Spanish Revolution 2011 - Democracia Real Ya

What is needed for Asturias to prosper?<br>
¿Qué se precisa para que Asturias prosperará?

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Raquel M
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Post by Raquel M »

I do not like the word Revolution at all.
Maybe it's a trauma from my childhood when I saw dirty people dress
in olive green with rosaries around their necks, shooting and destroying
everything in Cuba....
I firmly believe the people have the right to protest and to demand
changes in their countries....that is freedom of speech!

No me gusta nada la palabra Revolucion.
Debe de ser un trauma de mi infancia que vi a gente sucias vestidos de
verde olivo con rosarios en sus cuellos, disparando y destruyendo todo
en Cuba...
Creo firmemente que los pueblos tienen el derecho a protestar y a
exigir cambios en sus paises...eso es libertad de expresion!
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Art
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Post by Art »

I can understand how an experience like that could be traumatic. How old were you? I don't think I've ever read about what happened "on the ground" (from the point of view of the ordinary people) during the Cuban revolution.

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Entiendo que una experiencia como esa puede ser traumática. ¿Cuántos años tuviste? No creo que he leído sobre lo que pasó "en el suelo" (del punto de vista de la gente normal) durante la revolución cubana.
cando91
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Post by cando91 »

I am currently reading an excellent book on the subject called "Waiting for Snow in Havana" by Carlos Eire.
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Art
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Post by Art »

Cando91, it'd be great if you would post a summary of your impressions of the book when you get a chance!

------------------------------

Cando91, sería muy genial poner aquí un resumen de tus impresiones sobre el libro cuando tienes la oportunidad.
Raquel M
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Post by Raquel M »

They put on TV all the people screaming, all the shootings, everything!!!
I remember I saw a man with a hat, they put him near a wall and the
man said Viva Cuba Libre and they shoot him, I was 6 years old and I
remember everything, the TV was the whole day presenting the shootings
the killings, omg! one day my father said the TV broke...the TV repair
was impossible because the stores were taken by the government and
nobody had parts to repair it.....but it called my attention that all my
family had the same problem...their TV's broke...also my friends had
their TV broken too....later when I grew up I learned that everybody
broke their TVs because nobody wanted to see that kind of violence.
The TV Channals (4) were taken by the government and they put
the same thing 24 hours a day!

Ellos ponian en la television a la gente gritando, todos los fusilamientos,
todo!!!
Yo recuerdo que vi a un hombre con un sombrero que pusieron cerca de
una pared y el hombre dijo Viva Cuba Libre y lo fusilaron, yo tenia 6 a#os
y yo recuerdo todo, el televisor presentado el dia completo todos
los fusilamientos, ay Dios mio! un dia mi padre dijo que el televisor se
rompio y que era imposible arreglarlo porque no habia piezas ya que
todas las tiendas habian sido tomadas por el gobierno...pero me llamo
la atencion que mi familia tenia el mismo problema, ...sus televisores
se rompieron tambien...tambien mis amistades tenian sus televisores
rotos...despues cuando creci me entere que todas las personas que
conociamos habian roto sus televisores porque nadie queria ver mas esa clase de violencia.
Los cuatro canales de television que existian habian
sido tomados por el gobierno y ellos ponian lo mismo las 24 horas del dia!
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Art
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Post by Art »

Raquel, yep, that would be bad. Which government put the violence on TV? Was it Batista's or Castro's government?

And who was doing most of the shooting? Batista's people, Castro's, or both?

I suppose the "news" may have been edited to show the other side in a bad light. I'll look forward to hearing what Cando learns, too.

I can imagine my parents deciding that the TV was broken, too. My mom used to sneak a tube out of the TV and tell us to go outside.

--------------------------

Raquel, sí, eso sería malo. ¿Cuál gobierno puso la violencia en la televisión? ¿Fue el gobierno de Batista o de Castro?

¿Y quién estaba haciendo la mayor parte de los disparos? La gente de Batista, de Castro, o ambos?

Supongo que las "noticias" pueden haber sido editado para mostrar el otro lado actuando peor. Espero que Cando nos comparta lo que aprende, también.

Puedo imaginar a mis padres decidiendo que la televisión esté rota, también. Mi madre solía sacaba un tubo de la televisión sigilosamente y nos ordenaba salir por fuera de la casa.
Last edited by Art on Fri Aug 05, 2011 2:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Raquel M
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Post by Raquel M »

Art....the ONLY goverment in Cuba that took possesion of all the
TV stations, Radio stations, banks, restaurants, farms, houses,
apartments, hotels, schools, the ONLY one that put violence
on TV, the killings, the shootings, the destructions was the
Castro's regime.....the only one that killed people in front
of a TV camera was the Castro's people, cold blood killings,
no attorneys, no jury, nothing....cold blood killed in front
of the tv cameras so eveybody will see it!
My family were never involved in politics at all. My family
was so big, so happy....but after 1959 everything changed
my family was divided, destroyed, separated, thanks to the
Castro regime.
It is ridiculous to mention Batista's government...after 52 years
of repression in Cuba without free election, people eaten by
sharks trying to leave Cuba, omg, what else you want to see
to prove the terror and destruction caused by the Castro's regime?

