Anti-capitalist protester :'Bankers are 'global criminals,'

The London protests against the global financial system should be directed at the culprits responsible for the world's economic crisis, says anti-capitalist campaigner Philip Jarvis. “We should be protesting outside the Bank of England or we should be protesting outside Goldman Sachs,” the global investment banker, said Jarvis, who is among the hundreds of campaigners encamped in the grounds of St Paul's Cathedral.  “They are the 'scumbags' who should be locked up, they are the global criminals. They are the ones who choose to start wars, to finish wars. Wars are money,” he told IRNA.  “You have the crazy situation that Saddam Hussein and (Osama) bin Laden were the biggest international criminals. But go back 15 or 20 years and we were giving them buckets of cash to get them in the position they were in,” he said.  The Occupy London campaign started more than a week ago and has set up a second camp in Finsbury Square business district of the capital due to the growing numbers causing St Paul's to close for the first time since World War Two more than 60 years ago.  Jarvis, from Eastbourne, southern England, suggested that politicians were propping up the financial system when instead they should be acting for the mass people they represent.  “We have got MPs a bit like the weather forecaster in England. They tell us it is going to be raining tomorrow and it is sunny. They tell us whatever they like because we are all a bunch of zombies who follow whatever they say,” he said.  “I am happy to see all those here who are not zombies and I support everyone on the street, speaking their mind and who are protesting peacefully,” said Jarvis, who preferred to see himself as a “citizen of the planet” rather than a Occupy London protester.  He emphasised the importance of protests remaining peaceful wherever they are held rather than being distracted and discredited into using violence.  “If you start violence they (authorities) will play on that. It was essential not to get involved because it is normally the government who has arranged some violent people to come to the protest to make it look bad,” he warned.  The activist was convinced that the mass movements that have been held on more than 900 cities around the world would succeed in bringing about change.  “Peaceful protests have been going on in New York for over two months. People on the streets every day, every night, are continuing and continuing. I think this will gradually grow and grow and grow,” he said.  The main reason was the changed economic environment following the banking collapse and the injustice of ordinary people having to pay for the bail-outs which are continuing.  “Go back a few years, people had money in their pocket, now they don't, that's the difference unfortunately, Our whole global economy is based on one thing money and now people are beginning to feel the pinch,” Jarvis said.  “Once your common guy, your builder or your bricklayer, accountant or whoever, once they start to get a bit upset you will find protest everywhere. Be like the Arab uprising but continuing over the world,” he said.  But the campaigner also told IRNA that he believed the global movement against corporate greed was also different and in someway more dangerous for Western governments from the basic aims of the Arab Spring.  “The difference is Arabs are protesting against full-on tyranny but is probably going to be replaced by some sort of CIA-backed leaders.”  “They can play the game however they like with the Arabs. We are not innocent as far as capitalism is concerned,” he said, referring to the fact that it was the West itself that invented the current system.  Jarvis spoke of the many different forms of protests and direct actions to influence MPs, who depended upon people's votes, in order to make them understand “they are servants of the people and be forced to listen.”  He also believed that the protests will continue to grow to all sectors of society, including those are part of and help to uphold the corrupt system.  “People work for banks are overly brainwashed like the police who have been trained to be brainwashed but they have all got families, they got kids. They know the situation they can see what is happening,” he said.  “Sooner or later we are going to have the police in the protests and not around it” to keep law and order, the campaigner predicted.