There are thousands of Spanish and Greek workers fighting to defend their jobs against the dead hand of austerity which is threatening to wreck Europe's economies. You would hardly know about this if you followed the mainstream media, which is instead fascinated by David Cameron's schmoozing of the Murdoch empire, and Simon Cowell's string of girlfriends.
Meanwhile, in Spain thousands of miners have been on strike since the end of May, defending their jobs and communities. In time-honoured fashion the Spanish government have unleashed the police who have been given a free hand to break up the strikes and protests leading to violent clashes. In Greece, striking steelworkers have stopped work for 228 days in their fight to protect their jobs.
So why doesn't this make the headlines? Because it doesn't fit with the media agenda which is the modern equivalent of bread and circuses, designed to distract and manipulate us, whilst pandering to the 'free' market neoliberalism of the corporations and their tame politicians. Its OK to report such clashes in the middle east, in places like Egypt, because that is considered safe, but in Europe such events are not considered to be "newsworthy".
The big event this weekend is the Greek election and its looking like the Eurocrats have managed to turn the screws enough on the electorate to ensure a government which will support the 'memorandum' which is killing the Greek economy, and causing great pain to the Greek people. If New Democracy and its pro-bailout allies can form a government the Greeks will be ground down even further to protect the banks and the Euro vanity project. We can only hope that SYRIZA and its allies can gain enough votes to prevent this from happening. Since the bailout cannot work, a victory for the pro-bailout parties would be based on fear and ultimately fruitless. Either the terms of the bailout must be renegotiated and the debts written off or Greece will have to default anyway. Whatever happens the European Union has been badly damaged by this attempt to make its people pay for the blunders of the ruling 'free' market elite, who are wholly responsible for the current crisis.
1 comment:
Debt crisis is inevitable in a capitalist system. look at http://wocpage.com and see the explanation, and actually, also the solution. Only when you know the root cause can you come up with the solution to the problem – see how we can get rid of debt and eradicate poverty altogether.
Also, have a look at the link to “Poverty is Unnecessary” http://www.wocpage.com/blog/
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