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Spain: Massive Crowds Defy Ban on Protests
Tens of thousands of people are defying a pre-election ban on demonstrations and protesting unemployment in squares around Spain in defiance of an order to quit at midnight.
The government avoided saying if it would order police to break up the crowds on Saturday, but at the stroke of midnight officers kept a discreet presence on the edges of the demonstrations.
Demonstrators kept quiet as city clocks chimed the beginning of a new day, many with sticky tape over their mouths in a gesture organizers said suggested they have things to say but were being gagged by the ban.
People are angry over Spain's high unemployment rate and what they see as the national political parties' ineptitude in dealing with a deep economic crisis. Protesters built a camp in Madrid's central Puerta del Sol square Sunday, a week ahead of nationwide elections. Since then good-natured, peaceful and colorful gatherings have sprung up and grown around the country under the banner of "Real Democracy Now."
Many protesters have said they were influenced by recent pro-democracy uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East and one popular chant is "Join us."
Friday was the last day for candidates to campaign for the election for municipal and regional government positions in much of the country. Citing the mandatory end of campaigning, the national election commission banned protests Saturday and on Sunday, voting day.
Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero did not say whether he would order police to break up demonstrations.
Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba was also cagey about how the government would deal with the protesters, although he said the police would not act to make things worse.
Initially he said the government will "enforce the law," but he then toned down this stance, saying "The police are not going to resolve one problem by creating another."
The ruling Socialist party is widely expected to suffer big losses at the polls, perhaps even in traditional strongholds, having been forced by the crisis to introduce austerity measures.
"They want to leave us without public health and public education. Half of our youth is unemployed and they have raised the age of retirement," said protester Natividad Garcia, who declined to give her age and profession.
The government is presiding over an economy struggling to overcome recession and create jobs to chip away at a 21.3 percent jobless rate, the highest in the eurozone.
In Spain, rallies called to urge people to vote one way or another are typically banned the day before an election, called "days of reflection."
The election commission was deeply divided this time, and upheld the ban by just a one-vote margin. The panel was convened to give a blanket ruling for all of Spain because provincial election bodies had issued contradictory rulings, with some allowing protests this week and some banning them, as was the case in Madrid.
Organizers of the protests say that they have no party affiliation, are not trying to affect the election outcome in any way, and are not even urging people to abstain from voting.
"Campaign posters are still going to be up, so why ban people from freely mingling to exchange ideas," said graphic designer Antonio Quiroga, 27.
Daniel Woolls contributed to this report.
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44 Comments so far
Show AllIf only Wisconsin had gone this route.
CD when you delete comments, this way is preferable to the way it was done in the past by leaving a gap in the thread. However, I really like youtube's way which is hide after "flagging'with an option to click to read the remark anyway. Thanks.
While you're at it, can CD please explain what happened to the 'tracking' function and why it's gone?
The world's governments are denying the realities of Peak Oil and Climate Change that are doing so much accumulated damage that continuation of capitalistic economies is impossible.
Capitalism demands steady growth in order to pay off debts. The resources demanded by economic activity are simply no longer available. There isn't more oil, coal, grain, lumber, steel, metals, minerals and fish available this year than there was last year. There is less of all of these things and more people who demand a share.
Until we recognize that our economic systems are based upon a fundamental lie we are trapped.
One of the greediest choices a person can make is to have a large family. The Earth's life support systems can sustain 2 billion humans, but not 7 billion, headed to 10 billion or more. Breeding greed has become intolerable in this overpopulated world. More than one child is wrong, and more than two shows criminal disregard for all other life on Earth.
Hoarding $10 Billion dollars and having no children is alot worse than having two children and $100.
Food Providing NGO's constantly state faulty distribution not population is the cause of hunger.
Indeed! puredemocracy's comment was off the mark with its extraordinarily narrow lack of perspective. (Frustrating enough to warrant a comment.)
