It seems almost an everyday occurrence now that a riot breaks out somewhere in Europe.
Greece, Italy, France and Britain have all seen rioting in the past week and this year has also seen riots in Turkey, Germany, Spain, Ireland, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Greece, Iceland and Austria.
That's a lot of angry people on our continent and their rage is at the politicians for their economic mismanagement and their resulting austerity measures.
Banks have been the main target, petrol bombs were thrown through the windows of some Turkish banks and in France over 3 million people protested in a day of action against President Sarkozy's economic recovery plan.
In Moscow, over 2000 demonstrators gathered by a statue of Karl Marx calling for a return of communism.
These are not minor incidents by an angry few, this is an unprecedented outpouring of anger by the masses at the people who caused the spending cuts, rising unemployment, delayed retirement, wage cuts and fear of the future.
Protests, demonstrations and riots do change government thinking and have bought down Governments before although as yet none except Iceland have succumbed but a few are looking unsteady.
I have heard the demonstrations being called 'anti-capitalist' which to a degree is true, this economic crisis has exposed the frailties of the Capitalist system and the greed that drives it but most importantly, it has exposed abhorrent financial mismanagement by our Governments, financial markets and big business.
The political fallout is going to be long, messy and violent and we can expect to see a few ministerial scalps before we emerge on the other side hopefully wiser and with a better system which doesn't punish those who can least afford it.
7 comments:
The only way we'll ever get a better system (political and economic) is to get rid of the oligarchs who are running the world for their own benefit.
Presently the oligarchs are holding all the cards but when people start starving the ***## will hit the fan.
The oligarchs will then use the police and the military to try to hold onto their complete control.
That's when things will get interesting.
There has been a growing sense here that the police tactics dealing with the protests in the UK have been more aimed at detering people demonstrating in the future than 'policing' demonstrations.
As more than 3/4 of our present cabinet are millionaires, you are not wrong about who are holding the cards and whose interests they act in and i don't know how it works in Australia, but i noted before that you need to have a lot of money to run for most of the presidency/prime minster jobs now.
"police tactics dealing with the protests in the UK have been more aimed at detering people demonstrating in the future"
I'd be very interested in reading anything that you have that supports this assertion. My first instinct when I read this was that if that really is the Met's tactic, then it's a very misplaced one. From what I know about the hardcore who are always at the heart of any demo-that-turns-into-a-riot, a belligerent response by the police (and all the associated media coverage) is absolutely what they are trying achieve, so a good bit of televised biffo against the barricades is precisely the last thing that will deter them from demonstrating in the future.
It was read out to me from a newspaper, i didn't think it was the independent but i searched their site and found these which is along the same lines as the column i heard :
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-your-right-to-protest-is-under-threat-2162493.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/letters/letters-protests-2166339.html
Thanks Lucy. I read Hari’s column and agree with nearly everything in it, particularly about how civil liberties in this country have come under threat in recent years.
However, I'd say that the guts of the story centres around the expansion of government powers that have occurred since the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 (either under the direct auspices of the act, or just in the wake of its effect), which is like our equivalent of the US 'Patriot Act', rather than street-level policing practices.
When Hari cites people who he knows saying "I'm too frightened to go" (to the demo), I reckon he's talking about the polite middle-class placard-carriers that he's friendly with.
I stand to be corrected, but I'd be dubious as to whether a pre-conceived policy of police brutality in order to deter peaceful protestors actually exists in this country.
If it does exist, it's an immensely stupid policy. The obvious consequence will be to invigorate & encourage the non-peaceful protestors.
I wouldn't like to think that the police and Government are adopting a policy of scaring people out of demonstrating and i think that there are a few bad apples in the police who use disproportinate force. Whether they would kettle a demonstration by the countryside alliance for example i don't know. I think they thought they would get, and did get, widespread damage if they let the students run loose. I am not convinced that it is a policy but i am sure we will see a few more demonstrations yet to test the theory.
Good point about the Countryside Alliance. There's no doubt they get an easier ride from the justice system overall, not just on their demos e.g. I think only a couple of prosecutions for fox-hunting have taken place since the legislation was passed in 2004.
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