By Richard Cottrell: Some
eighty-five years ago a man whose books would change our perspective of
the world forever was struck by a sniper while serving as a volunteer
infantryman on the Catalonian front at the peak of the Spanish Civil War. His name was George Orwell.He wrote a famous diary called Homage to Catalonia describing his experiences fighting alongside partisan government forces resisting the fascist takeover of the country. That seminal work would eventually flower into Animal Farm and 1984, which today we can easily read as documentaries of our current plight beneath the heel of the new world orderista.
The war stripped away many illusions that led Orwell to this personal crusade against Generalissimo Francisco Franco. Orwell quickly discovered that hard-line communists Stalin sent to stiffen the ranks of the resistance were in reality no better than the fascists in both their methods and ideology. Were he alive today, Orwell would wring his hands at the plight of Catalonians, finding themselves once again crushed by ruthless foreign invaders and looters.
I am speaking of the EU imposed austerity measures which have wrenched the entire Spanish economy to a shuddering standstill. Catalonia, which accounts for a fifth of Spain’s total GDP, has responded by rekindling the spirit of independence. The province is already semi-detached but its unfortunate destiny marks it as the Spanish Tibet – lashed to Madrid, tossed some morsels of quasi-self determination but its people denied the sovereign freedom to make their own choices.
The Chinese always hit back at ‘China splitting traitors’ whenever anyone dares to raise the dreaded heresy of Tibetan independence. It is remarkable then that the aristocratic toffee-nosed Madrid-hinged Castilian-Leonese caste, who regard themselves as rulers by perpetual right of the choice real estate known as Spain, start to use the same ‘splitting’ language any time the break-away of Catalonia – or for that matter, the Basque country to the North – comes to the fore.
Just a few days ago, the Spanish military came out of the closet where everyone supposed they had been locked up and the key buried deep down in concrete. Generalissimo Franco must be spinning with delight in his marble tomb as the generals threaten to arrest and detain (with possibly worse to come) anyone in Catalonia who starts using the treacherous splitting talk. They cite an obscure unrepealed statute dating from the Franco era, which survived the so-called democratic transformations after the dictator’s summons to higher callings.
What is extremely interesting, and telling, here is that the mandarins of Brussels tied their tongues at the prospect of soldiers marching into Catalonia, arresting the legally elected government authorities and throwing them into prison.
I wish I could be ecstatic that Artur Mas, the pro-independence premier, has responded to a mass demonstration (1.5 million enthusiastic flag-wavers cramming the streets of Barcelona) in favor of breaking with Spain by calling a snap election on November 26th.
Unfortunately I am reminded of the tragic fate, in not entirely dissimilar circumstances, of Imre Nagy, the Hungarian leader at the time of the revolution in his homeland back in 1956. He was summarily arrested and shot shortly after he announced that Hungary had unilaterally left the Warsaw Pact.
If he is not watchful, Mr. Mas may be inviting a similar fate minus, we hope, the firing squad. Bear in mind that even the venerable King of Spain himself has suddenly discovered the Internet and there launched his personal royal web site to warn of his wroth at the dangers of ‘Spain splitting.’ Matters must indeed have come to a serious pitch when his majesty takes to the keyboard instead of the golf course.
Catalonians, proud independent-minded folk steeped in their own language, customs and culture, are not setting fire to their own capital city, any more than all those Greeks presently choking on police tear gas cocktails in Athens.
What we see on newsreels and the front pages of newspapers which fall just short of government propaganda organs are designer-made, purely synthetic riots and fabricated terrorism designed to show the world that opponents of the austerity rip-off which has wrecked the economies of both countries are fanatics and anarchists bent on the destruction of law and order.
Fiddlesticks. Those legendary hooded figures tossing fire bombs and indulging in stone-throwing sallies at the innocent, patient yet restrained ranks of Robocops, supposedly little more than kind uncles beneath all that grim battle gear, are nothing less than well-disguised government saboteurs.
A couple of points to make here. Catalonia is actually the spiritual home of anarchism. During the civil war, the local anarchists finding themselves in charge of the government actually created an extraordinary revolutionary laboratory in which anarchism – power and resource sharing, in the modern parlance, from the street upwards – was seen to operate with remarkable effectiveness.
Today we are indoctrinated by the powers that be that anarchists are all for tearing down the fabric of the state with all the violence they can muster. This is nonsense. The state destruction bringing a pack of nations to their knees, begging for mercy from the euro-bailiffs – Italy, Ireland, Portugal, quite aside from Spain and Greece – is entirely due to the current fiscal mischief concocted in Brussels, Berlin and Frankfurt.
