TOGETHER ON STRIKE?

"We do not want to suffer job losses and pension cuts in order for speculators and bankers to make fortunes at our expense again", "We are witnessing an unprecedented attack on national health and social welfare, education and civil liberties", "Down with capitalism", "On strike together", "It is clear that cuts have the biggest negative effect on women, youth, the disabled, people with different sexual orientation and minorities, and against this background, the government is determined to divide us - divert the strikers' attention to the most vulnerable segments of the population and incite racial sentiments among the strikers".

Leaflets with such content were all over the place on 9 October on the famous Westminster Bridge in central London, where dozens of people gathered to protest the government's planned changes in the health system. Many of them held slogans with leftist slogans and demanded the resignation of the David Cameron government.

In any case, the rally was held peacefully - in fact, the participants took a creative approach to their mission. Tourists, who decides to move from the London Eye to the other side of the Thames, found themselves in a colourful "hospital" crowd - young people walked around in costumes of nurses; old women and old people with crutches, tousled hair and big black circles under their eyes; sad-looking boys dragging a drip; "patients" hastily tied up with filthy bandages soiled with ketchup and dying in the middle of the pavement... And all this show was silently, but nevertheless carefully watched by police in yellow jackets standing in several rows.

The physicians' riot, meanwhile, was not the only protest that occurred in London since the beginning of autumn. Just a week later - on 15 October - demonstrators decided to seize the London Stock Exchange in a "theatrical" way. After police intervention, it resulted in a procession through the nearby neighbourhoods. At the same time, Julian Assange, the infamous founder of the Internet website Wikileaks, who dedicated his life to exposing the powers that be, decided to express his support for the protesters.

According to one of the leaflets on the pavement, nearly three million British workers will go on strike on 30 November in protest at the "government's attack on the pension system". Such large-scale protests last took place in the UK during the so-called general strike in 1926.

In their reluctance to pay for the crisis faced by the bankers, residents of the Foggy Albion are not alone. Quite an impressive wave of demonstrations against social inequality, the policy of the world's financial elite and the impact of multinational corporations on the political sphere swept through the Western countries. Some protesters call the actions of the authorities and international corporations "financial terrorism". People are outraged by the budget cuts as part of their government's anti-crisis policy. Instead, residents of many Western countries propose not budget cuts on social programmes, but an increase in taxes on the rich.

Strictly speaking, an example, as is often the case, was set by the US - very soon the protest with the pretentious title of "Occupy Wall Street", which was launched in mid-September, was reported in newscasts around the world. Many reporters spoke with ill-concealed delight about the protest camp just a block from the New York Stock Exchange - the world's largest stock exchange. Apart from that, the protesters have already got into the habit of walking around from time to time and shouting out their demands through the financial district of Manhattan...

It is not surprising that the protests spread to other US cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington DC. Subsequently, the Americans were joined by Italians, Britons, French, Belgians, Greeks, Spaniards, Germans and several other countries.

It is noteworthy that the protesters were even supported by citizens of Switzerland, one of the most stable countries associated with mega-reliable banking corridors. Protest marches were held in Zurich, Geneva, Basel and Bern. More than two thousand people gathered to protest in major cities in the Netherlands, while in Ljubljana - the capital of Slovenia - protesters chanted slogans against "financial capitalism". On the streets of Toronto in Canada, hundreds of people were indignant at "corporate greed". The protest spirit also reached France, where the demonstrations were not so large, even though the meeting of the heads of G20 financial institutions and central banks took place in Paris.

Italians turned out to be the most impatient in their demands - demonstrations in Rome turned into riots, leaving 70 people injured, including 40 policemen. People hiding their faces behind masks threw Molotov cocktails, set cars on fire, broke windows, attacked police and burned flags of Italy and the European Union ripped from the fa?ade of one of the city's hotels. They also broke into the building of the Ministry of Defence. It is estimated that the protest march was attended by 150 thousand people - most of them recently became unemployed and were students and graduates who demanded jobs with social benefits. It is noteworthy that among other things, the protesters demanded the preservation of decent school and university education and research funding.

