Hundreds of thousands march against austerity in Portugal
Source: Agence France-Presse
Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of Lisbon and other Portuguese cities Saturday to protest against the government's austerity measures aimed at rescuing the debt-hit eurozone nation.
The rallies were organised by a non-political movement which claimed 500,000 marched in the country's capital and another 400,000 in the main northern city of Porto. There have been no official estimates of the crowds.
But the mood of the crowd was clearly political, calling for new elections with banners declaring "Portugal to the polls!" and "If you fall asleep in a democracy, you wake up in a dictatorship".
Another banner showed a picture of centre-right Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho with the caption: "Today I am in the street, tomorrow it will be you."
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Read more: http://www.france24.com/en/20130302-hundreds-thousands-march-against-austerity-portugal-0
Also see http://www.democraticunderground.com/12526053
blkmusclmachine
(16,149 posts)starroute
(12,977 posts)There are at least two lies in that sentence -- that Portugal's central problem is debt and that austerity can, or is even intended to, rescue it.
The pro-austerity spin in that sentence trashes everything that follows, giving no explanation for why people are actually taking to the streets and making it seem as though they just have an inexplicable fear that their country is turning into a dictatorship.
Horrible, horrible, horrible reporting.
socialist_n_TN
(11,481 posts)(it must be some sort of wire service report), I thought the EXACT same thing. But this is par for the course for the capitalist owned MSM. I've come to expect bullshit like this from the mouthpieces of the PTB.
Cal Carpenter
(4,959 posts)It's like when there are major strikes that have an effect on shipping or transportation, most articles and reporting are focused on the impact it has on 'business'. No matter that workers are getting screwed and organizing and fighting back.
Thanks for pointing it out.
Fire Walk With Me
(38,893 posts)Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)fasttense
(17,301 posts)dipsydoodle
(42,239 posts)to the woes of both Portugal and Spain is the collapse of their construction industrys and real estate markets. The root cause of that was American financial institutions capitalising on the propensity of US citizens to "spend" their own homes.
fasttense
(17,301 posts)It was out and out fraud.
The banks admitted it and Obama got his DOJ to make an extra special deal with all the banksters.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zuesse/obama-foreclosure-settlement_b_2170927.html
Banksters conned, forged, manipulated and altered documents so home owners appeared to be eligible for loans that were way over their heads. Loans the banksters knew they would default on. Loans that had no real documentation to support them.
You can thank the dancing supremes for this. Besides picking the worse president in history of the country in 2000, the 9 robed junta made it so that money could buy politicians. Now if you can con, manipulate, cheat and steal enough money you too can be forever safe from prosecution if you bribe a few judges and politicians. That's how America works.
dipsydoodle
(42,239 posts)What I wrote was not intended as a criticism of those who were defrauded. The aggregate issue was caused by overall re-mortgaging where no change of home was involved - running up debt then remortaging to pay it off in an endless cycle.
Similar circumstances arose in the UK with the mere existence of non status mortgages - mortgages where confirmed ability to repay as a function of income was discarded as an underwriting criteria. That's been clamped down on now and I would assume the same has happened your side too.
Another time bomb sits around as we speak. Many now have low interest mortgages the payments for which would not be sustainable in the invevitable future increase in interest rates.