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Martin Armstrong Blasts "Ruthless, Undemocratic, Pretend Leader" Rajoy For Denying Catalonia's Right To Vote
Submitted by Martin Armstrong via Armstrong Economics blog,
Spain’s constitutional court has decided to suspend Catalonia’s referendum on independence following a request from the Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.
This ruthless undemocratic pretend leader jumps whatever height the EU Commission tells him to do betraying his own country to the rising dictatorship of Brussels.
As reported, a court spokeswoman stated that the 12 judges reached the decision to suspend Catalonia’s November independence referendum after an hour-long emergency meeting.
They too are a total disgrace to the very idea of democracy and the West should just stop the pretense that they are any different from Russia.
Power devolves to dictatorship whenever there are no checks and balances.
This is a simple truth of history without exceptions.
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they cant let them leave...
they would lose that tax base..
and thats means they (the politicians and bankers) will have to lower their standard of living...
NO VOTE FOR YOU! NOW, GET YOUR SHOE MAKING ASSES BACK TO WORK, BITCHEZ!
A bloody Civil War is coming to Spain?
As someone posted the other day, no people have ever voted themselves freedom. Think about it.
I take issue with Armstrong's comment:
Power devolves to dictatorship whenever there are no checks and balances.
We already are in a dictatorship. If voting really mattered, it wouldn't be allowed.
Como latina? That is Armstong's point. We no longer have checks and balances, all 3 branches are now one.
Are you talking about Spain or the US?
What's that guy got? ONE tooth in his head?
Anyway, like I said before, no country is going to let one of their states/regions go. Ever.
And now that the Scottish vote was close enough to scare the elites there won't even be any more (rigged) votes. This entire secession movement is dead in the water. You're going to either shoot yourself free, or somebody's going to help you shoot yourself free. The entire concept of voting yourself free in some gentlemanly way with both sides parting friends and better off for the experience is laughable.
Power devolves to dictatorship whenever it resides in government.
What good are checks and balances? It's all government.
Armstrong said 'checks and balances' not voting.
Go Cats!
The Jewish people claim their descent from the two-tribed "House of Judah" (Jew-dah), hence their name Jew. All true racial Jews are Israelites but not all Israelites are Jews. Just as, for example, all Scottish people are British but not all of the British people are Scottish.
Returning now to the story; Pharez, having taken the birthright from his brother Zarah, carried the tribal (family) name of Judah, from which came king David, the shepherd boy who slew the giant Goliath with a stone from his sling and became king of Israel. The Royal line of David descends from Pharez and their emblem is an amber/golden lion, rampant, with a crown on its head.
The descendants of his brother, Zarah of the ‘Red Hand’, having lost the Birthright, went into exile and migrated to Heberia (now known as Iberia or Spain). There they built the city of Zaragoza. Zaragoza (originally Zarah-gassa) means the "Stronghold of Zarah" and the city is still called Zaragoza today, even though the Israelites’ traditional enemy, Babylon and Rome, invaded Heberia and drove the Zarahites out to the northern coastlands of Spain. From there many of them fled across the water to Ireland (Hebernia – the Hebrews’ new-land and the Hebrides - Hebrew’s Isles). Some of their descendants migrated from Ireland to Scotland, and, once there, decided to use their own Judah Zarah version of the Judahite emblem, which is the red lion rampant, just as Judah Pharez use the amber lion rampant (rampant is a word used in heraldry. and it means that an animal is shown standing-up on its back legs, on a coat-of-arms)."
No no no...their beloved leader has spoken...they will all peacefully go home now and assume the position by grabbing their ankles. /sarc
This is going to get interesting...Franco was still in power only 39 years ago. They know what an opressive dictatorship looks like.
The paella is going to hit the fan in 3...2...1...
Power to the people. Fuck the government.
It will be interesting what happens when they deny the Basques their referendum.
Cue return of ETA in 3...2...1...
No. Catalonia has no desire to rule all of Spain.
Sorry bro, there isn't enough democracy for spain, it's all being used in libya, ukraine, hong kong, syria inter alia.
*shits pants*
". . . the West should just stop the pretense that they are any different from Russia."
