Occupy in Solidarity with the Greeks: "We're all Greeks Now"

what a sad state of affairs... the raping and pillaging continues unabated and we're all at great risk...


Protest, Syntagma Square, Athens

#OWS Joins International Day of Action: We Are All Greeks Now

Tomorrow, the people of Greece will take to the streets again to occupy Syntagma Square in protest of the extreme austerity measures being imposed on the backs of the Greek 99% to the joy and benefit of the European financial elite. The 99% everywhere are under assault by the same global banking interests. Greece is merely the most severe economic crisis yet to be imposed by the International Monetary Fund and other agents of the 1% in the Global North. People all over the world live under the tyranny of policies dictated by the IMF, the World Bank, and the G8. As demonstrated by the wholesale slashing of social services in the name of "debt reduction," New York City and the United States are not immune.

Our resistance to austerity will also be global. This weekend, the people of cities across the world will take to the streets in solidarity with the Greek protesters who have occupied their workplaces and public spaces to resist economic injustice. Demonstrations are planned throughout Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portgual, the United Kingdom, the United States, Sweden, and more. Click here for a partial listing of international rallies on Facebook. Occupy Chicago held a Greece solidarity rally yesterday. There is a rally today in San Francisco and tomorrow in New York City.

i like greece... i like the greeks... i've spent some time there and it's a wonderful country... they don't deserve this shit... nobody does...

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Remember, remember, the 5th of November

from anonymous...

If we are selfish today, then our future will be selfish tomorrow. But, if we respect, love and live for one another today, then our futures will do the same. The future will be following in our foot steps, just as we have been and are doing right now. For the last four weeks we have been given the opportunity and the responsibility to change our futures outcome. Second chances are hard to come by, and we can all relate. Let us make our voices heard, our presence not only seen, but felt, and let what we do here shake the world awake. This is our test of our commitment to change.

This is our chance to stand up against big banks and corporations with their Consumerism and Classism that has long divided all of us into groups of race, sex, political parties, have, the have nots and everyone in between. With the help of our own government, big banks and corporations have whipped us into line and divided us to keep the ideas, the power, and the knowledge separated to keep us weak, confused, and dependent on their services.

Corporations and big banks have taken over our government with money that line our representatives’ pockets and have blinded them from seeing us as people but instead a cash crop, as cheap labor, as entertainment, and even as lab rats. WE ARE PEOPLE.

These occupations might be our only stand against the corruption and abuse of power we have been experiencing over our life time. This is our calling. If we stop, if we stand still, then Wall Street, the uprisings in Europe and in the Middle East would have been for nothing. America is at the heart of the worlds corruption, and us being citizen leaders of America. We have the opportunity to bring it down. If we fall here we may never get the chance to get back up.

I am asking you to stand with us the tired, the manipulated, the lost and confused. Stand with neighbors, families, and friends. Stand with the ones who fought, fight, and die for this country and the people who helped build this country.

such an eloquent plea for a return to the principle of the common good...

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To worry about Social Security makes absolutely no sense, unless you’re trying to destroy the program

and why would you want to destroy social security...? chomsky makes the point that i have made since i started this blog back in 2005... our super-rich elites are bound and determined to destroy any semblance of the social contract... a social contract implies an underlying principle of the common good, a principle that is completely antithetical to those who are deeply committed to accruing every last scrap of money and power to themselves...

Social Security is not in any crisis. I mean, the trust fund alone will fully pay benefits for, I think, another 30 years or so. And after that, taxes will give almost the same benefits. To worry about a possible problem 30 years from now, which can incidentally be fixed with a little bit of tampering here and there, as was done in 1983—to worry about that just makes absolutely no sense, unless you’re trying to destroy the program. It’s a very successful program. A large number people rely on it. It doesn’t pay munificently, but it at least keeps people alive, not just retired people, but people with disabilities and others. Very low administrative costs, extremely efficient, and no burden on the deficit. The effort to try to present the Social Security program as if it’s a major problem, that’s just a hidden way of trying to undermine and destroy it.

Now, there has been a lot of opposition to it since the 1930s, on the part of sectors of extreme wealth and privilege, especially financial capital. They don’t like it, for several reasons. One is that for the rich, it’s meaningless. For anyone who’s had a fairly decent income, it’s a tiny addition to your retirement but doesn’t mean much. Another is, if the financial institutions and the insurance companies can get their hands on this huge financial resource—for example, if it’s privatized in some way or vouchers— that’s a huge bonanza. They’ll have trillions of dollars to play with, the banks, the investment firms and so on.

But I think, myself, that there’s a more subtle reason why they’re opposed to it, and I think it’s rather similar to the reason for the effort to pretty much dismantle the public education system. Social Security is based on a principle. It’s based on the principle that you care about other people. You care whether the widow across town, a disabled widow, is going to be able to have food to eat. And that’s a notion you have to drive out of people’s heads. The idea of solidarity, sympathy, mutual support, that’s doctrinally dangerous. The preferred doctrines are just care about yourself, don’t care about anyone else. That’s a very good way to trap and control people. And the very idea that we’re in it together, that we care about each other, that we have responsibility for one another, that’s sort of frightening to those who want a society which is dominated by power, authority, wealth, in which people are passive and obedient. And I suspect—I don’t know how to measure it exactly, but I think that that’s a considerable part of the drive on the part of small, privileged sectors to undermine a very efficient, very effective system on which a large part of the population relies, actually relies more than ever, because wealth, personal wealth, was very much tied up in the housing market. That was people’s personal wealth. Well, OK, that, quite predictably, totally collapsed. People aren’t destitute by the standards of, say, slums in India or southern Africa, but ver many are suffering severely. And they have nothing else to rely on, but the pittance that they’re getting from Social Security. To take that away would be just disastrous.

if we honestly believe - and practice - that we are here to take care of each other, that the principles enshrined in the declaration of independence, the u.s. constitution and the message of jesus in the gospels are the only ones worth living by, we pose a profound threat to the principle of social darwinism and our handlers must stomp it out wherever it appears...

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