Anti-Crisis anger calling out

Old Lehman Brothers logo One of the guilty ones - Image via Wikipedia

At last, in many countries there seem to be people who want to let hear their voice, making it clear they had quite enough of this system where certain folks can keep enjoying good life at the cost of others.

Egyptians came on the streets for democracy. So did people in Tunisia, Yemen, Bahrain and Syria. Activist groups in America launched their own uprising — in the form of thousands of protesters descending on Wall Street. Occupy Wall Street is a “leaderless resistance movement” spearheaded by activist magazine Adbusters. The world did not only watch how it was going to evolve. They did not wait for the end result. They also started coming out all over the capitalist countries.

That homelessness can happen for more reasons than mental illness and that it can happen quickly have many persons got to know for them selves in the last few months or the last two years.  The bank-crisis brought many families on to the street. In the United States people lost their bank account. They suddenly found themselves unable to even have computer service (possibly giving an extra avenue for part time income or facilitating a job search) and allowing access to email, which is almost a requirement for doing business with anyone these days.  Having no bank account or debit card to guarantee your credentials many places will simply refuse to do business with that person.  If they do, they require large upfront cash deposits for their services and this is not something that are negotiable if those people want a telephone and electric. If they found themselves shut out of a house or apartment and cannot give a fix address it becomes impossible to get help from the governmental institutions or to get a job.

While it is not possible to prepare for every sort of disaster, you could say it really does come down to the old advice to save for a “rainy day”.  But that good advice has now been soled at a sacrifice, for a song and came to a downpour. Many people got to bite the bullet. the thirst-quenching for the old day has  been shuttered the last months, because many savings have become worthless (Lehman–Brothers, Fortis and Dexia shares for example). Several people have fallen off the financial ladder because of the stock-markets tumbling down. In many countries several hardworking persons or even  entire families have become homeless.

In some countries we could find the pawn shop getting more attention again. The jewellery people still find in house has been brought to the counter to get some cash. Normally people would be better off to take it to a reputable jewellery shop where the jeweller will be qualified to appraise the items worth and may be offer the seller more since they know the true value of the item.  But people have the social value of the goods and do hope to get them back after a while. Therefore the Pawn shop looks for them a good alternative, though employees over there just  are not qualified to appraise the jewellery. Most often they will give a low ball price which will be as low as they possibly can.  They could care less if the seller would be insulted by their offer. They seem to operate on the assumption that those people coming to them are desperate and will be easy to take advantage of, and often they are right.

The EconoTwist’s New Years Eve comment of 2010 warned already that though the stage is set for a mind-blowing decade of technological breakthroughs that have the potential to change or lives completely we unfortunately are probably also in for a long period of financial instability and high levels of unemployment. The much debated economic recovery, in form of a hell of a lot of new jobs, did not happen ‘anytime soon’. Financial markets grew even more complex and unpredictable, tied together in an unofficial, unregulated intranet of dark fibre cables and with many governments going to and for, not taking severe measures.

The United States and Europe have borrowed a lot of money to bail out countries that got in trouble by borrowing too much money. On Planet Money, Satyajit Das explained this august that European countries aren’t actually putting their own money into that big Euro-zone bailout fund. Instead, the fund will borrow from investors around the world — the same investors who are growing wary of lending to a bunch of countries in Europe. What’s more, the fund will be guaranteed by the countries that use the Euro. So the more the fund is used, the more countries that are already struggling — countries like Spain and Italy — will be on the hook for potential losses.

In many countries so many people became pushed in a corner so that they either could be smashed or had to push to break out of their handcuffs.

The Spanish bull let the world hear about her. The Indignados took stand and ignited the fire of which the light could reach Paris but also across the ocean.

What could the poor people do, when their own government did not want to listen to their voice and Europe was not eager to give a hand out to help them to cross the swamp. this when banks tried to lure people in selling them worthless shares and getting the to invest in tricky things.

It really became time that we resist this corrupt global banking system that puts profits before human rights. In several countries producers of genetic products made farmers independent and got cattle-holders to invest in new machines. Banks got people to invest in new industries and promised heaven on earth. CEO’s and those in power were not afraid to create a bubble and a system that has robbed our lands, poisoned our waters, and oppressed our people for generations.

Some of them had been walking for months on end, first from cities all over Spain to the country’s capital, and then, after temporarily re-occupying Puerta del Sol, on towards to Brussels.  At last by seeing that more persons really got fed up and wanted to let hear their voice they could grow stronger and share the barbecue. Thousands of miles could not get them from the idea to try to convince Europe it had to do something to protect its poor citizens. “We won’t be tired until we reach Brussels,” they told the world. It was a testament to the enormous energy not only of the marchers, but of the 15-M movement as a whole.

