A wave of industrial and social unrest is building across Europe as workers resist attempts by governments and private companies to impose austerity policies, drive down wages and rescue some nations from near-bankruptcy.
Huge protest rallies took place in cities across Spain last night; today a general strike could paralyse Greece while industrial action at French airports and oil plants as well as the narrowly averted stoppage at Germany's Lufthansa promise to be just the start of the greatest demonstration of public unrest seen on the continent since the revolutionary fervour of 1968. Europe's industrial economy is not clear of recession yet either and with unemployment rising and demands for austerity growing, Europe's workers are becoming increasingly restive.
Is it 1968? Or is it 1848? Could Europeans revolt against the still-forming European Union bureaucratic soft dictatorship out of fear of what the elites want to do to them? Is this the last chance for European states to break out of the regulatory embrace that will stifle freedom if the EU imperial project goes on long enough?
Or will the EU elites attempt to enforce a Brezhnev Doctrine for their members to keep one chink in the armor from bringing down the whole still-fragile institution? Or will the EU attempt to deflect anger at the EU for causing the financial crisis (and it doesn't have to be a true allegation to inspire anger at Brussels) by singling out the Moslem population for blame. Or heck, maybe they'll blame the remnant Jewish population--again.
Or maybe Germany will take this opportunity, despite the cost, to bail out the weaker links and cement its control over central Europe, finally gaining the security that militarism failed to achieve at great cost to Germany, Europe, and the world.
