Eric Draitser joins us to define and discuss austerity, what austerity looks like in the US, the fact that austerity is the consensus of both parties, why an anti-austerity movement is essential in the US, and helps us connect what’s happening here to Greece, Italy, and Spain. Mr. Draitser talks about the deception of Obama on austerity-selling out his base and all progressives, Romney & Ryan as the bringers of death for many, possible solutions-including his recent activities organizing an anti-austerity movement in New York City, and more!

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Here is our guest Eric Draitser unplugged!

Eric Draitser is an independent geopolitical analyst based in New York City. He is a partner producer at Boiling Frogs Post, and the editor and host of StopImperialism.com and the Stop Imperialism podcast. He has provided analysis for Russia Today, Dr. Webster Tarpley’s World Crisis Radio and other programs.

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A student movement in the Canadian province of Quebec was sparked with a strike in February of 2012 against the government’s planned 75% increase in tuition. For over three months, students have protested night and day, with over 200 protests in the city of Montreal alone. The students are met with excessive state violence: pepper spray, tear gas, smoke bombs, concussion grenades, beatings with batons, trampled by horses, driven into by cars and trucks, or shot with rubber bullets. Several students have almost been killed and mass arrests have taken place, with over 2,000 people having been arrested in the past three months. As the reaction from students to the government repression and opposition to the strike and movement became increasingly radical, the government took new measures to try to destroy the student movement. On Friday, May 18, the province of Quebec passed Bill 78, which is a “declaration of war on the student movement,” severely restricting the rights to protest, assembly, and expression; which imposes heavy fines on protesters, leaders, and student organizations, of between $1,000 and $125,000, designed to bankrupt the student movement and scare people from partaking in protests.

On May 22, on the 100th day of the student strike, and in a massive display of civil disobedience (perhaps the largest in Canadian history), between 250 and 500,000 people took to the streets of Montreal to protest (illegally), with solidarity protests taking place in Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver, New York, and Paris. This movement has become bigger than ‘tuition,’ it has become about our very freedom. And so, despite the increasingly totalitarian measures of the supposedly “democratic” government of Quebec, the ‘Maple Spring’ marches on… “illegally”.

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Empire, Power and People - Episode 20 [ 45:46 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Tens of thousands take to the streets in Spain, Chile, Quebec, thousands of others in France, Greece, the U.K., protest movement emerging in the United States, across Europe, continuing struggles in Egypt and Tunisia: this is the Age of Anti-Austerity. Drawing on the historical roots of austerity programs in the Third World with the debt crisis and World Bank/IMF loans, the current global struggle against austerity measures, which is now developing in the Western imperial powers themselves, is placed in its specific historical context as a continuation of protests, riots, rebellions, and resistance against austerity measures in Africa, Asia, and Latin America over the past several decades.

As austerity now becomes a global phenomenon, demanding states impoverish their populations for the personal profits of parasitic elites, the people of the world are beginning to rise up in resistance, in different ways and in different places. There is one connect through it all: this is the Age of Anti-Austerity, and this is the reality of the social situation in which we exist.

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Empire, Power and People - Episode 19 [ 51:22 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by SUBSCRIBING, and by ordering our EXCLUSIVE BFP DVD .