Well, not really.. But Ravi Batra predicts the success of Occupy Wall Street revolution ant the death of crony capitalism by 2016, and he says he has never been wrong predicting revolutions.
We'll get back to him in a minute, but first a snippet from Naomi Klein in a speech for Occupy Wall Street :
We have picked a fight with the most powerful economic and political forces on the planet. That’s frightening. And as this movement grows from strength to strength, it will get more frightening. Always be aware that there will be a temptation to shift to smaller targets—like, say, the person sitting next to you at this meeting. After all, that is a battle that’s easier to win.
Don’t give in to the temptation. I’m not saying don’t call each other on shit. But this time, let’s treat each other as if we plan to work side by side in struggle for many, many years to come. Because the task before will demand nothing less.
Let’s treat this beautiful movement as if it is most important thing in the world. Because it is. It really is.
You say you want a revolution, well you know, we all want to change the world
Whoa! A great speech from Naomi comparing the WTO actions successes and failures to Occupy. Some good takeaways from someone who has been there done that, learned, and shares.
Naomi ends predicting success, scary but beautiful, for Occupy.
Many of us are hopeful, but reading about all the fail in our political, economic, and social system is daunting.
Too Much Information Can Be Bad For Your Health
Tonight my wife said she read a great deal of the posts today on Dkos about what was wrong with our system, and it did not leave her feeling encouraged. I had to agree with her.
I had zero interest in the Republican debates, so I decided to wander away from Dkos check around in some other places on the internets, and found this interesting article:
The Occupy Wall Street Movement and the Coming Demise of Crony Capitalism
Tuesday 11 October 2011
by: Ravi Batra, Truthout | News Analysis
In 1978, to the laughter of many and the derision of a few, I wrote a book called, "The Downfall of Capitalism and Communism," which predicted that Soviet communism would vanish around the end of the century, whereas crony or monopoly capitalism would create the worst-ever concentration of wealth in its history, so much so that a social revolution would start its demise around 2010. My forecasts derived from the law of social cycles, which was pioneered by my late teacher and mentor, P. R. Sarkar. Lo and behold, Soviet communism disappeared right before your eyes during the 1990s, and now, just a year after 2010, middle-class America, spearheaded by a movement increasingly known as "Occupy Wall Street (OWS)," is beginning to revolt against Wall Street greed and crony capitalism. Will the revolt succeed? It surely will, because the pre-conditions for its success are all there.
Hey, I'm loving this already!
But, well, I had never heard of Ravi, so off to wiki :
Raveendra Nath "Ravi" Batra (born June 27, 1943) is an Indian-American economist, best-selling author, and professor at Southern Methodist University.
He is best known for his 1985 book The Great Depression of 1990 in which he predicted a sharp rise in the US stock market during the remainder of the 1980s, followed by a cataclysmic drop and a depression in or around 1990. While the stock market continued to rise and fell sharply in 1987, the prediction did not come to pass in the USA in 1990. However, a stock market bubble burst in Japan that year, followed by a decade long depression in economic activity. A sequence of financial crises developed around the world in the 1990s and 2000s. Batra continued to publish books with the main thesis that financial capitalism breeds excessive inequality and political corruption which inevitably succumbs to financial crisis and economic depression.[1] In the late 2000s, a major financial crisis took place in the USA and other developed economies. In his works, including the 2008 book The New Golden Age: The Coming Revolution against Political Corruption and Economic Chaos, Batra's proposed solution is a social system, PROUT, envisioned by his spiritual mentor P.R. Sarkar.
Ravi Batra has appeared on CBS, NBC, CNN, ABC, and CNBC and has been profiled in The New York Times,[2] Time,[3] and Newsweek.[4] Since the financial crisis, Batra has been a frequent guest on radio shows[5] and featured in numerous publications.[6][7][8][9]
I hope you will find the time to go on and read why he predicts success for Occupy and what he thinks needs to be done to insure that success.
Abbey Road
Having been a kid in the 60's Viet Nam Protest era, and an volunteer activist working to end the Cold War and working for Nuclear Disarmament, US/USSR Citizens Diplomacy, I have known movement successes and disappointments.
Participating in Occupy Santa Fe last Saturday in front of Bank of America brought back memories, both scary and beautiful.
Who could have predicted?
What will our world be like by 2016? Tends to look scary and bleak from our perspective here in 2011.
But what the hell, Ravi predicts the Occupy movement will be a success and that we will create the end of crony capitalism by 2016.
I'm all in with that. You?