¡Que viva Puerto Rico Libre!

Puerto Rico, the same country that led the fight against American Imperialism and Colonialism back in the 20th century, is once again poised to lead the fight against the Global Elite today. Today is October 15th, the day a General Strike has been called for Puerto Rico.

Puerto Ricans are protesting the massive government layoffs that have been ordered in response to the economic crisis. Puerto Rico is not alone in suffering a huge government deficit, but the crisis there is more acute. And the government response has been more draconian.

So today there will be a historic public protest.

More than 200,000 people are expected to march in a mass rally tomorrow in San Juan, Puerto Rico, as part of a one-day work stoppage to protest Gov. Luis Fortuño’s plan to trim the budget deficit on the backs of workers.

Using recently passed legislation known as Public Law 7, the governor plans to lay off as many as 30,000 public employees and deny collective bargaining to the remainder of the island’s public employees. The U.S. Commonwealth, where unemployment is already at 15 percent, is set to receive $6 billion in federal economic recovery funds, more than enough to cover a projected $3.2 billion budget deficit.

Fortuño, a former Republican delegate to the U.S. Congress, is using the island’s deep budget deficit as a pretext to busting the union and privatizing public services, the Puerto Rican union movement says.

Of course the media in the US has completely ignored the events which have led up to this protest in Puerto Rico. They don't want you to realize that similar layoffs of government employees are occurring all over the US in response to the government deficits.

The importance of this event is that Puerto Rico has been used historically as a laboratory for policies that the Elite hope to eventually bring to the mainland. For instance, Puerto Rico was the first to give tax incentives (going all the way back to 1947) in order to attract business. This initially had some success, but eventually the corporations left when they were enticed away by even bigger profit incentives in other poorer countries. This was the beginning of "free trade" policies and globalization.

Now there is a push towards mass privatization in Puerto Rico. This is another goal of the Global Elite in their plan to strip away wealth from the citizens of the world and to turn us into their virtual slaves. If you live in the US then you had better heed the warning signs coming from Puerto Rico, because your state may be the next to be targeted.

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