Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt

 Movements are planning international mass protests against policies of pauperization

Declaration of the European Action Conference in Frankfurt on February 26^th, 2012

The 400 participants of the Action Conference from February 24^th to 26^th in Frankfurt/ Main, Germany, have decided to call for days of protest from May 17^th to 19^th against the crisis dictatorship of the European Union. We resist the disaster that is applied to Greece and other countries, against the impoverishment and denial of rights of millions of people and the practical abolition of democratic procedures resulting from the decisions of the Troika Troika Troika: IMF, European Commission and European Central Bank, which together impose austerity measures through the conditions tied to loans to countries in difficulty.

IMF : https://www.ecb.europa.eu/home/html/index.en.html consisting of ECB ECB
European Central Bank The European Central Bank is a European institution based in Frankfurt, founded in 1998, to which the countries of the Eurozone have transferred their monetary powers. Its official role is to ensure price stability by combating inflation within that Zone. Its three decision-making organs (the Executive Board, the Governing Council and the General Council) are composed of governors of the central banks of the member states and/or recognized specialists. According to its statutes, it is politically ‘independent’ but it is directly influenced by the world of finance.

https://www.ecb.europa.eu/ecb/html/index.en.html , EU and IMF IMF
International Monetary Fund Along with the World Bank, the IMF was founded on the day the Bretton Woods Agreements were signed. Its first mission was to support the new system of standard exchange rates.

When the Bretton Wood fixed rates system came to an end in 1971, the main function of the IMF became that of being both policeman and fireman for global capital: it acts as policeman when it enforces its Structural Adjustment Policies and as fireman when it steps in to help out governments in risk of defaulting on debt repayments.

As for the World Bank, a weighted voting system operates: depending on the amount paid as contribution by each member state. 85% of the votes is required to modify the IMF Charter (which means that the USA with 17,68% % of the votes has a de facto veto on any change).

The institution is dominated by five countries: the United States (16,74%), Japan (6,23%), Germany (5,81%), France (4,29%) and the UK (4,29%).
The other 183 member countries are divided into groups led by one country. The most important one (6,57% of the votes) is led by Belgium. The least important group of countries (1,55% of the votes) is led by Gabon and brings together African countries.

http://imf.org .

The days of protest in Frankfurt directly succeed to the International Action Day on May 12^th and the anniversary of the first assembly in Madrid on May 15^th. We are therefore sending a visible sign of solidarity to those people in Europe who have been and are resisting against the debtocracy of the Troika and the attacks on their livelihood and their future. Simultaneously, protests are being organised in the US against the G8 G8 Group composed of the most powerful countries of the planet: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the USA, with Russia a full member since June 2002. Their heads of state meet annually, usually in June or July. and NATO NATO
North Atlantic Treaty Organization NATO ensures US military protection for the Europeans in case of aggression, but above all it gives the USA supremacy over the Western Bloc. Western European countries agreed to place their armed forces within a defence system under US command, and thus recognize the preponderance of the USA. NATO was founded in 1949 in Washington, but became less prominent after the end of the Cold War. In 2002, it had 19 members: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the UK, the USA, to which were added Greece and Turkey in 1952, the Federal Republic of Germany in 1955 (replaced by Unified Germany in 1990), Spain in 1982, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic in 1999. Summits in Chicago.

The choice of Frankfurt for the protests results from the role that the city has as headquarters of the European Central Bank Central Bank The establishment which in a given State is in charge of issuing bank notes and controlling the volume of currency and credit. In France, it is the Banque de France which assumes this role under the auspices of the European Central Bank (see ECB) while in the UK it is the Bank of England.

ECB : http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/Pages/home.aspx (ECB) and of powerful German and international banks and corporations.

On May 17, we will occupy parks and main squares of the city to create spaces for discussion and exchange. On May 18, we will block the running business of banks in Frankfurt and turn our anger about the Troika’s policies into action. We will gather for a large demonstration on May 19 and visualise the broad base of the protests. From many countries and regions of the world people will travel to Frankfurt and participate in the days of protest.

The success of the protests requires a mobilisation that is actively supported by as many as possible: the Occupy movement, the initiatives of unemployed and the crisis alliances, trade unionists, Attac, the environmental and peace movement, migrants’, youth and students’ organisations, anti-racist, anti-fascist and left groups, activists of various local struggles and the Left Party.

The period of mobilisation includes the European action day on March 31^st and international Mayday, as well as collective bargaining struggles in Germany that have our solidarity.

From: european-resistance.org

 #BLOCKUPY FOR GLOBAL CHANGE!