While the Soviet constitution (unlike ours) provided for secession, it wasn't needed for the simple reason that "We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us" went from a cynical joke to the central government's realization that its vaunted experiment in communism had failed miserably and that resistance was futile.
The same goes for the American Union's vaunted experiment in federalism, which has also been a miserable failure, the moment not far off when "We pretend to rule, and they pretend to let us" becomes too obvious for continuing to pretend otherwise.
I do believe, however, that Texas will lead the way before the decade is out:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/102021344
Texans are all hat and no cattle when it comes to secession. They talk that stuff sometimes, but they're too invested in being a big fish in the American pond to go out on their own. Despite their big talk, they'll be one of the last out of the door. Hawaii will be first - last in, first out. They are far away from the mainland, and there are too many military retirees for the Feds to indiscriminately start bombing them.
Bottom line: I don't care which one starts the process, just that one does.
The American ship of state has hit an iceberg of its own making.
Man the lifeboats.
Seems like this guy would do better serving me margharitas in Ibeza than running a country.
Ibiza.
Whatever.
Wotever
It's 'wevvaah', I think you'll find
Is this really any surprise? Catalonia is economically too important to Spain. There's no way they'll let it go without a (weak, limp-wristed) fight. The media sound bites about democracy and bla bla bla are just for public consumption.
Where is the Generalisimo when you need him?
fighting on the side of the fascists like in '36
IN HELL!
Another "earth shattering event" that turned out to be a non-event. Now back to our regularly scheduled program of Greece defaulting.
First case of US Ebola in Texas according to FOX. Congratulations Texas!
Gives "don't mess with Texas" a whole new meaning.
No. It makes perfect sense.
That photo is begging for a Hedgeless Horseman treatment.
Does their constitution permit referendum for dissolution of the Nation? The would be breakaway province has a very distinctive Moorish component.
Would Mr. Armstrong propose such a referendum for these United States?
Don't need a referendum in USA. The founding fathers were paranoid about a federal government getting out of control so they gave us Article V in the Constitution. 34 state legislatures can call a state run constitutional convention at which their delegates can propose any amendments to the Constitution. If 38 state legislatures ratify an amendment it becomes federal law. No involvement at all by the federal government. The Constitution does not provide limits to a convention so the states could legally pass an amendment to dissolve the federal government and all of its functions, returning all powers of governance to the sovereign states. Legal secession of all states by eliminating the federal government if you want to look at it that way. A movement to call a convention is currently underway. We just need more wide awake citizens to get involved in pushing their state legislators to make it happen.
+38
Exactly.....Points well made, and well taken...
Our Constitution is Rock Solid....
Our Founders also Warned us from the start:
We Get the Government We Deserve......
I think the same legal constraint exists in the French constitution : One indivisible republic.
In order for a region to secede from it, it requires a referendum (vote) of ALL the citizens of the republic, not just of the region that wants to secede.
That is a legal issue as all intial members of the original assembly of the republic signed in to that "indivisibility" clause; requiring a universal vote of all citizens.
One has to be careful with the constitution its not just "a piece of paper"...
In France's individuals rights are superceded by the rights of the majority or in France's case their own government.
wtf does that mean?
An election is about individual rights to vote. Elections are fair and honest in France.
A majority is what COMES out of those ballot boxes. And if the issue is about secession then that vote decides who is the majority. Governments/Congress then act to put that vote into law via the legislature.
No prior majority exists if the decision is to put the issue to popular vote. Governments don't decide based on previous majorities once there is a vote to decide the future.
"This ruthless undemocratic pretend leader jumps whatever height the EU Commission tells him to do betraying his own country to the rising dictatorship of Brussels."
