Well, Milei's dollarization scheme, as far as I know, is about allowing the coexistence of the peso and the dollar, and letting the market (the people) decide which one they prefer. However, if I'm not wrong, bank deposits will immediately be dollarized, so they will need USD, and all assets belonging to the Central Bank will be sold... that includes its yuan reserves...
Argentinians hold an estimated 200 billion USD in cash, in literal USD dollar bills that they hoard. And a similar number is estimated to be held overseas. Perhaps he has a plan to allow or make attractive to all those Argentinian holders of USD, especially those overseas, to bring the USD in.
#Milei has said in the past that he sees crypto as a positive phenomenon because it represents a return of money creation to private hands. So it is understood that he will at least take a hands-off stance on crypto.
More specifically about Bitcoin, he has talked about it from an economic point of view. Basically, he sees the main merit of Bitcoin in its being non-confiscable and permissionless, and having a predetermined issuance schedule and finite supply.
I have said in the past (here on the Nostr I think) that the dollarization of such a significant economy like #Argentina is actually detrimental to Bitcoin adoption, because it extends a massive oxygen line to the role of the USD as world reserve currency.
That's why just hours after Milei's victory China has already threatened to stop allowing the convertibility of the peso vs the yuan (which is 50% of Argentina's current reserves).
I have been a critical supporter of Milei for years, and I have family and friends in Argentina and speak and understand Spanish natively. So I'm consider myself relatively well informed about the reality of Latin America and Spain, and the specificity of their very new, nascent "libertarian" movement.
There is a lot of what in political science is called "path dependence", which we can summarize as "historical baggage" dragging down and to a certain extent perverting the libertarian movement in Spanish speaking countries.
Lots of ultra-right wing fascists and ultra-religious fundamentalists trying to coopt the label, the rhetoric and the votes.
This is why I have been critical of Milei, because he is a libertarian, but travels with some seriously authoritarian people, which is a dangerous contradiction and gives easy ammunition for demagoguery to the enemies of libertarian ideas. nostr:note10gzknppsj76wf3gsluknum0280m3z6vycv6pa0y0420syr0sfwhs0wf7r9
I have noticed this for a while now. Also when a clip is running and you click on another one or just try to click away, it keeps running for a few seconds.
A while ago I gave my opinion about #Milei and some of his opinions and his joint platform with right wing and conservative elements, and how I think those are incompatible with being pro-freedom (and I still do). I think was nuanced and reasoned enough, and it's there for everyone to read.
I also said that given the critical situation in #Argentina clearly Milei was the only sane vote anyone could choose - and so I've been telling my family and friends there that they had to vote for him, regardless.
So even those it's likely that the ultra elements in his platforms will soon come to collect and Liberty will suffer for it in some issues, the potential net gains are massive. I always say that freedom is not fractional, though, and once again I (approximately) quote Xavier Sala i Martin here: Libertarianism is when the State doesn't put its hand in your pocket -- or on your crotch.
My bitcoin allocation is I am not getting a State-funded retirement pension and the State has turned private retirement plans a scam that doesn't even allow you to save on taxes - just defer them and pay up retroactively precisely when you need the money.
Also, I don't have access to the enormous downpayments required to get a housing loan, because I pay an enormous rent. All other yield-producing assets are equally out of reach due to extreme market inflation caused but the absurdly large generational gap that the toxic blend of socialism and vote-based government election causes, plus the fiat steroids.
So while Bitcoin is useless as a yield-producing asset, because it doesn't do anything or have any utility per se, it does provide 1. perfect store of wealth for whatever savings I'm still able to put together despite everything, 2. it still has a couple pf cycles in it before it stops appreciating against fiat at double digit yearly rates, which makes up for point 1, at least for the next decade, so it's actually a very good deal nostr:note1w2ct8ghgve33e200d4kttxy5p5pd7hun5r42wnkuylawvnj72vpsjyq42j
I ended up in the field I have always worked in by pure chance.
I did have a "plan" from high school, which was getting the fuck out of my country as soon as possible, given the lack of decent prospects.
To do that, I focused on learning languages, and on getting practical instrumental tools that would allow me to emigrate. Namely a college degree - ANY college degree.
