Occupy Cardiff

Today, the Occupy movement comes to Wales. From 2pm today, protestors will gather at the Aneurin Bevan Staute in Queen Street in Cardiff to be the voice of the 99%.

In her book Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein shows how the world's rich and powerful, the 1%, love a crisis.

"When people are panicked and desperate and no one seems to know what to do, that is the ideal time to push through their wish list of pro-corporate policies: privatizing education and social security, slashing public services, getting rid of the last constraints on corporate power. Amidst the economic crisis, this is happening the world over."

Speaking at Occupy Wall Street, Naomi said:

"today everyone can see that the system is deeply unjust and careening out of control. Unfettered greed has trashed the global economy. And it is trashing the natural world as well. We are overfishing our oceans, polluting our water with fracking and deepwater drilling, turning to the dirtiest forms of energy on the planet...The new normal is serial disasters: economic and ecological...

The task of our time is to turn this around: to challenge this false scarcity. To insist that we can afford to build a decent, inclusive society—while at the same time, respect the real limits to what the earth can take...

I am talking about changing the underlying values that govern our society. That is hard to fit into a single media-friendly demand, and it’s also hard to figure out how to do it. But it is no less urgent for being difficult."

Thanks Naomi. That covers it.