"The world's governments are denying the realities of Peak Oil"
Pangolin, "Peak Oil" is pure myth to fuel corporate profits. There are oil-wells by the hundreds, perhaps thousands, capped, the world over. Not only that, but it has been discovered recently, at first by Russian scientists and now confirmed in the west that mineral oil is exactly that. It isn't formed just by decaying vege matter over millions of years, but by an ongoing mineral process.
Sure, some resources will one day fail. Not because of the population size, but because of land mis-management. For example, you cannot keep turning over land from food growth to growing a fuel that takes more energy to produce than it gives without food production suffering. And while I'm on it, you cannot keep giving a company like Monsanto monopoly over food by allowing them to pollute the biosphere with inferior genetically modified crops that produce less at a higher cost, without even greater damage to food production.
These are the areas demanding our attention, and our very survival depends upon: not silly peak oil and global warming cap and trade politics that do nothing to help the planet except to make the powerful and mighty powerfuller and mightier.
PANGOLIN: Glowing, radioactive fish may provide for discounts, and thus significant financial benefits, however (said facetiously).
The anger showed up and intensified only after the Socialist Party played dumb pansy and gave into those austerity measures. Had they kept it firm and socialist, they wouldn't be embracing for losses. By the way, what is that something else that you had in mind?
Unemployment percentages don't give the full picture. We could screw around with the numbers by giving half the 21% a Walmart job and still nothing good would come out of it. The subsidies for those in need couldn't be the culprit. 40% of young kids not working means that they've tried hard on their luck to no avail. Without subsidies for those youngsters in need, it could've been worse. As someone who used to work for a variety of government agencies including the DoD, I could write you a novel or two detailing how budget cheating works out and I'll be a quadrillion you'd be asking for that kind of basic assistance that the young in Spain get. This brings me to one other fact. If more Americans were strong enough to hold on to their good will even though survival would be tougher, this country would getting somewhere. True, unemployment would be up but at least Corporate America and the Military Industrial Complex wouldn't be in control of most of our employment for one thing. Try looking beyond the numbers.
Rightwingers like you love to harp on the nanny governemnt and talk about how parasitic the people are, but rarely do you talk about the bank and corporate parasites. Fact is, capitalism would have died long ago if it weren't being constantly bailed out by--we the people. Capitalism is simply welfare for the rich. Take away subsidies, tax breaks, and wars to protect foreign investment, and let the corporations fend for themselves, and you'll see how weak capitalism really is as an economic system. It's unsustainable economically, environmentally and morally.
So you are a champion of removing corporate subsidies, tax loopholes and enforcement of corporate crime laws?
Let corporate bums sink or swim without taxpayer bailouts, no more privatized profits and socialized losses?
First, the Spanish government is not socialist, anymore than the government of North Korea is Democratic (DPRK). Second, the sustainability of social programs is a budgetary issue that depends on allocation. If Spain were not funnelling revenue into servicing European austerity debt, they could afford those things. And the only reason those loans had to be made is because the government opted to toe the neoliberal line and heave cash to bail out their financial sector, same is Ireland and Greece and Iceland. That's the whole purpose of "austerity" loans--to withdraw liquidity from budgets in order to force the state to privatize in order to remain solvent. If the "Socialists" spent their energies cobbling together a national work program and increasing cash circulation in Spain, they very much could sustain social spending. European countries have been doing this easily and regularly across the board since WW II.
The lie you tell that prompted me to respond to a troll is the claim that unemployment went up in Spain solely as a switch to the "socialist" goverment". This tactic is repulsive, since you are presumably willfully omitting the fact that the financial bubble has increased unemployment *everywhere* subject to the bubble crash of '07-08.
Unemployment skyrocketed here, too, and we haven't electedd a socialist government.
It will be a refreshing day when you guys actually say, "fuck it, I'm going to stand up for my real beliefs without lying". You *want* unequal societies, because you think you have a better chance at grabbing a larger share of the pie than your neighbors. You also think only the wealthy are fit to rule. Just say it. You'll feel better and cleaner, and even though you'll still serve evil, you'll at least have the bonus point of being honest about it. I can respect an honest adversary. I cana only hold in the deepest contempt any liar.
