All modern Nation States have quickly become repressive extortionist mafias claiming a 100% control of violence over their subjects.

Does anyone here care if there are 28 or 29 states in the EU?

Yes, for sure. The Catalans, for example, say their language and culture have been brutally repressed and their wallets robbed by the Spanish State for 300 years.

As if to prove the Catalans right the Rajoy Government has banned any Referendum. prosecuted anyone trying to organise it, refused to pay over legally agreed funds and uses its controlled Supreme Court to annul anything resembling Catalan rights and initiatives, from refugees to banning bullfighting.

Yet even the ‘left wing’ politicians, the socialists and Podemos in Madrid, anxious for a bigger slice of the coalition pie, are now supporting State repression against Catalonia. The exception being the SAT union in Andalusia which offers to provide ballot boxes for Catalans living there.

This week the PP government have upped the rhetoric a notch by announcing that the planned Referendum on Oct 1st is an attempted Coup D’Etat, thus preparing the ground for mass arrests, takeover of the police force, suspension of the Catalan Parliament and possible army intervention.

“Like a mad bull in a china shop” the far-right and ultra corrupt minority government continues its criminal campaign of clinging to power by whipping up obscene racist anti Catalan hysteria.

These are the politics of Hitler, or of the last Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic which provoked civil war and the breakup of his country.

Ironically it’s possible that the Catalan nationalists would lose the Referendum anyway, many of the country’s people are ‘immigrant’ families from Spain,(though their children are Catalan), and even some ethnic Catalans are fed up with nationalist politics, while supporting the language and culture..

Every detail and step towards the Referendum is immediately declared illegal by Madrid’s puppet courts, from declaring a date to buying the ballot boxes, and decisions need to be ‘signed by everyone’ so that they have to either prosecute and jail everyone or no one.

It seems like the authoritarian Central State hold all the cards. But this is not entirely so. Catalonia could commit financial suicide and bring Spain down with it. “It is desperately dependent on Spain for funding, and Spain is desperately dependent on revenues from Catalonia to service .. .. its own mega debts. Neither can keep these financial entanglements going without the other”.

“Without Catalonia’s (disputed) tax revenues, Spain would be bankrupt. As Columbia University Professor of Economics (and fervent Catalan separatist) Xavier Sala i Marti recently pointed in an interview on Catalan television, Spain would be unable to continue servicing its debt, which currently represents 100% of GDP”.

“The whole European system is surviving by ever bigger loans and ever more aggressive bond buying by the ECB, for example ‘Spain has issued €34.2 billion of bonds during the first six months of 2017, compared to the €30.7 billion it issued during the whole year 2016′.

Meanwhile, the situation with Catalonia’s separate home-grown debt gets more and more precarious. In recent days the value of debt issued by Catalonia has slumped to new lows”.

A default by Catalonia could upset the whole ‘rotten apple cart’ that the ‘European revival’ depends on.

“Catalonia issued most of this local debt, now €13 billion, before the debt crisis began biting really hard in Spain, in 2011-12. Catalonia’s finances went from terrible to disastrous.

Since the ECB doesn’t buy municipal or provincial bonds, it is essentially locked out of the credit markets.

Barcelona beach

Now Madrid is threatening to turn off the liquidity tap, destroying public services in Catalonia. But will it actually follow through? The Rajoy government already set a similar ultimatum last year and failed to make good on it.

It’s easy to see why: if the Finance Ministry decides to suspend payments to the region, it could trigger a liquidity crisis in a regional economy that accounts for 20% of Spain’s national economy, represents almost 25% of Spain’s vital tourist sector and is growing faster than any other region. It would also put further strain on Spain’s already out-of-control financing of its regions.

Even many moderate Catalan nationalists now believe that the only way to win meaningful concessions from Madrid is to push it to the edge of the abyss. The more radical elements want to go a step further, if necessary, pushing it over the edge.

Why not have Catalonia independent in the EU?

All modern Nation States have quickly become repressive extortionist mafias claiming a 100% control of violence over their subjects.

Yet within that context smaller states are clearly less dangerous and more likely to conserve local identity and language. Why not have 50 States in the EU instead of 28? Both Catalonia and Euskadi, for example, would perhaps be anti fascist, anti-fracking, anti nuclear and even anti NATO.

The countdown is underway.

On 6th September a crucial law in the Catalan Parliament will set off an irrevocable chain of events.

They may not have a chance again for another 300 years.

much info from http://wolfstreet.com/