Quite true. And the most dishonest thing about Rajoy which I have said before is that he calls himself a "Conservative", when in act he's plainly just another undemocratic big government socialist.
smacker, for you (and many others) nearly everybody isn't a conservative. including many conservatives on your own island
the Spanish People's Party has 800'000 members and some 10 million voters elected it. it sees itself as a party of conservatives, liberal conservatives, christian democrats, economic liberals and monarchists
but no, for you "it's all socialists". perhaps you need to think it through. perhaps you are not a conservative in the sense of our modern conservative mainstream
perhaps you should redifine what "used to be conservative, but isn't anymore" and perhaps you should even re-label it differently
take the iconic Maggie Tatcher. was she really a conservative? then her City of London "Big Bang" was for sure a liberal market-driven anti-regulation "whatever goes" reform
meanwhile, the whole european conservative mainstream is not anti-regulation. it opposes liberalization of banking. it is against this "whatever goes"
(from your comments, I find you have extreme liberal views coupled with a few conservative points, but that's me)
but calling conservatives "not conservatives" only because you are opposed to them... does not make you a conservative and does not make them "not-conservatives"
@Ghordius: that's some interesting comments there.
It may help you to understand my position on the political spectrum if I explain that to me, if a government (or political party) believes in such things as "limited government" "small government" "balanced budgets" "personal freedom" and "personal responsibility" etc etc, then they score quite low on the scale of size-of-government (0% to 100%).
That is what I support. Classic liberalism is a close match.
In Britain, I judge that we have more than twice the amount of government than we should have. 65%-70% instead of 25%-30%, depending on the specific topic.
But Rajoy and Cameron and virtually ALL European Conservatives, including the Republicans in the US, none of them actually support these aims. In some cases they have done so in the past, but nowadays they've all moved to the Left and quietly adopted the "big government" model. They all subscribe to ever more and ever larger government, ever increasing power and control of everything that goes on in society.
They are not Conservatives. They just parade under a false umbrella.
So what we now have across Europe and the US are two wings of the Left: Soft Left and Hard Left. Both are rapidly drifting towards a model of fascist totalitarianism.
Listen not to what they say, watch what they do.
Cameron may have been educated at Eton but he most certainly is a liberal Lefty not a true or traditional Conservative with any sort of belief in those virtues I listed above. Ditto most of his senior ministers (eg Theresa May, George Osborne). History tells us that many of the past Communists, Marxists and fascists were sons of wealthy people from the higher echelons of society who received world class university educations etc.
@smacker: I'll take that "interesting" as the damn best compliment I've received since long, and I'm very happy about this comment of yours
I fully agree: Small Government is a Classic Liberal demand. And yet you are a pearl beyond price by setting the "how much" question. Personally, I find that 33% should be the limit, but I can be quite tolerant of higher levels up to 50% if the quality is high (for state work, of course, so "quality" is perhaps a misnomer)
Where I don't agree with you is about Small Government being a tell-tale Conservative demand. Most Conservatives in Europe are nevertheless very much in favour of extensive agricultural subsidies, for example, and want to preserve the single-family farmer landscape wherever it still exists. They are not in love with Big State, but they do not want a complete liberal dismantling of existing structures, neither
in the UK (and even more strongly in the US) conservative and liberal issues are interwined. imho the Torys are conservative-liberals, the LibDem are liberal-socialists. And actually even your Labour should be seen imho as socialist-liberal. Britons see themselves as individualists and very much in favour of free trade, a tell-tale liberal demand
but on the Continent you do find "pure" Conservatives, with "pure" Conservative demands. I'll make one striking example: food. Some of my most conservative friends would prohibit all food import and exports, except for highly-taxed luxury items. They feel that A Nation Ought To Feed Itself. This discussion happened in Britain, which had Corn Laws (i.e. tariffs on import of cereals) by the conservative Whigs which then were repealed by liberal Torys after agitation by the liberal Anti-Corn-Laws League
in the same way, continental conservatives support the current banking system, but see it as a privilege granted by the state. so they also support strong restrictions and regulations, including even that new one of the Bonus Cap for bankers. on the other side you find liberals defending the "Big Bang" City of London, which is not anymore the conservative small merchant banker community that was before Maggie Tatcher liberalized the whole system
I fully agree on Champagne Socialists. Hell, even Julius Caesar was one, and the party was called "Populares"
But again, when it comes to the single issue of size of government, you find socialists pulling in direction of moar, liberals pulling in the direction of less or near nothing, and conservatives being the discerning party saying "what for is what matters, and it's way more important than size alone"
just as when it comes to the military, where liberals ask for a smallish volunteer army and conservatives are willing to pay more but ask for a (imho more serious) defense based on the draft, which is btw often a less offensive-oriented way, and curtails the typical liberal interventions in matters where the nation feels that they never heard of that country or that issue, and why are our boys going to fight for that, please explain more in detail, will you (not that there aren't reasons for conservatives to go to war, but they are often different)
and so I feel I have to defend (Continental) Conservatives from the accusation of not being conservatives because of liberal issues
"And yet you are a pearl beyond price by setting the "how much" question. Personally, I find that 33% should be the limit,"
Thankyou. I'd certainly settle for 33% if it were justified. Eventually, 25% is better.
