On Democracy in Spain

On Monday, July 30, 40 Spaniards ranging in age from their mid-20’s to early 70’s congregated in a dilapidated plaza in Madrid. Those wizened by past experience brought folding chairs; others tore off cardboard slabs from a nearby recycling heap to fashion makeshift cushions. Newcomers stood or crouched. All had gathered for a 3-hour meeting, a weekly affair organized by Economics Group of Puerta del Sol, lively chapter of citizens who’ve been assembling since the last spring to puzzle through Spain’s intractable economic crisis. (Jonathan Blitzer – NYTimes – 16/08/2012)

The group is one of the several civic taskforces; others are devoted to the environment, politics, culture and law. Each is affiliated with an individual neighborhood’s popular assembly that coordinates local activism from efforts to block execution of foreclosures to rallies at branches of Spanish banks. These local groups form the vertebrae of the national protest movement known as “15-M,” named for date, May 15, 2011, when tens of thousands of Spaniards started protesting government mismanagement and austerity measures. These indignados invite everyone from articulate activists to passersby, neighborhood eccentrics to participate in wide-ranging, and often interminable and inconclusive, debates about politics. Though the meetings can be unwieldy, and protesters’ critics caricature movement as quixotic rabble, it is unsung success of participatory democracy. With weeks of corralling and debating behind each proposal, the activists have stayed true to their egalitarian core, whatever the inconvenience. It is hard to pinpoint just how large this network has become. Turnout varies, and activists are keen on preserving their non-hierarchical structure, making it difficult to distinguish regular initiates from casual attendees. Still, to judge from Facebook and Twitter activity, these assemblies can reach thousands of people in a matter of hours. At first, the indignados laid easy claim to the public’s attention. Voluble politicians invoked them in their talking points. Newspapers published wispy profiles of demonstrators. And a spate of books carried “15-M”-inspired titles. Over a year later, as cynicism sets in about the worsening economic crisis, this attention has soured. Skeptics are accusing protesters of not having coherent agenda. Problem, instead, may be they have too many proposals. Neighborhood assemblies have posted scores of demands online, the result of arduous votes taken in plazas through the capital.

The Economics Group affiliated with Puerta del Sol, Madrid’s central hub, has proposed everything from the elimination of tax havens to increased development aid and reform of draconian foreclosure laws. Its members have also organized talks by intellectuals, including Nobel laureates. “Programming has given me an education about how economy works which I wouldn’t have gotten elsewhere”. But with conservatives wed to austerity in power and socialist opposition largely discredited, no one in the establishment circles is listening to self-anointed neighborhood parliamentarians. It’s all too easy to mock their initiatives as irrelevant. Last month, I attended a “strategy session” on how the Economics Group planned to cast its rhetoric about those responsible for the crisis: How could activists call out the guilty parties (señalar a los culpables) in public? As is typical, one person volunteered to moderate and another to serve as the administrator of floor remarks, or turnos de palabra, keeping a list of attendees who wanted to speak. Process is paramount. During the strategy session, a debate raged for two hours over abstractions tied to terminology. The moderator valiantly, but vainly, tried to keep comments focused. I left both exasperated and admiring. One activist challenged me to name another grassroots cause as “far-ranging” and “deep-thinking”. Participants are not simply out for a single signal change. They are creating holistic civic-mindedness, making ordinary citizens conversant in ideas for reform. “15-M” is a novel way for disgruntled Spaniards to find their voices in a brand new age of unrelenting hardship. Now, all they need is someone who’ll listen.

U.S. is right to assail China on its South China Sea claims

The South China sea stretches over 1.4 million square miles, rich in natural resources and bejeweled with islands. China has long regarded much of the sea as its own, claiming waters more than 1.000 miles from its shores and very close to the shores of other nations. Taiwan, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei make competing and overlapping claims in a tangled yet high-stakes rivalry. Territorial disputes stretch back decades, but took a new twist recently. In an Aug. 3 statement, State Department criticized China for aggressive actions to reinforce its claims. The next day, China’s Foreign Ministry summoned an American diplomat for formal protest, announced that the United States “showed total disregard of facts, confounded right and wrong, sent a seriously wrong message”. Why this matters is that the United States has announced a pivot toward Asia, a seminal move to counter China’s rising influence, including a rebalancing of forces over the next eight years toward a goal of 60% of the Navy in the Pacific, up from half at present. According to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, that will include six aircraft carriers and a majority of cruisers, destroyers, littoral combat ships and submarines. United States is neutral on territorial claims in South China Sea. But the State Department’s statement was intended to push back against China’s recent harrying of Philippines and Vietnam over disputed fishing and oil drilling rights. China has announced that it is upgrading the administrative level of Sansha city, on one of the Paracel islands, to a prefecture and establishing a military garrison there, a further signal of its intent. Worried neighbors are welcoming more port calls from U.S. naval forces. U.S. statement called for resolving disputes peacefully. China saw it, quite accurately, as a challenge on behalf of the weaker states in the region and insisted the United States “respect China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” What exactly does that entail? China has a very expansive claim to the sea, based on nine dashed lines sketched in a very imprecise fashion on a map six decades ago. The claim encroaches on some of the 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zones granted to other countries by United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. China has insisted that it will work out the disputes one by one, and the United States should stay away. State Department’s statement accurately asserted United States has a “national interest” in the region: not territorial, but to protect regional stability and the huge volume of international shipping passes through the sea. The sea is clearly a flashpoint. Everyone needs to make sure it does not become a sea of hostility. (source: Editorial Board – The Washington Post – 16/08/2012)

Setor privado é essencial para a economia, diz Dilma

A presidenta Dilma Rousseff afirmou que governo brasileiro continuará co desenvolvimento do país, com a busca melhoria da infraestrutura, para reduzir o chamado custo Brasil, reconheceu que o setor privado é essencial no processo de tornar a economia mais competitiva. Vamos reforçar a capacidade do Estado de planejar, organizar a logística, e compartilharemos com o setor privado a execução dos investimentos e a prestação dos serviços, disse Presidenta, após anúncio, nesta quarta-feira, programa de concessões de rodovias e ferrovias, que envolve investimentos 133 bilhões de reais. Meu governo reconhece parcerias com o setor privado como essenciais à continuidade e aceleração do crescimento, acrescentou. A criação de uma empresa de planejamento e logística, anunciada junto com o pacote, é “um passo fundamental” nessa etapa de investimentos na infraestrutura do país. A Presidenta procurou fazer distinção entre novo plano de concessões e privatizações realizadas em governos passados, ressaltando que “nós aqui não estamos desfazendo um patrimônio público para acumular caixa ou reduzir dívida”. Em um momento de crescimento fraco da economia, Presidenta finalizou dizendo que o país precisa taxas de crescimento compatíveis com suas necessidades de distribuição de renda. (Reuters – 15/08/2012)