What we need is a World Jubilee, and the coming of the Jubilee Jesus.
Jon
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/nov/14/eurozone-crisis-general-strikes-protest-day-of-action
From Madrid, Jaime Giménez sends a photo showing riot police vans lined up in the Spanish capital and armed (he says) with dedicated riot guns for firing rubber ammunition.
Jaime Giménez
@jaimegsb @graemewearden Riot police armed with rubber bullet shotguns in a demo right now in Madrid pic.twitter.com/hWndxxFN
14 Nov 12 ReplyRetweetFavoriteAs mentioned at 1.57pm, Reuters has reported that rubber bullets were fired at protesters in Madrid earlier today (not clear if anyone was hit).
2.17pm GMT Updated at 2.21pm GMT
Greek protesters predict revolt
Protesters chant slogans during an anti-austerity protest outside the Greek parliament in Athens today. Photograph: LOUISA GOULIAMAKI/AFP/Getty Images
In Athens, Helena Smith reports that demonstrators have spent the last hour amassed in front of the parliament in Syntagma square
She says the turnout was small, due to Greeks being “exhausted and disoriented” by relentless waves of punitive measures.
But what was striking was the talk of the country’s imminent social implosion.
Helena writes:
Across the board I heard people say that they had been able to survive, so far, because of hand-outs from their parents or family support.
“But when that dries up, and it will with these latest measures, there will be no reason not to descend en masse onto the streets,” said Kostas Kapetanakis, a young sociologist holding a banner demanding free education, health and welfare system. “There will be a revolt because we will have absolutely nothing to lose.”
Nikos Bokaris, the mild-mannered president of the national foresters’ association who was standing with other civil servants outside the parlaiment, feared Greece was being pushed towards a massive explosion.
“Civil servants feel they have been very unfairly singled out,” he told me. “I am very afraid that the country is heading for a massive social upheaval with huge consequences for public safety and order. All it will take is a spark.”
2.08pm GMT Updated at 2.12pm GMT
Spanish arrests up to 81The number of people arrested in Spain during today’s protests has now risen to 81.
Reuters is reporting that riot police fired rubber bullets at protesters in Madrid, where some of the largest protests have taken place.
A riot policeman arrests a protester during a general strike on November 14, 2012 in Madrid. Photograph: LLUIS GENE/AFP/Getty Images
1.57pm GMT Chaos reported in Rome as demos convergeIn Rome, American journalist Barbie Latza Nadeau reports that the Italian capital is “paralysed” as several anti-austerity demonstrations merge into a single mass.
Barbie Latza Nadeau
@BLNadeau Chaos in Rome. #austerity pic.twitter.com/Yjr8oKvR
14 Nov 12 ReplyRetweetFavorite1.49pm GMT Updated at 1.52pm GMT
The protests in Athens today (see 10.54am for details) appear to have passed off peacefully.
Pictures from the scene show that marchers carried banners criticising European austerity (just days after the Greek parliament approved billions of euros of new cuts), while some people performed a puppet show in which Europe was assailed from all sides:
spyros gkelis
@northaura Austerity kills dignity. Reclaim #Europe. #14N #14ngr #Greece now pic.twitter.com/ctCn5j6I via @thesspirit #rbnews #14-N #14nriseup
14 Nov 12 ReplyRetweetFavorite
Joanna P.
@Inflammatory_ #14N Performance in Syntagma: a European struggling to stand firm but is knocked down from all sides/countries pic.twitter.com/6HMgvRw9 #rbnews
14 Nov 12 ReplyRetweetFavorite1.44pm GMT Employers’ group slams strikeToday’s strike action has been criticised by a European employers organisation, which fears the walkout will damage Europe’s already-weak economy and deter potential foreign investors.
Philippe de Buck , the chief of Eurobusiness – the Brussels-based EU employers’ federation – said:
If you start striking at national level and in companies you only will harm the economy, and it is not the right thing to do today… It costs billions [of euros].
I can’t find any authoritative estimates for the cost of today’s action. But analysts have reckoned that major disruption to the UK economy (through bad weather or a bank holiday) costs upwards of £1bn — so it’s clear that the general strikes in Spain and Portugal, plus walkouts in Italy and Greece, will have a significant cost.
Manufacturers may be able to recover the lost hours, but service companies may not (commuters in Madrid won’t buy twice as many coffees, newspapers or sandwiches tomorrow, for example).