Imagine, if other people saw government in the same %age way, it would help us all to obsolete the age-old Left-Right paradigm of politics. Because "how much government" is all that really matters. And with so much less government, big problems quickly become small problems.
as long as we agree that "how much gov" is a tell-tale smart liberal question, not a smart conservative one, which would tend to be "what kind of tax and debt levels does this entail?"
because the typical sneaky politician is absolutely capable to sell you a tax-reduction coupled with a debt-increase, and appeal so to all, and sell himself as liberal to the liberals and conservative to the conservatives, and even find so the money to appeal to socialists
Catalonians (and everyone else). Don't wait for "officials" to let you make decisions for you. Decide for yourself. Declare your individual independence... from the EU, from Spain, from Catalonia, and from every other pack of predators who claim to be some fictitious entity or other.
Just say no... then follow through. Ignore them. Evade them. Shrug.
The state of mankind is one gigantic fraudulent game of "Simon sez"... where every Simon is nothing more than various human predators with delusions of grandeur.
Humanity. What a farce!
they didn't stop the clock counting down to nov 9.
a lof off people protesting on that square today.
my spanish isnt good enough, but I guess they are not happy.
if I read it right 1 of the big problems is they need to spend 20%! less in 2015. after already big cuts in 2014.
on orders off europe ? who gets the high intrest on those papers from the 2008 crisis? wall street banks ?
Not to worry, every Spanish ruler does it and Rajoy is just following in the footsteps of Franco, who didn't like the Catalans either.
Constitutional courts, referenum, checks and balances... all illusory anyway.
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Just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own. All the power it has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another; there is no other source from which State power can be drawn. Therefore every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves society with so much less power; there is never, nor can there be, any strengthening of State power without a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power.
...
As long ago as 1794, James Madison called “the old trick of turning every contingency into a resource for accumulating force in the government”;
...
Indeed, it is by this means that the aim of the collectivists seems likeliest to be attained in this country; this aim being the complete extinction of social power through absorption by the State. Their fundamental doctrine was formulated and invested with a quasi-religious sanction by the idealist philosophers of the last century; and among peoples who have accepted it in terms as well as in fact, it is expressed in formulas almost identical with theirs. Thus, for example, when Hitler says that “the State dominates the nation because it alone represents it,” he is only putting into loose popular language the formula of Hegel, that “the State is the general substance, whereof individuals are but accidents.” Or, again, when Mussolini says, “Everything for the State; nothing outside the State; nothing against the State,” he is merely vulgarizing the doctrine of Fichte, that “the State is the superior power, ultimate and beyond appeal, absolutely independent.”
It may be in place to remark here the essential identity of the various extant forms of collectivism.
The superficial distinctions of Fascism, Bolshevism, Hitlerism, are the concern of journalists and publicists; the serious student (of civilization) sees in them only the one root-idea of a complete conversion of social power into State power. When Hitler and Mussolini invoke a kind of debased and hoodwinking mysticism to aid their acceleration of this process, the student at once recognizes his old friend, the formula of Hegel, that “the State incarnates the Divine Idea upon earth,” and he is not hoodwinked. The journalist and the impressionable traveller may make what they will of “the new religion of Bolshevism”; the student contents himself with remarking clearly the exact nature of the process which this inculcation is designed to sanction.
...
Mr. Jefferson wrote in 1823 that there was no danger he dreaded so much as “the consolidation [i.e., centralization] of our government by the noiseless and therefore unalarming instrumentality of the Supreme Court.” These words characterize every advance that we have made in State aggrandizement. Each one has been noiseless and therefore unalarming, especially to a people notoriously preoccupied, inattentive and incurious. Even the coup d’Etat of 1932 was noiseless and unalarming. In Russia, Italy, Germany, the coup d’Etat was violent and spectacular; it had to be; but here it was neither. Under covers of a nation-wide, State-managed mobilization of inane buffoonery and aimless commotion, it took place in so unspectacular a way that its true nature escaped notice, and even now is not generally understood.
