A changed world is emerging

Globally the political economic structure as the world has known it over the last four decades or so seems not only set for fundamental restructuring, but the process has already started. What in immediate recent history came to be known as the Arab Spring is starting the shape-up to a winter of discontent for the developed world and with even echoes in planned actions of South Africa’s ANC Youth League.

The Occupy Wall Street protest, which started in New York on September 17 with a few dozen demonstrators pitching tents in front of the New York Stock Exchange, had by the end of last week seen its numbers approaching 20 000. Similar protests have sprung up at Federal Reserve banks across the United states, as far flung as Hilo, Hawaii

An online worldwide facility, offering people an opportunity to pledge support to the demonstrators was ticking over at an average rate of about 2 500 per hour over a 12 hour period. By Friday morning last week support from South Africans was coming it as tens to the hour.

And, the phenomenon is not restricted to the USA. There are Facebook calls for a global demonstration on October 15 in cities in more than 25 countries stretching from Hong Kong to Buenos Aires, Dublin to Madrid.

In Australia, Occupy Melbourne, a group started on Facebook late last week, had more than 2,000 members with plans to protest on October 15 in City Square. Similar calls have sprung up around Australia: "Occupy Brisbane", "Occupy Perth” and "Occupy Sydney”..

"Occupy the London Stock Exchange" -- referring to Europe's largest bourse and the world's fourth largest exchange outside of New York and Tokyo -- has more than 6,000 followers.

"It's time that we too say, enough is enough. Bankers have got off scot-free whilst the people of this country are being punished for a crisis they did not create," says London group's Facebook invite page. The event -- which by Wednesday last week had 2,300 signed up as attending --  plans to occupy Paternoster Square from 4 p.m. October 15 to December 12.

Basis broadening

While the protest groups are still mostly dominated by young people and workers who have lost their jobs in the recession, the basis of what is still more on a trend and maybe not yet a movement in the full sense of the word, is broadening.

In New York plans were afoot last week for major labour unions to join the protest action. Thousands have set up camp near the stock exchange, have lined up medical aid and legal assistance and are even printing their own newspaper, the Occupied Wall Street Journal.

A group of hacker activists, calling themselves Anonymous and which was behind previous attacks on corporate and government websites, also late last week vowed to support  Occupy Wall Street by erasing the New York Stock Exchange from the internet this week. They were reacting in retaliation to the arrest of a few hundred protesters on  Saturday before last during a march across New York’s Brooklyn Bridge.

“In Pamplona (Spain), the bulls run down the people. In Lower Manhattan, the people have the bull on the run,” Nyack News and Views wrote last week and noted: “Already the protesters can claim a significant victory. For weeks, the only national conversation about our economy was a drum beat of conservative calls for austerity. Now, the brave actions of these protesters have us debating what responsibility the banks have in our current fiscal predicament and what sum of money they must contribute (return) to achieve our national economic recovery;” and

“With a European debt crisis threatening to push our economy back into recession, the public is now returning its fickle attention on the culpability of Wall Street power brokers for the 2008 global financial collapse. Americans are revisiting questions about what happened to the billions of public dollars invested into Wall Street companies and asking that individuals who once enjoyed anonymity and impunity be held to account for peddling in fraudulent financial instruments. Just keep in mind that if Greece collapses and brings down the European and American economies, it was Lloyd Blankfein’s Goldman Sachs that helped the Greek government hide its haemorrhaging debt from other banks and Euro zone governments.”

The protesters have also received support from some surprising sources. For instance the Los Angeles City Council has endorsed the protests, and is lobbying the city’s mayor to issue similar support for the Occupy movements, and its goal of financial reform.

George Soros, one of the world’s richest people, also last week expressed support for the protesters, saying they had been provoked by the bumper bonuses paid by Wall Street banks. “I think I can sympathise with their  views,” he said.

Participants in the protest claim they were inspired by the Arab spring and that corporate greed, social inequalities and climate change are just some of the reasons behind the protests.

Different but the same

The details of what has happened in the Arab states of northern Africa since December 2010 might look quite different to the protests of Spain’s indignados, Greece’s outburst in reaction to austerity measures, Israel’s tent cities or the fast by one man that brought millions of people to the streets of Indian cities.

At its core it is fundamentally the same. It is fed by the ever increasing uphill battle of the masses to survive economically, while they perceive that those who caused the crisis in the first place are getting ever fatter.

More importantly there are growing numbers of people who feel deeply  that the system – be it a dictatorship in the north of Africa or a network of corporate and political elites in the developed world – has failed them.

In South Africa their efforts might have been contaminated by some of the antics of their leader, but it is important to note that the ANC Youth League recently declared their intention to marshal about 200 000 of the youth to march on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange on 27 October (birthday of ANC stalwart Oliver Tambo) to “demand their shares,” and to the Union Building s in Pretoria to “conscientise government that they are stting on a time-bomb and must address the issue (of youth unemployment) as soon as possible”.

As the dictators of the Arab spring could not remain standing in the face of popular uprising, it becomes increasingly unlikely that the political economic system as it developed over the last 40 years  can survive in its present form and functionality.

With last week playing out with the news that one of the top 50 financial institutions in the world, the Franco-Belgian bank Dexia, is collapsing with a 30-1 leverage – double that of Lehman Brothers in 2008 – and pushing Belgium into the sovereign debt league thus far dominated by Southern European economies, the chances that the existing system can still be saved, are looking increasingly slimmer and slimmer.

Piet Coetzer