Saturday, May 21, 2011

Massive Anti-Government Protests in Spain Spreading to Italy! No Mention at all in Japanese Press

UPDATE! LIVE FEED OF PROTESTS IN SPAIN AT BOTTOM! 
IS THIS SITUATION IS FAST SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL? MUST SEE!


The demonstrations in Egypt weren't nearly this big! In Europe, first Greece then Iceland now Spain! Massive demonstrations and protests have broken out all over Europe. There's not a word mentioned about these huge protests in the Japanese media or in the US media either! See the live feed at the bottom of this post. These demonstrations are huge and the news about them seems to be blocked all over the world!


Twitter comment about the protests from Poland


The demonstration first started out in Madrid but have now spread to Barcelona, Valencia and other cities in SpainThe Spanish government cannot withstand this pressure. 
RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE - WAKE UP

Elections are tomorrow but the protesters have said that they will continue to protest until they get what they want... I'm sure the elections will not satisfy their demands. What's next? This and events in Portugal and Italy bode ill for the Euro and the world economy. This will certainly hurt Japan's already faltering economy.

These massive demonstrations continue to grow and have turned quite ugly and violent in Greece and have now been banned in Spain (which has only served to increase their size). In Spain's case, the government has banned these gatherings, but absolutely cannot afford to send the police in and kick these people out. 


Ultimately, unemployment, taxes and austerity measures have caused these huge demonstrations that are, as one protester said, "... against the criminal behavior of the central bankers and IMF. Taking tax money from the people and giving it to rich bankers have finally made the people take to the streets...." 


Yet, this news is nowhere to be found in the Japanese news services in English or in Japanese.


I predict that this demonstration in Spain will collapse the Spanish government.


Hence this blog post.


Mish Shedlock has an excellent write up about it: 


"After passively submitting to the crisis, young Spaniards have finally taken to the street. Breaking out on the eve of municipal elections, the protests of recent days have been inspired by those in Iceland that led to the fall of the government in Reykjavik.

One morning in October 2008, Torfason Hördur turned up at what Icelanders call the “Althing”, the Icelandic parliament in the capital city, Reykjavik. By then, the country's biggest bank, the Kaupthing, had already gone into receivership and the Icelandic financial system itself was in danger of going under. Torfason, with his guitar, grabbed a microphone and invited people to talk about their dissatisfaction with the freefall of their country and to speak their minds.

A movement spawned by the Internet

But those voices calling for real democracy are not just being raised in Iceland, a country of about 320,000 inhabitants. Here in Spain, the umbrella organisation for various Spanish movements – Democracia Real Ya (Real Democracy Now) – already lists among its proposals some 40 points ranging from controlling parliamentary absenteeism to reducing military spending through to abolishing the so-called Sinde law (a law restricting on-line infringements of copyright).



Spain demonstration yesterday. This is not news in Japan!????

The demonstrations have broadened spontaneously, as was the case for those who rallied under the umbrellas of the "alternative globalisation" movements, and have evolved, one decade after the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, on a more modest stage than the one demonstrators faced in the past at the World Economic Forum of the global elite in Davos, Switzerland.

All this is happening at astonishing speed via the Internet, which has amplified the echo of discontent and opened the lanes of cyberactivism to groups such as Anonymous, notable for intervening against companies like PayPal and Visa during the advocacy campaign for Wikileaks chief Julian Assange. Yet it was also there at the beginning of the revolts in the Arab world, to help people get round the censorship of the Tunisian and Egyptian dictatorships.

“When we grow up, we want to be Icelanders!" cried one of the leaders of the organisation during the march on Sunday May 15 before a column of young – and not so young – parents and children, students and workers, the jobless and pensioners. Many Saturdays in Iceland were needed before citizens won the changes they had demanded. Spain’s first Sunday has taken place, and was followed by a Tuesday [May 17]- but there’s still a long way to go.



Protests have now spread to Italy and beyond.


Why these massive outpourings of discontent for government policies are being ignored in the Japanese press is a real curiosity. Here is a screen capture of NHK News English site. As you can see, not a word about it mentioned but there is a story of vital interest about Brazilian students sending letters to survivors of the Tohoku disaster!


