“The peasants are revolting!”
Friends, last night I saw on television some interesting footage of marches and protests in Europe. Something stirred inside me, an excitement. Was I witnessing the beginning of a new, radical movement, one that showed that the worm was turning, that the people were fed up with being pawns in the hands of politicians and corporations and financial institutions?
According to Al Jazeera, the protests took place in several places with the photograph showing one in Brussels, the headquarters of the European Union, where labour leaders estimated 100,000 people turned out. Police barricaded banks and shops in Brussels fearing violence.
Strikes and demonstrations over austerity measures were also held in Spain, Greece, Portugal, Slovenia, Poland, Italy, Serbia and Ireland. As well, in other nations across the world, the austerity pain is also being experienced. In America, for example, as I mentioned in a previous post, one in seven people now live below the poverty line.
It seems that the little people everywhere feel that they are unfairly carrying the full weight of measures designed to help moderate the effects of the Global Financial Crisis while those who caused the crisis receive large amounts of taxpayers money so they can maintain their immense wealth and go on to make even more.
Europe lost millions of jobs during the financial crisis, and more look set to vanish as public sectors across the region are shrunk by debt-laden governments eager to save money by telling people they are going to face cuts to pensions and benefits as well as retirement ages being moved ever upwards. In addition, wage cuts and wage freezes and tax increases are being put in place by governments, even socialist ones.
People who have worked their whole lives on the basis they will have a comfortable and secure retirement are facing harsh times and, understandably and reasonably, they want the ones whose greed caused the problems to pay for it, not them.
But of course, across the world, many governments are controlled by corporations, banks and billionaires so these powerful groups are manipulating governments to make sure the little people pay the price for their risky excesses so they can continue to enjoy their lavish lifestyles, private jets and castles in Spain.
Are we witnessing the end of capitalism? Is a new paradigm about to begin, one that is fairer, one that will bring more equality and justice? Or will governments simply become more fascist, more controlling, more brutal?
We can but hope it will be the former, not the latter!
About time
Time for some direct action and direct democracy too. Can’t happen soon enough.
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It is great that people in europe are coming out against the actions by the rich that are destroying so many lives. Sadly here in the US most of the demonstrations are by the right-wing tea party types calling for more of what is already destroying their lives. They are scared, angry and so uninformed that they are easily lead by the very people who would destroy any remnents of the middle class that have survived the last 40 years.
All the change Obama is bringing is for a more facists, controlling type of government with increased spying and more corporate control of every aspect of our lives. The crazy right calls that liberalism and wants policies even more to the right. They are seriously scary and as conditions continue to get worse more and more people seem to support their insane ideas.
There is no real left, liberal party here in the US that can give people an alternative, nor is there an independent media to put that message out if there was one.
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I listen to KPFA. One of the last independant, free speech radio stations. They are listener sponsored and they are struggling. I am a member. They are the only place on the dial to get an alternative view of the news. Please support your local free speech radio or watch Democracy Now! online or find your local station that airs that show. In America these thin elements are it. The Tea Party is sposnsored by two Billionaire brothers and is a total sham of a show of democracy. Jeannie is right, those uninformed Tea Partiers are just that, uninformed! They are fighting the wrong fight. Sad.
I am excited to see Europeans out in the streets doing what our Tea Partiers should be doing. Fighting the good fight.
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Bruce Reply:
October 1st, 2010 at 1:32 am
I agree with Grace. I used to live in the San Francisco Bay Area and one of the good things there was being able to listen to KPFA live. It was started in 1947 by pacifists and the audience back then was so low that when you paid your subscription you were given a small FM radio (FM was very rare back then) which only heard KPFA. Although I am in Indiana now (don’t ask) I still listen to KPFA online. One thing I really appreciate about them are the extensive archives that they have from past shows. You can go back for many years and listen to them. KPFA is one of the very finest alternative radio voices in an era of corporate shills broadcasting the propaganda to keep us all distracted and ignorant. I cannot watch commercial TV or listen to commercial radio anymore. The content is recycled crap and the commercials drive me crazy. I am even starting to feel that way about PBS and NPR. It is now legal for people to create micro-broadcasting on FM and have their own neighborhood radio stations. I wish that radio and TV could become more like that as the regular networks have been hopelessly compromised by the corporate agenda.
Try listening to KPFA online if you can and, if you like what you hear, please support them with a donation. If KPFA and it’s sister stations on the Pacifica Network were to close it would be a real tragedy to lose one of the very finest alternative voices we have left.