Got a grant to study abroad, and never looked back. Did a couple of random things while studying but then I got a job in which my combination of languages was useful and I came to like it, and I've been able to build a successful international career out of it.
When changing jobs, I have operated similarly. I don't care so much about what it is, but I have unbreakable principles in terms of what I want and I just never compromise or negotiate.
I have passed on tens of offers, even spending very long months jobless sometimes, under huge amounts of pressure from family and friends to "just stop being picky and a prick". Never compromised though, and never took a job that was a downgrade and didn't help me advance towards my goal to retire at at age 50.
So I would tell you, depending on what age you are:
1. Have a clear concept of what you want from your career and the function your jobs will have for you. Mine is purely getting as much money as possible to live comfortably, invest and retire early. Other people want to self-realize through work and other things. That's just not me.
2. Understand the practical steps to get the job. I knew I needed a college degree, but not a difficult/technical one. I went and got it, and moved on.
3. Be unbreakable and do not give in, ever, to anyone who offers you or pressures you into taking one step back in your goals. Conversely, be ruthless and unreasonable in stating your conditions and always overshoot towards your goals, even if you think "it's too much, they won't give it to me". They will.
These two dudes can't count. 
I'm seeing a lot of absolute TRASH takes about the fascist demonstrations in Spain, and about Spain in general here these days, too often coming from the same corners of the net, and I have decided to stop dignifying them with one by one replies, since in the end they all come from the same salaried propaganda hive mind which, again, I will not even mention. So here's my position about #Spain #Pedro_Sánchez and #Catalonia, for future reference.
"The demonstrations in Spain these days, like the one that Tucker Carlson just attended, are a show by the common Spanish people sick and tired of the WEF-sponsored, socialist, globalist New World Order. They're freedom fighters spontaneously demonstrating to save democracy in Spain and the West!"
If you're not Spanish, the take above, is an uneducated, misled, manipulated opinion and before simply regurgitating random shit you get from the usual State-sponsored propaganda outlets, you should just shut the fuck up, read extensively on the issue of the plead of the Catalans, and try to be less gullible next time and in general.
If you're Spanish, well, you're Spanish obviously, and I just feel sorry for you. Yours is simply the run-of-the-mill result of the ultra nationalist, supremacist, anti-Catalan xenophobic, fascist drivel that you've been intravenously fed and brainwashed with by the elites of your country, ever since you were born. So, being benevolent, I choose to think that you just can't help but be a fascist propaganda-regurgitating drone head of sheeple unwittingly working for the elites you say you hate so much. I don't think I can save you - I don't think I want to either - so the rest is not for you, but for the neurologically normal:
Spain is a semi-democratic regime at best. After 40 years of a literal fascist military dictatorship, it never cleaned up any of its institutions. The military was left intact (and staged another coup d'etat just 4 years after the first "democratic" elections), the king that Franco himself named his heir, completely bypassing even the monarchy's own inheritance rules, was left in place. Since Franco's coup d'etat and military takeover in 1939, Catalonia's democratically elected president had been in exile in France. In 1940, Franco's Nazi allies (specifically the Gestapo) captured him and returned him to Spain, where he was executed by firing squad without a (real) trial, even though the war was over. 40 years later, when the first "democratic" elections to elect the Spanish parliament to write the new post-Franco constitution were held, the party to which the executed Catalan president belonged was banned, to preclude it from influencing the constitutional convention and the position of the Catalan people. But especially and foremost, the so called judiciary power put in place by the Hitler-allied fascist regime was kept intact, its whole structure, institutions and the very people that sat there signing death penalties for political opponents from Franco's regime remained in place and have inevitably perverted Spain's pseudo democratic regime for the past 50 years now.
Catalonia's current plead stems from a massive campaign of lawfare, the politically motivated abuse of judiciary power to bypass democratic procedure, sustained for 5 decades. Systematically all Spanish governments have engaged in it in order to suppress Catalonia's wish for a widening of its limited pseudo-devolved powers and self-rule (because no powers in Spain are truly "devolved" as the word means in the UK, for instance, even less do regions have "self-rule" as it means in a federal country like the US).
