Europe Faces a Multi-National General Strike Against Austerity …. Workers from Telefonica phone company take part in a demonstration blocking the traffic and protesting against the unjustified dismissals at their company ahead of a general strike in Barcelona, Nov. 13, 2012. Austerity has spawned general strikes in individual countries across the troubled European Union. But this week may see something to add to the union's tensions: a coordinated, multi-national mega-strike. Organized labor plans a general strike against the E.U.'s austerity policies, borderless and spanning the south of the continent. With more than 25 million people out of work, Europe's biggest unions have vowed to lead marches and demonstrations on Nov. 14 that unite opposition parties, activist movements like Spain's M15 and a growing sea of unemployed to challenge their national governments, banking leaders, the IMF and EU policymakers to abandon austerity cuts ahead of a high-stakes budget meeting in Brussels later this month. − Time

Dominant Social Theme: The unions will lead us and save us.

Free-Market Analysis: We've written a number of articles recently about what we consider to be the EU's directed history. It is obvious to anyone who studies these issues in this Internet era (where lots of REAL information is available) that the EU was set up to fail via the euro.

Top Eurocrats have said as much, as we've pointed out. Recently we've also pointed out that the so-called Sovereign crisis has proceeded along the line of a developing-world manufactured crisis.

Directed History: A Fact of Life?

What this means is that countries were lent money on purpose that they could not pay back. The pact is between the borrowers, who put lots of money secretly into Swiss bank accounts, and the lenders, who lent on the assumption of default.

The borrowers, having been paid off, do their best to assist the lender's collection agency, which is usually the IMF. The solution is inevitably "austerity."

The IMF has been crushing developing countries with austerity for nearly 60 years (since inception). It was CREATED to do this, so Europeans shouldn't be surprised that this mechanism is now finally being tried on them. It is part of the larger manipulation of a power elite that wants to reduce the power of nation-states and usher in global governance.

One would have to be very naive to believe that the unions and their leaders were not part of this larger "directed history," as we call it. The idea that the union movement has not been co-opted – its leaders, anyway – is a silly one. The rank-and-file may believe, but leaders know the truth and operate as politicians do. They line their own pockets and try to stay out of the headlines.

In this case, of course, they cannot stay out of the headlines. The job of Europe's great commercial bankers was to lend the European PIGS into bankruptcy. The job of Europe's great unions is to introduce social chaos into Europe. Out of chaos, order. Here's some more from the article excerpted above ….

What makes Wednesday's strike even more threatening to Europe's managerial elite is the strong support it is receiving from traditional labor groups that rarely send their members into the streets—foremost, among them, the European Trade Union Confederation, representing 85 labor organizations from 36 countries, and totaling some 60 million members.

"We have never seen an international strike with unions across borders fighting for the same thing—it's not just Spain, not just Portugal, it's many countries demanding that we change our structure," says Alberto Garzón, a Spanish congressman with the United Left party which holds 7% of seats in the Spanish Congress. "It's important to understand this is a new form of protest."

The strike is expected to cause near or total shutdowns of the four most debt-battered countries—Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece—as all major unions march to oppose devastating cuts in salaries, pensions, benefits and social services, meanwhile protesting tax hikes and harsh labor reforms. There will be solidarity marches elsewhere.

Though not formally striking, France's largest labor groups signaled support with dozens of demonstrations planned nationwide. Rail workers in Belgium are striking; so are labor groups in Malta and Cyprus. In Britain, organizer Andrew Burgin of the Coalition of Resistance said marches and demonstrations there would "forge links across Europe, showing Britain's austerity struggles as part of a pan-European, international movement." And from Germany and Switzerland to Turkey, eastern Europe and Scandinavia, workers and many organizations have promised to rally around the single message: No to austerity.

It is easy to figure out what's probably going on if you understand the larger dialectic. The unions are put in place to co-opt REAL social action. The last thing the powers-that-be want is to encourage tribal identities and national cohesion.

The unions also look toward big government (and maybe the EU itself) for redress of grievances stemming from austerity. This has the effect of damping down the secession movement and cultural identity, which are on the upswing.

For this reason we don't put much faith in these big protests. In fact, it begins to look as if the chief reason for austerity was to provide justification for pan-European "union" protests, thus cementing internationalism rather than tribal identity as the dominant "people's voice" of the EU.

The subdominant theme here, then, is that large pan-socialist unions speak for "common people" at the big table of EU elites. The idea of a Super-Union is actually being cemented by these sorts of demos.

We will watch and wait. But if we are correct about this sort of directed history, the unions will not seek to break up the EU (which is what needs to happen) but will instead demand a place at the proverbial larger table.

Directed history at its finest …