See this picture?
Look familiar?
Egypt, maybe?
Syria?
Libya?
Guess again, folks.
Read on.
It’s Spain.
Tens of thousands of Spaniards demonstrated in the past week in city squares around the country against austerity measures that have kept a fiscal crisis at bay but aggravated the highest jobless rate in the European Union .
More than 34 million people are eligible to vote while in the background the growing protest movement has illustrated the disillusionment felt by Spaniards toward both main parties and what they call a political system that favors economic interests over citizens.
The protesters have called on Spaniards to reject the Socialists and the center-right Popular Party, the main two political options in Spain.
“I don’t like the policies of some of the parties,” said Cristina, a 23-year-old student who declined to give her last name outside a Madrid polling station. She didn’t want to say who she voted for but said: “You can also cast a blank ballot.”
“…a political system that favors economic interests over citizens.”
Hmmmmm…
Sound familiar?
Yup.
It does.
Now go look at a map.
In a generally east to west direction:
Pakistan
Afghanistan
Iran
Iraq
Saudi Arabia
Yemen
Syria
Israel
Jordan
Egypt
Sudan
Libya
and now headed north by way of Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco to…
Spain
Quick!!! Call the CDC!!! It’s an epidemic!!!
I wonder how far it will spread.
Portugal?
Scuffling.
Italy?
Ripe.
Greece? Read the news.
Georgia? Turkey? The area around the Caspian Sea that author Gary Shteyngart so perfectly labeled Absurdistan? (Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgystan, Kazakhstan, etc.)
OOOOOOooooooo…!!! Gonna take a world cop combined with a world doctor to deal with this infection!!!
Is that us?
The U.S.?
Hell…we can’t even pay our world debt! What kinda bigshot doctor is in hock like that?
But…”Hey, Doc…d’ya think it could skip across the Atlantic!!!??? You know…like that AIDS thing!!!???”
OOOOoooo…scaaary!!!
Hmmmm…
Check it out.
What is war? It is the result of planetary influences. Somewhere up there two or three planets have approached too near to each other; tension results. Have you noticed how, if a man passes quite close to you on a narrow pavement, you become all tense? The same tension takes place between planets. For them it lasts, perhaps, a second or two. But here, on the earth, people begin to slaughter one another and they go on slaughtering maybe for several years. It seems to them at the time that they hate one another; or perhaps that they have to slaughter each other for some exalted purposes; or that they must defend somebody or something and that it is a very noble thing to do; or something else of the same kind. They fail to realize to what an extent they are mere pawns in the game. They think they signify something; they think they can move about as they like; they think they can decide to do this or that. But in reality all their movements, all their actions, are the result of planetary influences. And they themselves signify literally nothing. …It must be understood that neither Emperor Wilhelm, nor generals, nor ministers, nor parliaments, signify anything or can do anything. Everything that happens on a big scale is governed from outside, and governed either by accidental combinations of influences or by general cosmic laws.
Further:
As I have said before, man’s chief delusion is his conviction that he can do. All people think that they can do, all people want to do, and the first question all people ask is what they are to do. But actually nobody does anything and nobody can do anything. This is the first thing that must be understood. Everything happens. All that befalls a man, all that is done by him, all that comes from him – all this happens. And it happens in exactly the same way as rain falls as a result of a change in the temperature in the higher regions of the atmosphere or the surrounding clouds, as snow melts under the rays of the sun, as dust rises with the wind.
Man is a machine. All his deeds, actions, words, thoughts, feelings, convictions, opinions, and habits are the results of external influences, external impressions. Out of himself a man cannot produce a single thought, a single action. Everything he says, does, thinks, feels – all this happens. Man cannot discover anything, invent anything. It all happens.
To establish this fact for oneself, to understand it, to be convinced of its truth, means getting rid of a thousand illusions about man, about his being creative and consciously organizing his own life, and so on. There is nothing of this kind. Everything happens – popular movements, wars, revolutions, changes of government, all this happens. And it happens in exactly the same way as everything happens in the life of individual man. Man is born, lives, dies, builds houses, writes books, not as he wants to, but as it happens. Everything happens. Man does not love, hate, desire – all this happens.
Wake the fuck up.
It is on, baby.
On.
Watch.
The infection must be allowed to run its course.
Thanks, Doc.
I feel better already.
Really.
Ummmmmm…you sure about that?
The operation was a success, but the patient died.
Oh.
So it goes, eh Doc?
So it goes.
Wake the fuck up.
That is really all that is left to us.
Wake the fuck up.
AG
