Golly. It looks like that fancy pajama party in Davos, has considered the state of the capitalist pig, and found its condition rather alarming.
For decades, this ritzy Swiss resort has hosted an annual celebration of capitalism where luxurious Audis ferry potentates and presidents between lavish hotels so they can bemoan the perils of socialism, high taxes and debt. And yet, this year, the veteran founder and Chairman of the Davos World Economic Forum, Professor Klaus Schwab, declares that "Capitalism, in its current form, no longer fits the world around us."
And is so shaken by the situation it's taking a page out of the Occupy movement. Just like Obama did last night.
For all the forced conviviality in the chamber, the most memorable parts of the speech were shaped not by shenanigans in Washington, but by the protests in the streets that have shifted the focus of the nation from debt and government-bashing to the enduring inequalities and inequities in American society.
Because they can see the writing on the wall, and the power of an idea whose time has come. Unlike Stephen Harper.
Uh oh. I mean oink oink. I see the unrepentant capitalist pig just can't help itself. Stuffing itself with human misery. While the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.
A new report finds that the gap between the rich and the poor just keeps getting wider in Canada.
So much for the Con plan to cut government jobs, drive down wages, reduce benefits by attacking unions, while giving the rich juicy tax breaks.
I see that Kalle Lasn, one of the Canadian instigators of the Occupy Wall Street movement, laments the way things turned out in Canada.
While protesters from Halifax to Vancouver emulated their global counterparts by pitching tents in public spaces and brainstorming ways to challenge the status quo, Lasn said the efforts he witnessed lacked some of the passion that characterized rallies in the United States.
I don't question Lasn's good intentions, but it all sounds a bit hollow. Firstly, since he only visited the campsite in Vancouver his views of the Canadian movement are obviously extremely limited. Secondly, since he came up with the idea of occupying campsites, and providing free food and shelter, in cities full of homeless people, street kids, drug abusers, and the mentally ill, like Vancouver, he should take some blame for what happened.
I'm going to miss the Occupy Toronto campsite, this colourful little progressive utopia in the heart of a cold grey city. For by tomorrow night it will almost surely be destroyed.
I'm going to miss the endless discussions about how to change the world and make it a better place. I'm going to miss the amazing collection of gentle idealists and activists who kept it running, so long and so peacefully.
It's going to be a cold night at the Occupy Toronto campsite, as the clock on the church that has refused the occupiers sanctuary, counts down the hours before they are evicted.
Because you don't have to ask yourself what would Jesus do eh? Or be a weatherman, to know that a cold wind is blowing.
Not only is the hanging judge in fine fettle, the right-wing rabble is in a frigging frenzy, some neighbours are outraged their dogs don't have enough room in the park to shit, and some old lefties are comparing the Occupy movement to Jonestown.
I see that London, Ontario, has become the first Canadian city to evict its Occupy protesters.
And that others are gearing up to do the same thing.
As news spread of what happened in London, Toronto's mayor said it was time Occupy protesters in his city left their encampment in a downtown park.
And although I'm disappointed, I'm not surprised. Canada is an aging, conservative country, where an authoritarian regime is making a mockery out of our Parliamentary democracy. And most people couldn't give a damn.
Nor am I surprised that our Con media has been attacking the peaceful Occupy movement like a pack of rabid hyenas, to stroke their corporate masters.
But what does surprise and shock me is the way some Progressive Bloggers have been attacking the protesters. Calling them degenerates.
I see the Mayor of Vancouver is using a tragic drug overdose to justify evicting the city's Occupy protesters.
"I have directed the city manager to expedite the appropriate steps to end the encampment as soon as possible with a safe resolution being absolutely critical to that," Mayor Gregor Robertson said Saturday night.
Even though everyone knows that a similar death could happen anywhere in Vancouver. In any other park, in a cheap hotel, in a squalid alley. Because it happens ALL the time.
And everyone knows that excuses are a dime a dozen, when every Mayor has a different reason, but the same goal : It's time to clear those "undesirables" out of OUR public spaces, and if the Canadian winter won't do it, we will
Oh my Con Majesty. I see that Margaret Wente is channelling her inner Marie Antoinette again, and declaring that the members of the Occupy movement shouldn't blame the rich. They should blame themselves.
Ms. O’Gorman is in a fix. But I can’t help wondering whether she, and not the greedy Wall Street bankers, is the author of her own misfortune. Just what kind of jobs did she imagine are on offer for freshly minted sociology graduates? Did she bother to ask? Did it occur to her that it might be a good idea to figure out how to support her children before she had them?
When I wandered through the Occupy Toronto campground today it was quiet, like most places in the city on a lazy, chilly, Sunday afternoon.
But there were more tents than ever. The food tent was busy...
So were the sign painters...
Even on a lazy Sunday, the little community was humming like a bee hive. There may be divisions.
