Civil Unrest Coming to the United States?

A friend in California sent me an article today that was very disconcerting.   The article was reflecting on a recent report published in Europe relative to the impacts and consequences of the economic situation:

According to the European think tank, LEAP/Europe 2020, two factors make the US a likely candidate for civil violence: the absence of a strong social safety net and the presence of hundreds of millions of firearms.

The full article is here (it’s in French, so you’ll need to use Google Translation if you want to read it in English).

Former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski has publicly expressed his fears about impending civil unrest with MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough :

JOE SCARBOROUGH: You also talked about the possibility of class conflict.

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: I was worrying about it because we’re going to have millions and millions of unemployed, people really facing dire straits. And we’re going to be having that for some period of time before things hopefully improve. And at the same time there is public awareness of this extraordinary wealth that was transferred to a few individuals at levels without historical precedent in America….

And you sort of say to yourself: what’s going to happen in this society when these people are without jobs, when their families hurt, when they lose their homes, and so forth?

We have the government trying to repair: repair the banking system, to bail the housing out. But what about the rich guys?… Where is the monied class today? Why aren’t they doing something: the people who made billions, millions…. there’s going to be growing conflict between the classes and if people are unemployed and really hurting, hell, there could be even riots!

Perhaps this will drive up immigration from the US to Canada?   Entreprenuers, VC’s (only those with a large fund and money to invest mind you) and leaders of large multi-national companies (only those companies that are profitable with no past history of government teat suckling) can go straight to the front of the line….

And the unrest is not expected to be restricted to the US.  On Feb 23rd, London Police expressed public concern over  the possibility of a “summer of rage” in the UK  -

Police said on Monday they feared a “summer of rage” with mass protests over the economic crisis…

There is evidence that governments are already preparing for the possibility of civil unrest.

And on a lighter note, Colbert takes an extreme look at future possibilities.