1.30pm GMT Updated at 1.37pm GMT
Your photos of today’s strike actionMany thanks to everyone who’s shared photos from today’s protests – our Readers’ Gallery has a lot of fine pictures already:
Photo by guyermadrid: “Sanidad Pública #14N #deCelenqueALaPrincesa” 28 minutes ago by hrwaldramPhoto by alexxinsanity: “#14n #vigo” 29 minutes ago by hrwaldramPhoto by alexxinsanity: “#14n #vigo” 30 minutes ago by hrwaldramPhoto by semanas_que_pasan_como_dias: “#14N” 31 minutes ago by hrwaldramPhoto by enriccat: “Avinguda primavera #cerdanyola #vaga #14N” 32 minutes ago by hrwaldramPhoto by groznyivan: “Una vita a difendere l’indifendibile #14n #14nit #14nriseup” 34 minutes ago by hrwaldramPhoto by jamichu: “IMPRESIONANTE. #14n #Ourense” 34 minutes ago by hrwaldramPhoto by alex_cubero: “¿Luz al final del túnel? No, solo otra huelga general. #14N” 34 minutes ago by hrwaldramPhoto by zant3: “A #Helsinki #14N è anche contro Talvivaara, azienda metalliurgica inquinante” about 2 hours ago by hrwaldramPhoto by ugo_roffi: “#14n #strike #genova #scioperogenerale #portuali #nomonti” about 2 hours ago by hrwaldramPhoto by gianok: “#14n #madrid #huelga #huelgageneral #españa #euro #lecheras” about 2 hours ago by hrwaldramPhoto by maritriniginer: “Jóvenes afectados por la situación respondiendo a cuestiones de medios digitales. #14n #14nsinmiedo #14nhuelgageneral” about 2 hours ago by hrwaldramPhoto by bettuniaa: “#14N” about 2 hours ago by hrwaldramPhoto by gianok: “#14n #madrid #huelga #huelgageneral #españa” about 2 hours ago by hrwaldramPhoto by zant3: “#14N a #Helsinki” about 2 hours ago by hrwaldramPhoto by aranxadt: “Si nos roban el futuro paramos la ciudad #14N #HuelgaGeneral #ALaCalle” about 2 hours ago by hrwaldramShow more ↓
To share yours, just click here.
12.44pm GMT Updated at 1.12pm GMT
Photos: protests and arrests in MadridMore photos of the protests in Madrid have arrived, showing riot police apprehending some demonstrators:
Photograph: Dominique Faget/AFP/Getty Images
Photograph: Susana Vera/Reuters
The number of arrests in Spain still stands at 62.
Protesters in Madrid have also plastered shop windows with anti-government stickers, and Reuters reports that some cash machines have been jammed with glue (we flagged up at 10.11am that they had been vandalised)
Photograph: Dominique Faget/AFP/Getty Images
12.36pm GMT Updated at 12.44pm GMT
Shrinking GDP in Portugal and GreeceNew economic data released this morning shows that austerity continues to have a dreadful impact on southern Europe.
Portugal’s economy shrank by 0.8% in the third quarter of the year, more than economists expected. This means the country’s GDP is 3.4% lower than a year ago, when it was in the early stages of an ‘adjustment programme’ having accepted a €78bn bailout.
Unemployment in Portugal has also hit a record high today of 15.8% for the last quarter.
Separate data showed that Greece’s economy is faring even worse – GDP has contracted by 7.2% over the last year.
12.06pm GMT Updated at 12.12pm GMT
What Europe’s unions wantSome readers are asking what is the alternative to Europe’s current economic path.
So here’s what the European Trades Union Convention (which called today’s co-ordinated strike) has proposed instead of austerity-driven cuts and tax rises.
• Economic governance at the service of sustainable growth
and quality jobs,
• Economic and social justice through redistribution policies, taxation
and social protection,
• Employment guarantees for young people,
• An ambitious European industrial policy steered towards a green,
low-carbon economy and forward-looking sectors with employment
opportunities and growth,
• A more intense fight against social and wage dumping,
• Pooling of debt through Euro-bonds,
• Effective implementation of a financial transaction tax to tackle
speculation and enable investment policies,
• Harmonisation of the tax base with a minimum rate for companies
across Europe,
• A determined effort to fight tax evasion and fraud,
• Respect for collective bargaining and social dialogue,
• Respect for fundamental social and trade union rights.
12.00pm GMT Updated at 12.37pm GMT
Update: More ways to share your picturesSome of you have been sharing your pictures from protests and strikes across Europe. For users posting images to Instagram, you can share your photo with us and be added to our gallery here by posting a picture with the tag #14N (make sure you have ‘add your photo to map’ turned on).
On Twitter you can send us a picture direct to @Guardian with the tag #14N and we’ll add you to today’s gallery of photos
And if you’re in Greece we have a Flickr group set up here [http://www.flickr.com/groups/greek-crisis/] where you can upload a photo.
You can also email hannah.waldram@guardian.co.uk direct or leave a comment below.
Thanks!
11.46am GMT Updated at 11.57am GMT
This video clip shows the early morning protest in Spain, where union leaders claimed that the European commission was imposing austerity on Spaniards “on the orders of Berlin”.
