Portugal anti-austerity revolt as left tears up eurozone's demands
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
22/10/2015

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Portuguese bank Banco Espirito Santo tumbled a seventh day as a group company faces a debt payment

The delayed fuse on the eurozone's debt-deflation policies has finally detonated in a second country.

Portugal has joined the revolt against austerity.

The rickety scaffolding of fiscal discipline and economic surveillance imposed on southern Europe by Germany is falling apart on its most vulnerable front.

The anti-austerity revolt in Portugal is a foretaste of what may happen in a string of EMU states when the global economic expansion rolls over

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Antonio Costa, Portugal's Socialist leader and son of a Goan poet, has refused to go along with further pay cuts for public workers, or to submit tamely to a Right-wing coalition under the thumb of the now-departed EU-IMF 'Troika'.

Against all assumptions, he has suspended his party's historic feud with Portugal's Communists and combined in a triple alliance with the Left Bloc. The trio have demanded the right to govern the country, and together they have an absolute majority in the Portuguese parliament.

The verdict from the markets has been swift. "We would be very reluctant to invest in Portuguese debt," said Rabobank, describing the turn of events as a political shock.

The country's president has the constitutional power to reappoint the old guard - and may in fact do so over coming days - but this would leave the country ungovernable and would be a dangerous demarche in a young Democracy, with memories of the Salazar dictatorship still relatively fresh.

"The majority of the Portuguese people did not vote for the incumbent coalition. They want a change," said Miriam Costa from Lisbon University.

Joseph Daul, head of conservative bloc in the European Parliament, warned that Portugal now faces six months of chaos, and risks going the way of Greece.

Mr Costa's hard-Left allies both favour a return to the escudo. Each concluded that Greece's tortured acrobatics under Alexis Tspiras show beyond doubt that it is impossible to run a sovereign economic policy within the constraints of the single currency.

The Communist leader, Jeronimo de Sousa, has called for a "dissolution of monetary union" for the good of everybody before it does any more damage to the productive base of the European economy.

His party is demanding a 50pc write-off of Portugal's public debt and a 75pc cut in interest payments, and aims to tear up the EU's Lisbon Treaty and the Fiscal Compact. It wants to nationalize the banks, reverse the privatisation of the transport system, energy, and telephones, and take over the "commanding heights of the economy".

A durable rebalancing of the economy has not taken place... Portugal faces an acute growth challenge

Catarina Martins, the Left Bloc's chief, is more nuanced but says that if the Portuguese people have to choose between "dignity and the euro", then dignity should prevail. "Any government that refuses to obey Wolfgang Schauble must be prepared to see the European Central Bank close down its banks," she said.

She is surely right about that. The lesson of the Greek drama is that the ECB is the political enforcer of monetary union, willing to bring rebels to their knees by pulling the plug on a nation's banking system.

These two parties have for now submited to eurozone pieties, agreeing vaguely to abide by EMU fiscal rules. Such lip-service is meaningless.

The EU Fiscal Compact requires Portugal to cut its public debt from 127pc to 60pc of GDP over twenty years, under pain of sanctions, with parallel cuts in Italy, Spain, France, and Belgium that feed on each other and are likely to trap monetary union in a contractionary vortex for another generation.

For Portugal it entails a primary budget surplus on such a scale that it cannot possibly be compatible with the economic agenda of the Left.

Mr Costa's own proposals - scarcely more moderate - put him on a collision course with the European Commission. He has vowed to "turn the page on austerity", reverse Troika cuts, roll back labour reform, review the privatisation of public transport and the water works, and launch a 55-point reflation package led by spending on health care and education.

The upset in Portugal has caught Europe's elites off guard. The eurozone is enjoying a cyclical rebound of sorts, driven by the happy trifecta of cheap energy, a cheap euro, and cheap credit. The ECB's quantitative easing has flushed the system with liquidity though Europe still has one foot in deflation.

Europe's leaders thought the crisis was over and believed their own propaganda that Portugal has successfully clawed its way back to safety by adhering strictly to Troika terms. This was always wishful thinking.

William Buiter, Citigroup’s chief economist, says Portugal has many of the same economic ‘pathologies’ as Greece, with debt ratios already beyond the point of no return, and a fresh solvency crisis almost inevitable in the next downturn.

Portugal's combined public and private debt is 370pc of GDP. This is the second highest in the developed world after Japan, but Japan is an international creditor while Portugal has net external liabilities of 215pc of GDP. "A systemic solution to the problem of excessive leverage is needed," says the International Monetary Fund.