The question of trade-offs with authority keeps arising as an irritant. I was a little antsy Monday night when some speakers wanted to ignore the Parks Department’s request to remove the straw now covering the ground to keep the mud down. “If we allow ourselves to live with bureaucratic bullshit and this petty tin-pot dictatorship,” the demands will keep on coming, was one comment in a line of similar others.
But they are being talked out, the protests remain peaceful, the camp is clean (apart from all that straw) and superbly organized...
(click pic to enlarge)
It still looks a lot like Woodstock to me, a wonderful little progressive oasis, in the heart of a cold, grim, Money City. And its small band of mostly young and poor inhabitants seem so innocent about the beast they are facing, I fear for their hopes and even their lives.
But their numbers are growing. For every one of them there are 50-thousand sympathizers. And together with all the other occupiers all over the world, they are making a difference.
Two weeks — or six weeks, in the case of the original Wall Street occupation — does not a movement make, but there is no doubt the Occupy campers have already made a difference.
Not to the extent that the ubiquitous Michael Moore claimed in a rallying speech to the Oakland protesters Friday, when he claimed the protesters have killed despair and apathy in his country.
Apathy is a tougher foe than that.
But Moore was right when he said the protest camps have already altered the public discussion.
Even if to me that discussion sometimes seems too slow, too vague, and too scattered....
At the Gazebo today this guy was rambling on about the glories of the sixties, and how they were for peace, and against the "neutrino bomb." And how the media should belong to the people, and why we didn't need the pharmaceutical industry because we had herbal remedies the natives used before the white people came to Canada.
But the only applause he got from the crowd, which included quite a few homeless people and street kids, was when he said he didn't like to use the word homeless because "we are all nomads."
Which is when I wandered away.
But then I'm an impatient guy. I have no time for the mindless babble of pompous poobahs or street prophets. I hate every minute of every day I have to live in Harper's Canada. I want to see a simpler message. I want to channel all this energy into a drive for political power. I want to start changing the world TOMORROW.
So although I'm glad the unions are going to give the occupiers special tents to help keep them warm in winter.
I wish they could also send in organizers to help them focus their message sooner rather than later.
The occupiers however, have other ideas. They don't want to be packaged, or co-opted, or rushed. They seem determined to get there, THEIR way, and in THEIR own time.
This it appears will be a peaceful and PATIENT revolution...
And who's to say they're wrong? Not me.
Not when in just two weeks they have started a whole new debate in this country. Not when they are using campgrounds as an incubator of new ideas, engaging the young, the old, the poor, and the marginalized, many for the first time. Not when they are taking their protest to the streets. In a country as smug and complacent and democratically lazy as this one.
So what now ? I guess I'm going to have to wait and see. Damn.
But what I can say is that whatever is happening, may not be happening fast enough for me. But something new and different is definitely happening.
I went down to the Occupy Toronto campground yesterday, just as the protesters were setting off on a march to City Hall. So naturally I followed them, and had a great time.
Only to discover later, much to my surprise, that according to some in the MSM I was marching with a dying movement.
Miserable weather for camping and public apathy appears to be taking a toll on the "occupy" movement in Canada, even as protesters in Toronto took to the streets for a march and rally at City Hall on Saturday.
Which sort of echoes what the old Con Andrew "Silver Spoon" Coyne had to say the other day, when he dismissed the movement saying more people had lined up for the latest i-phone.
Now it's true that the core group is still a small one. A coming together of young and old activists, community groups, the poor, and the marginalized.
But what Coyne and the other cons don't seem to understand is that this movement has spread all over the world in a matter of weeks. Its message is resonating with millions, and framing a new debate. The global consensus has finally been broken.
These people have not come to protest just against a bad law or a single issue, but the system itself. They are putting capitalism in the dock. The photograph powerfully captures this moment because it so vividly shows the symbols of the order of things that inhabitants of western economies have up to now accepted.
The monster finally exposed.
Occupy Wall Street and the global movement it is inspiring may yet prove to be an effective call for change, or a flash in the pan. That is not the point. Nor does it even matter if the protest is right or wrong. What matters is that unfettered capitalism, a force for economic dynamism that seemed unassailable, beyond reproach or reform, a monster we learned to be grateful for, suddenly finds its ugliness widely commented on, exposed among the lights of Times Square. The emperor of economics has no clothes.
Yup. The Occupy movement can't fail, because it has already won.
And an idea doesn't need a campground to continue to grow, until it eventually changes the world...
As this one must. For unless the capitalist monster is tamed, or replaced by a better system, it will destroy us ALL.
The writing is on the wall...
As economic conditions deteriorate more people will understand that, and more will join the movement.
So even if the campgrounds go down, the light will burn on. It may be necessary to occupy a physical space right now, as Alice Klein says here.
