Arcadi Oliveres, PhD in Economics of Autonomous University of Barcelona, spoke on Friday May 20 2011 in the afternoon before a large audience in Barcelona, during the protest movement of the Outrageds that reached across the world in the midst of the Plaza de Catalunya demonstration, part of the called ‘#acampadabcn’.
No to the pensions fund
Investing in a pensions fund automatically makes us accomplices of speculation, we will be involved necessarily in awful things without even being aware, our money will finance corporations that do regretful things, we cannot go to demonstrations such as these, against the war, for example, without being aware that our money may be going to an arms factory.
Fight the Tax Fraud
Tax fraud in Spain is of 80.000 Euros. By preventing tax fraud we could raise pensions by 60 %, making any pensions fund unnessary.
Banks involved in money laundering
EL PAIS published “ Big Spanish banks launder sistematically money from drugs in tax paradaises”.
A week after this news was published the complete Executive Board of the bank BBVA resigned
Nationalization of banks
We should nationalize the banks that have received public funding, and this is not socialism, marxism or leninism, even Mr George Bush, who cannot be suspected of being a leflist, nationalized two american banks after funding them. Mr Gordon Brown, the former British prime minister, did the same thing.
Here in Spain we have given money to many banks and we haven’t nationalized a single one.
Ending hunger is possible
Since the begining of the crisis, banks around the world have received a total of 2.7 milion dollars.
With this amount of money given by goverments to banks famine in the world could be erradicated for … 54 years!
Rescuing Greece is too expensive
The time has arrived to create two Euro currencies with different speeds in Europe, depending on each country capacity. A euro for Germany, France. Belgium, Holland… and another for Spain, Greece, Portugal or Ireland.
Last year Spain payed 10,000 milion Euros to rescue Greece, and this week we will have to pay more. 10,000 milion Euros is exactly the amount of money that Zapatero has taken from Spanish citizens by freezing pensions, reducing civil servants salaries, stopping the funding for economic development, or discontinuing the “baby check”, etc… here are the 10,000 milion of euros we have given to Greece…
Working hours
The biggest impact of this crisis is not financial, but laboral. So, what should we do? Create new jobs, for sure, but could we create jobs for all the unemployed? No. In Spain there are 5 milion unemployed people, could we create jobs for all of them? Impossible! We could create some, but never 5 milion new jobs. I tell you, the only solution to this problem is that those employed work less hours so others can work. This is Solidary Distribuion of Employement. There is no other solution to this problem, that those fortunate enough to have a job reduce their working hours so others can be employed. This means that we have to fight to reduce working hours, (which is the contrary of what Zapatero is doing, he is extending the retirment age). Is this utopian? Not at all. A former French prime minister, Lionel Jospin, did this in France 12 years ago, and in less than two months 1,5 milions of new jobs were created in France… In our case it is impossible to solve the problem in less than 4 years.
Yes to “economical decrease”
But I tell you something, if one day we manage to get out of this crisis we cannot NEVER AGAIN, talk of economic growth, this is over! We the privileged people of the North that have exhausted the natural resources, the planet cannot sustain this anymore. Now is time to talk about economical decrease, and never again about growth.
This is linked to the ecological footprint
STOP the military expenses
You know that the Spanish goverment has not increased pensions, then how much have they saved by not increasing them? 13,000 milion Euros. On the other hands the Spanish goverment has spent 1,300 milions Euros of its budget building a fighter plane called the “Euro Fighter”, the saving in pensions has been spent building this plain jointly with Germany, Italy and the UK. Some years ago, the former German Prime Minister, Gerhad Schroder said that he will do his best take Germany out of the Euro Fighter project. This plane is very expensive and 15 years behind American models, and it is designed to attack USSR, which no longer exists… Schröder attempted to abandon the project, but after few weeks he said, “I wanted to leave the project but manufacturers, bankers and military haven’t allowed me” So, who is really in charge of German democracy? Bankers, manufacturers or military? And think it is quite clear.. Spain has never even attempted to abandon the project. Once they invite us into something, there we stay…
Don’t blaim immigrants
We cannot blame immigrants for this crisis, it is not their fault, and still they are scapegoats.
We are using them as scapegoats and some political parties of fascist tendencies… OK today I don’t want to talk about that during this elections campaign… they are taking advantage of all this with electoralist objectives…
This planet belongs to everybody and borders should be abolished. Besides, even from a very selfish point of view, we should be aware of what immigration is about, Spain needs immigrants because our population is growing old.
The ElectionsBoard is wrong
Don’t get discouraged, the Elections Board has no right to forbid this. The Elections board is trying to block any type of participation…
Final Manifesto
(Reads) “We are united by this upsetting situation, for our precarious lifes and general inequality, but above all we are united by a wish of change, we are here because we want a new society that will prioritize life above economical and political interests. We feel opresed by the capatialist economy and we feel ignored by the present political system which doesn’t represent us. We are working to achieve a deep transformation of the society we live in, and above all we work to make society the protagonist of its own tranformation”.
You all are the protagonists, thank you very much.
Original video (Catalan):
15mayrevolution.wordpress.com 
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