The IMF praises Portugal's “export miracle” but warns that the gains have been narrowly based. While exports have jumped from 30pc to 40pc of GDP since 2010, there have been no such advances in "domestic-value added" shipments, which are what matter for competitiveness. “A durable rebalancing of the economy has not taken place and the nontradable sector is still dominant,” it said.

“Portugal faces an acute growth challenge. Productivity growth has been declining over the past half-century. Portugal’s working-age population is projected to fall, and the country’s capital stock is contracting because of underinvestment,” it said. It is this mix of high debt and chronically low growth that is so toxic, compounded by deflationary forces that poison with debt dynamics. The IMF says the only sure way to escape the stagnation trap within EMU constraints is a blast of radical market reform. Yet reforms have already "stalled". They now look implausible.

The anti-austerity revolt in Portugal is a foretaste of what may happen in a string of EMU states when the global economic expansion rolls over, as it may well do within a couple of years on historical patterns.

The social and political damage caused by the eurozone's self-inflicted slump from 2008-2014 is still fermenting, a combustible atmosphere if the region is soon hit by fresh downturn.

The currency bloc is in worse shape on almost every metric than it was before the Lehman crisis. Debt levels are 35 percentage points of GDP higher. EMU-wide unemployment is stuck at 11pc. The credibility of eurozone leadership is in tatters.

Powerful populist forces are waiting in the wings in Spain, Italy, and France. The events in Portugal have shown that every election in Southern Europe is a now an "event risk". Political chickens are coming home to roost, and economic time is running out.

http://www.independent.ie/business/world/portugal-antiausterity-revolt-as-left-tears-up-eurozones-demands-34130883.html

http://www.independent.ie/business/world/portugal-antiausterity-revolt-as-left-tears-up-eurozones-demands-34130883.html

Eurozone crosses Rubicon as Portugal's anti-euro Left banned from power
Constitutional crisis looms after anti-austerity Left is denied parliamentary prerogative to form a majority government

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Portugal's president: 'This is the worst moment for a radical change to the foundations of our democracy'
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard4:30PM BST 23 Oct 2015

Portugal has entered dangerous political waters. For the first time since the creation of Europe’s monetary union, a member state has taken the explicit step of forbidding eurosceptic parties from taking office on the grounds of national interest.
Anibal Cavaco Silva, Portugal’s constitutional president, has refused to appoint a Left-wing coalition government even though it secured an absolute majority in the Portuguese parliament and won a mandate to smash the austerity regime bequeathed by the EU-IMF Troika.
• Indebted Portugal is still the problem child of the eurozone
He deemed it too risky to let the Left Bloc or the Communists come close to power, insisting that conservatives should soldier on as a minority in order to satisfy Brussels and appease foreign financial markets.
This is the worst moment for a radical change to the foundations of our democracy.
President Cavaco Silva
Democracy must take second place to the higher imperative of euro rules and membership.
“In 40 years of democracy, no government in Portugal has ever depended on the support of anti-European forces, that is to say forces that campaigned to abrogate the Lisbon Treaty, the Fiscal Compact, the Growth and Stability Pact, as well as to dismantle monetary union and take Portugal out of the euro, in addition to wanting the dissolution of NATO,” said Mr Cavaco Silva.

“This is the worst moment for a radical change to the foundations of our democracy.
"After we carried out an onerous programme of financial assistance, entailing heavy sacrifices, it is my duty, within my constitutional powers, to do everything possible to prevent false signals being sent to financial institutions, investors and markets,” he said.
Mr Cavaco Silva argued that the great majority of the Portuguese people did not vote for parties that want a return to the escudo or that advocate a traumatic showdown with Brussels.
This is true, but he skipped over the other core message from the elections held three weeks ago: that they also voted for an end to wage cuts and Troika austerity. The combined parties of the Left won 50.7pc of the vote. Led by the Socialists, they control the Assembleia.
• Stalemate threatens to derail eurozone's model pupil
The conservative premier, Pedro Passos Coelho, came first and therefore gets first shot at forming a government, but his Right-wing coalition as a whole secured just 38.5pc of the vote. It lost 28 seats.

