spain protest

Americans are accustomed to war. War on nations, war on drugs, war on obesity, war on “voter fraud”, even war on tactics and emotions such as terror (might the US one day declare a War on Horror if we’re attacked by zombies?)

There is however a war that is underway around the globe, it is in fact a World War which has come to the shores of America but though the battles may get attention, the bigger overall war remains a secret to most, as the aggressors want it to be.

It is an unconventional war, all the aircraft carriers and fighter jets we have are of no help. And make no mistake, this war is for big stakes, the biggest, world domination.

Many have speculated on who our adversaries would be if there was a World War III. The Soviet Union used to be the likely enemy when it was in existence. Some have speculated about China, Islamic countries and rogue nations such as Iran and North Korea. However, in the modern age, wars are not often fought between nations, they are fought between ideologies, between segments of populations as we’ve seen in our recent wars with Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Here’s the secret…World War III is going on right now. And it’s no different than our recent wars when it comes to being ideologically-based even though the players are different. The enemy is small but incredibly powerful, they mount assaults all across the globe on people everywhere but are like terror cells, operating independently but driven by the same philosophies and practicing the same viciousness. The enemy is both foreign and domestic and has more destructive power than any army.

They are the wealthy who see class warfare and dedication to their greed as a righteous crusade and their global assault against the people of the Western World is fully engaged.

The campaign of austerity that the wealthy launched against Western Europe, following their looting of Western Europe’s wealth in the economic crisis of 2008, has been brutal. The intensifying of this war on the people at that time was opportunistic and ruthless (a specialty of the wealthy). The politicians financed by and doing the bidding of the wealthy responded to their economic plundering of world economies…by insisting that those most victimized should pay the price of setting the economy back up so it can be usurped once again by the wealthy. So while the wealthy and their corporations enjoy record profits and aren’t asked to put back more of that back into the wounded economies of the nations they’ve hobbled, the poor have money and food taken away, the youth have jobs and their futures taken away and the elderly and ill have their pensions, health care and security taken away from them.

This politically enforced class warfare is happening in a limited way here in the U.S. because President Obama has stood between the wealthy and their injecting this poison at full potency into our economy. President Obama’s stimulus spending bill in 2009 thwarted the same destructive assault on the American public. While all Western nations crashed along with the global economy in 2008, the American economy bounced back sooner and is showing more positive growth than any of the European nations which were forced down the austerity path…some European countries are actually declining into double dip recessions if they haven’t already.

A growing number of Europeans are unemployed, 12.1 percent now, with 27% unemployed in Spain and in Greece, 18% in Portugal, 14% in Ireland and 11.5% in Italy. Again, these numbers aren’t dropping, they’re rising. The youth are being hit even harder in these nations. In Spain, 50% of young people are unemployed. Nearly 25% of youth in Europe unemployed.

Consider that again for a moment, 50% of all young people in Spain can’t find a job, can’t start a career, can’t earn any money. And 25% of all young people in Europe. What happens when you’re young and angry and you see that you have no future?

What’s happening in Spain is that a growing armed insurgency of thousands of young people around the country are participating in attacks, vandalism, sabotage and violent protests against their government.

What’s happening in Greece are riots that take place every single day and the rise and growth of ultra-Right Wing groups espousing Nazi-type views and violently attacking those they oppose (they now claim 10% of Greek Parliament seats).

This World War the wealthy are prosecuting against the majority isn’t just riling up the reasonable against them, it’s activating the extremists against whoever they see as their enemy. In Greece, street battles go on between different populist groups such as the Anarchists and the Nationalists (purity of the Greek race types).

As Americans, we may sometimes look at what happens in the rest of the world from a detached distance, harboring the delusion that what we see elsewhere can’t happen here. Whether it’s acts of terrorism by religious or economic jihadists, we later learn the hard way that what can happen there, can happen here.

There have been the rumblings of social unrest here in the U.S., from the Occupy Wall Street protests to last week’s protests in Chicago by minimum wage employees at fast food and retail places. The World War of the wealthy against the rest of the population of the world continues to intensify and as more are shoved into desperation and see their futures stolen away from them, the opposition will grow in force.

