http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/standoff-puts-catalonia-s-independence-plans-in-jeopardy-1.2435341
Also:
"The poor relationship between Madrid and Catalonia was underlined when Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy did not include Mas in his round of consultations with Spanish political leaders on jihadist terrorism on Wednesday. Catalonia is one of Spain’s biggest hubs of jihadist activity."
A jihadist cell linked to al-Qaeda was broken up as a result of the antiterrorist operation carried out in Catalonia in January 2003. Its members were in possession of mobile phones that were identical to those used a little more than a year later in the 11 March terrorist attacks in Madrid and had been altered in a similar way. Furthermore, those who had fled after 11-M to Iraq passed through Santa Coloma de Gramanet, a town in the province of Barcelona where members of the Moroccan Islamic Combattant Group (Groupe Islamique Combattant Marocain, GICM) were active. The latter were linked to facilitators of another jihadist organisation associated to al-Qaeda’s Iraqi branch, Ansar al-Islam (AI)."
http://www.realinstitutoelcano.org/wps/portal/web/rielcano_en/contenido?WCM_GLOBAL_CONTEXT=/elcano/elcano_in/zonas_in/international+terrorism/commentary-reinares-garciacalvo-catalonia-and-the-evolution-of-jihadist-terrorism-in-spain
conec posted:well, that`s a better assumption than the triumphalist interpretation that the fall of the USSR was a calculated American victory of the cold war. it was mainly Ukraine`s fault, for having voted for independence, which led to the Belavezha Accords. something like 93% of Ukrainian voters voted for independence.
it`s also a much better assumption than the Russian nationalist notion that the fall was due to a C.I.A plot
this is a weird false dichotomy. the US intentionally escalated military conflicts (e.g. by supporting the mujaheddin against the afghan government, on top of the more "classical" cold war notions) with (at least in part) the explicit goal of forcing the USSR to devote a prohibitive fraction of their resources to the arms race. the US economy was something like 4 times the size of the soviet economy so i don't see the problem in saying that the collapse of the soviet union was sharply contingent on the cold war interactions with the US.
RedMaistre posted:Pace certain liberal fatnasists, I don't think the United States, or North America in general for that matter, would be improved by either blue state secession or through encouraging Dixie/the Sun belt to leave.
how about europe tho?
there seems be a large shearing force on the eu between southern states in financial collapse and northern states seceding (finland will have a referendum on leaving the eu in 2016 and britain in 2017) and i dont know how well its dealing with the general rightward/fascist drift taking place rapidly.
what would it mean for people in europe and outside (vis-a-vis nato, trade agreements etc) for scenarios like a shrinking eu and extreme nationalist governments being the norm?
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/11/catalonia-declaration-independence-151118061832614.html
The body of the text than makes clear that the Catalonia separatist movement is no such delinking. But the article still makes the non-sequitur that neoliberalism legitimizes such a politics.
xipe posted:RedMaistre posted:Pace certain liberal fatnasists, I don't think the United States, or North America in general for that matter, would be improved by either blue state secession or through encouraging Dixie/the Sun belt to leave.
how about europe tho?
there seems be a large shearing force on the eu between southern states in financial collapse and northern states seceding (finland will have a referendum on leaving the eu in 2016 and britain in 2017) and i dont know how well its dealing with the general rightward/fascist drift taking place rapidly.
what would it mean for people in europe and outside (vis-a-vis nato, trade agreements etc) for scenarios like a shrinking eu and extreme nationalist governments being the norm?
It probably mean economic, political, and social disaster for Europe and those outside of it, not that disaster is avoidable if things continue on in their present form. For the dysfunctionality of the EU, malformed as it is by have been born under the shadow of the american military and cold war anti-communism,is itself one of the causes of the splintering.
I until recently had hopes that the anti-austeirty movements would lead the poorer states to break from the EU to form their own block. preferably allied with Russia, China, and other nations from the Second and Third Worlds. Instead of being locked into the Europeon ideology, they would seek out alliances that would help connect the West in concrete ways tot the larger Eurasian World Island, the resistance axis in the Middle East, and the people's movements of Latin America.