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Newly re-appointed Portuguese prime minister Pedro Passos Coelho
The Socialist leader, Antonio Costa, has reacted with fury, damning the president’s action as a “grave mistake” that threatens to engulf the country in a political firestorm.
“It is unacceptable to usurp the exclusive powers of parliament. The Socialists will not take lessons from professor Cavaco Silva on the defence of our democracy,” he said.
Mr Costa vowed to press ahead with his plans to form a triple-Left coalition, and warned that the Right-wing rump government will face an immediate vote of no confidence.
There can be no fresh elections until the second half of next year under Portugal’s constitution, risking almost a year of paralysis that puts the country on a collision course with Brussels and ultimately threatens to reignite the country’s debt crisis.
The bond market has reacted calmly to events in Lisbon but it is no longer a sensitive gauge now that the European Central Bank is mopping up Portuguese debt under quantitative easing.
Portugal is no longer under a Troika regime and does not face an immediate funding crunch, holding cash reserves above €8bn. Yet the IMF says the country remains “highly vulnerable” if there is any shock or the country fails to deliver on reforms, currently deemed to have “stalled”.
Public debt is 127pc of GDP and total debt is 370pc, worse than in Greece. Net external liabilities are more than 220pc of GDP.

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The IMF warned that Portugal's “export miracle” remains narrowly based, the headline gains flattered by re-exports with little value added. “A durable rebalancing of the economy has not taken place,” it said.
“The president has created a constitutional crisis,” said Rui Tavares, a radical green MEP. “He is saying that he will never allow the formation of a government containing Leftists and Communists. People are amazed by what has happened.”
Mr Tavares said the president has invoked the spectre of the Communists and the Left Bloc as a “straw man” to prevent the Left taking power at all, knowing full well that the two parties agreed to drop their demands for euro-exit, a withdrawal from Nato and nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy under a compromise deal to the forge the coalition.
• Defiant Portugal shatters the eurozone's political complacency
President Cavaco Silva may be correct is calculating that a Socialist government in league with the Communists would precipitate a major clash with the EU austerity mandarins. Mr Costa’s grand plan for Keynesian reflation – led by spending on education and health – is entirely incompatible with the EU’s Fiscal Compact.

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The secretary-general of the Portuguese Socialist Party, Antonio Costa, appears on Saturday after the election results are made public Photo: EPA
This foolish treaty law obliges Portugal to cut its debt to 60pc of GDP over the next 20 years in a permanent austerity trap, and to do it just as the rest of southern Europe is trying to do the same thing, and all against a backdrop of powerful deflationary forces worldwide.
The strategy of chipping away at the country’s massive debt burden by permanent belt-tightening is largely self-defeating, since the denominator effect of stagnant nominal GDP aggravates debt dynamics.
It is also pointless. Portugal will require a debt write-off when the next global downturn hits in earnest. There is no chance whatsoever that Germany will agree to EMU fiscal union in time to prevent this.

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What Portugal needs to pay off (Source: Deutsche Bank)

The chief consequence of drawing out the agony is deep hysteresis in the labour markets and chronically low levels of investment that blight the future.
Mr Cavaco Silva is effectively using his office to impose a reactionary ideological agenda, in the interests of creditors and the EMU establishment, and dressing it up with remarkable Chutzpah as a defence of democracy.
The Portuguese Socialists and Communists have buried the hatchet on their bitter divisions for the first time since the Carnation Revolution and the overthrow of the Salazar dictatorship in the 1970s, yet they are being denied their parliamentary prerogative to form a majority government.
This is a dangerous demarche. The Portuguese conservatives and their media allies behave as if the Left has no legitimate right to take power, and must be held in check by any means.
These reflexes are familiar – and chilling – to anybody familiar with 20th century Iberian history, or indeed Latin America. That it is being done in the name of the euro is entirely to be expected.
Greece’s Syriza movement, Europe’s first radical-Left government in Europe since the Second World War, was crushed into submission for daring to confront eurozone ideology. Now the Portuguese Left is running into a variant of the same meat-grinder.
Europe’s socialists face a dilemma. They are at last waking up to the unpleasant truth that monetary union is an authoritarian Right-wing enterprise that has slipped its democratic leash, yet if they act on this insight in any way they risk being prevented from taking power.
Brussels really has created a monster.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11949701/AEP-Eurozone-crosses-Rubicon-as-Portugals-anti-euro-Left-banned-from-power.html

The fools, they sell rope. Was a little disturbed that the Portuguese Party might go all Syrzia, little danger of that now and perhaps some opportunity as the booj act scared and stupid.

The silent coup Lisbon
BY JACQUES SAPIR · OCTOBER 25, 2015

Portugal was the victim in recent days of a silent coup organized by pro-Europeans leaders of this country [1]. This event is particularly serious. It occurs so what fresh the memory of the coup against the Greek government managed through a combination of political pressure from the Eurogroup and economic pressures (and financial) from the European Central Bank. It confirms the profoundly undemocratic nature of not only the Eurozone but also, one must regret, the European Union.