Not only that, but even the original devolution laws passed by the Catalan Parliament and ratified by the Spanish Parliament itself in 1980, based on the Spanish constitution itself, as well as basically all other subsequent laws passed by the Catalan Parliament, regardless of its contents (for instance, even a regulation about having Catalonia's flag on car plates was challenged and nullified) were consistently and relentlessly eroded, neutralized, or simply nullified, court challenge after court challenge, Spanish government decree, after Spanish government decree, for 3 decades, prompted by all Spanish parties, when they were in power and when they weren't.
This culminated when after 30 years of trying to "play by the rules", rigged as they were, in 2006 the Catalan Parliament passed a proposal for a new improved devolution law with 120 votes vs 15 (out of 135). So this wasn't just a "pro-independence" move. Pro-federalist Spanish nationalist parties like the Socialist and the Communist parties voted for it.
The text was sent to the Spanish Parliament , who completely defaced it and re-wrote it before passing the final text and calling for a ratification referendum in Catalonia. The complete re-write was so egregious that pro-independence parties and activists actively promoted a vote AGAINST the law, and as a result, there was a significantly low turnover for the Spanish government-organized referendum. The YES carried the vote, but only with a minority of the people explicitly in favor.
I reiterate the point: this wasn't just a law passed by Catalonia's Parliament, but the reviewed and amended version that the Spanish Parliament passed, which later on the Catalan people ratified in a referendum organized by the Spanish government itself, not by the Catalan government.
None of that stopped the Spanish Francoist right, conniving with its militant judiciary allies, from immediately launching a barrage of court challenges. The law was automatically suspended while the Spanish constitutional court deliberated on it -- which it did for FOUR YEARS during which the Catalan government was left without legal recourse and operating without the new devolution law and under the heavily eroded and neutralized old one.
As expected, the verdict was a systematic, point by point nullification or "reinterpretation" of every single sentence and provision of the new devolution law, which was demolished and left without practical effect. Not only that, but they seized the opportunity to even "reinterpret" retroactively many principles that affected and changed their own established precedent, to further erode and destroy as much as they could of what would be left of Catalonia's autonomy.
After this charade, which was effectively a lawfare-enabled coup d'etat by the Spanish right and its militant allies in the judiciary to bypass democratic process, a clamor arouse among a large majority of Catalans, including pro-federalist, non-pro independence Catalans many of which finally gave up on Spain, publicly regretted supporting the YES vote, and turned pro-independence.
From that moment onward, a consistent pro-independence majority kept winning elections in Catalonia , and the push became for a democratic, legally organized, independence referendum, just like there had been more than once in Quebec and was being organized in Scotland shortly after. Time after time the Spanish judiciary and all parts of the Spanish government rejected the idea of simply letting Catalans vote, and went after whoever tried to organize one by all means necessary short of outright assassination (which in the context of Spanish history I guess was an improvement). Huge propaganda campaigns and dirty play at the EU-institutional level, for instance, of course at the expense of the Catalan tax payer, were put in place by the Spanish institutions, although that, as bad as it is, was not even the key problem compared to the sheer abhorrence of suppressing people's voice.
Between 2009 and 2011, sick and tired of the blockade, in which actually even pro-independence parties who still insisted on "the need to play by the rules" participated, civilian organizations successfully held a wave of local-level referenda in which the independence vote overwhelmingly won. This required the non-active resistance of each local government to happen, so in many towns and cities the polls couldn't be held and the results could not be taken as a binding mandate. I will not even go to the detail of the wave of Spanish ultra nationalist terror that was unleashed, with government agents engaging in illegal espionage, dirty war tactics, media propaganda, smears, fabricated cases, and of course even physical violence by organized groups which, by the way, are abundantly represented in the original posts depicting the current fascist demonstrations in Spain as "anti-WEF" and even more ludicrously "pro-freedom". They're as much "freedom fighters" as the Taliban were when the CIA was funding them.
Finally, after a couple of hotly debated elections in which mainstream Catalan parties become more unambiguously pro-independence, in 2014 Catalonia elected a government with the clear, unequivocal mandate to organize and carry out an independence referendum, regardless of the opinion of the Spanish government. Many said, and keep saying (for instance, I do) that the members of the Catalan government never had the true intention to execute the mandate. The Spanish government of the Partido Popular, for sure, decided as well that it was a bluff. But finally, in 2017, with lots of difficulties and barely skirting the judiciary war, the Spanish secret service dirty war, the Spanish diplomacy's dirty war, the Spanish media's dirty war... a true nation-wide referendum was held in Catalonia in which a significant turnover with an overwhelming majority resulted in a YES.