As long as Occupy Toronto manages to sustain its presence in the park, it will have that vital ingredient of time to work through the kinks. Time is needed to get the logistics together, to build community, to forge links with the larger community of supporters, to develop even more powerful means of communication and group process. And finally, time is needed to coalesce around more specific messages and bigger, even more inclusive actions.
But when I saw the pictures on TV at work, and I saw how the Occupy movement is spreading.
I knew that I was right when I said the other day that this is a movement that could change the world, and save it from destruction.
Then tonight on my way home I went to the park and the mood was electric...
A large group of demonstrators had just finished a noisy march around the block, escorted by a contingent of cops on bicycles.
And in the dark park, a wild drumming party was in progress...
But what struck me was the incredible level of organization. Food, water, and other supplies were pouring into the park, and a logistics committee was running around barking out orders with almost military precision.
Don't be fooled by appearances. These people are serious, and they won't be easily moved.
And the dumbos in the MSM shouldn't be confused by their seemingly disparate demands. Because as far as I can see most of them have one thing in common. They are all complaints about a decaying economic system.
Companies, Roubini said, are motivated to minimize costs, save money and stockpile cash, but this leads to less money in the hands of employees, which means they have less money to spend and flow back to companies -- [thus] weakening the capitalist system.
Now, in the current financial crisis, consumers, in addition to having less money to spend, are also motivated to minimize costs -- to save, to stockpile cash and to pay down debt -- thus magnifying the effect of less money flowing back to companies.
They can fix the banking system in Europe, but it won't bring the good jobs back. Without those jobs, and with high levels of debt, consumers can't keep consuming.
So far governments have responded to the renewed crisis of capitalism by frantically seeking to invoke the old magic again, to start the engine of creative destruction once more. The means to do so no longer exist. Even if they did, they would only delay and enlarge the underlying problems.
But now, in the wake of the English riots and faced with possible collapse, we are at last beginning to talk about the issues ignored while the illusion persisted: equality, exclusion, the feral rich and the discarded poor and, in WH Auden's words, about "what the god had wrought / To please her son, the strong / Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles / Who would not live long."
It will DIE. It's really that simple.
Yup. The conditions for a movement like OWS to grow have never been more favorable.
Protesters worldwide geared up for a cry of rage on Saturday against bankers, financiers and politicians they accuse of ruining global economies and condemning millions to poverty and hardship through greed.
What started online in Vancouver, with the rallying hashtag cry of #OCCUPYWALLSTREET — will materialize Saturday in rallies and camp-outs in at least six cities across Canada — Ottawa, Victoria, Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and of course, Vancouver.
I know some Canadians think that an Occupy movement won't take root here. Because Canada is different eh?
But they are wrong.
"We have the same dominant ideology in Canada, in terms of really prioritizing the interests of large corporations, of the big banks, of the wealthy over the interests of the majority of the population," she said. "That's what I think this movement is really a response to.
And besides this movement is bigger than Canada. Because it must be a global one if we are going to be able to save the planet for all the humans who will follow us. And all the other living things that call earth home.
Right now it's more about how than what. But at least it's asking the question that really needs to be asked:
“They are not protests that are making demands; they are protests that are aimed at having discussions amongst people and taking the space and time to do that: ‘What sort of world do we want?’”
I know I want a better world.
I believe in the power of peaceful protest.
And that now is the time everybody must ask themselves these questions:
Do I really want to save to save the planet? Will I let fear or greed blind me?
I see that New York's monkey police are threatening to crackdown on Occupy Wall Street.
A possible confrontation between New York police and hundreds of Occupy Wall Street protestors loomed Thursday after a Canadian company requested police help while cleaning up three weeks' worth of garbage at the movement's base in Zuccotti Park.
And that a Canadian company is to blame. Just in case anyone still thought that corporate Canada was different.
Or that the Canadian hogs weren't getting fatter and fatter. Or that it couldn't happen here.
How can the Occupy movement not touch a chord? Put plainly, there is something completely screwy about a society in which, to take a current Canadian example, airline attendants, some of whom barely make $50,000 a year, are being challenged on their legitimate right to strike while, as Toronto Life magazine recently reports in its hot-off-the-press Who Earns What issue, certain fund managers in Toronto raked in salaries up to $34-million last year.
Now they know better.
Just like those corporate hogs should know that we are not afraid. They can't stop a movement that has the survival of the planet as its banner. They can't arrest or kill an idea.
They don't stand a chance against this kind of call to action.
There are no excuses left. Either you join the revolt taking place on Wall Street and in the financial districts of other cities across the country or you stand on the wrong side of history. Either you obstruct, in the only form left to us, which is civil disobedience, the plundering by the criminal class on Wall Street and accelerated destruction of the ecosystem that sustains the human species, or become the passive enabler of a monstrous evil. Either you taste, feel and smell the intoxication of freedom and revolt or sink into the miasma of despair and apathy. Either you are a rebel or a slave.
