Lets occupy Europe
I was sniffing around my feed reader yesterday when this popped up.
Now I’m not a very keen news follower as it usually is the same depressing stuff – the Daily Murder, the EU interfering in something or other, or the imminent demise of the world’s finances, so I’m only partially aware that there was something going on in Wall Street.
What Kirk M has found is what may loosely be termed a manifesto, though as Kirk M points out, it’s more a declaration of what pisses them off rather than a set of proposals.
What struck me on reading it is that this is pretty much a list of the gripes we have here. Some of the gripes pertain fairly exclusively to America, but where we remove those, we can add quite a few more about loss of democracy and the devious handing over of power to the EU, not to mention the thousands of new laws and regulations being imposed on us from an unelected bunch of power crazed fuckwits in Brussels.
I wonder if there is any chance of the movement spreading this far?
National revolutions are fairly commonplace but a continental revolution would be a fine beast to behold.
How about it?
And here I reproduce [with no kind permission from Kirk M] the document.
-oOo-
Declaration of the Occupation of New York City
As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.
As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.
They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices.
They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.
They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.
They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
They have donated large sums of money to politicians supposed to be regulating them.
They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantive profit.
They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.
They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.
To the people of the world,
We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.
Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.
To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.
As it happens I am off to Wall St this very afternoon. Will be gone for the weekend comrades.
Corporation managers looted the publicly owned corporations that they were entrusted to manage. This looting was in the form of thousands of individual milti-million-dollar fees, commissions, and bonuses.
The corporation thieves financed the political campaignes of the ruling class. The ruling class used hundreds of billions of tax-payer dollars to bail out the looted corporations. This is the opposite of lais sez faire capitalism.
A revolution is needed to punish the corporation-government crime team.
I’ve said it before. We are all Serfs. The Feudal system is alive and well. We just don’t know it. Our Lords and Masters do, however.
We need to replace it with another system, but what system? Experiments like Communism failed miserably and now Capitolism is biting the dust too. Dictatorships had limited success, millions died as a result. Religion has also been in the mix too, people are still dying here also.
As long as there is Human Greed, things will only work to greed limitations.
Gordon Gekko was the expert on this one.
Either way, its going to take the People (Serfs) to start the Revolution.
Fukkit! Lets all Eat Cake.
Slab:
The serfs- I call them the common man- are the problem. The common man does not want to be free. The common man wants to escape from freedom. The common man wants a benevolent dictator- your choise of words is a nanny. This benevolent dictator provides a rulebook, hierarchy, and orderly society that relieves the common man of responsibility.
TT – Are you part of the Occupying Force, or just a mere boring trader?
There is a very simple answer to the problem of chosing a type of government – don’t bother. The Belgians seemed to get on very well without one. Have they elected one yet?
By “occupying Europe” I thought you were going to give them knitting needles, wool and patterns.
tt – best of luck on Wall St. don’t let the cops smack you up too much it could cause brain damage, mind you with such a small target…
Occupying force. Just for the weekend. Saturday night soldier. Weekend warrior. The missus will be checking your blog for me and keeping me up to date so don’t think I won’t be keeping an eye on you. From jail, no doubt.
Ramrod;
In Ireland we are Serfs (Common Man). We have endured the fallout of Corrupt Politicians, Crooked Bankers and Theiving Fucker Developers. We now endure the cut backs, lower wages, higher taxes and our Soverign rights taken from us by the fuckers who got us here. Our right to control our economy gone, again, fought, bought and paid for by the sweat, blood and toil of generations.
There is no action from “the common” man, mearly moans and groans of discontent. We wearily go about our days depressed and disappointed with the state of our Country. The spirit of freedom and the will to get it, like the early Twentieth Century, does not exist here.
Maybe it would take the threat of invasion to stir everything up, ‘cos nothing else is.
“I am off to Wall St”
tt, I always thought you might be an idiot but now you have removed all doubt
Translation, “We need Cesar and Senate to give us more bread and circuses”.
Alternate translation, “we would loot and pillage, but we are too lazy and want the government to do it for us”.
Slab:
I understand what you are writing about. Anyone who does resist tyrany- such as tax resistors and whistle blowers (Private Bradley Manning)- is hated by the rest of the herd for not conforming.
The problem with Ireland [and a lot of other European countries] is that we have been downtrodden by corrupt politicians for far too long. We are suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. We hate ’em but we keep voting ’em back in.
People who are sick of the banks and other big financial institutions can do two things immediately: a) withdraw all funds from their bank accounts; b) place the funds safely under a mattress.
Then they can think about where to lodge their money for safekeeping.
I’d suggest placing some funds in post office savings accounts. Savings certificates yield modest, guaranteed interest within two to three years. Money needed at quick call could safely be deposited in a credit union account.
Seems to me the post office and the credit unions had the least to do with the causes of the Irish and world financial meltdown.
Ger,
I don’t know what you read about Ireland, but The Govt are about to recapitolise the Credit Unions who also “overindulged” during the boom years. They are all broke too. I would prefare to invest my money in pork bellies rather than in The Post Office. Its funds are guaranteed by The Government.
I don’t know about you, but with our Govt bonds regarded internationally as junk, would you trust the cash hungry State to “mind” your money safely. I fucking would’nt
So what should we who are pissed off with the banks and building societies do with our liquid funds then? Keep them in the casino-capitalist banks?
No need to ask my permission to reprint the “manifesto occupado” since I stole it from somewhere else myself. Personally, I believe the solution/form a government/replacement for capitalism is not another form that already exists but one we haven’t discovered yet. On that note, major parts of Canada do not seem to be suffering from the same problems that we, of other countries, have been experiencing of late. Bearing in mind that nothing is ever close to perfect, I always wondered about that.
Meanwhile, I’ll just sit back and enjoy the comments.
Kirk M:
It will not matter what form of government the U.S.A. gets. The American people are rotten to the core. They are supportive of replacing public trials with secret death panels and robot killing.
RAMROD – Robot killing? Why would we wish to kill robots? I didn’t realize there were any robots to kill. The year 2035 is still a bit away yet. And if anyone catches that reference I’ll buy ’em a beer. In the meantime sir, I see an American flag by your moniker in your comment and I do believe you need to get out more often. You’d probably find out that your fellow Americans are not so rotten after all. That is if you keep your mind open, your hands in your pockets and (no offense meant here, no matter how it sounds) your mouth shut. Just some damn good advice that someone gave me long time ago when I was rather angry at the world. It worked for me.
And by the way, people in general can be rotten to the core and that kind of rotten knows no boundaries, property lines or borders.
Kirk M:
The robot, a U.S. drone aircraft, intentially murdered an American born citizen that was not charged with any crime. Do a google search if you care: Obama’s secret death panel- Washington Times. This is a mainstream newspaper, not a conspiracy tabloid. Read the comments from various news sources, as I did. You will find out that their is overwhelming support from our fellow countrymen for replacing open trials with secret death panels. I submit to you that this is one example of a country populated by people rotten to the core.
This intentional targeting and assassination of an American citizen received modest news coverage because it lacks importance to an amoral population that is more interested in Monday night football.
Send me an email address and I will send you my favorite proof that the American people are the modern-day Nazis.