Anyone who graduated from high school understands the principal of cause and effect. The wealthy who marshal this war on the rest of the world know it too but they are blinded by their greed and hubris to see it clearly. Like all tyrants, they believe might makes right and that once they win their war, they will simply continue to dominate the majority. They fail to consider the history of what happens to most tyrants who have tried to dominate their own nation or even the world. In the end, the many can always defeat the few as long as they are united…which is why the wealthy work so hard to create divisions and hatreds between the many. Their mistake is in overlooking that their tyranny will, after oppressing the people hard enough and long enough, unite the many against them and bring about their downfall. In the short term however, even though they may see victory coming closer into their grasp, they are priming a powder keg to blow up.

The leadership of many countries have been content to put the burden of reducing their debt on the poor and working class people with the thought that it will buy them time and hopefully by the next decade, things will be okay again (and they’ll have slashed expenditures on the majority so that’s more tax money to reroute to the wealthy). They have not addressed the root causes of the economic collapse and the unsustainability of their economies because that would entail taking the License to Steal away from the wealthy. So what if leaders make the majority of their citizens suffer for a decade with the promise it will be better by the next decade…and things aren’t better then?

Here’s where austerity is leading Europe on its debt/GDP ratio per Eurostat (a lower percent is better):

  • Spain’s  increased from 69.3% in 2011 to 84.2% in 2012
  • Greece declined from 170.3% to 156.9%
  • Portugal increased from 108.3% to 123.6%
  • Ireland increased from 106.4% to 117.6%
  • The U.K. increased from 85.5% to 90%.

As much as the war is escalating in some of these nations today, what might it be like after 10 more years go by with depressed standards of living, 10 years more of young people graduating college and not being able to find work or income, 10 more years of the elderly and those in medical need being deprived?

And if Republicans continue to be able to block government spending here in the U.S. on such necessities by continuing the sequester, fighting the closing of tax loopholes, opposing spending on repairing infrastructure and decimating social welfare programs including Social Security and Medicare, where might America find itself in this war? Under the sequester, Republicans and the wealthy just yawn as Americans are denied cancer treatments, elderly are deprived of Meals on Wheels, the unemployed are deprived of Unemployment Insurance payments, children are deprived of Head Start education and on and on. As the standard of living in America is lowered by the wealthy and their cronies, as our young people graduate college and can’t find well paying jobs while realizing that for the first time in recent memory, their futures will be worse than their parents’, the hopelessness and anger will build here too.

It is no secret that the agenda of the wealthy Right Wingers who dominate the top 1% in the US is to depress wages for Americans, slash government spending on the 99% and their safety nets and eliminate the taxes the wealthy pay while increasing the amount of handouts they receive from the government from the 99%’s tax money.

All the wealthy’s talk of libertarianism and taking personal responsibility only applies to the 99% and is their camouflage for stripping Americans of the benefits they pay for with their taxes so that money can be looted by them. When it comes to the wealthy taking personal responsibility, the wealthy just laugh as they claim to be too big to fail and grab billions in “bailouts”.

There’s a quote in the old Francis Ford Coppola movie about wealthy gangsters, “The Cotton Club”, which is just as poignant when it comes to this, “If you don’t think you’re at war, you’ve already lost the war.” There is a World War going on now, the media may show each battle as an independent conflict but zoom out and you’ll see the big picture, the same battles against the standard of living of the non-wealthy majority are happening at the same time, all around the world. The wealthy are invested globally so to one degree or another, they are intertwined with each other and that makes their wars on the majority, global.

As the quote goes, in order to fight back, you first have to recognize that you’re in a war.

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jjgravitas
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jjgravitas

You’re dead-on, Adlib. In days past, the rich built this world, back when it needed to be built. The rich paid for it themselves, as in the case of the railroads, or they allowed the government to do it for them, as in the case of the phone system and the phone and electrical grids. And they allowed for a dense social structure including welfare and safety nets for the very public who made up the workers and consumers whose efforts built the structures that helped make the rich as rich as they are.
Now we are a world of seven billion people. Now that the world is entirely built, we’re just doing maintenance. And maintenance is never as much fun as building from scratch. The social safety net, which in days past was seen as an investment in our future, is now only seen as an albatross hanging on the neck of whoever the present administration happens to be. Except for NASA, No one seems to believe in the future anymore.
We may still be voting for our politicians, but our democracy is rapidly becoming an oligarchy. Or perhaps we are already there.