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The result of the Portuguese elections
Much has been said, particularly in France, in the press that was out right coalition won the last elections Portuguese. This is wrong. Right parties, led by Prime Minister Passos Coelho M. did Pedro met 38.5% of the vote and lost 28 seats in Parliament. A majority of Portuguese voters voted against the latest austerity measures, in fact 50.7%. These voters have focused their vote on the moderate left but also on the Portuguese Communist Party and other formations of the radical left. Indeed the Portuguese Socialist Party has 85 seats, the Left Bloc (radical left) 19 and Portuguese Communist Bet 17. Of the 230 seats in the Portuguese Parliament, that gives 121 anti-austerity forces when the absolute majority is 116 [2].

An agreement could be found between the right parties and the Socialist Party. But this agreement was clearly not possible without challenging part of the austerity program resulting from the agreement between Portugal and the European institutions. This is reminiscent of the situation in Greece ...

The Socialists and the "Left bloc" have clearly said that the agreement should be revised. This is what motivated President Cavaco Silva's decision to reject the draft presented by the Left government. However, expected his statement go further. He said: "After all the important sacrifices made ​​in the context of an important financial agreement, it is my duty and my constitutional prerogatives, to do everything possible to prevent false signals to be transmitted to the institutions financial and international investors [3]. " It is this statement truly problematic. Mr. Cavaco Silva believes that a government of the united left can lead to a clash with the Eurogroup and the EU is their right, and it is even very likely the case. But in a parliamentary republic, as is Portugal currently it is not in his power to interpret future intentions to oppose the will of voters. If a coalition of left and far-left has a majority in Parliament, and if it shows - this was the case - a government program, it must give him a chance. Any other decision is akin to an unconstitutional act, a "coup".



The economic situation in Portugal
This "hit" occurs when the economic situation in Portugal, often presented - wrongly - in the press as a "success" of austerity policies, remains very precarious. The budget deficit reached over 7% in 2014 and should be well above 3% this year. The public debt is over 127% of GDP. And if the economy is again some growth, it is, in 2015, still at the level of 2004. The country has been reduced over ten years ago by austerity policies, with a sudden social (unemployment) extremely loud.

In fact, the "reforms" that have been imposed in return for the aid package to debt financing and banks have not solved the main problem of the country. This problem is labor productivity. The latter is too low in Portugal, and this for many reasons, a workforce badly or poorly trained and largely insufficient productive investment. Portugal, in the 1980s and 1990s could accommodate low productivity because it could let its currency depreciate. Since 1999 and the entry into the Euro, this is impossible. It is therefore not surprising that production has stagnated.

Successive austerity plans that have been implemented are intended to drive down wages (by value), that we speak of direct or indirect wage. However, this decline can only benefit exports because it depresses, at the same time, domestic consumption [4]. Where a currency depreciation would leave unchanged domestic consumption, it is necessary that export gains through austerity plans domestic consumption offset losses. This is why the austerity plans are always less effective than monetary depreciation, and Patrick Artus can add in a note dating from 2012: "The adjustment of the exchange rate gives quick results; we have seen above in the case of Spain and Italy in 1992-1993 with rapid disappearance of the external deficit and increase time-limited unemployment. We also see it in the different adjustments emerging markets: Korea and Thailand in 1997, Brazil in 1998 "[5].

Responsibility for the Euro in the economic situation in Portugal is undeniable. But the responsibility of the European authorities in the economic and political chaos that may occur is just as certain.



Lessons to be learned
We often speak of tolerance to disaster, a weariness of suffering peoples leading to surrender the worst. In fact, there is no such thing here. The Portuguese attempted to apply the methods inspired by the Eurogroup and the European Commission and today they are obliged to note that these methods do not give the expected results. Voting for parliamentary elections is the result of this review. But leaders subservient abroad, ie the European institutions, have decided not to consider it. This is happening today in Lisbon is as serious, even if it is less spectacular than what we experienced in Greece.

The profoundly anti-democratic nature of the Eurogroup and the European Union has again affirmed and confirmed. It would be blind not to see it. However, this time may be the time too. But for it to be so, it is imperative that all forces determined to fight against the Euro are the forms of coordination of their actions. Here we must remember that La Boétie wrote in the Discourse on Voluntary Servitude published in 1574 [6]: "the tyrants are great only because we are on our knees" [7]. We could then take this formula, which seems so contemporary, and formulated as follows: "the European institutions are not large because we (the separatists) are divided."