Now it seems clear, however, that the anti-austerity movements exists merely to add fuel to the centrifugal forces without being able to either stop neoliberal imiseration, American aggression, takfirism, or the fascists. If anything, their failures make those forces even more dangerous while discrediting the ideals of democracy and socialism in the process, which then in turn makes xenophobia and fanaticism that much more attractive as alternatives.
I would be happy to be proven wrong in this, however. Perhaps Uncle Jez can turn things around, but eh...its mostly just the dancing bears of (pseudo) social democracy as far as the eyes can see.
Edited by RedMaistre ()
Panopticon posted:for every separatist movement you oppose, i'll support two
conec posted:nein. the bush administration tried to save gorbachev and the ussr out of fear that a balkanized civil war would break out, or, more specifically a "yugoslavia with nukes”. even the CIA had no idea that the USSR would collapse, and the white house only found itself responding to the rapid unfolding of events. bush even urged the ukrainians to stick with gorbachev, saying that "freedom is not the same as independence". the bush administation also enjoyed what it viewed as a productive and friendly relationship with gorbachev - they co-sponsored "israeli-palestinian peace talks", signed a nuclear disarmament agreement, worked together on glasnost and perestroika. bush and gorbachev were even personal friends - the state department had no intention of bringing him down after what he had done for american/soviet relations
none of this, even if most of it is true to a great extent, doesn't change the fact that the capacity of the USSR to sustain itself was undermined as a conscious policy. instability of the USSR, at the very least, was consciously aimed for. just because they didn't know exactly how it was going to happen doesn't mean they weren't working very hard for it to happen.
c_man posted:conec posted:
nein. the bush administration tried to save gorbachev and the ussr out of fear that a balkanized civil war would break out, or, more specifically a "yugoslavia with nukes”. even the CIA had no idea that the USSR would collapse, and the white house only found itself responding to the rapid unfolding of events. bush even urged the ukrainians to stick with gorbachev, saying that "freedom is not the same as independence". the bush administation also enjoyed what it viewed as a productive and friendly relationship with gorbachev - they co-sponsored "israeli-palestinian peace talks", signed a nuclear disarmament agreement, worked together on glasnost and perestroika. bush and gorbachev were even personal friends - the state department had no intention of bringing him down after what he had done for american/soviet relations
none of this, even if most of it is true to a great extent, doesn't change the fact that the capacity of the USSR to sustain itself was undermined as a conscious policy. instability of the USSR, at the very least, was consciously aimed for. just because they didn't know exactly how it was going to happen doesn't mean they weren't working very hard for it to happen.
Well they should have planned better. You have a system that potentially lets you look at any variable and so on, and yet you fail to even sustain yourself and prevent basic ecological mishandling, etc. As soon as the Soviet project floundered, their hanger-ons like Cuba also went flailing desperately - no wonder Fidel stated that his biggest mistake was following the USSR and not staying non-aligned like he was advised by several people.
The Soviets had a couple thousand people (or so) working for their planning apparatus, and sure they achieved a lot that isn't really acknowledged nowadays and it's proven that those countries are worse off without it, but... it clearly wasn't enough. There were many things deeply wrong with the socialist economy that can't be explained away as American aggression. I'm also skeptical that the answer to these planning problems today would be "more computers!"
Edited by COINTELBRO ()
COINTELBRO posted:There were many things deeply wrong with the socialist economy that can't be explained away as American aggression. I'm also skeptical that the answer to these planning problems today would be "more computers!"
i dont think ive heard anyone argue the solution to the soviet economic problem is more computers, at least not the revisionist historians that cover the economy. regardless, the party-bound socialist answer is to view a variety of possible socialist economies as possible. policy-wise china was wedged away from the ussr but its undeniable that it still exists, same with cuba and vietnam.
COINTELBRO posted:There were many things deeply wrong with the socialist economy that can't be explained away as American aggression. I'm also skeptical that the answer to these planning problems today would be "more computers!"
what do you think those problems were, and why do you think more advanced computing/networking wouldn't help?
Urbandale posted:i dont think ive heard anyone argue the solution to the soviet economic problem is more computers
*raises paw*
Urbandale posted:COINTELBRO posted:There were many things deeply wrong with the socialist economy that can't be explained away as American aggression. I'm also skeptical that the answer to these planning problems today would be "more computers!"
i dont think ive heard anyone argue the solution to the soviet economic problem is more computers, at least not the revisionist historians that cover the economy.
