http://www.alternet.org/workplace/125566/naomi_klein:_public_revolt_b...

http://tinyurl.com/bezlos

Naomi Klein: Public Revolt Builds Against Rip-off Rescue Plans for the  
Economy
By Naomi Klein, The Nation
Posted on February 6, 2009, Printed on February 7, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/125566/

Watching the crowds in Iceland banging pots and pans until their  
government fell reminded me of a chant popular in anti-capitalist  
circles in 2002: "You are Enron. We are Argentina."

Its message was simple enough. You--politicians and CEOs huddled at  
some trade summit--are like the reckless scamming execs at Enron (of  
course, we didn't know the half of it). We--the rabble outside--are  
like the people of Argentina, who, in the midst of an economic crisis  
eerily similar to our own, took to the street banging pots and pans.  
They shouted, "¡Que se vayan todos!" ("All of them must go!") and  
forced out a procession of four presidents in less than three weeks.  
What made Argentina's 2001-02 uprising unique was that it wasn't  
directed at a particular political party or even at corruption in the  
abstract. The target was the dominant economic model--this was the  
first national revolt against contemporary deregulated capitalism.

It's taken a while, but from Iceland to Latvia, South Korea to Greece,  
the rest of the world is finally having its ¡Que se vayan todos! moment.

The stoic Icelandic matriarchs beating their pots flat even as their  
kids ransack the fridge for projectiles (eggs, sure, but yogurt?) echo  
the tactics made famous in Buenos Aires. So does the collective rage  
at elites who trashed a once thriving country and thought they could  
get away with it. As Gudrun Jonsdottir, a 36-year-old Icelandic office  
worker, put it: "I've just had enough of this whole thing. I don't  
trust the government, I don't trust the banks, I don't trust the  
political parties and I don't trust the IMF. We had a good country,  
and they ruined it."

Another echo: in Reykjavik, the protesters clearly won't be bought off  
by a mere change of face at the top (even if the new PM is a lesbian).  
They want aid for people, not just banks; criminal investigations into  
the debacle; and deep electoral reform.

Similar demands can be heard these days in Latvia, whose economy has  
contracted more sharply than any country in the EU, and where the  
government is teetering on the brink. For weeks the capital has been  
rocked by protests, including a full-blown, cobblestone-hurling riot  
on January 13. As in Iceland, Latvians are appalled by their leaders'  
refusal to take any responsibility for the mess. Asked by Bloomberg TV  
what caused the crisis, Latvia's finance minister shrugged: "Nothing  
special."

But Latvia's troubles are indeed special: the very policies that  
allowed the "Baltic Tiger" to grow at a rate of 12 percent in 2006 are  
also causing it to contract violently by a projected 10 percent this  
year: money, freed of all barriers, flows out as quickly as it flows  
in, with plenty being diverted to political pockets. (It is no  
coincidence that many of today's basket cases are yesterday's  
"miracles": Ireland, Estonia, Iceland, Latvia.)

Something else Argentina-esque is in the air. In 2001 Argentina's  
leaders responded to the crisis with a brutal International Monetary  
Fund-prescribed austerity package: $9 billion in spending cuts, much  
of it hitting health and education. This proved to be a fatal mistake.  
Unions staged a general strike, teachers moved their classes to the  
streets and the protests never stopped.

This same bottom-up refusal to bear the brunt of the crisis unites  
many of today's protests. In Latvia, much of the popular rage has  
focused on government austerity measures--mass layoffs, reduced social  
services and slashed public sector salaries--all to qualify for an IMF  
emergency loan (no, nothing has changed). In Greece, December's riots  
followed a police shooting of a 15-year-old. But what's kept them  
going, with farmers taking the lead from students, is widespread rage  
at the government's crisis response: banks got a $36 billion bailout  
while workers got their pensions cut and farmers received next to  
nothing. Despite the inconvenience caused by tractors blocking roads,  
78 percent of Greeks say the farmers' demands are reasonable.  
Similarly, in France the recent general strike--triggered in part by  
President Sarkozy's plans to reduce the number of teachers  
dramatically--inspired the support of 70 percent of the population.

Perhaps the sturdiest thread connecting this global backlash is a  
rejection of the logic of "extraordinary politics"--the phrase coined  
by Polish politician Leszek Balcerowicz to describe how, in a crisis,  
politicians can ignore legislative rules and rush through unpopular  
"reforms." That trick is getting tired, as South Korea's government  
recently discovered. In December, the ruling party tried to use the  
crisis to ram through a highly controversial free trade agreement with  
the United States. Taking closed-door politics to new extremes,  
legislators locked themselves in the chamber so they could vote in  
private, barricading the door with desks, chairs and couches.

Opposition politicians were having none of it: with sledgehammers and  
an electric saw, they broke in and staged a twelve-day sit-in of  
Parliament. The vote was delayed, allowing for more debate--a victory  
for a new kind of "extraordinary politics."

Here in Canada, politics is markedly less YouTube-friendly--but it has  
still been surprisingly eventful. In October the Conservative Party  
won national elections on an unambitious platform. Six weeks later,  
our Tory prime minister found his inner ideologue, presenting a budget  
bill that stripped public sector workers of the right to strike,  
canceled public funding for political parties and contained no  
economic stimulus. Opposition parties responded by forming a historic  
coalition that was only prevented from taking power by an abrupt  
suspension of Parliament. The Tories have just come back with a  
revised budget: the pet right-wing policies have disappeared, and it  
is packed with economic stimulus.

The pattern is clear: governments that respond to a crisis created by  
free-market ideology with an acceleration of that same discredited  
agenda will not survive to tell the tale. As Italy's students have  
taken to shouting in the streets: "We won't pay for your crisis!"

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist and syndicated columnist  
and the author of the international and New York Times bestseller The  
Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (September 2007); an  
earlier international best-seller, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand  
Bullies; and the collection Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the  
Front Lines of the Globalization Debate (2002).

© 2009 The Nation All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/125566/

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