Global Unrest and Europe’s GIPSI Revolution

Although England and France are facing equally bleak outlooks, with severe cuts to public services and an increasing drain on the working class, they are yet to face the full-blown, dreaded, IMF loan criteria of mass privatization and third world indebtedness being imposed on the GIPSI countries; Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, and Italy.  Currently, though receiving little to no attention from corporate controlled main stream media, massive populist demonstrations are underway – the likes of those in Egypt’s Tahrir square – against the austerity measures that threaten to devastate their societies and enslave their citizens as a means of payment to those that created the debt in the first place.

The people have been leveraged against the debt created by the banks and financiers that have devastated the global economy while posting record profits. The ownership of the planet we share is being consolidated in the hands of the few.  The other 99% of us are being turned into their indentured servants.  Some are fighting back.

These uprisings, like those throughout north Africa and the middle-east, are neither sectarian or ideological. They are the struggle of the exploited against the exploiter: the working class against the global financiers. The conflicts are neither liberal or conservative, religious or secular;  the struggles are of the exploited and disenfranchised against those who have willingly succumbed to man’s most primal reactions to fear….  violence and greed.  The struggle is for emancipation from those who hoard our wealth and resources and demand that we labor for them in order to be allowed to survive.

The entire Mediterranean Sea is surrounded with unrest; North Africa, the middle-east, and Europe alike.  Groundswells throughout China and Asia are being frantically suppressed, even as they gain ground through independent news outlets and social media.  This is not a regional issue.  Our governments, and the media, prefer to present it that way in an attempt to avoid the reality that there is currently a substantial challenge to the powers that would rule us all; but the reality is undeniable.  This is not a coincidence.  This is a global battle.  Not one country is exempt from the struggle of the working class- the expendable class- against the powers of global capitalism and the tyrants and dictatorial regimes it places in power and supports.

The GIPSI revolution is very much one with the Jasmine Revolution and the Arab Revolution which find common ground with the working class in England, Russia, China, and America.  The term “Arab Spring” is used to belittle what is actually happening… this is not a ‘Spring,’ this is a revolution.  It is a euphemism that attempts to protect the status quo  from that reality, the reality of revolution.  Failure to realize that this singular movement that goes by many regional names is a unified force for democracy, and against global predatory capitalism and exploitation, will prove foolhardy in the end.

Every Country on the planet, like every state in the American Union, is the subject of an onslaught against the people.  Their wealth is being stolen by banks and corporations, their resources exploited by profiteers, their tax dollars going to the thieves that have impoverished them, and the services that they have created for themselves are being cut to pay off the banksters.  In addition to this exploitation, their rights as the subjugated laboring class are being stripped away.  The result is that the majority of global citizens are being sentenced to a life of labor for the profit of an elite; and only the elite are afforded any rights.  So, not only are we giving an elite the power over our survival in return for our labor, for their exclusive profit, we are allowing a system that provides for only that elite to have codified, defensible, and actionable, rights… and we’re being asked to trust that they will ‘do the right thing.’

A single sign, held by a protester in Madrid, Spain, best sums up the response we must have to the evil being perpetrated against us; “Spain is not a business, we are not slaves.”  This simple truth- substituting any national entity, or descriptive term for the citizens of the world, for Spain – decries our global plight and inspires our global solution.  We do not live to work for the benefit of a small elite.  That is not the purpose of our existence.  We must live as free and emancipated individuals and work together to ensure that all of us may continue do so.

Americans have been convinced that their country is a business and their life’s role is as fodder for the gears that drives the machine, and provides them with the coveted chance to be an over-worked, under-payed, member of the planets most indulgent consumer culture. If you’re lucky enough in America, you too can trade quality of life for material gain.  You can have a home you barely visit and hire others to raise the strangers to whom you gave birth.   If you’re one of the very fortunate few you can pay for your own retirement next to a golf course to wait out your final years while your children are too busy to visit you because they’re trying to repeat the process.  Being a favored servant doesn’t make you any less of a servant.  Americans are just beginning to wake up and realize this.

Today, May 22, 2011, Spain is holding national elections.  Protesters were banned by the government, but as you can see from the live feed below, the people of Spain are too committed to allow this to happen.  Tens of thousand have taken to the streets in Madrid, Barcelona, and at least 15 other cities to protest corruption and the power of bankers and capital over politics.

Webcam chat at Ustream
The movement is known as M-15 because it was launched on May 15.  The demonstrators, as a group, do not offer support to any particular party and have pledged to stay at the central Puerta del Sol for at least a week following the elections.

Throughout Italy, demonstrations of the same magnitude are continuing unabated.  As actions intensify in Syria, Bahrain, Jordan, Palestine and Yemen, Egypt is planning another day of demonstrations for this coming Friday, May 27.  Greece remains a powerhouse of anti-capitalist demonstrations, and activists in Ireland and Portugal continue to mount opposition to those that seek to drain the wealth of their countries, privatize state services and utilities, and claim the future product of the citizens labor.  The movement is growing and it doesn’t seem as though there is anything that can stop it.  The journey towards a global strike that will cripple those that enslave us has begun.

The most dangerous people are those with nothing left to lose.  The over-reach of global financial interests and multinational corporate giants is reaching a critical point.  In their lust for wealth and power they have created, as a byproduct of their greed, a very dangerous, and very powerful, enemy.  That enemy is beginning to organize and coalesce.  The demand for democracy, social justice, and economic justice, is becoming the battle-cry of citizens around the globe.

American media is sheltering Americans from the truth.  It isn’t even covering these events.  You can watch endless reruns of Piers Morgan, Lock-up, To Catch A Predator, any of the garbage on Fox News, or a myriad of other distractions presented by so-called news outlets.  There’s a reason for this.  It scares the living shit out of the corporations that control them.  Wake up, investigate, and research.  Use the resources at your disposal.  Get involved.  America is about to be the subject of the same austerity measures being imposed on all of these other nations.

Your coffers have been emptied and now they’re coming for your labor rights, social security, medical coverage, and future taxes; just as they did in Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy.  Apathy is not an option.  Stand with the GIPSI Revolution.  Stand with the Jasmine Revolution.  Stand with the democratic uprisings for social and economic justice around the globe.  Stand… before it’s too late.