Art...el UNICO gobierno en Cuba que tomo posesion de todas
las estaciones de Televison, estaciones de Radio, bancos,
restaurantes, fincas, casas, apartamentos, hoteles, escuelas,
el UNICO que puso violencia en la Televison, los asesinatos,
los fusilamientos, las destrucciones fue el regimen de Castro....
el unico que puso los asesinatos enfrente de una camara fue
la gente de los Castro...asesinatos a sangre fria, no abogados,
no jurados, nada,...asesinatos a sangre fria enfrente de una
camara de televison, para que todos lo vieran!
Mi familia nunca se involucro en la politica. Mi familia era tan
grande, tan feliz....pero despues de 1959 todo cambio, mi
familia fue dividida, destruida, separada, gracias al regimen
de Castro.
Es ridiculo mencionar el gobierno de Batista....despues de 52 a#os
de represion en Cuba, sin elecciones libres, la gente comida por
los tiburones tratando de salir de Cuba, Ay Dios mio, que mas
usted quiere ver para convencerse del terror y la destruccion
causado por el regimen de los Castro?
Last edited by Raquel M on Fri Aug 05, 2011 2:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Art
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Post by Art »

Perhaps you misunderstood my question. I didn't know which government you were talking about and wanted to know.

It is odd that Castro's people would show videos of them behaving badly. Maybe the intent was to crush any attempt to rebel.

By the way, I added a short paragraph to the end of the message above while you were responding.

---------------------

Tal vez has mal entendido mi pregunta. No sabía de cuál gobierno estabas escribiendo y quería saber.

Es curioso que la gente de Castro se mostrarían videos de ellos comportándose tan mal. Tal vez la intención era aplastar cualquier intento rebelarse.

Por cierto, he añadido un breve párrafo al final del mensaje anterior, mientras que fuiste respondiendo.
Last edited by Art on Fri Aug 05, 2011 2:55 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Raquel M
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Post by Raquel M »

Ok, I am sorry if I misunderstood your question.


Ok, siento mucho si yo no entendi bien su pregunta.
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Art
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The Fight for 'Real Democracy' at the Heart of Occupy Wall S

Post by Art »

This article links the Real Democracy Now protests in Spain, the Arab Spring, and the Occupy Wall Street protests in the United States as sharing a common complaint about the failure of representation:The Fight for Real Democracy at the Heart of Occupy Wall Street
I'll post the text below.

-------------------

Este artículo relaciona las protestas de Democracia Real Ya en España, la Primavera Árabe, y las protestas de Occupy Wall Street en los Estados Unidos por una queja común sobre el fracaso de la representación:
Lucha por la democracia real está en el corazón de Occupy Wall Street
Voy a publicar el texto en inglés abajo.

------------------------------------------------------

The Fight for 'Real Democracy' at the Heart of Occupy Wall Street:
The Encampment in Lower Manhattan Speaks to a Failure of Representation
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri
October 11, 2011
Foreign Relations

Demonstrations under the banner of Occupy Wall Street resonate with so many people not only because they give voice to a widespread sense of economic injustice but also, and perhaps more important, because they express political grievances and aspirations. As protests have spread from Lower Manhattan to cities and towns across the country, they have made clear that indignation against corporate greed and economic inequality is real and deep. But at least equally important is the protest against the lack -- or failure -- of political representation. It is not so much a question of whether this or that politician, or this or that party, is ineffective or corrupt (although that, too, is true) but whether the representational political system more generally is inadequate. This protest movement could, and perhaps must, transform into a genuine, democratic constituent process.

The political face of the Occupy Wall Street protests comes into view when we situate it alongside the other "encampments" of the past year. Together, they form an emerging cycle of struggles. In many cases, the lines of influence are explicit. Occupy Wall Street takes inspiration from the encampments of central squares in Spain, which began on May 15 and followed the occupation of Cairo's Tahrir Square earlier last spring. To this succession of demonstrations, one should add a series of parallel events, such as the extended protests at the Wisconsin statehouse, the occupation of Syntagma Square in Athens, and the Israeli tent encampments for economic justice. The context of these various protests are very different, of course, and they are not simply iterations of what happened elsewhere. Rather each of these movements has managed to translate a few common elements into their own situation.