More than ever, the question of coordinating the various sovereignist forces arises. This coordination does not imply that what opposes these forces is negligible or is put in brackets. This is the logic of "fronts", as the "Anti-Japanese United Front" made in China by the CCP and the Kuomintang, not alliances strict sense but that can march separately and strike together. But the reality, however unpleasant it may be to some, is that as long as we can we can coordinate a minority reality may continue to exercise his tyranny. And coup coup, set up a regime of permanent coup.

[1] Evans-Pritchard A. "Eurozone crosses Rubicon as Portugal's anti-euro Left banned from power", The Telegraph, October 23 2005, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11949701/AEP-Eurozone-crosses-Rubicon-as-Portugals-anti-euro-Left-banned-from-power.html

[2] Reuters, "LEAD-2 The Portuguese left working on the formation of a government" October 12, 2015, http://fr.reuters.com/article/idFRL8N12C47720151012

[3] Evans-Pritchard A. "Eurozone crosses Rubicon as Portugal's anti-euro Left banned from power", op.cit ..

[4] Blanchard O. and D. Leigh Growth Forecast Errors and Fiscal Multipliers, IMF Working Paper WP / 13/1, Washington DC, January 2013.

[5] Artus P., "devalue when needed was a lot of benefits," Flash-Economy, Natixis, No. 365, May 29, 2012, p. 6.

[6] La Boétie E. Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, Paris, Thousand and One Nights, 1997.

[7] This quote was a great success on the eve of 1789, but in another form: "The great are only because it is perched on our shoulders; shake them and they joncheront the earth.

http://russeurope.hypotheses.org/4406

Will Communists assume power in Portugal?

Communists ready to assume power in Portugal and topple conservative government
Anti-euro Communist party say 'conditions are in place' to form historic triple Left coalition and bring down centre-right after just 11 days


By Mehreen Khan

6:05PM GMT 06 Nov 20

Portugal's Communist party has struck a historic deal with the country's Socialists and radical Left in a bid to assume power and overthrow the incumbent centre-right after just 11 days.
After weeks of negotiations, the Communists have resolved their differences to form a "triple Left" coalition that will bring down the government of Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho when a parliamentary vote of confidence is held on Tuesday.

• Portugal's constitutional crisis threatens all of Europe's democracies

A statement on the party's website said “conditions are in place” to bring an end to the nascent minority government. Between them, the Communists, Socialists and Left Bloc would have a 51pc parliamentary majority.

Mr Passos Coelho was only sworn into office last Friday. His centre-right coalition oversaw four years of austerity policies in the former bail-out country, but lost its parliamentary majority in elections last month.



The re-appointment of the centre-right has been clouded in controversy after Portugal's head of state vowed to block anti-euro Communists and Leftists from assuming power.

President Anibal Cavaco Silva could now be forced into a humiliating climbdown when the minority government is set to fall on Tuesday.

• AEP: Eurozone crosses Rubicon as Portugal's anti-euro Left banned from power

He has warned that Portugal risks becoming "ungovernable" and warned Leftist forces to respect the terms of Portugal's EU membership.

Should the president fail to provide a mandate to the Leftists, a caretaker regime is likely to assume office until new elections are held in March 2016.

The left-wing coalition would be led by Socialist party leader Antonio Costa - a moderate who has promised to adhere to the bail-out terms set by the country's former creditor powers.

But anti-austerity left forces are set to derail Portugal's fiscal consolidation by raising the minimum wage, and reversing cuts to social security and pensions. The Left have also renounced the terms of the EU's Fiscal Compact and could force Mr Costa into slashing VAT rates and scrap cuts to public sector wages.

A political stalemate has also seen Lisbon fail to submit its draft 2016 budget plans to Brussels by an October deadline.

Despite exiting its €78bn rescue programme last year, Portugal continues to lumber under the highest combined debt burden in the eurozone.

The economy is only set to grow by 1.5pc next year - lower than its former bail-out counterparts in Spain and Ireland.

http://houstoncommunistparty.com/will-communists-assume-power-in-portugal/

Anti-austerity bloc brings down Portugal's government
Published time: 10 Nov, 2015 18:03
Edited time: 10 Nov, 2015 18:22

https://cdn.rt.com/files/2015.11/original/5642350dc36188d6728b458e.jpg
Left parties vote at the end of a debate on government programs at the parliament in Lisbon, Portugal November 10, 2015 © Rafael Marchante

Left parties vote at the end of a debate on government programs at the parliament in Lisbon, Portugal November 10, 2015 © Rafael Marchante / Reuters
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Portugal’s pro-austerity government has been forced to resign by a leftist anti-austerity block, despite being sworn in only two weeks ago.
Proposals to continue austerity policies were blocked in parliament, backed by mass public anger, forcing the government to dissolve.