CLICK ON IMAGE FOR LARGER VIEW

And here's a screen capture of the Japanese language page. Nothing about protests in Europe:

CLICK ON IMAGE FOR LARGER VIEW

Let's see: Something about the Hague Convention member states welcoming something called "the Buddha policy," Asia's largest exhibition of Naval Weapons, special trains, Japanese children in Brazil... Oh! There's demonstrations! No. No. Those are in Thailand. Nope. Nothing about demonstrations in Europe.

Quite odd, don't you think?

MISH SHEDLOCK posts this: "SOL TV has a continuous direct broadcast from Puerto del Sol in Madrid, where today's gathering has just started."

  

  

Madrid Spain time is 7 hours behind Tokyo, Japan time
More information and additional links (in Spanish) can be found here:http://www.soltv.tv/soltv2/index.html
Use 
Google Translate to translate any of the links. You can use a link, not just portions of text.

The summer of 2011 has started. It's going to be a very hot one too. Got gold?

Here's a map and more information about the global insurrection against banker occupation. There's even an event planned in Tokyo today!!! http://www.thetechnoant.info/campmap/ 

4 comments:

  1. www.Democracynow.org also has English language coverage of the Spain protests.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well spotted! I don't know why the Japanese media doesn't write about this. There's absolutely no way this could spur the Japanese to do likewise. What's happening in this country that the populace could possibly have to complain about? I mean, yes, there's the "inevitable" raise in consumption tax, the highly probably increase in deficit spending to "pay for" the Tohoku compensation and reconstruction, the 20 years (and counting) of recession in Japan thanks to the central bank and the elite's management, the somewhat lax management and supervision of the country's nuclear industry... Mere bagatelles! And anyway the Japanese never riot. It's not in their DNA.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'm spanish and have been in the protests since they started on May 15th. Each and every day they've grown stronger, it took us supporters by surprise too! Right now there are over 700 associated protests worldwide, and the protesters are not just young people. You can find workers, jobless people, parents with children, elderly persons. Newspapers say "young people" just as a way to make them seem narrower and less important in scope.

    Also, we've been very strict to make the protests peaceful and non-committal to any political party.

    The main gripes are the separation of political and justice systems, political class privileges control and banking control too. Any other demands are "nice to have", but what we really need is to take our democracy back from corrupt politicians and lobbies.

    The coverage here in Spain (and the resot of Europe) has been spotty and misleading, but that's what you get with mainstream media. Luckily, we have the Internet, but net neutrality has been under attack everywhere for a long time, let's hope we can keep it open, as it was meant to be!

    Thank you, Mike, for taking notice of these grassroots movements.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I'm spanish and have been in the protests since they started on May 15th. Each and every day they've grown stronger, it took us supporters by surprise too! Right now there are over 700 associated protests worldwide, and the protesters are not just young people. You can find workers, jobless people, parents with children, elderly persons. Newspapers say "young people" just as a way to make them seem narrower and less important in scope.

    Also, we've been very strict to make the protests peaceful and non-committal to any political party.

    The main gripes are the separation of political and justice systems, political class privileges control and banking control too. Any other demands are "nice to have", but what we really need is to take our democracy back from corrupt politicians and lobbies.

    The coverage here in Spain (and the resot of Europe) has been spotty and misleading, but that's what you get with mainstream media. Luckily, we have the Internet, but net neutrality has been under attack everywhere for a long time, let's hope we can keep it open, as it was meant to be!

    Thank you, Mike, for taking notice of these grassroots movements.

    ReplyDelete

Comments must be succinct & relevant to the story. Comments are checked frequently and abusive, rude or profane comments will be deleted. I’m just one of many bloggers who answer questions online and sometimes for the press. I usually handle questions about Japan, marketing or the economy, so in those areas I’m more likely to make sense and less likely to say something really stupid. If I post something here that you find helpful or interesting, that’s wonderful. This is my personal blog. If you don't like what you have read here then, just like when you go into a restaurant or bar that allows smoking, if you don't like it, there's something at the front that has hinges on it and it is called a "door."