15 May should for may become the start of a “New Spring” for Europe with more equality for all its citizens. Many countries followed to react against their government and against Europe.
The UK had in July the strike against the Coalition’s pension reform plans which  saw hundreds of thousands take to the streets across the UK – not only members of the four Trade Unions taking action, which cover 750,000 workers between them, but also crowds of their supporters. Most of the banners on the London streets read “Fair Pensions For All”, but this was just a single-issue cipher for a much wider response to the Conservative programme of austerity, cuts, and privatisation.
Aaronjohn Peters commented: “The privatization of public agencies and the attack on the welfare state, while relieving societies of some bureaucratic burden, worsen living conditions for the majority of citizens, break the historic social contract between capital, labor, and the state, and remove much of the social safety net, the nuts and bolts of legitimate government for the common people.”

Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, Adbusters a not-for-profit, reader-supported, 120,000-circulation magazine concerned about the erosion of our physical and cultural environments by commercial forces wanted to break the line of silence which has gone on too long.  The editors of the activist magazine Adbusters have just called for a “shift in revolutionary tactics” and a Tahrir/Sol-style occupation of Wall Street.

We not only have to face the consequences of severe climate change which are unavoidable. We also have to face the price of the penalty for 9/11 and the war against terror, plus for the result of us wanting to live above our means. Those in charge of the country looked more to fill their own pocket and the ones of the global companies instead of taking care that everybody could get his or her right share. The doom picture of an economic crisis has been placed above everybody’s head since 1980 so that employers could take advantage of the situation that most employed became afraid to  loose their job.

People got exploited and the older ones put aside, because they could utter their voice and say to much or react to hard. The younger ones got provoked by jealousy and the advertisements of the technical gadgets.

Working within the system to reform it has failed. Working outside the system to defy it may also fail.

It could not go up that we would continue this way defeciting the future of our beloved ones.

Several people are aware of our demands on nature and on those around us. How the world is turning we just can not let it happen. We have to be aware that we cannot linger.  Chris Hedges says: “We must fight for those who come after us, for those who at this moment are too small, too weak and too disempowered to fight, for the born and the unborn, for those who have not yet lost the capacity for wonder and awe before the natural world. We owe our children that. The hardest moral stance and the greatest act of courage will be to see clearly, like Sitting Bull, the darkness and the power of the forces of death arrayed against us and yet find the fortitude to resist. Sitting Bull’s greatest fear at the end of his life was that he had not fought hard enough for his people and that they might revile him.”

After triumphing in a standoff with the city New York over the continued protest of Wall Street at Liberty Square in Manhattan’s financial district, the Occupy Wall Street movement has spread world wide with demonstrations in over 1,500 cities globally and over 100 US cities from coast to coast. In New York, thousands marched in various protests by trade unions, students, environmentalists, and community groups. As occupiers flocked to Washington Square Park, two dozen participants were arrested at a nearby Citibank while attempting to withdraw their accounts from the global banking giant.

Up North in Confederation Park, Ottawa, Canada joined the 16th the global day of action, while Down Under In Australia, about 800 people gathered in Sydney’s central business district, carrying cardboard banners and chanting “Human need, not corporate greed.” Protesters will camp indefinitely “to organize, discuss and build a movement for a different world, not run by the super-rich 1%,” according to a statement on the Occupy Sydney website.

In South Africa, about 80 people gathered at the Johannesburg Securities Exchange, Talk Radio 702 reported. Protests continued despite police efforts to declare the gathering illegal. In Taiwan, organizers drew several hundred demonstrators, who mostly sat quietly outside the Taipei World Financial Centre, known as Taipei 101.

In Brussels, thousands of marched through the downtown area chanting “Criminal bankers caused this crisis!” They pelted the stock exchange building with old shoes then marched on to the European Union sector.

Protesters also accused NATO, which has its headquarters in Brussels, of wasting taxpayer money on the wars in Libya and Afghanistan, saying that one European soldier deployed to Afghanistan costs the equivalent of 11 high school teachers.

(CNN) — Like the spokesmen for Arab dictators feigning bewilderment over protesters’ demands, mainstream television news reporters finally training their attention on the growing Occupy Wall Street protest movement seem determined to cast it as the random, silly blather of an ungrateful and lazy generation of weirdos. They couldn’t be more wrong and, as time will tell, may eventually be forced to accept the inevitability of their own obsolescence.

