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30s whose usage came to an end due to the 1987 stock market crash and the early 1990s recession. I revive its usage because the yuppies believe that the August 2011 riots in England were nothing but works of thuggery (popularly known now as yobs) which are driven in large measure by a gangster mentality and broken family values.

Such a mindset thinks that might is right, and refuses to accept reality, but would rather hide behind terms such as yobs in order to protect its interests – mostly political and economic. We saw that after the five days of rioting in the UK, and on August 9, British Prime Minister David Cameron “completely condemned the scenes that we have seen on our television screens . . . sickening scenes – scenes of people looting, vandalising, thieving, robbing, scenes of people attacking police officers . . . criminality, pure and simple, and it has to be confronted and defeated.”
When similar incidents occur in Africa, yuppies demonise the actions and instead of thuggery behaviour, we hear terms like rebellion, uprisings and others.

Western governments become cheer leaders arguing that rioters have every reason to demonstrate against “corrupt” and “dictatorial” governments. But they forget that this is a global village. There is a yob behaviour that started with 12 students on Wall Street, the United States of America’s financial district.
They called it Occupy Wall Street. However, the Occupy Wall Street protests are all over the United States and Canada and they have entered their twentieth day. Although the US and Canadian citizens are beginning to give credence to the demonstrators, the story is really still under wraps. The Dalai Lama, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Afghanistan, Palestine are the big stories recycled daily because those who call the shots have strategic interests to protect.

But, when Occupy Wall Street, an uprising that has a bearing on the globalised world happens, it is as if an uprising in the US is different from the ones in North Africa or Zimbabwe. To start with, it’s no secret that countries such as the US are operated by interest groups. I have written about “The Obama Deception” documentary before, a documentary that bares it all.
It’s also an open secret that the US is one of the most policed nations in the world, and most people wonder whether these protests will really shape up and last.

So, the Occupy Wall Street won’t be a big story like the Tahrir Square uprisings in Egypt early this year, which resulted in president Hosni Mubarak’s ouster, until the interest groups give the nod.
Only then will satellite TV stations such as CNN, BBC, Sky News, France 24 and Al-Jazeera carry it.
When they do, what angle will they take? In North Africa they cheered and the leadership of Western countries encouraged the demonstrators to carry on until their demands were met. Who will cheer on the Occupy

Wall Street demonstrators? But, as we wait for them to turn it into an international story, there is no harm in saying that contrary to wild expectations, what we are witnessing right now is a developing story that is turning into an American Spring, just like the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings resulted in the Arab Spring.
These are developments that I prefer to call, “From Tahrir Square to Zuccotti Park” (now called Liberty Park) in New York. It is a story that combines yuppies, yobs and dictators for the protesters have continued their occupation of Zuccotti Park, near the New York Stock Exchange, despite mass arrests last weekend.

The Occupy demonstrators started as a small but loose group, and the mainstream media could not be bothered with yobs that had little to do except make some noise in a democratic society. But interestingly, from the very onset, they said that they were getting inspiration from the Arab Spring.
Here are the comparisons. The Tunisian uprising started in December 2010 and ended in January 2011 with president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s ouster. But according to the Tunisians, it is on-going. The major causes of the uprising were unemployment; government corruption; inflation; self-immolation and lack of freedom. In Egypt, they rose up against police brutality; state of emergency laws; corruption; high unemployment, etc. The nature of the uprisings whose centre was Tahrir Square in Cairo was civil disobedience; riots; strike actions and online activism. These have become the template for the uprisings in North

Africa and the Middle East.
Now, juxtapose these with the UK riots whose characteristics were rioting; looting; arson; mugging and assault. Just like the Arab Spring, the UK riots recorded five deaths and many arrests. As the protests crossed the Atlantic, we realise that the protesters have a longer laundry list of grievances, but they have targeted the banking sector. Their single demand is to “occupy Wall Street”.
From an analytical point of view, Wall Street becomes a representation of an oppressive system – what they call the one percent that is lording it over the 99 percent of the people.