I know that is one of the suggestions put forward by the non-socialist but sympathetic cultural historican Francis Spufford in Red Plenty who suggests at certain points that the greater cybernetic planning proposed by Kantorovich really could have enabled socialist planning to thrive.
COINTELBRO posted:Well they should have planned better
this is a joke right?
Makeshift_Swahili posted:feels like even having something as simple as widespread use of barcodes would help a lot. the US army was one of the first to adopt them in the early 80s iirc. gonna assume they never had them in the ussr?
barcodes are mostly a labor-saving thing, its perfectly possible to keep close track of inventory if you have people who are nonoverworked enough to give a fuck
Red_Canadian posted:One thing that might be slightly liberal of me, and is definitely also a critique of Western liberalism, is how nobody gives credit to the Soviet Leadership for not bloodily maintaining their position during the break-up, despite their "unpopularity" (debatable). Sure, part of it was they probably figured under capitalism they'd be even more powerful, but I like to think the middle-level guys were motivated by ideology saying they represent the working class, saw huge crowds, and said fine, if you want capitalism so bad, we won't resist. Hindsight tells us that those crowds are worse off now.
There is some truth to this. IR theorists, who's sole purpose is to make American aggression appear as natural to humanity or the international system, could not possibly imagine the peaceful breakup of the USSR because they were projecting from the inevitable nuclear war that will result from a truly declining America. Of course the peaceful breakup didn't affect IR theory at all, it simply chose to ignore reality for neo-neo-realism. The breakup was a tragedy of course but we are lucky the Soviet system was capable of breaking up peacefully unlike past capitalist empires who by nature go down with a world war. If the USSR really had been 'state capitalism' we would probably all be dead.
Urbandale posted:i dont think ive heard anyone argue the solution to the soviet economic problem is more computers,
Well here is an article by a socialist theorist who thinks "that linear programming could now be applied to detailed planning at the whole economy level"
http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/standalonearticle.pdf
His argument is very detailed and he cites others who had the same idea for communist economy.
Urbandale posted:regardless, the party-bound socialist answer is to view a variety of possible socialist economies as possible. policy-wise china was wedged away from the ussr but its undeniable that it still exists, same with cuba and vietnam.
This is how they ended up with more stock traders than Communist Party members in China. You're basically proposing 'financial popular frontism', absolutely hilarious and opportunistic 
solzhesnitchin posted:what do you think those problems were, and why do you think more advanced computing/networking wouldn't help?
Factories cheating their planned targets, which resulted in shortages. A system unresponsive to consumer demand, so you ended up with a surplus of unwanted, dated goods.
Products were kind of ugly and rugged-looking compared to the sexy products of capitalism dipped in imperialist blood, but I've read that Soviet machinery was easier to fix and less disposable. Also if you're a perfect Marxist robot you don't care about aesthetics and you're satisfied just by breathing the air of full communism. 
The reason I'm skeptical about Silicon Valley Communism is that nowadays it would mean to get Google to side with Lenin or something, I'm not sure how an emergent communist country today could summon the capacity and expertise to plan the whole economy around the latest computer algorithms,
I keep thinking about how Syriza only had 5 people in their "war room" with only one being an IT guy and they had no idea how to begin taking over the banking system like V pompously announced in the press. What a farce
c_man posted:in case it's not: just having some sort of planning doesn't mean you have precise access to every possible "variable" related to social production. it means you can try to allocate your resources in a directed way. your actions are strongly constrained by your environment, and increasing military encroachment and economic and political stress induced, as i said before, as a direct policy of the US, put very strong constraints on how resources can be allocated. these tensions influence things that are not reducible to industrial resource allocation like the actions of people with lots of influence who are put under pressure by these situations.
You make Soviet management sound like an utterly fragile thing that could be undermined by the CIA using telepathy or something. Soviet management was very efficient up to a point until the end, when GOSPLAN was removed in the early 90s the national output fell by 40% or more and they spent a decade in poverty and chaos directly because of it (not just because of the shock therapy). The troubles of management like the shortages I mentioned had nothing to do with insidious U.S. strategies and everything to do with limitations built into GOSPLAN itself. If you read that article up there it shows how some Soviet & non-Soviet economists thought of specifying complex economy-wide orders in their input-output analyses, even bypassing the price system entirely and just working with natural physical units... Sounds way more ambitious and less vague than "trying to allocate your resources in a directed way".