At this point, I contend that the Catalan government should have just pushed forward with the mandate all be damned, but they just didn't. This was caused by their probable lack of initial sincerity about what they would do if the YES won, but the actual underlying reason, which is more generally the real historical reason why Catalans do not seem so openly keen about independence, was simply the very real threat of military intervention by the Spanish government, who had set the precedent just the day before with the display of violence that the Spanish paramilitary police had unleashed to suppress the voting.
SWAT teams were brought over from all over Spain, even leaving key border areas devoid of protection, and camped in Barcelona during the weeks before the referendum. On the day in question, the Spanish judges ordered Catalan police (not Spanish) to confiscate and break ballots and to close voting stations. Which they did, without resorting to violence and without any opposition by voters or organizers. That wasn't enough though because people were undeterred and kept voting, and the Spanish public and government wanted blood, so finally they sent the paramilitary police to physically suppress the event. Which they promptly did. They indiscriminately beat up women, children, the elderly and whoever got in their way (just look up videos on Youtube, there was ample international coverage by all major media outlets), arresting elected officials, etc. It's completely necessary to point out that the number of violent acts by pro-independence groups and citizens simply trying to vote was ZERO. Again, this is all perfectly documented in thousands of video and live reports by non-Catalan, non-Spanish sources who were there those days.
The fallout of the Catalan government's failure to push forward was that half the government had to flee to exile, the half that didn't was put in jail for several years and are currently banned from being elected again, but most egregiously thousands of anonymous citizens who dared vote that day or help organize the referendum had been arrested, prosecuted, financially ruined and even put in jail, clearly to "give example" collectively to all Catalans. As a reward for his service in confiscating and break ballots without breaking bones and heads in the process, the Catalan Police top chief was fired and prosecuted by Spanish judges. Catalan autonomy was formally suspended, completely this time, and direct rule was established. The democratically elected government and Parliament were disbanded and irregular and illegal elections in Catalonia were organized.
Once again, a significant faction within the "pro-independence" camp went back to "playing by the rules" and chose to participate in the illegal elections, thus legitimizing them, and the current state of things. The political gridlock however continued, with half the government in prison and the legitimate president still stuck in exile in Belgium. This time however, the Spanish government hasn't find any Nazi allies in Europe to kidnap and return the president to them, and every single time they have asked Belgium, Germany and other European countries, as well as the EU courts, to do it, they have refused, given the blatant political nature of the prosecution and the null merit on real criminal grounds -- if there's a silver lining to being a EU member is that to a certain extent the fascist regime in Spain doesn't have the legal right to keep political though in their criminal code, so they can't legally prove any reason to extradite the president.
In this context, the current Spanish government, after some bad luck with parliamentary arithmetic, has found itself in need of the votes of the president's party in order to get their prime minister elected again. The price for those votes is an amnesty law that puts an end to the lawfare campaign against Catalan politicians, and most importantly, anonymous citizen victims of the fascist Spanish judiciary, related to the events explained above. The text is willingly broad because everybody is aware that the militant fascist judiciary is simply not going to roll over, and they will try to bypass the law and keep prosecuting political opponents.
This is what literal Nazis, Franco supporters, ultra nationalist fanatics are protesting against these days in Spain. For the last several years, they have taken care to coopt the "anti-globalist" rhetoric and to build ties with international organizations, media and political agents. They are the poisonous Trojan Horse in the movement, and they're not alone, as we know, with other crazy nutjobs in the most extreme right in several European countries that I'm not going to bring up now. Not only that, but ultra nationalism, Spanish supremacism, is indeed the drug of choice of the elites and the globalists in Spain to keep the sheeple occupied and docile, while they advance their agenda. Globalism advances in different ways in every country, it adapts to the specificity of each society. That's why from outside people like Tucker Carlson who know jack shit about Spain's historical development, what in political science is called "path dependence", but see an appearance of a pattern they superficially recognize as their own, end up being confused and fooled into supporting those who in the end are working against the interests they think they support.