BourneID
Member

AdLib

Please check the Help Desk; there’a note for you – important.

B

choicelady
Member

Very well said, AdLib. As a trained historian (don’t try this at home without a good guide) I know this is part of a century-plus continuum, that the progressive movement, the New Deal, the Great Society all were major threats to the Great and Powerful, and they have determined to get their power and the money BACK.

Over the past 40 years they have made constant inroads on social welfare, and the collapse of the world economy was their best chance to bring it home – it was the moment they could impose ‘austerity’ and pretend that didn’t mean making the poor bail out the rich.

But it’s NOT working. In nation after nation it has become clear that the wealthy – those who created the hell – are engaged in what Jacob Hacker called “The Great Risk Shift”. Only the US under PBO’s guidance have avoided the worst impacts.

I see this as the last gasp of a dying Moby Dick. It will not go well for many of us, but it never has in dark and troubled times. But from so many nations we are seeing resistance including here – and it will fundamentally change the way we organize production, benefits, outcomes, decision making. Will it happen in our lifetime? Possibly. But it WILL happen. It always does. No matter how powerful the rich seem to be, they fall. The hubris alone does them in, and the will of the people commands major policy changes. Setbacks WILL occur, but they will not prevail.

We gave the bastards a chance. They blew it. Now they, not we, will have to pay the piper and begin dancing to a new tune, one WE write.

That is the arc of history – it bends toward justice. Today is no exception.

kesmarn
Admin

AdLib, in an article full of impressive statements, this one stood out particularly:

The politicians financed by and doing the bidding of the wealthy responded to their economic plundering of world economies…by insisting that those most victimized should pay the price of setting the economy back up so it can be usurped once again by the wealthy.

I think it’s going to take a couple of re-readings and some time for me to get my thoughts together on this one. There’s so much in it.

My immediate reaction is not so much commentary as it is a bunch of questions. Among them:

Are there non-violent ways to take on an “enemy” that is so well financed that none of the children in their dynastic empires will ever have to work — for many generations?

When/if conflict comes, will it be the various factions that the wealthy have set at odds with each other battling one against another? A sort of re-run of the Civil War? Or will the 99% finally recognize who’s really doing what to whom and turn against the oppressing minority?

Will the military and/or the police take sides? With whom?

What role will the media play? MSM and/or social media?

Do street protests like Occupy Wall Street work any more? Or do the wealthy simply stand on balconies, sip champagne and snicker as the police “clean the streets” for them?

I guess the bottom line question is — can the mega-rich be brought into line? Or are they so wealthy and powerful that they’re now unbeatable?

As a basically hopeful person, I’m hoping it’s not the latter. For everyone’s sake.

glenn
Member

Wow! Powerful stuff, AdLib.

The only other time I felt this concerned about the future of my country was during the Vietnam War protests, which just about tore our country apart. We had no internet or “social media” at that time, yet it was clear that the country was deeply polarized.

Now, with social media and the internet allowing every nutjob in the country a platform in which they can enlist other nutjobs, the polarization is even worse. I believe you’re right; the hopelessness and anger is building here. The question is, on which side will the anger build the most, and which side will “pull the trigger” (metaphorically speaking). The 1% have managed to fuel that anger on both sides, but there are some of us who still believe in the fundamental principles of our country–that voting and holding politicians responsible–are the best actions we could take to restore our collective sanity.

If we take the other path–armed rebellion–then we have betrayed our principles, our Constitution, and our “exceptionalism” as Americans. Melissa Harris-Perry says, “Democracy is messy…The only way it gets better is when everybody is in,” she said. “…The only danger in democracy is when we opt out.” (I do know that MHP didn’t author the “democracy is messy” quote). Today, it is as messy as it has been in many years. We need to find our way through the mess by using the highest power we have–our votes and our voices. Thank you for using yours so well.