Wall Street Protests Go Global…

Anti-greed protesters rallied globally, denouncing bankers and politicians over the international economic crisis, with violence rocking Rome where cars were torched and bank windows smashed.

An estimated 500 people spent the night outside St Paul’s Cathedral in London’s financial district where around 70 tents could be seen. Some 200 people also camped in front of the European Central Bank building in Frankfurt and 50 tents were seen outside the stock exchange in Amsterdam.

There were rallies in 951 cities in 80 countries around the globe on Saturday in an extension of a campaign born on May 15 with a rally in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol square by a group calling itself “Indignados” (“Indignants”).

The rallies passed off mostly peacefully but in Rome hundreds of the tens of thousands of protesters set cars alight, smashed up banks and hurled rocks at riot police, who responded by firing tear gas and water cannon jets. Seventy people were injured, including three in a serious condition, and 12 people were arrested. There were also clashes in New York where the “Occupy Wall Street” movement has gained pace and 88 people were arrested.

The biggest rallies were in Lisbon, Madrid and Rome, where tens of thousands came out. There were thousands too in Washington and New York. Major protests also took place at European Union institutions in Brussels and Frankfurt, as well as in Athens, where painful budget cuts imposed by international lenders in return for a bailout have sparked widespread anger.

In Washington, the son of slain civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr told a crowd on the National Mall that his father would have been proud. “I believe that if my father was alive, he would be right here with all of us involved in this demonstration today,” Martin Luther King III said.

The demonstrations by the disaffected coincided with the Group of 20 meeting in Paris, where finance ministers and central bankers from major economies were holding talks on the debt and deficit crises afflicting many Western countries.