In Tahrir Square, the political nature of the encampment and the fact that the protesters could not be represented in any sense by the current regime was obvious. The demand that "Mubarak must go" proved powerful enough to encompass all other issues. In the subsequent encampments of Madrid's Puerta del Sol and Barcelona's Plaça Catalunya, the critique of political representation was more complex. The Spanish protests brought together a wide array of social and economic complaints -- regarding debt, housing, and education, among others -- but their "indignation," which the Spanish press early on identified as their defining affect, was clearly directed at a political system incapable of addressing these issues. Against the pretense of democracy offered by the current representational system, the protesters posed as one of their central slogans, "Democracia real ya," or "Real democracy now."

Occupy Wall Street should be understood, then, as a further development or permutation of these political demands. One obvious and clear message of the protests, of course, is that the bankers and finance industries in no way represent us: What is good for Wall Street is certainly not good for the country (or the world). A more significant failure of representation, though, must be attributed to the politicians and political parties charged with representing the people's interests but in fact more clearly represent the banks and the creditors. Such a recognition leads to a seemingly naive, basic question: Is democracy not supposed to be the rule of the people over the polis -- that is, the entirety of social and economic life? Instead, it seems that politics has become subservient to economic and financial interests.

By insisting on the political nature of the Occupy Wall Street protests we do not mean to cast them merely in terms of the quarrels between Republicans and Democrats, or the fortunes of the Obama administration. If the movement does continue and grow, of course, it may force the White House or Congress to take new action, and it may even become a significant point of contention during the next presidential election cycle. But the Obama and the George W. Bush administrations are both authors of the bank bailouts; the lack of representation highlighted by the protests applies to both parties. In this context, the Spanish call for "real democracy now" sounds both urgent and challenging.

If together these different protest encampments -- from Cairo and Tel Aviv to Athens, Madison, Madrid, and now New York -- express a dissatisfaction with the existing structures of political representation, then what do they offer as an alternative? What is the "real democracy" they propose?

The clearest clues lie in the internal organization of the movements themselves -- specifically, the way the encampments experiment with new democratic practices. These movements have all developed according to what we call a "multitude form" and are characterized by frequent assemblies and participatory decision-making structures. (And it is worth recognizing in this regard that Occupy Wall Street and many of these other demonstrations also have deep roots in the globalization protest movements that stretched at least from Seattle in 1999 to Genoa in 2001.)

Much has been made of the way social media such as Facebook and Twitter have been employed in these encampments. Such network instruments do not create the movements, of course, but they are convenient tools, because they correspond in some sense to the horizontal network structure and democratic experiments of the movements themselves. Twitter, in other words, is useful not only for announcing an event but for polling the views of a large assembly on a specific decision in real time.

Do not wait for the encampments, then, to develop leaders or political representatives. No Martin Luther King, Jr. will emerge from the occupations of Wall Street and beyond. For better or worse -- and we are certainly among those who find this a promising development -- this emerging cycle of movements will express itself through horizontal participatory structures, without representatives. Such small-scale experiments in democratic organizing would have to be developed much further, of course, before they could articulate effective models for a social alternative, but they are already powerfully expressing the aspiration for a "real democracy."

Confronting the crisis and seeing clearly the way it is being managed by the current political system, young people populating the various encampments are, with an unexpected maturity, beginning to pose a challenging question: If democracy -- that is, the democracy we have been given -- is staggering under the blows of the economic crisis and is powerless to assert the will and interests of the multitude, then is now perhaps the moment to consider that form of democracy obsolete?

If the forces of wealth and finance have come to dominate supposedly democratic constitutions, including the U.S. Constitution, is it not possible and even necessary today to propose and construct new constitutional figures that can open avenues to again take up the project of the pursuit of collective happiness? With such reasoning and such demands, which were already very alive in the Mediterranean and European encampments, the protests spreading from Wall Street across the United States pose the need for a new democratic constituent process.
Raquel M
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It's not the same!!!

Post by Raquel M »

I am sorry Art, but Occupy Wall Street protests is a different group!
the members are hippies and drug addicts....you just need to see the
photos and the interviews...they just want to dance, polute the streets
with junk and do nothing....after all ...Washington is the real problem, so
they should go to Washington to protest there!!!
( I did not vote for Owebama or his friends!!! )
bye!

--------------------------

Lo siento Art, pero Occupy Wall Street protests es un grupo diferente!
los miembros son hippies y adictos a las drogas....solamente tienes que
ver las fotos y las entrevistas...ellos solamente quieren bailar, botar
basura y contaminar las calles y no hacer nada...despues de todo...
Washington es el problema, entonces ellos deben de irse para Washington
y protestar alla!!!
( Yo no vote por Deudabama o sus amigos!!!)
Adios!
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Art
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Post by Art »

What are your sorry about, Raquel?

