RANT: The Strain of the Pain in Spain

Photo courtesy of The Sun online

So the streets of Madrid are awash in angry protesters and violent police. The protesters chant against the gross injustices of the austerity measures implemented by the Spanish government due to the ongoing eurozone crisis, whilst the police charge with batons and batter and beat away at the protesters with a viciousness that only neo-fascist police can muster.


The violent protests (made violent by the shocking actions of the police, by the way) on the streets of Madrid are a mirror to the entire financial crisis that has gripped the world in a sickly vice since 2008: the downtrodden, increasingly impoverished masses in supposedly democratic countries are met by police violence and violation that is so massively undemocratic that it makes the entire notion of democracy in those countries nothing but a sham. The actions of these authorities (read: authoritians) on the streets of Madrid, Athens, London, New York, Oakland and countless other Western countries is nothing short of neo-fascism.
The marches and violence of Madrid were inevitable. Gone is the welfare state that protected all with free healthcare, affordable education, generous (and just) unemployment and pension schemes and labour laws that protected those who needed protecting, i.e. the worker. All of that has been slashed due to the Eurozone crisis owing to ‘huge public debts’ due to ‘unlimited public spending’ and other such excuses pontificated by European leaders, the European Commission and other shameless liars. It’s all rubbish – we all know that the entire ‘crisis’ is due to the criminal and amoral actions of traders, speculators financiers and bankers and their political acolytes (read: paid out whores) and, instead of all being put out of business or even hauled off to prison, they’ve all been bailed out with huge amounts of public money. Simple as that, folks.

And someone had to foot the bill. Of course – the unemployed, the working poor, the elderly and the middle classes of Spain, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Ireland, the UK and many other countries have had to pay with their hard-earned rights and safety nets so that the rich could get more obscenely rich.

The protests in the streets of Madrid and the violence with which they are being met are analogy to the times in which we live – cynical times in which we the people are being pillaged and our rights imprisoned by those who supposedly represent and protect us.

And it will only get worse if all of us do not keep vigilant. Forewarned is forearmed.

Do you get my point?

MAN OF THE DAY: Max Keiser

Have you heard of Max Keiser? Well, to be honest, I only recently heard about this renegade NYU-educated former stockbroker on Wall Street - and thank goodness I have.

The man is a breath of fresh air when it comes to ripping and tearing into the banking and political systems of today that have created the current economic recession in so many countries, not to mention the very decline of democracy itself.

After all, I know that I feel that there's a real sense of 'malaise' when it comes to the state of the world's economy and political state of affairs. A sense that this is increasingly an uber-rich person's world where most of us simply don't count at all. Don't you?

Well, Max Keiser taps into those feelings of alienation and frustration I feel - and, wow, does he pack it with a punch!

Max is a force of nature on television as he rips into everything that is so bad about the current global banking system - the banking system, loans and mortgages system, rich-protecting-the-rich syndrome, etc, not to mention the collusion between politicians and the super-rich in guaranteeing that the very rich are protected at all times and that laws are enacted thereto.

Need I say more about the recent US Supreme Court decision to now allow corporations to make limitless contributions to political candidates? You should have seen Max Keiser rip into THAT decision yesterday on satellite Russian TV (RTV) - brilliant stuff.

Max shouts, rants and raves like no other commentator I have ever seen on television - the man is unrelenting as he tears into leaders, institutions, corporations, politicians, special interest groups, and the like. And this man NAMES NAMES. There is no pussyfooting with him. He tells it as it is, in his rather shrill and bombastic but always hilariously funny and on-the-mark way.

He has his detractors, of course, and those who belittle or ridicule what he says or some of what he has propounded. He is divisive and he is corrosive and not to every one's liking at all - no doubt about that. 'Polite' and 'demure' he most certainly is not. Controversial and relentlessly in-your-face he most certainly is. And thank goodness for that.

This is precisely the type of voice we need in this world of corporate-sanctioned packaged news and endless soundbites that mean nothing to most of us and can hardly be trusted.

Please visit his site at www.maxkeiser.com and, if at all possible, try and watch his show on satellite station RTV at 6:30pm CET/CAT on Thursdays. The show is brilliant.

Max Keiser for President!

Jeez, if only one could live in a world like that...