Of course it is no co-incidence at all that a stack of EU troublemakers turned up in Barcelona at precisely this moment, in some wonderful conclave at the Palacio de Congresos supposed to kick start the European economy, which is fast sinking into the trough of despair from the Atlantic to the Aegean. Here we are looking at a perfect example of what is known in the trade as ‘issue management’.
This calculated affront of entertaining a carnival of EU commissars and hangers-on in the Catalonian capital was a deliberate provocation. Lo, the majestic peace bringers preside in their lofty citadel, while the rabble are on the streets below sowing the seeds of destruction. This is the same old story of the Strategy of Tension, the ‘years of lead’ wrought by NATO’s Gladio secret army of street-savvy guerillas who wrought havoc across Europe in the 1970s and 80s.
In those days impersonated violence, fashioned to order, was supposed to instill Europeans with a dread of communist saboteurs beavering away in their midst, thus sending public opinion flocking to the quarters of safe right wing authorities. Today it’s the turn of anarchists (often harnessed to violent ‘students’, as in the London Riots of 2011) bent on shaking normal society to its very foundations.
The ‘safe quarters’ nowadays is the European Union, or more precisely, the euro zone. How anyone in Spain can be expected to believe that unemployment touching 24%, almost 50% among the young generation, is somehow a glorious boon bestowed by the EU is beyond the bounds of the rational. Yet, on the principle of inflicting pain in order to experience the subsequent relief, that is exactly the word preached by the faceless commissars of the EU, the European Central Bank, and that famous old spoon-stealer, the International Monetary Fund.
According to the established organs of the media, what we see now is nothing more than a cleansing exercise, cutting away the fiscal gangrene that threatens financial orthodoxy – and of course, the sacred euro.
I don’t believe a word of that. I believe the entire fantasy of the ‘austerity crisis’ is – reduced to basics – one huge mirage, a classic Gladio/Strategy of Tension exercise, a contrived crisis designed to push through the completion of a European Super State in short order – even as early as the approaching New Year’s Day.
If the euro-commissars get their way, then under the flag of emergency, the sovereign states of the union will be driven to surrender control of their finances to Brussels and the European Central Bank. Moreover, a new super regulator will acquire the right to supervise some 6,000 banks sprawling across the European continent. No-one in Europe will be allowed to vote on this massive snatch of sovereignty and civil rights. Democracy was not one of the fairies present at the cradle of the EU.
Of course there are inconvenient creases in this splendid quilt. What about those countries that are aren’t members of the euro zone and cling stubbornly to their own national currencies – like the UK, Poland, Sweden, and the two Baltic mini-states? That’s an easy one. Once the Valhalla of a single monetary discipline in most of the European states is reached, then it will be easy to suborn the back-sliders later on.
In my personal opinion, the British finance minister and ex-Oxford University hell-raiser and prominent Bilderberger George Osborne, has already made a clandestine secret pact (known to the innermost courts in the City of London) to junk the pound sterling the moment the time is ripe. That is why the titular Prime Minister, David Cameron, is resisting a stay in/get out referendum with all the powers at his disposal.
For now, the message is clear and obvious: why waste a good crisis? Here is the gospel truth, a splendid euro understatement, coming from one Jose Manuel Barroso, the tubby chief of the EU civil service, the man who consigned Portugal, his own homeland, to the dogs of Brussels: ‘We must use the momentum to move towards a centralized European solution.’
Gosh, what a giveaway, not even a modest curtsy to add some tact. The old Prince of Darkness himself, George Soros, patron saint of currency swindlers, weighed in with about five thousand words in a recent op-ed piece in the New York Review of Books which, boiled down to the essentials, said simply this: ‘The only cure for Europe is more Europe.’ You cannot read this stuff and fail to connect it with the toxic palls of tear gas soaking the public squares of Madrid, Barcelona and Athens.
We must trust the guardians of Europe were not too disturbed by the overhead roar of NATO jets as they were enjoying sherry and tapas at the Palacio de Congresos. They had only to console themselves by glancing out of the window at a row of warships riding at anchor, lest any anarchist pirates should make it ashore to upset the proceedings. Only an armor-plated autocracy in the making requires this kind of protection racket. Or put another way, a circus show to remind the populace who is in charge nowadays.
PS: I almost forgot. The cure for Europe’s ills agreed at the Congress of Barcelona was the compulsory sale of all the remaining power generators in state control. This has nothing whatsoever to do with shrinking unemployment. But it will certainly please Wall Street banks when they go shopping for cut-rate bargains.
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