Did you know that twice as many Americans have positive views of these protesters than of the Tea Party (Time, from a nationwide poll)?
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... 48,00.html
Time wrote:A new TIME/Abt SRBI poll finds 54% of Americans have a favorable view of the new protest movement, despite the images of bearded and shirtless youth playing bongo drums, rolling cigarettes and painting their bodies in Zuccotti Park. The same poll finds just 27% still have a favorable view of the Tea Party.
I see one rational argument in your post: they Should go to Washington. Well, the good news is that there is an OccupyDC:
http://occupydc.org/
I've seen the one in Baltimore, and there are others all around the county and around the globe.

Wikipedia's entry under "name calling" (like your "hippies and drug addicts") says this:
Name calling is a cognitive bias and a technique to promote propaganda. Propagandists use the name-calling technique to incite fears or arouse positive prejudices with the intent that invoked fear (based on fearmongering tactics) or trust will encourage those that read, see or hear propaganda to construct a negative opinion, in respect to the former, or a positive opinion, with respect to the latter, about a person, group, or set of beliefs or ideas that the propagandist would wish the recipients to believe. The method is intended to provoke conclusions and actions about a matter apart from an impartial examinations of the facts of the matter. When this tactic is used instead of an argument, name-calling is thus a substitute for rational, fact-based arguments against an idea or belief, based upon its own merits, and becomes an "argumentum ad hominem."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_calling

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¿Por qué escribes, "Lo siento", Raquel?

¿Sabes que los estadounidenses tienen el doble de opiniones positivas sobre estos manifestantes que los del Tea Party (Time, a partir de una encuesta a nivel nacional)?
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0, 9171,2096848,00. html
Time wrote: [trans. Art] Una nueva encuesta por Time / Abt SRBI indica que un 54% de los estadounidenses tiene una opinión favorable del nuevo movimiento de protesta, a pesar de las imágenes de los jóvenes con barba y sin camisa jugando bongos, liando cigarrillos y pintando sus cuerpos en el Zuccotti Park . La misma encuesta se encuentra sólo el 27% aún tiene una opinión favorable del Tea Party.
Veo un argumento racional en tu mensaje: Que deban ir a Washington. Bueno, tienes buena noticia: hay una OccupyDC:
http://occupydc.org/
He visto la protesta de Baltimore, y hay otras en todo el país y en todo el mundo.

La entrada de la Wikipedia sobre "name calling" (insultos) (como tu frase: "hippies y drogadictos") dice lo siguiente:
Insulto es un sesgo cognitivo y una técnica para promover la propaganda. Propagandistas utilizan la técnica de los insultos para incitar a los temores (basado en las tácticas de difusión del miedo) o prejuicios positivos con la intención de que el miedo o confianza se invoca o la confianza favorecerán que aquellos que leen, ven o escuchan la propaganda construirán una opinión negativa, con respecto a la primera, o una opinión positiva, con respecto al último, acerca de una persona, grupo o conjunto de creencias o ideas que la propaganda se desea que los destinatarios creen. El método tiene la intención de provocar conclusiones y las acciones sobre un asunto, aparte de un examen imparcial de los hechos de la materia. Cuando esta táctica se utiliza en lugar de un argumento, el insulto es, entonces, un sustituto para argumento racional, basadas en hechos en contra de una idea o creencia, basada en sus propios méritos, y se convierte en un "argumentum ad hominem".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_calling
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Ron Gonzalez
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Post by Ron Gonzalez »

When you don't have an argumemt the only thing you can do is call everyone hippies, or drug addicts, something left over from the Nixon years.
Raquel M
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Post by Raquel M »

http://youtu.be/fnyVuMLit64


The truth and the cause of the problems.....enjoy!
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Art
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Post by Art »

What are your thoughts, Raquel? Are you saying that the 2007 crisis was caused by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac?

The video (which was well-done as art or propaganda) makes it seem like the entire financial problem was caused by evil, crooked Democrats and these two public institutions (Freddy Mac and Fannie Mae). Oddly missing is any admission of the role Wall Street played in the creating the mess.

The denial and exaggeration of this video is ridiculous.

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¿Y qué sean tus pensamientos, Raquel? ¿Estás pensando que la crisis de 2007 se provocó por Fannie Mae y Freddie Mac?

El video (que fue bien hecho como arte o propaganda) nos da a entender que el entero problema financiero fue causado por los demócratas malos y deshonestos, y estas dos instituciones públicas (Freddy Mac y Fannie Mae). Por extraño que parezca, lo que falta es una admisión del papel que Wall Street jugó en la creación de la crisis.

La negación y la exageración de este video es ridículo.
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