For a social Europe "Indignez vous" - Picture by Samuel Cossar-Gilbert and Jerome Roos

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Please do read more in:

• The Tuesday Podcast: To Solve Debt Problem, Europe Borrows More Money
• The sun rises: indignados take back Puerta del Sol (by Jérôme E. Roos on August 6, 2011)
• The Global Revolt Continues: Indignados Reach Paris as Wall Street is Occupied
  Jérôme E. Roos write on September 18, 2011: Apart from helping to inspire the movements in Greece, Chile and Israel, the indignados might have attracted a lot of international attention, but they remained a largely nationally-based movement.
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  Next to the highly anticipated occupation of Wall Street, actions were held in San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto, Tokyo, Tel Aviv, Athens, Madrid, Barcelona, Milan, Rome, Amsterdam, Berlin, London, and numerous other cities around the world. What is most exciting is that all of these actions were organized by local action groups, no longer just by Spanish expats. More than ever before, it has become clear that what began in Madrid on May 15 has now become a truly transnational movement with roots in every major city of the Western world.
• Time for Britain’s Indignados: the pension strike, Labour and strategic optimism
  This is not a time to sadly shake our heads, but to look out beyond neoliberalism, and beyond Westminster – and, as many of those who fought inequality and injustice did in 1842 – to do so with the same pair of eyes.
• Panache!
  Why we must fight.
• From Tahrir Square to Times Square: Protests Erupt in Over 1,500 Cities Worldwide
• While the spotlight is on New York, “occupy” actions are also happening all across the Midwestern and the Southern United States, from Ashland, Kentucky to Dallas, Texas to Ketchum, Idaho. Four hundred Iowans marched in Des Moines, Iowa Saturday as part of the day of action:
• “People are suffering here in Iowa. Family farmers are struggling, students face mounting debt and fewer good jobs, and household incomes are plummeting,” said Judy Lonning a 69-year-old retired public school teacher. “We’re not willing to keep suffering for Wall Street’s sins. People here are waking up and realizing that we can’t just go to the ballot box. We’re building a movement to make our leaders listen.”
• Think Occupy Wall St. is a phase? You don’t get it (By Douglas Rushkoff, Special to CNN)

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Related articles

• World Wide Occupy Wall Street Protests(rainbowwarrior2005.wordpress.com)
  • Thousands participated in the Vancouver leg of the financial protests.
  • Video on the protest in Vancover
  • Video Occupy Toronto protesters settle in at St. James Park 
• Occupy the planet: ‘Indignant’ protests to sweep across world (talesfromthelou.wordpress.com)
  “Indignant” activists, angered by a biting economic crisis they blame on politicians and bankers, vow to take to the streets worldwide on Saturday in a protest spanning 71 nations.
• Protesters in Europe march against corporate greed (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
  Italian riot police fired tear gas and water cannons in Rome on Saturday as violent protesters hijacked a peaceful demonstration against corporate greed, smashing bank windows, torching cars and hurling bottles.Elsewhere, hundreds of thousands nicknamed “the indignant” marched without incident in cities across Europe, as the “Occupy Wall Street” protests linked up with long-running demonstrations against European governments’ austerity measures.
• Protesters in Europe March Against Corporate Greed (foxnews.com)
  “People of Europe: Rise Up!” read one banner in Rome. Some peaceful demonstrators turned against the violent group and tried to stop them, hurling bottles, Sky Italia and ANSA said. Others fled, scared by the raw violence.
  In Frankfurt, continental Europe’s financial hub, some 5,000 people protested at the European Central Bank, and some were setting up a tent camp aiming at permanently occupying the green space in front of the ECB building.Wikileaks founder Julian Assange spoke to about 500 demonstrators outside St. Paul’s cathedral in London, calling the international banking system a “recipient of corrupt money.”
• Being Indignant Is Not Enough (mraybould.wordpress.com)
  The violence on the streets of Rome today raise memories of the Anti-Globalization protest in Genoa ten years ago which resulted in the  death of Carlo Giuliani.
  Martin Boldray, who lives in Emilia Romagna, Northern Italy, wrote from there: “The violence on the streets of Rome today raise memories of the Anti-Globalization protest in Genoa ten years ago which resulted in the  death of Carlo Giuliani.My fear is that any legitimate aims get hi-jacked by groups intent on violent confrontation which will be as politically progressive as the recent rioting and looting in the UK.I would like to stress here that my sympathies lie with the protesters and I am as sick and tired of the failure of capitalism as they are.”
• Across the world, the indignant rise up against corporate greed and cuts (independent.co.uk)
• ‘Indignant’ Protests to Sweep Across World (jhaines6.wordpress.com)
  Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, predicted Wednesday the Wall Street demonstrations, which bring thousands of people together for marches, would one day spell the downfall of the West.“This movement will soar to completely mark the downfall of the West and the capitalist regime,” he said.
• Violence erupts during Rome’s ‘occupy’ protest (theglobeandmail.com)
• Riot police fire tear gas at Occupy protesters in Rome (theglobeandmail.com)
• Rome clashes mar global day of protests (heraldsun.com.au)
• Berlusconi vows to punish rioters (bbc.co.uk)
• The Global Economy is about to Crash (twistedeconotwist.wordpress.com)
• Portugal: Greek déjà-vu? (rt.com)
• G-20: IMF Could Extend Aid To Italy And Spain, Only If EU Leaders Have A Concrete Plan By Oct. 23 (businessinsider.com)
• Tracing the Roots of #OccupyWallStreet (greatfinds.icrossing.com)
• Adbusters founders cheer their Occupy idea (cbc.ca)
• Europe Crisis Plan Wins Global Backing as G-20 Urges Action (businessweek.com)
• Europe Crisis Plan Wins Global Backing as G-20 Urges Action – BusinessWeek (news.google.com)
• Anti-crisis anger turns into global movement (calgaryherald.com)
• Spain and Portugal: ‘the worst will be next year. Then it will really hit’ (guardian.co.uk)
• Money march: 1,500 trek to demand Brussels clean up its act (rt.com)
• The Global Economy – Out through the In Door? (ritholtz.com)
  In 2008, panicked governments and central banks injected massive amounts of money into the economy, in the form of government spending, tax concessions, ultra low interest rates and “non-conventional” monetary strategies – code for printing money. The actions did stave off the Great Depression 2.0 temporarily, converting it into a deep recession –the US economy shrank by 8.9% in 2008.As individuals and companies reduced debt as banks cut off the supply of credit, governments increased their borrowing propping up demand to keep the game going for a little longer. The actions bought time. Governments gambled on a return to growth, solving all the problems. That bet has failed.
• You: The Face of Anger (thedailybeast.com)
  On last Tuesday’s “Millionaires March” past the homes of such financial titans as Rupert Murdoch and David Koch, the protesters looked very different. They looked like Americans—ordinary people fed up by the unfairness that has infected our national life in recent years. It’s the unfairness of reckless financiers triggering a brutally harsh economic crisis, accepting a government bailout, and then going on to become even richer while everybody else has been left to struggle.
• Wall Street Sit-In Goes Global Saturday (jhaines6.wordpress.com)
  “We have people from all walks of life joining us every day,” said Spyro, one of those behind a Facebook page in London which has grown to have some 12,000 followers in a few weeks, enthused by Occupy Wall Street. Some 5,000 have posted that they will turn out, though even some activists expect fewer will.
• America’s indignados (blogs.ft.com)
  Unlike in previous corporate scandals – such as Enron and Tyco – there have been no high-profile arrests, following the Wall Street crash of 2008. And yet the economic and fiscal consequences of the crash have been incomparably more severe. than the post dot.com scandals. That fact, plus the survival of the “bonus culture” in the big banks, has fed the public perception that Wall Street has “got away with it”.
• “People all over the world, we are saying ‘Enough is enough’.”(voceroboliviano.wordpress.com)

