How Far Will The Fires Spread?

August 15, 2011
by Bob Livingston


Metropolitan Police's Operation Withern is investigating the London riots. Photographs of suspects are posted on the agency's website.

Last week, the U.K. burned. Several nights of rioting, looting and general mayhem began in a London neighborhood following the police shooting of a black man (who was armed with a blank pistol) and spread across the country.

Simultaneously, a quarter of a million people took to the streets of Tel Aviv, Israel, to protest the rising cost of living. CNBC http://www.cnbc.com/id/44073673 reported the protests actually began a month previous when some people set up tents in an expensive part of town to protest rising property prices.

In Spain, Greece and Portugal, strikes, protests and rioting have occurred off and on for much of the spring and summer over government austerity measures and corruption.

Rising prices of consumer goods fueled demands for better pay and job protection by workers in the Philippines in May. Workers left their jobs and marched in the streets.

In China, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Algeria, Jordan, Morocco, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Sudan, Iran, Lebanon and Kuwait, people have risen up in protests of varying degrees. Some of these led to a change in government, some fizzled out, some have been bought off and some have been quashed by violent repression.

While none of these protests are exactly alike and the spark that ignited them often came from different sources, they do have some common traits. Among them are the roiling economy, inflation, loss of liberties, class warfare and seemingly hopeless job prospects.

In Great Britain, Spain, Greece and Portugal, the protests demonstrate the failure of socialism.

Governments have run out of money, so they are cutting back on programs supporting the parasite class that developed off government largess. The crash of the economy has left many without jobs, and cutbacks in unemployment, food subsidies, housing subsidies, education subsidies, healthcare subsidies and the like are either being implemented or discussed.

That’s not sitting well with the parasites who grew dependent on the nanny state and have seethed and simmered over the injustices — whether real or perceived — they have endured. They’ve heard the elected elites blame the rich for their troubles, so they’re lashing out at those they consider “rich.â€