One last comment which is not hopeful. The American Left was a major reason why the Vietnam War ended. I really can’t see that kind of thing happening again despite the hopeful signs from Europe. There really isn’t an American Left anymore. I don’t see it rising even as conditions in the U.S. become ever more dire for many millions. As Noam Chomsky (one of our best intellectuals) has said, American society has become more and more “atomized”. We do not spend enough time in direct contact with each other. Rather we stare at screens. Yes, I’m using a laptop right now but I don’t walk around staring at a cell phone screen ignoring the people and the real world around me. I see that everywhere now. People are plugged in with their huge TVs, iPods, cellphones, video games, and WiFi laptops. Our public places are now full of people who are staring at screens and hardly having any contact with the people around them. To me this is ominous. It is a very different environment than the one I remember from the 60s and 70s. I believe that as the world continues to deteriorate there will even more pressure to escape into the digital world. I also believe that here in the U.S. we are more likely to turn to reactionary politics as a means of finding and attacking scapegoats rather than realizing that we did to this to ourselves. I think that even if a popular mass movement in Europe spares innocent people there from “austerity measures” that it will be largely ignored in the U.S. media. No sense in giving the people any ideas. Here in my country we have apparently become used to the idea of diminishing expectations and the fact that 1% of Americans own more than 40% of the nation’s wealth! It works great for the ruling elite and the Pentagon and the arms manufacturers, though. as people get poorer and poorer they will be too busy eking out a “living” to contemplate revolution to topple the War Machine. I do hope that the demonstrations in Europe can succeed in reversing this global trend of heartless corporatism and war but I wouldn’t count on much help from the DisUnited States of Amerika.
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76-water Reply:
October 1st, 2010 at 4:52 am
Bruce- I feel your pain. With the controlled MSM here in America the average Joe/Jolene have little else to base their opinions on while they eek out a so called living. I too grew up in the 60′s early 70′s and am angry. They taught us lies. Now after working the best years of our life they want to restrict us from the SSI we gladly paid into while working our ass’es off. Our government cares more for the welfare of Israel than it’s own citizens. Our politicians get elected by who tells the most lies. Hope and change my ass! I will check out KPFA online, thanks! Peace and goodwill to all.
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Bruce Reply:
October 1st, 2010 at 1:24 pm
Hello 76-water -
Thanks for the good words. When you check out the KPFA website go to the link that has the program schedule. You will see the dazzling array of programs and topics. KPFA is a broadcasting treasure! Good listening to you.
Grace Reply:
October 1st, 2010 at 2:54 pm
“Our public places are now full of people who are staring at screens and hardly having any contact with the people around them. To me this is ominous.”
Bruce, this is an ominous development. Now they sell vans with movie theatres in the back seats so kids NEVER HAVE TO BE BORED. I told my son, “No way.” I told him it is important to know where you are and what is going on and to notice things in general.
On that note, Boredom is a develpmental stage in human deveopment. People that can deal with boredom can deal with life.
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Bruce Reply:
October 1st, 2010 at 6:53 pm
Grace -
The screens are everywhere. When I have flown in the past I always tried to get a window seat and I was like a kid despite my advanced years with my nose to the window looking out on the amazing world at 35,000 feet. It still seemed like a miracle that I could be flying at 500 mph in the lower stratosphere and munching on some pretzels and sipping cranberry juice. I have never been able to take that for granted. My fellow passengers? Increasingly, they are paying for heaphones so they can watch some mediocre movie or they call people on the AirPhone or use their laptops to watch movies that they have downloaded. I believe that I heard a while back that people would have WiFi service while in flight! I realize that most folks don’t have window seats and flying is no fun in tourist class. I just wish we could be able to tear ourselves away from the self-involvement that becomes so easy when you are staring at screens. This reminds me of that wonderful scene in Frank Capra’s movie “It Happened One Night” when the reporter and the society woman are on the “night bus” and the people all break out in a rendition of ‘The Man on the Flying Trapeze”. It is such a human moment, all of these strangers sharing that song and entertaining each other. It is pure Capra who believed in the power of the common people to get together and make the world
better. I wish we could be more like that.
The tea partiers are funded by billionaires.
It’s easier to organize if you have a billion dollars to do so. And if corporate media all over the world covers you as if you were millions.
David, didn’t you say that they showed the tea party convention on AUSTRALIAN TV?!!
Now that’s power to the rich!
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Magda, I hope it’s not just a false dawn.
Jeannie, if Obama was supposed to be the voice of the left, then he has disappointed many people including me!
Grace, people power is enormous and largely untapped. If only we could convince the people to act. To do that we need a real leader, one who has the right motives.
I have seen documentaries about tea partiers on Australian television but I don’t recall seeing a whole Convention, Wagelaborer.
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I guess if we can cram every second of peoples’ lives with entertainment along with their producing and consuming then no one has time to question the worth of their lives or think about broader questions like inequality, injustice, imperialism, etc.
Bread and circuses again!
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