11.44am GMT Updated at 12.00pm GMT
Photos: Milan marchesHere’s a couple more photos from the marches in Italy this morning:
People gather on Milan’s Piazza Duomo for a demonstration organised by the Italian CGIL trade union. Photograph: STEFANO PORTA/EPA
Photograph: STEFANO PORTA/EPA
11.40am GMT Video: marchers clash with Italian policeThis video clip appears to show a clash between demonstrators and riot police this morning in Milan.
It begins with a large group of people carrying banners and placards, who march up to a line of riot police. What appear to be petrol bombs (or possibly flares) are thrown at the officers, at which point they charge the students (hitting several with their batons).
The protesters then regroup and march towards the police again (using their placards as a shield wall, rather like a phalanx), and a second clash takes place.
The video comes from Maurizio Sartori – you can see more of his clips here.
11.16am GMT Updated at 11.27am GMT
Italian riot police clash with students
Photograph: Bambuser
Some of the most violent scenes so far this morning have taken place in Italy, where students have clashed with riot police.
Italy’s CGIL union has organised 100 protest events on Wednesday in Italy to mark a four-hour general strike, but it is students who are attracting attention in cities across Italy.
From Rome, Tom Kington reports:
The windows of a bank in Milan were reportedly smashed by protesting students, while far right students in Rome threw stones at police in a bid to break through a barricade to reach Palazzo Chigi, the residence of prime minister Mario Monti, which sits next door to the Italian parliament, where a budget law is being voted today.
Police in Brescia charged against students congregating at the town’s station.
Susanna Camusso, the head of the CGIL is meanwhile heading a march which started from the gates of the troubled ThyssenKrupp steelworks in Terni in Umbria. In Turin, thousands of protesters marched behind a model dragon representing global finance, with a placard in its jaws on which the word “Work” was written. A raid on the city’s tax office was met with tear gas fired by police.
In Milan, transport workers, train conductors and hospital employees joined the students in the streets.
The strike follows a tense day on Tuesday for Italian government ministers. In Sardinia, industry minister Corrado Passera and Fabrizio Barca, minister for territorial cohesion, needed to be evacuated by helicopter from a meeting on the local economy after protesters lined a road with burning cars.
In Naples, a talk given by labour minister Elsa Fornero was interrupted by a man who threatened to slash his wrists to protest his daughter’s inability to find work. Protesters clashed with police in the city on Monday.
11.08am GMT Updated at 11.40am GMT
Here’s a photo of the protests that are starting now in central Athens (see 10.54 for details)
Makis Sinodinos
@MakisSinodinos Φωτο Κλαθμωνος, ξεκινησε η προσέλευση του κόσμου για την πανευρωπαϊκή κινητοποίηση #14N #14nRiseUp #rbnews pic.twitter.com/wFzR16pa
14 Nov 12 ReplyRetweetFavorite10.59am GMT Updated at 11.00am GMT
Send us your pictures!If you’re taking part in a march today, or on strike, or simply feeling the impact of today’s protests, we’d love to here from you.
If you’re on Twitter, please tweet your pics to @guardian with the hashtag #14N.
Thanks!
10.57am GMT Updated at 11.17am GMT
Protests in GreeceIn Greece, the frontline of Europe’s debt crisis, protesters are taking to the streets as public and private sector employees stage a three-hour work stoppage.
Our Athens correspondent Helena Smith writes:
While the Greek prime minister Antonis Samaras is upbeat, with the conservative leader announcing that he expects a total of €44.6bn in loans to be handed over by creditors in the coming weeks, unions representing ordinary Greeks predict that the worst is only just beginning for a nation on course to endure it sixth straight year of recession amid every worsening poverty and unemployment.
“The price of this money is more misery for Greeks who are now undergoing their worst ever crisis in modern times.” said Ilias Iliopoulos at the civil servants’ union Adedy. “There will be more cuts in salaries and pensions not to mention firings in the public sector,” he lamented.
Greek unionists in both the public and private sector have staged some 19 general strikes this years alone – but with little effect. The pan-European action follows months of efforts to coordinate anti-austerity protests across the continent with trade unionists frequently visiting Athens in recent months.
“We are a small country and so there is only so much that we can achieve,” said Iliopoulos. “Greece is no longer alone. Other countries in Europe are suffering from these terrible neo-liberal policies. This is the best way of getting our message heard.”
10.54am GMT Updated at 11.18am GMT
More arrests in SpainThere are now reports that 62 people have been arrested so far today in Spain, with 34 people injured (including 18 policemen).
Reuters reports that there have been clashes in Madrid this morning:
Spanish anti-riot police and protesters clashed on Wednesday in central Madrid during a general strike. Two protesters were arrested and police hit others with night-sticks.