They are also saying that they are taking “to task the people who perpetrated the economic meltdown” of 2008. They are also protesting against “social and economic inequality, corporate greed and the influence of corporate money and lobbyists on government.”
This could be the mother of all revolutions because the debt crisis in the United States and Europe has far-reaching implications internationally. Although I do not have the figures, there are thousands of Zimbabweans in both the US and Europe, who have already been adversely affected by the economic meltdown – job losses in particular.

It also remains to be seen whether the age-old adage, “when America sneezes, the whole world catches a cold” will stand.
As the protests spread, so also the messages on their posters. The following were some: “The police are tools of the rich; You can’t buy the earth; Fight racism and police brutality; Robbed by the bank; Banks – get out of politics and student loans; Citizen of the world not corporate America; Money for jobs not war; The only way to experience the American dream is while sleeping; Billionaires – your time is up; How did the cat get so fat?; You’re a pawn in their game; etc.

Billionaire George Soros who is backing the protests for reasons still not clear will probably have to rethink.
On Monday one of the demonstrators wore a T-shirt with the message, “The present is struggle. The future is ours. – Che”. Another protestor had a placard with the Latin American revolutionary Che Guevara on it, and it read: “Si se puede – The workers’ struggle has no borders”.

Will the Che element force the American authorities to quash it and label the protesters communists?
But the protesters’ resolve and confidence so far shows that it is most unlikely, especially when workers’ unions and Hollywood personalities are slowly lending support. Min Reyes, one of the organisers of the

Vancouver demonstrations in Canada said, “I knew as soon as I saw the first uprising in Tunisia it was going to pick up. Our system is very unsustainable and it was only a matter of time for that movement to come to Canada and Vancouver.”

The West has called itself a champion of democracy, fighting needless wars in different parts of the world, and preferring to sponsor those wars and illegal regime change, rather than development so that the global village does not have top and under dogs.

It is also important for the US to learn that while they created a melting pot of cultures, religions, classes – they, however, proceeded to fight wars in other parts of the world – where the current generation’s ancestry came from.

The protesters who are on their streets today have been watching as they saw their original home countries destroyed to smithereens by drones and the people reduced to beggars.
What the US president Barack Obama said about Tahrir Square is also ironic: “While the sights and sounds that we heard were entirely Egyptian, we can’t help but hear the echoes of history – echoes from Germans

tearing down a wall, Indonesian students taking to the streets, Gandhi leading his people down the path of justice.
As Martin Luther King said in celebrating the birth of a new nation in Ghana while trying to perfect his own, “There is something in the soul that cries out for freedom. Those were the cries that came from Tahrir Square, and the entire world has taken note.”
When the Chicago sit-in, which is Obama’s base began on September 23 and the Chicago Tribune reported that some protesters called it their Tahrir Square. What came to Obama’s mind?

As protesters in Chicago beat drums – the true African way, what again came to his mind as he moves around the US looking for economic solutions and seeing a bleak re-election staring him in the face?
It has also been easy to take other nation states before the United Nations and also exercising its veto as it saw fit. But when push comes to shove like what happened at the weekend when more than 700 people were arrested how will this be handled?

Will Obama be forced to deploy the army across the nation if the protests really turn out to be like Tahrir Square? But as the Zuccotti Park gains momentum, it is still critical to ask whether we are witnessing the end of an era of the 21st century’s revolutions?

Peter Schwartz says, ” . . . scenarios are tools for taking a long view . . . By drawing sketches of what might happen tomorrow, you can make savvy choices today.”
This is the remarkable opportunity we have in sub-Saharan Africa. Lessons abound. Instead of replicating other people’s blunders, let’s create a future for our young people. We will remain alert, but for now we leave it to the big guns to see how they deal with their “sophisticated” occupiers.

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