All this said, I clarify: Catalonia's elites ARE ALSO GLOBALIST. It can't be otherwise, obviously! But nationalism is NOT the delivery method of choice of the globalist drug in Catalonia. Catalan nationalist, as in a truly particularist, antiglobalist ideology is dead, if it ever even existed in Catalonia in recent times. On the contrary, the current Catalan elites have very meticulously articulated a thoroughly anti-nationalist "pro-self rule" movement which only due to the radical intolerance and visceral totalitarianism of Spanish fascists has necessarily evolved into a pro-Catalan State movement. In Catalonia, being a much more left-leaning society than Spain, globalism is a lot more mainstream and easily recognizable: ESG, progressivism, "diversity", etc. are the delivery methods, and I am sure an independent Catalan State, despite being a net positive for Catalans, would also be a very active "model child" of the WEF regime. It does not change the inherent justice of the self-determination of the Catalan NATION.
The bottom line is, not only one can be anti-WEF, anti-globalism, anti-socialist while also being anti-fascist and anti-authoritarian, but one MUST be so. We must reject the lies and the propaganda of elements like Spain's Vox party who are just using the anti-globalization movement and label to leech off it, get exposure, relationships and funding, and to whitewash the absolutely revolting, disgusting, immoral NAZI TRASH that they and their supporters are.
In short: FUCK SPAIN and VISCA CATALUNYA LLIURE motherfuckers.
I'm seeing a lot of absolute TRASH takes about the fascist demonstrations in Spain, and about Spain in general here these days, too often coming from the same corners of the net, and I have decided to stop dignifying them with one by one replies, since in the end they all come from the same salaried propaganda hive mind which, again, I will not even mention. So here's my position about #Spain #Pedro_Sánchez and #Catalonia, for future reference.
"The demonstrations in Spain these days, like the one that Tucker Carlson just attended, are a show by the common Spanish people sick and tired of the WEF-sponsored, socialist, globalist New World Order. They're freedom fighters spontaneously demonstrating to save democracy in Spain and the West!"
If you're not Spanish, the take above, is an uneducated, misled, manipulated opinion and before simply regurgitating random shit you get from the usual State-sponsored propaganda outlets, you should just shut the fuck up, read extensively on the issue of the plead of the Catalans, and try to be less gullible next time and in general.
If you're Spanish, well, you're Spanish obviously, and I just feel sorry for you. Yours is simply the run-of-the-mill result of the ultra nationalist, supremacist, anti-Catalan xenophobic, fascist drivel that you've been intravenously fed and brainwashed with by the elites of your country, ever since you were born. So, being benevolent, I choose to think that you just can't help but be a fascist propaganda-regurgitating drone head of sheeple unwittingly working for the elites you say you hate so much. I don't think I can save you - I don't think I want to either - so the rest is not for you, but for the neurologically normal:
Spain is a semi-democratic regime at best. After 40 years of a literal fascist military dictatorship, it never cleaned up any of its institutions. The military was left intact (and staged another coup d'etat just 4 years after the first "democratic" elections), the king that Franco himself named his heir, completely bypassing even the monarchy's own inheritance rules, was left in place. Since Franco's coup d'etat and military takeover in 1939, Catalonia's democratically elected president had been in exile in France. In 1940, Franco's Nazi allies (specifically the Gestapo) captured him and returned him to Spain, where he was executed by firing squad without a (real) trial, even though the war was over. 40 years later, when the first "democratic" elections to elect the Spanish parliament to write the new post-Franco constitution were held, the party to which the executed Catalan president belonged was banned, to preclude it from influencing the constitutional convention and the position of the Catalan people. But especially and foremost, the so called judiciary power put in place by the Hitler-allied fascist regime was kept intact, its whole structure, institutions and the very people that sat there signing death penalties for political opponents from Franco's regime remained in place and have inevitably perverted Spain's pseudo democratic regime for the past 50 years now.
Catalonia's current plead stems from a massive campaign of lawfare, the politically motivated abuse of judiciary power to bypass democratic procedure, sustained for 5 decades. Systematically all Spanish governments have engaged in it in order to suppress Catalonia's wish for a widening of its limited pseudo-devolved powers and self-rule (because no powers in Spain are truly "devolved" as the word means in the UK, for instance, even less do regions have "self-rule" as it means in a federal country like the US).