Edited by COINTELBRO ()
Urbandale posted:china was wedged away from the ussr but its undeniable that it still exists, same with cuba and vietnam.
"china: at least it still exists."
great slogan for communism.
COINTELBRO posted:Urbandale posted:i dont think ive heard anyone argue the solution to the soviet economic problem is more computers,
Well here is an article by a socialist theorist who thinks "that linear programming could now be applied to detailed planning at the whole economy level"
http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/standalonearticle.pdf
His argument is very detailed and he cites others who had the same idea for communist economy.
this doesnt really address my point. i know of no socialist who says computers solve for 'soviet planning problems', despite things like chile's cybersyn program and things like that. this technosocialist thing you were yelling about before doesnt exist as an organized group or even common thread of argument among socialists.
COINTELBRO posted:Urbandale posted:regardless, the party-bound socialist answer is to view a variety of possible socialist economies as possible. policy-wise china was wedged away from the ussr but its undeniable that it still exists, same with cuba and vietnam.
This is how they ended up with more stock traders than Communist Party members in China. You're basically proposing 'financial popular frontism', absolutely hilarious and opportunistic
this set of sentences doesnt actually make an argument but im going to humor you anyway for some reason. id like to know what your proposed impact is to this statement, what the specific link between my statement and 'financial popular frontism' is, what that phrase is even supposed to mean, how you know how many stock traders vietnam and/or cuba have, and why its a bad thing that these two countries might have more people working in a specific industry than there are members of the CPC.
Edited by Urbandale ()
getfiscal posted:Urbandale posted:china was wedged away from the ussr but its undeniable that it still exists, same with cuba and vietnam.
"china: at least it still exists."
great slogan for communism.
my point is that people seem to be talking as if socialist planning is dead because the USSR doesnt exist anymore. its pretty stupid as a line of argument because planning is still a thing that socialist countries do today
Edited by Urbandale ()
COINTELBRO posted:
counterpoint, communist aesthetics are real and own my jones.
Urbandale posted:getfiscal posted:
Urbandale posted:
china was wedged away from the ussr but its undeniable that it still exists, same with cuba and vietnam.
"china: at least it still exists."
great slogan for communism.
my point is that people seem to be talking as if socialist planning is dead because the USSR doesnt exist anymore. its pretty stupid as a line of argument because planning is still a thing that socialist countries do today
central planning is still a thing that all capitalist countries do in various ways. it's pretty silly to say that it is somehow impossible to implement because the economic calculation problem is too difficult and must be left to the magical invisible hand. that's basically loony tunes austrian goldbug talk, but for whatever reason, contemporary marxists seem to beleive in the efficiency of the free market and the existence of pure competition way, way more strongly than 90% of capitalist economists do.
consumer capitalism is demand-side planning: future demand is generated through PR and marketing and on a large enough scale is essentially predictable (from consumer electronics to clothes to music etc). work is directed to an endless renewing cycle of consumer trend items. desire for a better life is sublimated into desire for quantifiable objects, which as we know is the absolute heart of how the machine works, but on top of that the macro-scale predictability of generating demand is also absolutely required.
not to mention all the extensive supply planning and collaboration that happens in the sectors that capitalist states actually care about, like arms and energy...
COINTELBRO posted:You make Soviet management sound like an utterly fragile thing that could be undermined by the CIA using telepathy or something. Soviet management was very efficient up to a point until the end, when GOSPLAN was removed in the early 90s the national output fell by 40% or more and they spent a decade in poverty and chaos directly because of it (not just because of the shock therapy). The troubles of management like the shortages I mentioned had nothing to do with insidious U.S. strategies and everything to do with limitations built into GOSPLAN itself. If you read that article up there it shows how some Soviet & non-Soviet economists thought of specifying complex economy-wide orders in their input-output analyses, even bypassing the price system entirely and just working with natural physical units... Sounds way more ambitious and less vague than "trying to allocate your resources in a directed way".
if you think "huge global arms race" and "men who stare at goats" have anything like the same level of relevance to the material operation of an economy you need to go back several hundred steps and start again.
http://www.catalannewsagency.com/politics/item/swiss-ambassador-to-spain-considers-catalan-independence-viable