As I blogged at 8.05am, today’s protests in Spain began before dawn. Here’s another good photo from the centre of Madrid this morning.
Photograph: Juan Sierra/Demotix/Corbis
10.50am GMT Germany unions show solidarityPockets of demonstrators led by trade unions gathered across Germany this morning as a sign of solidarity towards colleagues elsewhere in Europe, our Berlin correspondent Kate Connolly reports.
But apart from several cancelled flights to and from destinations hit by strikes elsewhere, Germany remains largely untouched by the unrest.
Michael Sommer, head of DGB, one of Germany’s largest trade unions which has organised several solidarity demonstrations across the country, called on politicians to take more heed of social imbalances as they sought ways to battle the crisis.
Sommer said:
The austerity policies are not working…It not only make no sense to try to tackle the crisis with cuts, it is also dangerous.
Instead he said the crisis should be tackled with a “comprehensive growth and investment programme”. He added that the European strikes sent a “strong signal: we cannot continue like this”.
Kate also reports that that Chancellor Angela Merkel – towards whom much of the strikers’ rage is directed – said she welcomed the protests, saying everyone had a right to demonstrate.
“I spent 34 years living in a country where you could not demonstrate,” she said, referring to her East German origins.
10.34am GMT Updated at 11.19am GMT
Just in: photos from the rail strike in Belgium today, which appears to have caused significant disruption (see 8.20am).
Here, Belgian workers with flares demonstrate on rail tracks and block trains:
Photograph: Yves Herman/Reuters
Passengers wait at the Thalys high-speed train terminal at Brussels Midi/Zuid rail station. Photograph: Yves Herman/Reuters
Not everyone has had to wait in a chilly railway station, though:
Fiona Wilson
@MissFiWi A woman in our brussels hotel lobby asking reception staff to book her a cab to Paris.
14 Nov 12 ReplyRetweetFavorite10.27am GMT Updated at 11.20am GMT
130 protests expected in FranceTrade unions are to hold 130 marches across France today in support of anti-austerity strikes in Europe.
The unions, in a joint declaration, said they wanted to show “firm opposition to austerity measures which would plunge Europe into stagnation, if not recession” creating deep “injustices”.
Our Paris correspondent, Angelique Chrisafis, reports:
Francois Hollande, at his first official press conference last night, argued that the French demonstrations “were not questioning our politics, but rather supporting it.”
The Socialist president, who was elected for his opposition to one-size-fits-all austerity across Europe yesterday admitted France’s high public spending needed to be trimmed in these times of economic crisis. But in French political semantics, the word “austerity” remains taboo.
Photograph: Christian Liewig/Liewig Media Sports/Corbis
And this morning, Jean-Marc Ayrault, the French prime minister denied any recourse to the dreaded a-word. He told French radio:
A rigorous approach to get our public accounts under control, that’s true. But austerity, you know what that means: cuts to salaries, pensions, family benefits, it means thousands of job cuts, that’s not what we practise.
Ayrault said the French state would make efforts to deal with its spending, and look closely at the social security system and local authorities, without detailing where these budget cuts would fall.
10.16am GMT Updated at 10.23am GMT
Here’s a view from Madrid via Andrew Moody, an Australian living in Spain.
ATMs in Madrid vandalised, garbage uncollected, more traffic than normal, walked to work to avoid the metro
10.11am GMT The streets of Florence are now heaving with protesters (see also 9.24am)
Fernando Algaba #14N
@FerAlgaba Via Arazzieri packed #Florence #14N #14nRiseUp #14Nit pic.twitter.com/NYa4RPXs
14 Nov 12 ReplyRetweetFavorite10.08am GMT TUC lobbies EC over austerityBritain’s TUC will deliver a letter to the European Commission’s London offices later today, urging European leaders to change their approach to the crisis.
It warns that:
The austerity measures that the European Commission, the IMF and the European Central Bank are imposing on some countries and advocating for others are dragging the whole of Europe into economic stagnation….
These measures, far from re-establishing confidence in the financial markets, only serve to worsen imbalances and foster injustice. Workers and citizens are paying the price for a crisis they did not cause, in unemployment, falling wages and living standards and cuts in public services.’
European unemployment levels have been hitting record highs month after month. The latest data showed that 25.751 million men and women are without jobs across the EU, where the unemployment rate is 10.6%.
In the eurozone, the rate is 11.6%, or 23.3% for young people.
10.06am GMT Jude Kirton-Darling of the European Trade Union Confederation has told the BBC that today’s general strike was called to highlight the fact that austerity is actually making the crisis in Europe worse.
Kirton-Darling said:
It’s increasing inequalities, it’s increasing the social instability in society and it’s not resolving the economic crisis.
Rosamond Press 
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