Not only that, but even the original devolution laws passed by the Catalan Parliament and ratified by the Spanish Parliament itself in 1980, based on the Spanish constitution itself, as well as basically all other subsequent laws passed by the Catalan Parliament, regardless of its contents (for instance, even a regulation about having Catalonia's flag on car plates was challenged and nullified) were consistently and relentlessly eroded, neutralized, or simply nullified, court challenge after court challenge, Spanish government decree, after Spanish government decree, for 3 decades, prompted by all Spanish parties, when they were in power and when they weren't.
This culminated when after 30 years of trying to "play by the rules", rigged as they were, in 2006 the Catalan Parliament passed a proposal for a new improved devolution law with 120 votes vs 15 (out of 135). So this wasn't just a "pro-independence" move. Pro-federalist Spanish nationalist parties like the Socialist and the Communist parties voted for it.
The text was sent to the Spanish Parliament , who completely defaced it and re-wrote it before passing the final text and calling for a ratification referendum in Catalonia. The complete re-write was so egregious that pro-independence parties and activists actively promoted a vote AGAINST the law, and as a result, there was a significantly low turnover for the Spanish government-organized referendum. The YES carried the vote, but only with a minority of the people explicitly in favor.
I reiterate the point: this wasn't just a law passed by Catalonia's Parliament, but the reviewed and amended version that the Spanish Parliament passed, which later on the Catalan people ratified in a referendum organized by the Spanish government itself, not by the Catalan government.
None of that stopped the Spanish Francoist right, conniving with its militant judiciary allies, from immediately launching a barrage of court challenges. The law was automatically suspended while the Spanish constitutional court deliberated on it -- which it did for FOUR YEARS during which the Catalan government was left without legal recourse and operating without the new devolution law and under the heavily eroded and neutralized old one.
As expected, the verdict was a systematic, point by point nullification or "reinterpretation" of every single sentence and provision of the new devolution law, which was demolished and left without practical effect. Not only that, but they seized the opportunity to even "reinterpret" retroactively many principles that affected and changed their own established precedent, to further erode and destroy as much as they could of what would be left of Catalonia's autonomy.
After this charade, which was effectively a lawfare-enabled coup d'etat by the Spanish right and its militant allies in the judiciary to bypass democratic process, a clamor arouse among a large majority of Catalans, including pro-federalist, non-pro independence Catalans many of which finally gave up on Spain, publicly regretted supporting the YES vote, and turned pro-independence.
From that moment onward, a consistent pro-independence majority kept winning elections in Catalonia , and the push became for a democratic, legally organized, independence referendum, just like there had been more than once in Quebec and was being organized in Scotland shortly after. Time after time the Spanish judiciary and all parts of the Spanish government rejected the idea of simply letting Catalans vote, and went after whoever tried to organize one by all means necessary short of outright assassination (which in the context of Spanish history I guess was an improvement). Huge propaganda campaigns and dirty play at the EU-institutional level, for instance, of course at the expense of the Catalan tax payer, were put in place by the Spanish institutions, although that, as bad as it is, was not even the key problem compared to the sheer abhorrence of suppressing people's voice.
Between 2009 and 2011, sick and tired of the blockade, in which actually even pro-independence parties who still insisted on "the need to play by the rules" participated, civilian organizations successfully held a wave of local-level referenda in which the independence vote overwhelmingly won. This required the non-active resistance of each local government to happen, so in many towns and cities the polls couldn't be held and the results could not be taken as a binding mandate. I will not even go to the detail of the wave of Spanish ultra nationalist terror that was unleashed, with government agents engaging in illegal espionage, dirty war tactics, media propaganda, smears, fabricated cases, and of course even physical violence by organized groups which, by the way, are abundantly represented in the original posts depicting the current fascist demonstrations in Spain as "anti-WEF" and even more ludicrously "pro-freedom". They're as much "freedom fighters" as the Taliban were when the CIA was funding them.