  Transnational call to action in Frankfurt, May 16-19 * International solidarity in our common struggle *

We are calling for massive protests in Frankfurt this May against the crisis regime of the European Union. We are activists representing a multitude of movements and struggles from different European countries and elsewhere, who have risen up in the past months and years to protest the assaults on our freedoms, jobs and livelihoods that have become fiercely intensified in the global crisis. We have joined together and shared our struggles and experiences, and we have realized that in a multitude of local forms, we are fighting the same fight. Like never before, our movements are starting to strengthen each other: a truly transnational opposition is beginning to emerge.

Directly following the global action days on 12M and 15M, where we will protest in our own cities and regions, our transnational struggles will join together in Frankfurt, the European hub of global capitalism and the place of origin of the distress and misery that dictatorship of the markets has caused for millions of people.

We are protesting the widespread impoverishment and denial of democratic rights occurring in the Eurozone as part of a global systemic crisis.

In the periphery of the EU we are experiencing the extreme effects of politics pushed for by the governments of Germany and France and enacted by institutions representative of global capitalism: the ECB, IMF, EU, and their imposed technocratic governments. Millions of us have been impoverished and driven to misery by austerity and structural adjustment Structural Adjustment Economic policies imposed by the IMF in exchange of new loans or the rescheduling of old loans.

Structural Adjustments policies were enforced in the early 1980 to qualify countries for new loans or for debt rescheduling by the IMF and the World Bank. The requested kind of adjustment aims at ensuring that the country can again service its external debt. Structural adjustment usually combines the following elements : devaluation of the national currency (in order to bring down the prices of exported goods and attract strong currencies), rise in interest rates (in order to attract international capital), reduction of public expenditure (’streamlining’ of public services staff, reduction of budgets devoted to education and the health sector, etc.), massive privatisations, reduction of public subsidies to some companies or products, freezing of salaries (to avoid inflation as a consequence of deflation). These SAPs have not only substantially contributed to higher and higher levels of indebtedness in the affected countries ; they have simultaneously led to higher prices (because of a high VAT rate and of the free market prices) and to a dramatic fall in the income of local populations (as a consequence of rising unemployment and of the dismantling of public services, among other factors).

IMF : http://www.worldbank.org/ programs, the denial of labor rights and the slashing and privatization of public services, such as education, healthcare and welfare. We are experiencing the looting of human and natural resources by supposedly democratic institutions!

These processes are only the most evident sign of the precarization of working and living conditions experienced in all of Europe and beyond. Our social uprisings, traversing the internal borders of the EU, are the expression of indignation acting outside every form of political representation. As representative democracy fails, we leave it behind, creating our own democratic practices in everyday struggles against exploitation.

We are experiencing global migration as another clear sign of the refusal of this transnational system of exploitation, its border regimes and violent wars. It is devastating our earth and basic livelihood. The situation is urgent: we are facing a human-made climate disaster!

Yet in Europe and beyond, we are also experiencing the emergence of political movements that are challenging the everyday exploitation of people and the earth, the social fragmentation, precarization and racism that pretend to divide and then weaken us. By creating connections among these movements and making ourselves visible and powerful, we are attempting to practice a real democracy right now.

In Frankfurt, we have the opportunity to make these connections real, and to empower local struggles on a transnational level. We will blockade a crucial center of global capitalism, learning from what we watched in Oakland and the Occupy movement in the United States, who in turn learned from the revolutions across North Africa, the Middle East and the Indignados of Southern Europe. Let us bring our movements together in solidarity to continue the fight! Let us not miss this opportunity to set the agenda to reinvent our common future!

On May 17 we will occupy parks and main squares in the city center with our tents to create spaces for discussion and exchange. On May 18 we will advance from different points toward the financial district: our vision is a full blockade of the ECB and all the other important financial institutions in Frankfurt to stop their running business. On May 19 we will show our magnitude in a mass demonstration and make it known that we will not allow our societies to be destroyed by financial institutions.

 FOR A TRANSNATIONAL MOVEMENT TO END PRECARITY AND IMPOVERISHMENT!

 FOR INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY, FREEDOM and REAL DEMOCRACY NOW!

#BLOCKUPY FRANKFURT!
May 16 – arrival and actions at the ECB board meeting
May 17 – OCCUPY the financial district, asambleas, cultural program
May 18 – BLOCKADE the ECB and major banks
May 19 – MASS international demonstration

More informations: http://blockupy-frankfurt.org / http://17to19m.blogsport.eu
http://march31.net/
http://notroika.linksnavigator.de
http://www.occupyfrankfurt.de/
http://www.european-resistance.org/