Will Frankfurt See Birth of 'Occupy Germany' Movement?

Will Frankfurt See Birth of 'Occupy Germany' Movement?

By Stefan Schultz

Thousands are protesting in the United States in a new movement criticial of the excesses of Wall Street casino capitalism. Now activists in Germany and other parts of Europe are planning similar demonstrations. On Saturday, the protesters plan to occupy public spaces across Germany. Are the similarities between the US and Germany great enough for the movement to take off?

In Germany, the revolution against the financial system is already raging -- at least on the Internet. A cyber class war with photos, videos, texts and plenty of symbolism is in full swing. In the video messages calling for a nationwide protest in Germany this Saturday, images of the Frankfurt bank skyline are juxtaposed against paintings of the German Revolutions of 1848. Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" is mixed with the orchestral pomp of the "Requiem for a Dream" movie soundtrack.

"Something is going to happen on Oct. 15," the cyber revolutionaries pledge. Thousands will supposedly rise up in Germany alone so the "people can take back control from the dictatorship of money." "It began in New York," the call to action states, "but it will end in Hesse," a reference to the western German state where Frankfurt is located.

Thousands of outraged Americans have occupied Zuccotti Park near Wall Street in New York for weeks now, and protesters in a growing number of cities in the United States are joining the revolt, starting their own protest camps. What began on Sept. 17 in Zuccotti Park now appears to be spreading to Europe. German activists are seeking to bring the phenomenon to Germany, where protest events are being planned in dozens of cities across the country, starting on Saturday. In the German financial center Frankfurt, protesters are expected to march to the European Central Bank on Saturday. Elsewhere in Europe, events are planned in Paris at the Place de la Bourse, in London outside St. Paul's Cathedral and in many other European cities.

The statements in the protest announcements are in no way modest. "In this room all of my dreams become realities," one protest video states. "And some of my realities become dreams." The quote comes from the Roald Dahl children's book "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." In the context of the desired revolution, it can be interpreted in a number of ways.

The most obvious interpretation is that, if you believe hard enough, you can achieve anything you dream of -- in this case, an economic system that treats all citizens fairly and punishes banks for the worst excesses of their casino capitalism. But one could also interpret the quote this way: For now, the room in which all dreams become true will remain a virtual one. After all, it is a lot easier to set up a protest camp on the Internet than in the real world. Can it function on Germany's streets, with freezing night-time temperatures?

Sympathies in Germany for American Movement

The kind of sheer anger that can lead to the birth of protest movements is indeed considerable in Germany -- at least at first glance. Germans see themselves every day as being confronted with a world in which overly powerful banks cash in as the rest of the world is forced to pay for the consequences of their errors, a world where the major banks are still profiting from the same kinds of dubious financial products that led to the first outbreak of the crisis in 2008. It is a world in which politicians are as frustrated as the people, given that it has proven nearly impossible to regulate financial institutions and stop waves of speculation. On top of that, it now appears that the state will soon have to bail out numerous banks again.

Regardless whether people are living on Germany's €350-a-month social welfare benefits or have a salary of €250,000 a year, it is not hard to find people who believe the current system is unfair. When the Wall Street protesters claim, "We are the 99 percent. We are getting nothing, while the other 1 percent is getting everything," they are likely to get 99 percent sympathy in Germany -- perhaps even from some dyed-in-the-wool investment bankers.

"They will tell you that you are dreaming," Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek said in a speech at the New York protests on Monday. "We are not dreamers, we are the awakening from a dream which is turning into a nightmare." The true dreamers, he said, "are those who think things can go on indefinitely" with the injustices of the global economic system.

More Difficult to Mobilize Germans

But the situation in Germany is hardly comparable to that in America. Whereas many people in the US who are protesting have lost money or even their jobs in the crisis, few have been directly affected in Germany. "Unemployment is far lower than in the US," said protest researcher Wolfgang Kraushaar. "The German social system functions considerably better than in the US." One other important element is lacking in Germany: disappointment over Barack Obama, the man many Americans had pinned their hopes on to improve their society. Now they are realizing that the president is largely powerless against the lobbyists of the defense and financial industries.

"It will be markedly more difficult to mobilize people in Germany," said Dieter Rucht, also a protest movement researcher. "But it is not impossible." Research has shown that it was by no means only unemployed people who participated in the 2004 "Monday demonstrations" in Germany against unpopular social welfare reforms, which included steep cuts in benefits for the long-term unemployed. Around one-third of protesters were civil servants and higher income earners. They viewed participation in the marches as a social responsibility.