  Concrete demands are few from those who proclaim “We are the 99 percent,” other than a general sense that the other 1 percent – the “greedy and corrupt” rich, and especially banks – should pay more, and that elected governments are not listening.

  “It’s time for us to unite; it’s time for them to listen; people of the world, rise up!” proclaims the Web site United for #GlobalChange. “We are not goods in the hands of politicians and bankers who do not represent us … We will peacefully demonstrate, talk and organize until we make it happen.”

• Protesters To Occupy London, Rome, Madrid Saturday(huffingtonpost.com)

  Concrete demands are few from those who proclaim “We are the 99 percent,” other than a general sense that the other 1 percent – the “greedy and corrupt” rich, and especially banks – should pay more, and that elected governments are not listening.

  “It’s time for us to unite; it’s time for them to listen; people of the world, rise up!” proclaims the Web site United for #GlobalChange. “We are not goods in the hands of politicians and bankers who do not represent us … We will peacefully demonstrate, talk and organize until we make it happen.”

• Bill Mann’s Canada: Occupy finally comes to roost in Vancouver (marketwatch.com)
  Adbuster creations, like anti-smoking symbol Joe Chemo, and its anti-Nike sportswear “subadvertisements” that proclaim, “Just Douche It,” are pretty funny. Adbusters has always focused largely on the powerful American advertising industry, and it’s cultivated a growing, if modest, core of young followers with its strong anti-consumerist message

  Still, the youthful Adbusters staff here in British Columbia must be more than a bit surprised by the current widespread political demonstrations in the U.S. they inspired — occupations that are (finally) drawing attention from the media and politicians. The magazine and its anti-ads have been called sophomoric — accurately, I would argue. Occupy Wall Street sometimes seems like a Canadian fraternity prank that’s gotten out of hand.

  But the Canadian magazine has hit a nerve in the U.S. at just the right time economically. Adbusters, you could say, has exposed and exploited capitalism’s Achilles heel. Just as, I would argue, Canada’s far saner banking and more humane health-care systems have highlighted it.