On 22 October, anti-government demonstrations escalated into riots and violence in Greece. In the heart of Athens, thousands of protesters pelted police with stones and Molotov cocktails, while they retaliated with tear gas and stun grenades. The number of demonstrators in the capital of Greece exceeded 100,000, and it became the largest protest in years. The reason that brought people to the streets again was the coming parliamentary vote to increase taxes and reduce budget spending.

At the same time, as the protests escalated, the police began to take more stringent measures. In Germany, tear gas was used to disperse the demonstrators, while in the US the most vociferous protesters, who settled in Manhattan, were put in prison. On 23 October, Chicago police arrested 130 protesters who participated in the "Occupy Chicago" protest, marching through the city's business district. On the same day, 11 participants in similar demonstrations were arrested in Cincinnati, Ohio. In Melbourne, about 95 protesters were sent to jail for a while. Moreover, according to the protesters, the police were unreasonably violent.

Against this background, politicians in a number of protest countries are clearly seeking to find the "bad instigators" among the "good protesters". For example, the Italian government and law enforcement officials said that the riots were organized by an anarchist organization called "Black Bloc", which used peaceful protests for its own purpose. According to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, the incident "poses a threat to civil society".

In the US, one of presidential hopefuls from the Republican Party, Herman Cain, said on CBS News that "Occupy Wall Street" was an anti-American campaign, as its participants, driven by envy, reject capitalism and free market. The former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, said that the protests result from the poor education system that instils false ideas in people.

At the same time, congressmen failed to comment on the CBS report which, quoting an opinion poll conducted in conjunction with The New York Times, noted that the movement "Occupy Wall Street" is supported by 43 per cent of Americans. 30 per cent of respondents failed to answer the question.

Indeed, the US unemployment rate recently reached 9.1 per cent. At the same time, according to the Congressional Budget Office, 1 per cent of Americans who are the richest people in the US increased their share in the country's national income from 8 to 17 per cent over the past 30 years.

However, in mid-October, the US Senate rejected President Barack Obama's proposal providing for the allocation of $ 35 billion to support the employment of teachers, police officers and fire fighters. In response, Obama once again accused Congress, Wall Street and government officials in Washington of doing too little for ordinary Americans.

In turn, Die Presse quoted the website of the British conspiracy theorists David Icke, who put forward a theory that "Occupy Wall Street" was initiated by "professional Serbian rebels" from the Centre for Applied Non-Violent Actions and Strategies (CANVAS) on the initiative of the CIA. The "Arab Spring" and protests in London and New York belong to the same series of events: "The purpose is supposedly not to disrupt the system, but to control opposition forces: the new American movement is a 'trap for the naive left'." Meanwhile, Reuters published an article saying that George Soros was indirectly involved in financing the protests.

Meanwhile, whoever is behind the protests, they are all being held under the slogan of the struggle for social justice and against the hypocrisy of the world's financial elite. Indeed, on behalf of many politicians and economists, the global financial crisis is presented as something that affected mainly banks and large corporations, although people who live on wages are now having to bear the brunt of budget cuts.

Such events were held in 900 cities around the world, and among the protesters, there are many young people aged from 18 to 29, who learned about each other through Facebook and Twitter. The opportunity to communicate through social networks allows people, who live in different parts of the world, to come to the conclusion that they have common problems, and hence, the solution to them can be common. That is "the occupiers of Wall Street" unite on the basis of dissatisfaction with their socioeconomic status, regardless of other differences. For example, according to Rosbalt, a protest called "Occupy Islamabad" is expected in Pakistan. It is organized by youth movements and trade unions, who want to demonstrate their solidarity with participants in similar protests in New York and other cities around the world. As they say, no comment.