From Belerico: What is wrong with us?

Filed by: Alex Blaze

I was in Athens last week, and on Friday there were massive protests against the proposed austerity package the socialist government proposed in order to get Germany and France to back their outstanding debt. People demonstrated in the street, all transport within Athens was on strike, and protested again just yesterday. It makes sense - the austerity package will cut wages, raised taxes, and froze pensions, because Greece has debt equivalent to about 120% of their GDP that they hid for the last decade with fancy accounting (by Goldman Sachs, no less) that couldn't be hidden forever, especially with the financial crisis hitting their country and their banks (which got bailed out by the now-broke Greek government, naturally) hard. And of course workers are expected to pay off that debt.

In the US, workers are being asked to pay off a non-existent debt crisis. The effect is something that people in power love: forcing working class and poor Americans to give up the few social services they have. And yet people aren't protesting. Heck, we're being told that we can't afford a health care system that would cost less than the one we have now and the only people protesting are on the right.

I could go on, but we all know the score - there are lots of problems worth protesting in the US but those protests aren't happening (except on the right). Allison Kilkenny has a post worth reading up that provides a good summary of some of the tactics being used to quell protest:

Here we have the completion of the perfect police state. Citizens are monitored from cradle to grave. Any signs of anger or rebellion are swiftly squelched with medication or "peace officers." The schools step in when the state cannot act to monitor and regulate every movement of students' lives under the banner of "Zero Tolerance."

More after the jump.

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