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This regime was established by a coup d’Etat of a new and unusual kind, practicable only in a rich country. It was effected, not by violence, like Louis- Napoleon’s, or by terrorism, like Mussolini’s, but by purchase. It therefore presents what might be called an American variant of the coup d’Etat. Our national legislature was not suppressed by force of arms, like the French Assembly in 1851, but was bought out of its functions with public money; and as appeared most conspicuously in the elections of November, 1934, the consolidation of the coup d’Etat was effected by the same means; the corresponding functions in the smaller units were reduced under the personal control of the Executive. This is a most remarkable phenomenon; possibly nothing quite like it ever took
place; and its character and implications deserve the most careful attention.
...
A visitor from a poorer and thriftier country might have regarded Mr. Farley’s activities in the local campaigns of 1934 as striking or even spectacular, but they made no such impression on us. They seemed so familiar, so much the regular thing, that one heard little comment on them. Moreover, political habit led us to attribute whatever unfavourable comment we did hear, to interest; either partisan or monetary interest, or both. We put it down as the jaundiced judgment of persons with axes to grind; and naturally the regime did all it could to encourage this view.
(Another) thing to be observed is that certain formulas, certain arrangements of words, stand as an obstacle in the way of our perceiving how far the conversion of social power into State power has actually gone. The force of phrase and name distorts the identification of our own actual acceptances and acquiescences. We are accustomed to the rehearsal of certain poetic litanies, and provided their cadence be kept entire, we are indifferent to their correspondence with truth and fact. When Hegel’s doctrine of the State, for example, is restated in terms by Hitler and Mussolini, it is distinctly offensive to us, and we congratulate ourselves on our freedom from the “yoke of a dictator’s tyranny.” No American politician would dream of breaking in on our routine of litanies with anything of the kind. We may imagine, for example, the shock to popular sentiment that would ensue upon Mr. Roosevelt’s declaring publicly that “the State embraces everything, and nothing has value outside the State. The State creates right.” Yet an American politician, as long as he does not formulate that doctrine in set terms, may go further with it in a practical way than Mussolini has gone, and without trouble or question. Suppose Mr. Roosevelt should defend his regime by publicly reasserting Hegel’s dictum that “the State alone possesses rights, because it is the strongest.” One can hardly imagine that our public would get that down without a great deal of retching. Yet how far, really, is that doctrine alien to our public’s actual acquiescences? Surely not far.
The point is that in respect of the relation between the theory and the actual practice of public affairs, the American is the most unphilosophical of beings. The rationalization of conduct in general is most repugnant to him; he prefers to emotionalize it. He is indifferent to the theory of things, so long as he may rehearse his formulas; and so long as he can listen to the patter of his
litanies, no practical inconsistency disturbs him – indeed, he gives no evidence of even recognizing it as an inconsistency.
- excerpts from Albert Jay Nock's "Our Enemy, The State" (1935)
Replace "social" with "individual". The notion of "social" is just as much a fraud and racket as the notion of "state" or "collective". Once you accept the notion of "social", every individual loses.
I believe Nock just uses society (anything outside of the State) versus the State, and hence he calls it "social." I agree and get where you're coming from though.
He does mention that the State is about collectivism, which is not about individuals.
Also, society is made up of individuals and society itself has no mind and no opinion. There are no such statements as, "We have decided or voted for..." or that the corporation, union, group is as an individual. Not we, but rather speak for one's own self and not automatically lumping others in.
This one's easy. All the people in that area have to do is go on a six month work strike and intensely pressure the government for freebies and handouts. Their worst enemy is themselves. Just shut down! Be a burden, not a source of income for your corrupt government!
One sure way to stir up opposition in Catalonia is to tell them they are forbidden to express their views.
Bazza...my favourite nephew. ;-)
pols only respond to money, a gun to their head or pictures of dalliances with underage children. the public only has access to a gun and they try like hell to make that impossible.