But the question of whether a revolt like the one being witnessed in the US could also take shape in Germany, he said, would hinge on how effectively it was organized. In fact, the first attempt already failed. On Sept. 17, protestors tried to start an "Occupy Frankfurt" campaign at the same time "Occupy Wall Street" began. Only a few dozen people turned out for the protest and far fewer stayed overnight. The protest soon disbanded peacefully.

'Thousands Have Joined Our Movement'

But this time the protesters argue they are better prepared. "Thousands of people have joined our movement on the Internet," said Colin Below, who has organized the Frankfurt protests. A number of larger networks are also helping to organize the protests, including the globalization critics at Attac and the Internet rebels from Anonymous. The Left Party and the major Ver.di union are also supporting the protests. "That's why we are expecting greater participation on Oct. 15," Below said.

Whether or not the activists will hold out for a long time is another question. The "Occupy Germany" faction appears to be hoping for a kind of revitalization of the mass anti-capitalist movement seen in Germany that began around the turn of the century and culminated in the at times violent and often creative mass protests at the G-8 summit in Heiligendamm in 2006. Attac is also hoping that the Occupy Germany movement can help it to regain its erstwhile status as a significant movement.

In general, Attac is the driving force behind many of the protest events -- and steers some demonstrations in questionable directions when it comes to the issues they champion. For example, a flyer that Attac distributed at a demonstration in Frankfurt proclaimed that: "The troika is symbolically driving the people of Europe to the European Central Bank." There, they are supposed to "sacrifice democracy, social security and the provision of public services to financial-market actors." The argument is based on a number of assumptions, including that "the ECB is one of the most powerful democracy-free zones in the EU" and that it "has primarily acted in accordance with the interests of the financial industry for years."

It seems to elude explanation why the ECB, of all financial institutions, should be declared the root of all evil rather than, say, Deutsche Bank or the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. "It is a pseudo-focus that is both unreasonable and exaggerated," says Kraushaar, the expert on protests, adding that this kind of argumentation surely does little to win over broad segments of the population to the group's cause.

In addition, there are also bureaucratic hurdles: According to city officials, the camp that the protesters hope to set up in front of the ECB is supposed to be cleared away by 3 p.m. on Oct. 19 at the latest because another event has been scheduled for the area. In response, the protesters say that the events won't get in each other's way -- and that people may well stay there longer.

What a load of crap! This is a media generated movement with absolutely ZERO substance!

I am so sick of hearing about these spoiled brats and all their whinning I could spit!

lol

Bubbles, for bad or good, these people here aren't drawing the pleasure from the average American. Many here view these protesters as spoiled kids, uninformed and just plain ol' kids that want something handed to them on a silver platter.

How is this movement media generated?

And how are these people spoiled brats`?

Here's an answer to your questions, all wrapped up in one nice little article... by Reuters even!

Who's behind the Wall Street protests?

Mark Egan and Michelle Nichols
Reuters
Oct. 13, 2011

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Anti-Wall Street protesters say the rich are getting richer while average Americans suffer, but the group that started it all may have benefited indirectly from the largesse of one of the world's richest men.

There has been much speculation over who is financing the disparate protest, which has spread to cities across America and lasted nearly four weeks. One name that keeps coming up is investor George Soros, who in September debuted in the top 10 list of wealthiest Americans. Conservative critics contend the movement is a Trojan horse for a secret Soros agenda.

Soros and the protesters deny any connection. But Reuters did find indirect financial links between Soros and Adbusters, an anti-capitalist group in Canada which started the protests with an inventive marketing campaign aimed at sparking an Arab Spring type uprising against Wall Street. Moreover, Soros and the protesters share some ideological ground.

"I can understand their sentiment," Soros told reporters last week at the United Nations about the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, which are expected to spur solidarity marches globally on Saturday.

Pressed further for his views on the movement and the protesters, Soros refused to be drawn in. But conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh summed up the speculation when he told his listeners last week, "George Soros money is behind this."

Soros, 81, is No. 7 on the Forbes 400 list with a fortune of $22 billion, which has ballooned in recent years as he deftly responded to financial market turmoil. He has pledged to give away all his wealth, half of it while he earns it and the rest when he dies.

Like the protesters, Soros is no fan of the 2008 bank bailouts and subsequent government purchase of the toxic sub-prime mortgage assets they amassed in the property bubble.

The protesters say the Wall Street bank bailouts in 2008 left banks enjoying huge profits while average Americans suffered under high unemployment and job insecurity with little help from Washington. They contend that the richest 1 percent of Americans have amassed vast fortunes while being taxed at a lower rate than most people.