The moderate Socialists worked with the Communist Party and radical Left Bloc to form a majority that voted down fresh austerity proposals today.

Following the October 4th general election, the anti-austerity leftist majority was explicitly prevented from forming a government by the president, citing ‘the national interest’.

One of Europe’s troubled PIGS, Portugal took a €78 billion bailout in 2011 and since then has spiraled into austerity dead-end fueling mass social unrest and emigration.

Sweeping cuts and increased taxes led to large street protests and strikes. Unemployment peaked at 17.7% in 2013.


Anti-austerity supporters are already celebrating the fall of the right-wing administration.

https://www.rt.com/news/321482-portugal-austerity-govt-down/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Vladimir Suchan shared a video.
2 mins ·


http://static.xx.fbcdn.net/rsrc.php/v2/y4/r/-PAXP-deijE.gif

Miquel Puertas
Yesterday at 12:04am · Porto, Portugal · Edited ·
How a genuine revolution looks like. A song can change a country and even a continent (please share)//// Winds of change, democracy and freedom only can come from southern Europe. And is already happening right now in Portugal, Spain and Greece where people are used to speak and protest and organize themselves in a dense network of social organizations. This video was taken in Porto (Portugal) two years ago (2013). The real revolutions have this looking. Normal people without masks, without weapons, with love in their hearts. This is why I didn't support the maidan, or "Occupy Wall Street" or the "arab spring" or any other fake controlled social engineered movements promoted by US intelligence and George Soros network. I support genuine revolutions. Not "demolutions" (neologism that is a combination of "revolution" and "demolition") The revolutions are coming from the people and are serving the interests of the people. Genuine revolutions are patriotic and democratic. The demolutions are coming from foreign agencies and are serving foreign interests. I recommend you to read this article. The article explains who are behind the fake "demolitions" like the maidan, the Hong Kong "umbrella revolution", the "arab spring", Occupy Wall Street and even the Spanish 15-M or the so-called "colour revolutions" in Eastern Europe. They were engineered by US intelligence services with the help of a myriad of NGO'S that are in the payroll of the US militar-industrial-financial complex that dictates the political and economic agenda in Washington and in those countries under Uncle Sam boots. https://laverdadocultablog.wordpress.com/2015/10/31/388/

https://www.facebook.com/vladimir.suchan/posts/10153215425023388

This from the link:



SHADOWS ON Zuccotti Park: THE ORIGIN OF OCCUPY WALL STREET
From August 13 to September 10, 2011, I attended the meetings of the General Assembly in New York (AGNY) in Tompkins Square Park in Manhattan. (...) I was therefore witness to the prehistory of Occupy Wall Street, although I admit it was more out of curiosity than conviction.
So the researcher tells Occupy Wall Steet Jeffrey Lawrence his experience first hand in an article on the origins of this social phenomenon entitled "The international roots of 99%" . The argument put this witness exception is that, contrary to what is spread by the media on which version OWS emerged through an "indirect inspiration" which moved hundreds of Americans to emulate spontaneously 15M movement in Spain, in They were actually foreign activists, and especially the Spaniards, who traveled to New York for the express purpose of planting the seeds of a similar movement of the indignant revolutionary:
There are many misperceptions about the history of the Occupy movement in the US . Since the early days of Occupy Wall Street, when a New York Times reporter Gina Belafonte referred to Zuccotti Park camp as "political protest turned into a spectacle," US Occupy mass media presented as a bunch of disgruntled individuals and struggling to find a purpose in their lives. At the same time, supporters of the movement have often given a version of its origins that revolves around the activities of a group of American organizers who managed to somehow capture the public imagination. This paper proposes a different narrative: the story of how a group of foreigners who brought tactics and experiences of recent social movements in other countries articulated some of the most persuasive and most enduring practices that would arise from the Occupy movement ideas.
The standard story of Occupy Wall Street in the United States is that the American left was able finally to promote a collective movement to combat abuses of political and financial elites, in the wake of the economic crisis of 2008. Even articles that have recognized international connections Occupy normally have been characterized in terms of indirect inspiration of social movements of 2011 in Egypt, Greece, Spain and elsewhere.
But what I saw in these meetings and what I have been able to reconstruct studying the first document of the General Assembly of NYC, is that about 40 or 50% of the participants in the meetings in August and September 2011 They came from places that were not the United States. Spain, Brazil, Iran, Greece, Armenia, Japan, India, Palestine, Argentina, Russia and Italy, plus the Choctaw nation and Puerto Rico Only one appeared in the media for the first article Month Occupy Wall Street is partly focused on the international roots of the movement, "How really started Occupy Wall Street" published by Andy Kroll in Mother Jones magazine on 17 October. From my point of view, his provocative but legitimate claim that foreign participants were at least as important as the Americans in the organization of Occupy Wall Street, was not taken seriously anywhere else.
Most surprising, perhaps, is the way in which leading intellectuals of the left, and many of the movement, began rehearsing the story of indirect inspiration, not the direct participation, once Occupy swept the world. Contrary to what one would expect, the main Occupy academic theorists have relied heavily on the media version of the origins of the movement, although they have given more importance to the international momentum of the movement, compared to the national, and idealized what press has tended to demonize. I was disturbed that the academic and political theorist American Michael Hardt speak of "invisible continuity" of the new social movements during a talk on "The right to the commons" at the University of Princeton in November 2012, as if Occupy alone could connecting with Madrid and Athens by analogy. In his now famous "Declaration" of May 2012, Hardt and Antonio Negri used almost identical to that of the mass media to describe the social movements of 2011 metaphorical language: the camps "were inspired by" riots, the occupiers of Wall Street "took over" European outraged, and protesters worldwide "recognized the resonance." In its efforts to attribute the movements around the world to a horizontal "multitude" faceless name, Hardt and Negri do not seem to contemplate the possibility that some of those protesters had taken a plane. Are materialistic historians give no importance to the fact that foreign participation in these movements was not only virtual but also face?
What caught my attention of these statements by someone who witnessed spot the origins of this protest movement is when it comes to the small group of foreigners who started the first camping OWS " brought tactics and experiences of social movements Recent Sites and articulated some of the most persuasive and most enduring practices that would arise from the Occupy movement ideas. " And is that like it or not, the fact is that Jeffrey makes us a pretty good description of a kind of variant of one of the most influential people in the revolutionary movements of the past fifteen years, regarded as a "machine of exporting revolutions" NGO: I mean the Serbian organization Otpor / CANVAS .
But we will deal with Otpor and its connections with the Occupy movement later. Suffice it to note that apparently the "official version" so far we have told the media about the germ of OWS does not fit too with the version that tells one of his witnesses, which casts a shadow of doubt on the called "spontaneity" that the media have tried to give this movement from the beginning.
A "Spanish" hand pulls the strings of the riots outraged on Wall Street. This is Vlad Teichberg , a former broker of 38, and married the son of Russian dissidents with Madrid, Nikki .
Thus begins the newspaper article about the Digital Freedom Occupy Wall Street published on November 11, 2011 entitled . "A married to a Spanish expression leads to the indignant Occupy Wall Street broker The article continues:
The French daily Le Figaro defined him as a man of "a little run down" with a "exalted tone", typical of the "revolutionaries", which, however, are accustomed to good manners of educated intellectuals in the prestigious (and expensive) Princeton University.
It is defined as a "global" outraged . Perhaps that is why he crossed the pond to be at the epicenter of the protests in Spain, Puerta de Sol in Madrid to move the 15-M movement to the US.
So according to this article, despite everything that has been said about this movement had "leaders" who traveled from Spain to New York with the mission of planting disimilada nothing against Wall Street the seeds of a social movement very similar the 15M.
But who are really Vlad Teichberg and his Spanish wife Nikki?
According to the Russian researcher Daniel Estulin , he managed to find him in February 2011:
I know Vlad Teichberg , who came in mid-February and in May said it would be a revolution in Spain. This, released in many media, was indignant, but is a computer and mathematical genius who works for big Wall Street firms like JP Morgan designing software for earning more money in the bag . He lives in a New York loft built by Frank Wright, 250m2, and by paying $ 37,000 a month. I was in the palace he had rented in Pez Street Madrid, where half a million dollars was only $ 100,000 in computers and wiring. When I unmasked my radio program received an SMS on my phone eight seconds in which said 'I'm hearing from New York'.
We do not know how eccentric Estulin's testimony may be true or it is a cluster of hype, but the reality is that the description given on the working studio where Teichberg operates is very similar to the New Yorker: "The study is a waste glued to the walls, cubes battery chargers, laptops and wires everywhere. "
Apparently Teichberg have grown their childhood in a Jewish family emigrated from Russia who fled to the United States for political reasons, which would have led to generate a family atmosphere conducive to Russophobia .
By his own account, Teichberg left at age 20 his comfortable life as unscrupulous broker and computer genius to engage in "activism and the struggle for social justice." The coincidences of life led him to live closely events the Arab uprisings, and later led to the events of 15M, where he met his current wife, the Spanish Nikky Schiller.