Cheers! Yes, if they'd only strip away the veneer and come out of the closet as the rabid social Darwinists they really are, at least we'd be able to address their real agenda. But that's political survival--don't say what you mean and never reveal your true motives; tell the people what they want to hear and, once elected, screw them--after all, they have nowhere else to turn. P.T. Barnum was right, you can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time. And that's enough for corrupt politicians to win in this idiotocracy.
Bravo! Sometimes it does take a drone to get the point across!
Max, and Donna, and Glenn, et al., have you pegged, but frankly you said it best yourself:
'I am really not a political genius...' And you then went on to prove your case.
What this situation shows is that a socialist party is not the bogeyman the West tries to make it. It can be voted in and out of office. It is a viable choice--that should be left to the people to decide. And don't confuse a socialist party--which still has to function within a capitalist system--with a socialist society, in which the market pressures and politics would not have reduced Spain to such levels. Your comment about trying something else smacks of ignorance--we've been trying capitalism for several hundred years and all it's brought us is wars, wars, unemployment, bank bailouts (talk about not working!), homelessness, poverty, and more wars.
Another word for your prosperity is "over-shoot". The "prosperity" of capitalism is unsustainable. It is about to result in millions of dead people and mass extinctions the like we've not seen before. When the worlds resources are depleted and every ecosystem lies in ruin, what will your precious capitalist system do? Greed is no virtue.
The impending planetery death and present mass poisoning, endless wars is not in my humble opinion Prosperity.
Did Goldman Sachs destroy Spain too?
It's the same story everywhere. Teachers are under pressure for many reasons. The unspoken one? A well educated society has 17 children for every 20 adults; a gentle population decline toward reduced environmental stress, and nobody tells anybody what to do. Just go to school as long as you want to. Heck. Let's make it free. Add housing that pay people to live in themselves, modern tech and the eighteen to twenty hour work week, sounds like fun. Will it be enough to induce our children home from endless war?
Rejection of self-appointed authoritarians in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Syria and now Spain....
Coming to a public square near you, soon!
Never happen--liberals who were outraged under Bush seem to have left their outrage at DNC headquarters.
Canceling repeat
Well, a global revolt against fascist austerity, fascist capitalism, (defined as the merger of corporate power to the class state), using totalitarian, global strategies, requires a "world revolution" , against a global fascist Matrix of corporate power and military fascism/empire. Spain, Greece, the Arab world, even the Latin nations are confronting fascist NATO, fascist American Empire and its criminal , totalitarian policies.
Note the pro-ruling class spin in the article: "The ruling Socialist party ...(has) been forced by the crisis to introduce austerity measures."
The crisis hasn't "forced" austerity measures. The crisis wasn't caused by ordinary people but by the greed and risky decisions made by the ruling class, especially the financiers.
Austerity is to economics what bleeding is to medicine -- a barbaric, medieval "remedy" whose only purpose is to transfer more wealth and power to the already wealthy and powerful.
To CD editors:
Publishing AP "reports" like this without a correcting postscript is problematic because it purports to be objective journalism but contains hidden editorializing.
Specifically in piece, Friedmanite "austerity" policies are presented as a) the only solution ever thought up by economists for dealing with recession and unemployment, and b) a "solution" that has actually been demonstrated to "solve the problems" when it it never, EVER has!
This is true bias since the deficit spending and job-creation policies of J.M. Keynes are a very different solution that HAVE actually worked from the New Deal to Cold War Defense and Research spending.
This is far from the first wire service or "mainstream" news report over the past several years that is guilty of this kind of "editorializing by omission" that has -yet- been published without correction here on CD.
What gives?
-matti
If you read through the comments, you'll see that no one was fooled by the article. In fact, CD readers are smart enough to read and critique an article from the MSM without "correcting postscript" notes from the editors.
Astute observations by dfairley and matti. Thumbs up!
what happened?