Banking Life Support

Soros in 2009 wrote in an editorial that the purchase of toxic bank assets would, "provide artificial life support for the banks at considerable expense to the taxpayer."

He urged the Obama administration to take bolder action, either by recapitalizing or nationalizing the banks and forcing them to lend at attractive rates. His advice went unheeded.

The Hungarian-American was an early supporter of the 2008 election campaign of Barack Obama, who will seek a second term as president in the November, 2012, election. He has long backed liberal causes - the Open Society Institute, the foreign policy think tank Council on Foreign Relations and Human Rights Watch.

According to disclosure documents from 2007-2009, Soros' Open Society gave grants of $3.5 million to the Tides Center, a San Francisco-based group that acts almost like a clearing house for other donors, directing their contributions to liberal non-profit groups. Among others the Tides Center has partnered with are the Ford Foundation and the Gates Foundation.

Disclosure documents also show Tides, which declined comment, gave Adbusters grants of $185,000 from 2001-2010, including nearly $26,000 between 2007-2009.

Aides to Soros say any connection is tenuous and that Soros has never heard of Adbusters. Soros himself declined comment.

The Vancouver-based group, which publishes a magazine and runs such campaigns as "Digital Detox Week" and "Buy Nothing Day," says it wants to "change the way corporations wield power" and its goal is "to topple existing power structures."

Slow Start

Adbusters, whose magazine has a circulation of 120,000 and which is known for its spoofs of popular advertisements, came up with the Occupy Wall Street idea after Arab Spring protests toppled governments in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, said Kalle Lasn, 69, Adbusters co-founder.

"It came out of these brainstorming sessions we have at Adbusters," Lasn told Reuters, adding they began promoting it online on July 13. "We were inspired by what happened in Tunisia and Egypt and we had this feeling that America was ripe for a Tahrir moment."

"We felt there was a real rage building up in America, and we thought that we would like to create a spark which would give expression for this rage."

Lasn said Adbusters is 95 percent funded by subscribers paying for the magazine. "George Soros's ideas are quite good, many of them. I wish he would give Adbusters some money, we sorely need it," he said. "He's never given us a penny."

Other support for Occupy Wall Street has come from online funding website Kickstarter, where more than $75,000 has been pledged, deliveries of food and from cash dropped in a bucket at the park. Liberal film maker Michael Moore has also pledged to donate money.

The protests began in earnest on September 17, triggered by an Adbusters campaign featuring a provocative poster showing a ballerina dancing atop the famous bronze bull in New York's financial district as a crowd of protesters wearing gas masks approach behind her.

Dressed in anarchist black, the battle-ready mob is shrouded in a fog suggestive of tear gas or fires burning. Some are wearing gas masks, others wielding sticks. The poster's message seems to be a heady combination of sexuality, violence, excitement and adventure.

Former carpenter Robert Daros, 23, saw that poster in a cafe in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Having lost his work as a carpenter after Florida's speculative construction boom collapsed in a heap of sub-prime mortgage foreclosures, he quit his job as a bartender and traveled to New York City with just a sleeping bag and the hope of joining the protest movement.

Daros was one of the first people to arrive on Wall Street for the so-called occupation on September 17, when protesters marched and tried to camp on Wall Street only to be driven off by police to Zuccotti Park - two acres of concrete without a blade of grass near the rising One World Trade Center.

"When I was a carpenter, I lost my job because the financier of my project was arrested for corporate fraud," said Daros, who was wearing a red arm band to show he was helping out in the medic section of the Occupy Wall Street camp.

Since its obscure beginnings, the campaign has drawn global media attention in places as far-flung as Iran and China. The Times of London, however, was not alone when it called the protests "Passionate but Pointless."

Adbusters' co-founder Lasn dismisses that, reeling off specific demands: a tax on the richest 1 percent, a tax on currency trades and a tax on all financial transactions.

"Down the road, there will be crystal clear demands coming out of this movement," he said. "But this first phase of the movement is messy and leaderless and demandless."

"I think it was perfect the way it happened."

Of course, there’s more to the story than what Reuters reported. The Soros-funded Working Families Party, a member of the Hexagon of Progress, is running a jobs ad on Craig’s list for activists to help fight Wall Street.



Guess what? The Working Families Party shares the same address as the SEIU and ACORN and was listed as an affiliate of ACORN. Unions and ACORN!

Thank you Tex!

I rest my case!

Where exactly is the media creation?

BubbleBliss wrote:
Where exactly is the media creation?

You mean media generated movement? That's what Dbl said. But I'll let him debate that.