Finally, after a couple of hotly debated elections in which mainstream Catalan parties become more unambiguously pro-independence, in 2014 Catalonia elected a government with the clear, unequivocal mandate to organize and carry out an independence referendum, regardless of the opinion of the Spanish government. Many said, and keep saying (for instance, I do) that the members of the Catalan government never had the true intention to execute the mandate. The Spanish government of the Partido Popular, for sure, decided as well that it was a bluff. But finally, in 2017, with lots of difficulties and barely skirting the judiciary war, the Spanish secret service dirty war, the Spanish diplomacy's dirty war, the Spanish media's dirty war... a true nation-wide referendum was held in Catalonia in which a significant turnover with an overwhelming majority resulted in a YES.
At this point, I contend that the Catalan government should have just pushed forward with the mandate all be damned, but they just didn't. This was caused by their probable lack of initial sincerity about what they would do if the YES won, but the actual underlying reason, which is more generally the real historical reason why Catalans do not seem so openly keen about independence, was simply the very real threat of military intervention by the Spanish government, who had set the precedent just the day before with the display of violence that the Spanish paramilitary police had unleashed to suppress the voting.
SWAT teams were brought over from all over Spain, even leaving key border areas devoid of protection, and camped in Barcelona during the weeks before the referendum. On the day in question, the Spanish judges ordered Catalan police (not Spanish) to confiscate and break ballots and to close voting stations. Which they did, without resorting to violence and without any opposition by voters or organizers. That wasn't enough though because people were undeterred and kept voting, and the Spanish public and government wanted blood, so finally they sent the paramilitary police to physically suppress the event. Which they promptly did. They indiscriminately beat up women, children, the elderly and whoever got in their way (just look up videos on Youtube, there was ample international coverage by all major media outlets), arresting elected officials, etc. It's completely necessary to point out that the number of violent acts by pro-independence groups and citizens simply trying to vote was ZERO. Again, this is all perfectly documented in thousands of video and live reports by non-Catalan, non-Spanish sources who were there those days.
The fallout of the Catalan government's failure to push forward was that half the government had to flee to exile, the half that didn't was put in jail for several years and are currently banned from being elected again, but most egregiously thousands of anonymous citizens who dared vote that day or help organize the referendum had been arrested, prosecuted, financially ruined and even put in jail, clearly to "give example" collectively to all Catalans. As a reward for his service in confiscating and break ballots without breaking bones and heads in the process, the Catalan Police top chief was fired and prosecuted by Spanish judges. Catalan autonomy was formally suspended, completely this time, and direct rule was established. The democratically elected government and Parliament were disbanded and irregular and illegal elections in Catalonia were organized.
Once again, a significant faction within the "pro-independence" camp went back to "playing by the rules" and chose to participate in the illegal elections, thus legitimizing them, and the current state of things. The political gridlock however continued, with half the government in prison and the legitimate president still stuck in exile in Belgium. This time however, the Spanish government hasn't find any Nazi allies in Europe to kidnap and return the president to them, and every single time they have asked Belgium, Germany and other European countries, as well as the EU courts, to do it, they have refused, given the blatant political nature of the prosecution and the null merit on real criminal grounds -- if there's a silver lining to being a EU member is that to a certain extent the fascist regime in Spain doesn't have the legal right to keep political though in their criminal code, so they can't legally prove any reason to extradite the president.
In this context, the current Spanish government, after some bad luck with parliamentary arithmetic, has found itself in need of the votes of the president's party in order to get their prime minister elected again. The price for those votes is an amnesty law that puts an end to the lawfare campaign against Catalan politicians, and most importantly, anonymous citizen victims of the fascist Spanish judiciary, related to the events explained above. The text is willingly broad because everybody is aware that the militant fascist judiciary is simply not going to roll over, and they will try to bypass the law and keep prosecuting political opponents.
This is what literal Nazis, Franco supporters, ultra nationalist fanatics are protesting against these days in Spain. For the last several years, they have taken care to coopt the "anti-globalist" rhetoric and to build ties with international organizations, media and political agents. They are the poisonous Trojan Horse in the movement, and they're not alone, as we know, with other crazy nutjobs in the most extreme right in several European countries that I'm not going to bring up now. Not only that, but ultra nationalism, Spanish supremacism, is indeed the drug of choice of the elites and the globalists in Spain to keep the sheeple occupied and docile, while they advance their agenda. Globalism advances in different ways in every country, it adapts to the specificity of each society. That's why from outside people like Tucker Carlson who know jack shit about Spain's historical development, what in political science is called "path dependence", but see an appearance of a pattern they superficially recognize as their own, end up being confused and fooled into supporting those who in the end are working against the interests they think they support.
