unofficially it is widely known as the Genestapo. In this post we look at how it keeps political control of the schools and the police, two very sensitive areas for totalitarian governments.

Political control of schools 

We have already seen the way in which the Catalangovernment interferes politically in the lives of schoolchildren by spying onthem. Now the children are being asked for their political opinions.

The El Morell secondary school in Tarragona circulated a questionnaire from Lérida University to be completed by the pupils. It contained the questions:

To what extent do you feel:

1 Catalan

2 Spanish

3 Of your country of birth (or that of your family)

To what extent do you feel proud of being:

1 Catalan

2 Spanish

3 Of your country of birth (or that of your family)

To what extent do you identify with:

1 The Catalan language

2 The Spanish language

3 The language of your country of birth (or that of your family)

To what extent do you identify with:

1 Catalan culture

2 Spanish culture

3 The culture of your country of birth (or that of your family)

To what extent do you identify with:

1 The independence movement

2 The non-independence movement

Answers to be given as a score from 1 (never) to 5 (always)

“We don’t understand why the pupils have to be asked these questions,” said one mother. The documentation in the study says that “Participation is voluntary, anonymous and confidential” but parents have said that that was not the case. The school is trying to row back, saying, “We didn’t know the content of the questionnaire,” (yeah, sure, pull the other one) and “We have proposed the individualised return of the questionnaires to the families who ask for them or else collective destruction.” The individualised return of anonymous questionnaire forms – now there’s a thought!

The questionnaire form shown here is presented in Catalan only. That is the only language that can be used in Catalan schools for any purpose at all. Why? Because it ensures that the lower classes will have poor Spanish and will not be able to leave Catalonia. The policy of linguistic immersion is not practised by the  Catalan bourgeoisie. The latest in a long line of hypocritical top Catalans to be discovered avoiding the policy that they impose on the lower orders is a well-known footballer called Pep Guardiola, who sends his children to the American Benjamin Franklin school in Barcelona, a “truly international school” where the teaching “is entirely in English, with language courses offered in Spanish, Catalan and French”. It must be said though that he hasn’t quite worked out quite what a international education is about: “My children go to school with Indian people, black people, normal people …”

Political control of the police

In 2016 Victor Tarradellas was the Secretary for International Relations of CDC, the name at that time of Carles Puigdemont’s party (now JxCat). He was a trusted confidant of former Catalan premier Artur Mas and of Puigdemont at the time when the 2017 illegal referendum was being planned. If a government is planning an illegal action on the scale of a referendum, it obviously has to have the police on its side. It was Victor’s job to find out which senior officers (“comisarios”, like superintendent) of the Mossos (Catalan police) could be trusted.

“Fainthearted separatist”, “comes from the Guardia Civil”, “red”, these are some of his comments, which were accompanied by positive and negative marks against the names. He kept his comments in a notebook that has come to light in the course of a judicial investigation into illegal funding of the party.

He had a list of 45 officers marked on three scales: patriotism and determination, management ability and charisma, and institutional loyalty. His notes praised recently promoted officers while criticising others for having come from the Guardia Civil or for their being close to the Spanish socialist party PSOE. The current chief officer of the Mossos Eduard Sallent had a top score on all three scales with a positive mention of his background in the nationalist student union FNEC. “Very separatist” was the verdict.

Sources

(Spanish)

Diari de Tarragona

Un estudio pregunta a alumnos de El Morell si son independentistas

(A study asks pupils at El Morell if they are separatists)

Mundo deportivo

La polémica frase de Guardiola: “Mis hijos van al colegio con gente india, gente negra, gente normal...”

(Guardiola’s controversial sentence: “My children go to school with Indian people, black people, normal people …”)

El Independiente

Un dirigente de CDC hacía listas de "buenos y malos" comisarios de los Mossos

(A leading member of CDC made lists of “good and bad” senior officers of the Mossos)

(English)

Benjamin Franklin International School