BubbleBliss wrote:
Where exactly is the media creation

Read the article Tex posted. It's right in there Adbusters magazine started the movement, and the MSM is treating it like a legitimate spontaneous movement (when it's been bought and paid for from the begining by the far left) and has been hiding or deemphasizing the more disgusting aspects of the protests, where they don't try to make excuses for it.

Just imagine the coverage we'd be seeing if this same crowd where a bunch of Tea Partiers. Do you honestly believe it would be a sympathetic as what we are seeing now

Hell, the Tea Party assembled much, MUCH larger crowds and NOBODY got arrested, no property was damaged and the protesters, everytime, left the protest spaces cleaner than they found them! And the media coverage (where they bothered to cover them at all) was vicious and blatantly dishonest!

This Zucotti Park mob is media created and media sustained and are nothing more than a bunch of frustrated socialists whining because they can't have other peoples money! JUST LOOK AT THEIR LIST OF DEMANDS!!!! You avoided their list of demands this entire thread! READ THEM! That will tell you everything you need to know about these morons!

Here's a list of "demands" I found in 20 seconds;

1) Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending "Freetrade" by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr.

2) Institute a universal single payer healthcare system. To do this all private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market as their only effect on the health of patients is to take money away from doctors, nurses and hospitals preventing them from doing their jobs and hand that money to wall st. investors.

3) Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.

4) Free college education.

5) Begin a fast track process to bring the fossil fuel economy to an end while at the same bringing the alternative energy economy up to energy demand.

6) One trillion dollars in infrastructure (Water, Sewer, Rail, Roads and Bridges and Electrical Grid) spending now.

7) One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of America's nuclear power plants.

8) Racial and gender equal rights amendment. [as if we don't have this already in law]

9) Open borders migration. anyone can travel anywhere to work and live. [Bull-fucking-shit]

10) Bring American elections up to international standards of a paper ballot precinct counted and recounted in front of an independent and party observers system. [Bull-fucking-shit again]

11) Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the "Books." World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken from the "Books." And I don't mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period.

12) Outlaw all credit reporting agencies.

13) Allow all workers to sign a ballot at any time during a union organizing campaign or at any time that represents their yeah or nay to having a union represent them in collective bargaining or to form a union.

These demands will create so many jobs it will be completely impossible to fill them without an open borders policy.

Quite a list of Marxist "demands", indeed. The real question here is if these demands are not met, then what?

How anyone can take most of those "demands" seriously is beyond me. It's like living in Bizarro World.

Like I said, that list tells you everything you need to know about these slacked-jawed -deleted-.

That list would DESTROY the international economy!

These sorry -deleted- have ZERO understanding of even basic economics, not to mention no grasp on reality.

Now, Bubbles, you can see why I hold them in such contempt.


Sorry, bud, but I have to enforce the rules, ya know. I agree with you but I have to do what I have to.

As with every movement, there are some people who have laughable demands, are violent or just protest for the sake of protesting. Sadly, most of the time protests that are left of center are the ones where those things take place. Whether it's socialists/communists, anarchists, hardcore environmentalists, etc. they go to these protests and give their demands, which makes all the serious demands drown.
What I'm saying is that there are some valid demands by some valid people protesting, but they are outnumbered by those with laughable demands.

dblboggie wrote:Like I said, that list tells you everything you need to know about these slacked-jawed -deleted-.

That list would DESTROY the international economy!

These sorry -deleted- have ZERO understanding of even basic economics, not to mention no grasp on reality.

Now, Bubbles, you can see why I hold them in such contempt.


Sorry, bud, but I have to enforce the rules, ya know. I agree with you but I have to do what I have to.

No worries mate. I can't even remember what I said. Did I use a bad word?

BubbleBliss wrote:
As with every movement, there are some people who have laughable demands, are violent or just protest for the sake of protesting. Sadly, most of the time protests that are left of center are the ones where those things take place. Whether it's socialists/communists, anarchists, hardcore environmentalists, etc. they go to these protests and give their demands, which makes all the serious demands drown.
What I'm saying is that there are some valid demands by some valid people protesting, but they are outnumbered by those with laughable demands.

Amazingly enough, I actually agree with much of what you have said here!

I can't say that there are any valid demands, though there are almost certainly valid concerns.

But it is quite true that when liberals gather in large numbers there is almost always violence and destruction of property. And you have correctly identified the elements in these mobs most responsible for that.

Very well done Bubbles!

Not really. Just words that will piss off left wingers.

TexasBlue wrote:Not really. Just words that will piss off left wingers.

Ah... gotcha. Yeah, I'll let the odd one fly now and again...