Portugal Hostage to Communists After Costa Ambushes Coelho
Joao Lima
November 26, 2015 — 3:52 PM EST Updated on November 27, 2015 — 3:53 AM EST
Costa's minority Socialist government aims to ease austerity
Communists, Left Bloc, Greens will back government, Costa says

Portugal’s new Prime Minister Antonio Costa will need to keep a group of anti-austerity radicals onside to sustain his minority Socialist government after his maneuver to seize power tore up a four-decade political convention.
Costa, sworn in as premier in Lisbon Thursday, teamed up with the Communists and the Left Bloc this month to force out Pedro Passos Coelho just five weeks after Coelho’s Social Democrat-led coalition won the most votes in October’s election. The two parties have helped each other out from time to time over the years. Now the Social Democrats swear they’d rather see Portugal dragged back toward crisis than help their nemesis stay in office.

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Antonio Costa Photographer: Paulo Duarte/Bloomberg

No one is predicting a Greek-style meltdown, but the breach leaves Portugal with a weakened government that may struggle to drive through economic reforms and could plunge the country back into election mode as soon as April.

“This government is unprecedented,” Federico Santi, a political analyst at Eurasia Group in London, said in a Nov. 25 note. “The moderate, strongly pro-European Socialist Party has never before formed a parliamentary majority with the aid of more radical leftist parties, considered too extreme.”

Costa has pledged to increase the minimum wage and reverse state salary cuts only gradually and to keep below the European Union’s 3 percent budget-deficit limit. The new government holds its first cabinet meeting at 9:30 a.m. Friday.

“We will not make progress with radicalization,” Costa said Thursday after being sworn in. “The government’s program will be moderate, carrying out an alternative to the vertigo of austerity that only worsened the economic, social and even budgetary problems.”
‘Critical Test’
That stance may sit uneasily with his new bedfellows. The Communists have said Portugal should prepare to exit the euro and the Left Bloc has said in the past it wants to restructure the country’s debt, though the two groups have signed “joint positions” with the Socialists in other policy areas.
Portugal’s 10-year bond yield fell 6 basis points to 2.28 percent on Friday, after reaching a four-month high of 2.91 percent on Nov. 9. The yield was as low as 1.5 percent in March after the European Central Bank announced its bond-buying program.

For the new administration, the 2016 budget will be a “critical test,” Antonio Garcia Pascual, an economist at Barclays Plc, said in a Nov. 25 note. “It is not yet clear how some of the Socialist Party proposals such as the enhanced public expenditures and possible changes to some taxes can help to achieve a deficit below 3 percent.”

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In the past, Portugal’s two main parties have helped each other out when they needed to push difficult-yet-necessary measures through parliament. In 2010, the Social Democrats abstained to let a minority Socialist government push through its budget while the Socialists voted alongside Coelho on some key policies during his first term.
Now those days are over, after the Socialists joined other opposition parties to form a majority that blocked the government’s program and ousted Coelho in a Nov. 10 vote.
“The Socialist Party wasn’t available to support the government that won the elections,” Coelho said in an interview with television station RTP on Nov. 20. “It can’t expect support in the future from those it declined to support. The Socialist Party has no legitimacy to ask us for anything.”

Minority Governments

Coelho led the first coalition government to survive a full term in Portugal since the dictatorship ended in 1974. During his four years in office, he implemented most of the three-year bailout program that the Socialists had requested from the EU and International Monetary Fund in April 2011.
But the ruling coalition failed to retain its majority in October’s election, taking 107 of the 230 parliamentary seats, including 89 for Coelho’s Social Democrats. The Socialists have 86 members of parliament, while the Left Bloc and Communists hold 19 and 15 seats, respectively and the Greens have two.
Portugal is no stranger to minority governments, though they tend to be short-lived. It’s more than 15 years since Socialist leader Antonio Guterres led the only minority administration to survive a full term since the four-decade dictatorship ended.
Coelho and his allies, who’ve seen their polling numbers improve since the election, are lining up to make sure that Costa doesn’t follow him.

Then-Vice Premier Paulo Portas, leader of junior coalition party CDS, warned Costa of the potential risks of his putsch before the Nov. 10 vote.
“Don’t come asking for help afterward,” he told the Socialist leader.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-26/portuguese-government-hostage-to-communists-after-costa-ambush

Bloomberg gets 'the vapors' easily enough but perhaps this will lead to something positive.