Spain schools Cuba in Democracy

4 Responses to Spain schools Cuba in Democracy

1. Jim Hadstate says:

   March 18, 2010 at 11:36 AM

   That’s what I love about you, ‘Bina; you’re so very droll. You know, there are so many “free” and “human rights respecting” countries, like the good ol’ USA, who think busting heads is the way to deal with us dirty hippies.
   I remember being in the demonstrations against the Viet Nam war and having to dodge the clubs as best I could while the tear gas kept my eyes so blurred that I didn’t always succeed. Things haven’t changed much based on the pictures and videos of the cops at the Republican Convention. St. Paul Cops are channeling Mayor Daley’s thugs and police riot seems to have disappeared from the lexicon of the corporate media.
   And then they wonder why I hate capitalism and became a hard-core socialist many years ago.
2. Sabina Becker says:

   March 18, 2010 at 1:23 PM

   Jim, I’m convinced it’s only a matter of time before the feds in Ottawa did what Mike Harris did as Ontario’s premier, and simply call out the dogs everytime there’s even a squeak of dissent. Harpo’s got a lot of old Harrisites in his cabinet, most notably finance minister Jim Flaherty, who looks like a gnome and is really a troll. I was very lucky NOT to get my head coshed in by Harris’s thugs when I was at Ryerson. I left during a lull in the demo, not long after asking another student demonstrator (jokingly) when it would be time to “storm the Bastille”, as I put it. Then, realizing I was cold, tired, hungry and really needing to pee, I decided they wouldn’t miss me, as nothing was happening anyway and nothing looked likely to happen at all. I walked back to my tiny apartment (which was a few blocks away) and got some needed relief. I didn’t realize until I turned on the TV at six that things had erupted within half an hour after I left thinking nothing was going to happen! They had cops in full riot gear, clubbing people over the head; they also had mounted ones, using the horses to try to stomp the students. (Cruelty to animals? You betcha.) They even blamed the demonstrators when a horse got injured in the charge! I knew full well that the people I was with were unarmed and committed to nonviolent protest. So I immediately got suspicious. And sure enough, several demonstrators told the dutiful media flunkies that the cops had started it, advancing on the crowd and trying to stir them up. And when the demonstrators refused to be provoked by this, the cops beat on them anyway! The whole point of their presence was not to stop a riot, but to start one–and failing that, to just get rid of these pesky kids any which way they could. Violence, they thought, would be a deterrent.
   Well, they thought wrong. Instead of giving up my leftist views for fear of having the shit kicked out of me, I became even MORE of a leftist. I also became a smarter, more skeptical one. I remember thinking quite clearly that if this was conservatism, I wanted no part of it. The honorable old “Red” Tories were now the Dead Tories; the progressive party of Bill Davis was no more. From now on, the conservatives, big C or small, were the people’s enemy and mine.
   Some of my right-wing classmates thought I was cute and funny for saying that, so I quit associating with them outside of class. I insisted they’d see, in time, that this government was bad news, that the province was on the verge of going down a very big toilet because of all that bad policy that we lefties were dead set against. They all laughed. But a few years after we graduated, when the Walkerton water scandal hit the news, I’ll bet they weren’t laughing anymore. Seven dead and a thousand sick due to privatization of a public utility is not a coincidence, it’s an indictment. And the Harrisites finally fell on those grounds.
   I wonder what it’s gonna take to politically kill Harpo. I’m guessing a continued recession and more subversion of democracy, leading to bigger and louder protests, will finally be the kicker.
3. Manaat says:

   March 18, 2010 at 7:26 PM

   So it rained today in Caracas today. Los escualidos will be very sad.
4. Sabina Becker says:

   March 18, 2010 at 11:47 PM

   I’m LOLing. I hope the Guri Dam reservoir fills up again soon, too–one more in the eye for them.

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