Reasons for Protests in United States

The Occupy Wall Street protest movement of the United States had a unique day in New York yesterday. Hundreds of picketers protested on the steps of the homes of Manhattan’s five wealthiest residents, starting with Rupert Murdoch. Other homes were visited, such as those of bankers John Paulson, David Koch and Howard Millstein — all of whom were involved in huge Wall Street scandals but were bailed out by President Bush.

The slogans were the same — that these rich persons should return what they have taken from the economy. The police only had barriers to control the protesters. However, the same thing did not occur in Boston. The city police there acted with extreme violence during the early morning hours yesterday, attacking dozens of protesters with clubs — resulting in the wounding of two war veterans, one of whom was a 74-year-old Vietnam War veteran.

The “Occupy Together” movement reached more than 1,200 American cities in preparation for the greater national movement scheduled for next Saturday. As the American journalist David Graeber stated, in an incisive article published for The Guardian, young people, along with mature adults, are taking to the streets of the United States for jobs, good education and peace, and they certainly want much more than this. They are challenging a system that failed them but that instead helps bankers and anachronistic capitalism. “What does capitalism serve?” you ask. In response, they explain that it is a system based on the conspicuous consumption of some and founded on the denial of basic necessities to 99 percent of the country’s population. They have discovered that their future, their dreams and their life’s destiny have been stolen by a system that stopped being democratic.

The neoliberals of the entire world realize that these protests mean nothing, and many of them remain unaware that they are occurring. It has always been like this in history. During the night of Aug. 4, 1789, the National Assembly of France abolished the privileges of feudal nobility. Louis XVI, who was to be guillotined less than three years later, wrote in his diary: Today there is nothing new.

As Paul Krugman correctly stated in his article in The New York Times, the protesters are not extremists: The real extremists are the oligarchs, who do not want the public to know the source of their wealth. The politicians do not realize that the revolutionary process under way will, in one way or another, reach every country in the world. The imposition of a financial system that has globalized itself has resulted in people all over the world reacting to a totalitarian and criminal system. Now is the time for the world’s statisticians to understand what is going on, to draw spectators to reason and to put the State to work in the interest of justice, thus returning it to its natural state.

In Europe and the United States, it is obvious that the State (government) is bailing out fraudulent bankers and the rich, insisting on the classical neoliberal recipe of financial accounting — such as reducing social services, freezing wages and summarily dismissing huge amounts of workers — all to ensure the profits of shareholders. During the 1980s, emerging countries, among them Brazil, were involved in nasty and massive international debt, generated by the need to roll out billions of eurodollars without the resources to do so. Mrs. Thatcher once said that Brazil would have to sell its lands and forests in order to pay what it owed. Now, 30 years later, Greece is selling all it can, even historic monuments, while groups of its people are starting to go hungry. When African nations were dying of hunger and disease, as we are starting to see again, there was no problem. For whites — European or American — respect is something that does not concern them. Africa is not another continent — it’s another world. But right now, it is the blond-haired and blue-eyed whites who are protesting in Boston — the jewel of old New England aristocracy. They are taking to the streets and being beaten by police. The revolution, as the protesters themselves call it, is a peaceful movement and is under way.

There is, however, some progress being made in Europe, such as the nationalization of the Belgian bank Dexia, but this only serves as a palliative, since Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, recommended injecting more money into the private financial system. Even more frightening is that China’s government strengthened its state presence in the financial system, increasing its stake in the bank, thus making it the majority shareholder.

And the world moves toward politics. Abbas, president of the National Palestinian Authority, is fighting for United Nations recognition of his state. As he is very skilled in his initiative, he was in Bogotá, Colombia yesterday. He made the trip to Colombia knowing that they would hardly support him: The country houses American military bases, and yesterday, a Senate committee in Washington approved a free trade agreement between the two countries. Thus, President Juan Manuel Santos was limited to protocol statements in support of peace in the Middle East, which will not stop the course of history.