Revolt is in the air: Countries across Europe in turmoil

The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression is throwing countries across Europe into turmoil--and spurring struggles unseen in years.

The financial turmoil that began in the summer of 2007 in the U.S. is spreading around the globe with frightening speed and devastating consequences for working people.

The bursting of the bubble in the U.S. housing market in the summer of 2007 was the catalyst for full-blown economic crisis in country after country in Europe.

Now, the economic disaster is sparking mass protest and revolt on a scale not seen in two decades. Britain's Guardian newspaper described the new political reality in a January 31 article titled "Governments across Europe tremble as angry people take to the streets." It begins:

France paralyzed by a wave of strike action, the boulevards of Paris resembling a debris-strewn battlefield. The Hungarian currency sinks to its lowest level ever against the euro, as the unemployment figure rises. Greek farmers block the road into Bulgaria in protest at low prices for their produce. New figures from the biggest bank in the Baltic show that the three post-Soviet states there face the biggest recessions in Europe.

It's a snapshot of a single day [January 30] in a Europe sinking into the bleakest of times. But while the outlook may be dark in the big wealthy democracies of Western Europe, it is in the young, poor, vulnerable states of Central and Eastern Europe that the trauma of crash, slump and meltdown looks graver.

Exactly 20 years ago, in serial revolutionary rejoicing, they ditched communism to put their faith in a capitalism now in crisis and by which they feel betrayed. The result has been the biggest protests across the former communist bloc since the days of people power.

Europe's time of troubles is gathering depth and scale. Governments are trembling. Revolt is in the air.

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