All this said, I clarify: Catalonia's elites ARE ALSO GLOBALIST. It can't be otherwise, obviously! But nationalism is NOT the delivery method of choice of the globalist drug in Catalonia. Catalan nationalist, as in a truly particularist, antiglobalist ideology is dead, if it ever even existed in Catalonia in recent times. On the contrary, the current Catalan elites have very meticulously articulated a thoroughly anti-nationalist "pro-self rule" movement which only due to the radical intolerance and visceral totalitarianism of Spanish fascists has necessarily evolved into a pro-Catalan State movement. In Catalonia, being a much more left-leaning society than Spain, globalism is a lot more mainstream and easily recognizable: ESG, progressivism, "diversity", etc. are the delivery methods, and I am sure an independent Catalan State, despite being a net positive for Catalans, would also be a very active "model child" of the WEF regime. It does not change the inherent justice of the self-determination of the Catalan NATION.
The bottom line is, not only one can be anti-WEF, anti-globalism, anti-socialist while also being anti-fascist and anti-authoritarian, but one MUST be so. We must reject the lies and the propaganda of elements like Spain's Vox party who are just using the anti-globalization movement and label to leech off it, get exposure, relationships and funding, and to whitewash the absolutely revolting, disgusting, immoral NAZI TRASH that they and their supporters are.
In short: FUCK SPAIN and VISCA CATALUNYA LLIURE motherfuckers.
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Why are they making life complicated nostr:npub1w975kchdvcw7c50m8xtzw29yynwsp78dk6x693fg2xme5zkj23js6xgfqv lol 
They're being smartasses here with the labeling. The 99% claim is not due to the "antibacterial" portion, but to the soap itself. That's why they make sure to word it as "cleans away" instead of "kills". Check out my reply above for details.
I am well versed in hygiene and food safety for professional reasons, and there are a couple of considerations here.
First, it's been a while since the main "antibacterial" soap additive, triclosan, was banned for household use in the US. In the EU it has never been on the approved list. The reasons range from lack of evidence of its effectiveness to the need for limiting its use to medical environments to prevent the development of resistant bacteria, and to minimize wash into the environment which may affect other non-target microorganisms. So, what type of "anti-bacterial soap" are we talking about?
Second, again for household use, the single most important thing you can do if you currently wash your hands with "plain" soap and water is simply to wash them for a bit longer. Soap does not kill microorganisms, but it does "catch" them and carry them away when you rinse, as it does with all sorts of harmful organic and inorganic substances, which hand sanitizer or "antibacterial" products just don't. Plain soap is actually extremely effective at that. So unless you have some reason to want the bacteria in your hands specifically dead when you send them down the drain, there is no need for any "antibacterial" product.
Does anybody doubt that Altman's sacking is 100% a State actor's political power move, and that it is very much likely that Altman was the lesser evil?
Incidentally, and take is as you will and feel free to clutch your pearls dearly, but every time I see one of these CEO dudes fired/replaced by some randoms third-world country broad, I smell the scent of rot.
nostr:note14swn4z9n95u43xllh9py0j7a7v697pxghn69s767ksagfk9unlxs3hu55e
I keep saying this, and it doesn't apply to "traders" only. It also applies to "spenders". Probably even more, because if you truly pay attention, all these people telling you to spend your sats on "the circular economy" are the ones collecting them, while very likely you have to buy them back with fiat if you want to replace them.
YT video from Matt Kratter aka Bitcoin University https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2D63C94S9A
Exactly! 100% in agreement. But not just state and local. We have to make all non-voluntary institutions devoid of actual power to influence an individual's daily life and voluntary interactions significantly.
Winter is the best. Civilized. People can take out of the closet and wear actual clothes that make them look like people. They generally hurry or at least walk with purpose when they're outside. You want to be home, cozy and toasty. It's just so much much better.