Scary but true.
Google or youtube the 'Franklin Scandal' to see the way it works in the US...just like westminster...Europe and elsewhere.
It's the way the Nazionists maintain their status as puppeteers.
duh. now Martin Armstrong jumps on the Rajoy comment criticism bandwagon
this sentence is BS: "This ruthless undemocratic pretend leader jumps whatever height the EU Commission tells him to do betraying his own country to the rising dictatorship of Brussels."
any evidence? this "undemocratic pretend leader" is backed by a majority in the Spanish Parliament
see here: Rajoy_Cabinet. 187 elected parliamentarians out of 350 back his government. hardly an "undemocratic pretend leader"
and it's Rajoy telling the EU Commission what he wants, not the other way round, but of course Armstrong can't understand that. it sells so much better to talk about the "rising dictatorship of Brussels". Note that Brussels is mostly neutral to all those independence moves, with the exception of two key people in the EU Council: Cameron and Rajoy
Rajoy's point is actually very, very simple: he maintains that there is one People in Spain. so if there is a referendum about Spain and it's integrity, then it would have to be a Spanish referendum and not a Catalan region referendum. it's Democracy by The Whole People and Not Part of The People, for him
the same point has been made in Britain, without all this fuss. in the same way as you find Scots in England and non-Scots in Scotland, the undeniable Catalan Nation, with it's own language and culture, is not perfectly "captured" in modern Catalunya, as the Catalan independentists themselves point out
you'll find Spanish-speaking people in Catalunya and Catalan-speaking people all over Spain, in particular on the Balearic Isles. which for Rajoy are all Spaniards. note that by that, he is following the Spanish Constitution that mandates him to do so
note, for example, that for the Scottish vote on independence they had - after a discussion on this very point - to find a compromise. and so everybody in Scotland voted, which is not the same as all Scots voted, and left for example many Scots in London quite unhappy about that, including witnessing that non-Scots would vote. yet Britain is a special case, then the UK hasn't a written constitution
further, as a small reminder: Catalan Independentists want to get out of Spain, and stay in the EU. I know, it spoils the anti-EU stance of Armstrong and others, but that's a fact
Catalania was not attached by its own merrits to Spain and nobody was asking the catalan people, if they want or they do not want to become a part of Spain.
If Catalans take it in the reversed order now, it should be a problem for you???????
Fu*ck the EU, in this point I am with you.
This is the same story like in Ukraine, a drunken jewish syhilitic bastard, called Lenin, attached south and east to ukraine and then another bastard jew, Solomon Chruscov, attached Krim to Ua.
What happens now is the reverse order of those attachements. Ukraine did not exist, neither as a nation, nor as a state 100 years ago.
Basically up to Romanian Slovak border, is the land a russian land. The north is a polish land. As far east as Zitomir, this is all russia. And I hope it will return back to Russia.
Once more, Fu*k the EU and USA.
Jano, do you have any idea of Catalunya or it's history? Ever been there? Did you even read my comment? You are obviously missing all my points, I did not have at any point a problem with Catalans wanting independence. btw, on this blog you can write FUCK. Go sleep, you seem quite drunk
one thing, though: a Nation is not a State. there are some few Nation-States. But Spain is a state with several Nations, and at the same time there is a Spanish Nation and identity
The tax base of Catalunya happens to be outside Catalunya..i.e. all VAT paid by Spanish Consumers for buying Catalunya made goods and services.
be it as it may...it's all a comedy:
Arturo Mas: Mariano...I got a pretend I am calling a referendum
Rajoy: Arturo... I got a pretend I get the Courts to call it off.
Arturo: great! I got to pretend I want more money from the Central Revenue Box.
Rajoy: I got to pretend I dont give it to you...cuz there is no money anyways...it's all debt
Arturo: Then I got to pretend that this time around I am really calling a referendum!
The Sheer Arrogance of Rajoy and those who back him is illustrated by one simple fact:
Youth Unemployment in Spain....
Any Nation where the Majority of its Youth cannot find Gainful Employment, even if only as a 'Serf' .....
Needs New Leadership....
And the refusal to so act Guarantees that at some point Spain is going to get, but not peacefully......