At the end of the day, we must realize we will all pay for our cynicism and disengagement. When our politics is ill, as it is now, we delude ourselves if we fail to realize how it affects us in our daily lives. Only people who turn out to vote are taking part in the decision-making. Bad governments don’t happen by accident.
Easy to understand why so many Canadians feel that if it ain't broke why fix it?
Except of course that you'd have to be living in a treehouse not to understand that having a crazed right-wing regime try to change Canada beyond recognition, with the support of less than forty percent of Canadians, is an outrage.
I don't know what shape this movement is going to take in Canada. Whether it will take root in this smug country, or will be smothered by complacency, and the contempt of the right-wing media.
Because in a country where people can seriously debate the merits of violence in hockey, even as players brains turn to jello, anything is possible eh?
But if it gets Canadians off their asses and into the streets it will be worth it. Because in the great darkness of Harperland only massive protests will stop the Cons from destroying this country, and turning it into a prison state.
As the Occupy Wall Street protests continues to grow. And unions join the struggle.
Some old wankers still struggle to explain what it means.
The organizers of Occupy Wall Street are fighting to upend the system. But what gives their movement the potential for power and potency is the masses who just want the system to work the way they were promised it would work. It’s not that 99 percent of Americans are really struggling. It’s not that 99 percent of Americans want a revolution. It’s that 99 percent of Americans sense that the fundamental bargain of our economy -- work hard, play by the rules, get ahead -- has been broken, and they want to see it restored.
But not me eh? I don't want to perform mouth to mouth resuscitation on a rotting corpse. I want to BURY it.
And I know that when a Con whore like Ann Coulter is scratching her smelly balls and calling it "mob rule."
The capitalist pigs are trembling in their boots trotters, and we are heading in the right direction.
However, if somebody STILL needs to understand why it's happening, and where the river of history is leading us, all they need to do is remember this.
It's time to check ourselves, to see if we still have that small part that believes in the values that America promises. Do we still have a shred of our decency intact in the face of debasement? If you do, then now is the time to give that forgotten part a voice. That is what this movement is ultimately about: giving voice to decency and fairness.
And him...
Each of us is of great value to the whole. Do not forget your greatness. Even when the world around you is telling you you are nothing. You have a voice. You want a better life for your children and the people you love. You live in a democracy. You belong, and you deserve a world that is fair and equal. You have a right to take your place and be heard.
And all the others.
Glory, Glory Hallelujah !!!! It's springtime in America !!!!
But instead are caught on video watching a group of marchers from a balcony.
Laughing and swilling champagne...
As it has others, the video reminds me of the classic scene in Dr Zhivago. When the boobeoisie are gathered at an opulent ball, swilling champagne and rattling their jewels, and the party mood is momentarily broken by the unwelcome sound of hundreds of commie demonstrators outside, singing The Internationale.
A nervous silence descends on the glitzy gathering, until the sleazy lawyer Viktor Komarovsky, played by Rod Steiger, stands up and says: "No doubt they'll sing in tune after the revolution."
The tension is broken. The fat cats laugh and applaud, and the band plays on.
But of course, as we all know, not for very much longer.
Whatever else these protests are achieving, they are drawing a line between THEM and US.
Their protest may be angry but unfocused. They have been ignored by the MSM. Brutalized by the police, and arrested in massive numbers.
But slowly but surely Occupy Wall Street is rediscovering the radical imagination.
We are watching the beginnings of the defiant self-assertion of a new generation of Americans, a generation who are looking forward to finishing their education with no jobs, no future, but still saddled with enormous and unforgivable debt. Most, I found, were of working-class or otherwise modest backgrounds, kids who did exactly what they were told they should: studied, got into college, and are now not just being punished for it, but humiliated – faced with a life of being treated as deadbeats, moral reprobates.
Is it really surprising they would like to have a word with the financial magnates who stole their future?
And who would be surprised if it happened here? Where the fat cats and the union-busting Harper Cons are trying to turn young Canadians into slaves.
The CEOs have decided. The value of young people is lower than the value of people from my generation. You don’t deserve the same salary, even if you are better educated. You don’t deserve the same vacation time or health benefits. And you certainly don’t deserve to have the same kind of secure retirement. It’s just not in the business plan.
With the same predictable result.
When the history is finally written, though, it's likely all of this tumult – beginning with the Arab Spring – will be remembered as the opening salvo in a wave of negotiations over the dissolution of the American Empire. Thirty years of relentless prioritising of propaganda over substance, and snuffing out anything that might look like a political basis for opposition, might make the prospects for the young protesters look bleak; and it's clear that the rich are determined to seize as large a share of the spoils as remain, tossing a whole generation of young people to the wolves in order to do so. But history is not on their side.
