Police Start Shooting Protestors in Spain w/Rubber Bullets- Still Not News in Japan

Astounding. The peaceful demonstrations in Spain are over. The people have begun beating people and shooting them with rubber bullets. As usual, Japanese news is eerily silent on the matter. What's going on here? 

THE CLASH - REVOLUTION ROCK

Google reports that the government has sent in police in Barcelona with truncheons and they are beating peaceful demonstrators and shooting them with rubber bullets. Google reports:

Police fire rubber bullets at protesters in Barcelona

BARCELONA — Spanish police fired rubber bullets and swung truncheons to disperse anti-crisis protesters in a Barcelona square Friday as cleaning crews cleared their tent camp.

Catalan police in anti-riot gear moved in after about 50 protesters sat down on the street to block a convoy of cleaning trucks leaving the Plaza de Cataluna square with remnants of the encampment.

Police, some with plastic shields, were shown on television dragging protesters along the street and swiping with truncheons at activists, who had been chanting: "They shall not pass."

An AFP reporter at the scene saw rubber bullets fired.

The protest blockade was broken up within minutes but about 100 protesters regrouped in the square. They were surrounded by two police cordons blocking hundreds more people from entering from nearby roads.

Demonstrators chanted: "The people, united, will never be defeated!" and "No to violence!"

Cleaning crews with 10 lorries dismantled the last of the tents under police surveillance. Later, police left the square and let thousands of demonstrators flood in.

By the evening, at least 5,000 people were in the square protesting against the police intervention, some having put up tents. A dozen police vehicles were in streets leading to the square.

"What happened today was awful but it is a warning" for the country's leadership, said Ramon Deltran, 50, a psychiatrist.

I predict that this situation is going to seriously escalate and, like I wrote on May 21 in Massive Anti-Government Protests in Spain Spreading to Italy! No Mention at all in Japanese Press, the exact same thing is going on now! 

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.

There's no way unemployment or the situation with government debt, which will lead to higher taxes and more austerity measures in Spain is going to go away anytime soon, so these demonstrations are going to go on. The government, by taking a heavy hand are just escalating the situation. They are toast.

But, once again, not a word about it in the Japanese press! I checked both Yahoo! Japan and NHK and cannot find any mention of this news!

Here's a screen capture of NHK news site:

Quick translation from top to bottom:

Anti-Nuclear Demonstrations Prompting Closure of Nuke Plants

President Expected in Poland

Tourism promotion delegation sent to China

U.S. envoy continuing investigation of food shortages in North Korea 

Honda in Canada leaks personal information

The state of the last shuttle maintenance announced

"The strange quiet of territorial negotiations"

Syrian crackdown as police fire at protesters

Democratization and  assistance in the Middle East

Massive demonstrations protesting the army in Egypt

U.S. Secretary of State visits Pakistan

......Nothing about police shooting people with rubber bullets in Barcelona Spain. How about Yahoo! Japan?

Well, what do you know!? Yahoo! Japan does come through and has a story about Barcelona! (Marked in red)... Yippee... Er, well, not exactly about demonstrations and the police rousting people out like the Nazi Gestapo, but about how some soccer team from Barcelona won a soccer championship for the fourth time beating Manchester United..... .....Yawn!

Unemployment in Spain is the highest in the EU at over 21%, the entire country is about to go bankrupt and these stupid people care about who wins some professional sports title? Are you kidding me? Morons. 

Who was it that wrote something about "Bread and Circuses for the masses"? 

Proof! Chinese "Anti-Japanese" Protests Are Really About Problems in China

As stated in an earlier blog the Chinese government allows the "Anti-Japanese" protests (they approve of all political gatherings) because it serves a political purpose for the government.

If they can have the people protesting some side show problem like islands and fishing thousands of kilometers away, then that takes the people's minds off of the true problems in China today like inflation, no jobs and government corruption.

Now, after some of the demonstrations have been starting to go after those true issues, the Chinese government says that they want these "Anti-Japanese" demonstrations to stop. Interesting timing.

The fact of the matter is that they don't care about the "Anti-Japanese" demonstrations, in fact, they encourage them. The Chinese government doesn't like how these demonstrations are evolving into "Anti-Chinese" government demonstrations.

It's sort of like the Islam hysteria in the USA... Everyone needs a boogeyman.

Even the western media is buying into this "Anti-Japanese" spin effort put out by the Chinese government.

As Breitbart reports:

About 200 people staged fresh anti-Japanese protests in the southwestern Chinese city of Chongqing on Tuesday as the Chinese government sought to rein in the outburst of patriotism from getting out of hands. Anti-Japanese sentiments triggered by a diplomatic row over a remote chain of disputed islands in the East China Sea last month have led to waves of protests in various Chinese cities in response to calls made on the Internet. Police in Chongqing, the largest city in Sichuan Province, stepped up security as protesters gathered in the latest anti-Japanese rally in the Chinese inland. 

The problem with many of these western reports is that the English speaking press must rely on Chinese government interpretation of what is going on. If you can read some Chinese kanji, you can see in this next video that there are many people demonstrating against government corruption, unemployment and inflation.

The Breitbart report must be just some regurgitation of a Chinese government approved press release.

The proof lies here in this Japanese news video. The red banners are, for sure, about the islands and Anti-Japanese... It's the blue and green banners that the police do not want shown on TV that are protesting the government and China's social ills.

Watch video:

Chinese Anti-Japanese Demonstrations Starting to Focus on Real Problems

A friend writes about my recent post concerning anti-Japanese demonstrations in China:

The fact is that it's not happening in Beijing or Shanghai but mostly in central China.  Why?  Because more than 25% of college graduates in China can't find work.

China is experiencing a hell of a lot more economic pain than they're letting the world believe.  Rather than admit it to their citizens and take the blame for the anxious climate, they use their propaganda machine to focus every one's negative energy on Japan.  Better Japan than themselves, right?

Your take on why Japan is so impotent fills in the rest of the picture.


I agree with this whole-heartedly. The Chinese government allows these sorts of demonstrations as they deflect public opinion off the domestic problems (what government in the world doesn't do this?) and onto some foreign target.

But, now, it looks like the Chinese government might have allowed this Pandora's Box to open up a few unexpected surprises for them. Now the demonstrations seem to be evolving into protests against inflation and local government corruption. This, as my friend writes, is the true crux of the problem in China.


As Japan Times reports:


Hundreds of Chinese staged protests against Japan on Sunday in Shaanxi and Gansu provinces, stirring more discontent after demonstrations in Sichuan Province the previous day. The situation took a strange twist, however, as protesters in Baoji, Shaanxi Province, appeared to vent their frustration with China's widening income gaps and corruption, carrying green banners that read, "We oppose corruption in the bureaucracy" and "Curb high housing prices."


This is not a "strange twist" that these protesters would vent their frustrations with the problems that actually do affect their personal lives... I wouldn't doubt for a moment that the Chinese government does the same thing the US government (or most governments do, for that matter) and use agent provocateurs to drive these protests into the directions that benefit the government in the media and public eye.

The Chinese government certainly does not want these demonstrations to deal with China's real problems.

But, in China, as in France, many of the people who aren't asleep do recognize what the real problems are that they are facing in their daily lives... Could it be that the Bread and Circuses routine is coming to an end in China too?