Shattered Euro plus change or Euro à plus tard; European (Dis)Integraton

The History book on a shelf

   is always repeating itself

Excerpt from "Waterloo" by ABBA 

(written by Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus, Stig Anderson)

     One of my favorite courses in college was “International Organizations.” After switching from being a psychology major to a political science major, I took as many political science courses as I could as quickly as I could (double-full time studies) and when told I could take no more, (too many in one core area even though it was my major) I switched schools, eventually finding a way to transfer them back and graduate, studying things many of my previous and later fellow students would have been envious of.

     I got to study the collapse of the Soviet Union both while it was happening, and after it had happened from within the former Soviet Union. I got to study the European Union both in its middling-stages, and during its largest expansion while it was happening within countries that were joining and had recently joined. When I originally switched to political science, it was to better understand why people constantly vote against their own interests and how they can be manipulated so easily and so often into doing so.

     I got to study the “Swedish model,” when it existed, of Social Democracy from within Sweden itself. I got to study the whole concept of social revolutionary movements with many examples in a graduate study program devoted to revolutions and social change. I got to formally and informally suss out the “European identities” of Eastern and Western European students both in the West and East, and of Western students studying in the East, and of Eastern students studying in the West.

     But through it all, I especially perked-up when the subject was International, or more specifically Supra-International Organizations. In them, they have the seeds of the future, should humanity have much of a future at all. A League of Nations 3.0 or United Nations 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 etc. Thus in one of my favorite courses back at the University of Massachusetts at Boston many years ago, I was excited when the topic came up of European Integration. I remember the enthusiasm the instructor had in saying, “There is even talk of creating a common currency one day.” He made us stop to think about what that would mean, and his enthusiasm became my enthusiasm.

     When heading eventually for university in Europe 8 years ago, I got my first Euros at Logan International Airport in Boston a few miles, and more than a few years, from where I first heard of the concept of a Euro in that course on “International Organizations.” As I held it, I thought of that lecture when, for me, the concept of it was first brought up at the opposite end of Boston. And now here it was, right in my hands.

     Within days after that, I picked up my “hot off the presses” (literally, the English translation came out just then) of the soon to be somewhat ratified and then killed off “European Constitution” in Brussels at the EU headquarters. Also there I picked up a large map of the soon-to-be expanded EU 25 (now 27) which adorned my apartments and dorm rooms, and also much other free literature about the expansion and the now-dead (but reincarnated as a treaty) “Constitution of Europe.”

     The Baltic Countries of Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, were the ideal focal point of my interests to study. They were the only 3 countries both to directly experience the collapse and disbanding of a transnational organization, the Soviet Union (other Eastern Bloc states already were in theory their own states) from within as well as going to join the EU, another transnational organization, all within a little over 20 years. And since they had no existing currencies of their own, their trying to join the Euro was a large part of their development, and a significant part of my studies.

     From early on, their currencies were pegged to other currencies, eventually the Deutschmark, and when that became the Euro, they were at a fixed-rate exchange to the Euro. The purpose of this was to give these smaller, almost micro-states (average of around 2 million people) a solid backing or greater stability for increasing investment into the region, so long as other states were convinced that the fixed rate would hold until they joined the Euro.

     Since then, Estonia has joined the Euro, post economic crash. But as yet the other 2 Baltic states, though closer to joining the Euro, still have not. Of the three, I have long thought Estonia could most benefit from joining the Euro. As long as a country has a fixed-exchange rate, they have all the disadvantages of being in the Euro, with little of the advantages.

     I thought, with Estonia the loss of surcharges (due to currency exchange fees) on purchases made by very heavy tourism and trade with Finland, just a short cheap boat ride across the water, would undoubtedly help its economy, and I am sure it has. But the other issues of not being able to print new money to offset an economic downturn, to devalue their currency, have been shared by those countries still on a fixed-rate exchange with the Euro, yet they have not the benefits, such as they are these days, of actually being in the Euro-zone.

     The pressures on Lithuania and Latvia especially have been enormous to break the fixed-exchange to the Euro. The slashing of wages, internal devaluation, has been up to 50% for public employees who were on balance to be fair, poor before the cuts. And the much touted “attraction for foreign investment” part of the reason for Euro fixed exchange, I have read a staggering 100% of foreign factories were closed in Latvia after the 2008 crash. For these countries trying to join the Euro has almost literally been an economic Armageddon. One could argue the ability to print more of their own currencies, or since technically they already can do that since they already HAVE their own currencies, may create more problems than it solves because of a loss of trust via no longer having a fixed exchange rate.

     As I said before, a fixed-exchange rate only can build confidence if it is a pact which cannot be broken. But the pressures to do so I think have gone far beyond what almost anyone could consider reasonable pressures to reconsider that lock-in.

     The situation, or should I say current crisis, with Greece and the Euro, is similar. Since Greece unlike Latvia currently has no currency of its own, it would be far more disruptive for it to leave the Eurozone than it would be for smaller fixed-rate countries hoping to join the Euro to suddenly start printing more of their own money again. But the reasons and need to do for each of these countries is the same. Slashing wages (without corresponding drops in prices), gutting or dismantling entirely social programs, selling off of state assents and protected industries, it is a economic forecast of unending miserly coupled with periods of unbelievable grief into the horizon as far as one can see.

     While I am not trying to say Greece should stay on the Euro or should not, or that Latvia should abandon a fixed-exchange rate or should not, what I find most insane about the so-called Euro-crisis is the lack of alternatives ever being mentioned, and that is par for the course. These vitally important decisions will be made primarily by banks, or by one or two large banks according to what is in THEIR best interests, not what is in the best interests of the countries or even of Europe and the whole “European Union Experiment” at large.

     As I said, I tried to get an idea about a mythical “European Identity” and I really did not find much to support the idea that there really is one at this point in time. With many different languages and cultures, many of which have until recently been at war with each other as often as not, perhaps that should not be surprising. But there is not much to suppose that northern countries are going to be willing to fork over their surpluses (if any country can even come up with a surplus these days) in large amounts for the benefit of poorer countries in the EU. At least not in the way which countries subsidize their poorer regions. The investment and stabilization funds are a fraction of what they would need to be to hold the region together under a common currency, and there is little political support for creating new Euro-wide structures to even out the ever widening disparities. And “disparities” does not even begin to measure up as a word. Complete and devastating collapse is in the pike not only seemingly for Greece, but possibly Italy, Portugal, Spain, and beyond. 

     The option of the Baltic countries, which as I said have micro-economies, for joining the Euro was not the only option considered at the time. The idea of these countries banding together and issuing a common currency of their own together was also discussed, and eventually abandoned.

     Whether Greece stays in the Eurozone or goes, the entire crisis is treated as this state or that states problem and not the under-lying cause of possibly incompatible economies all trying to share a common currency which is basically killing off economically not one region here and there, but wrecking economic chaos across the zone. Without these poorer countries in the Euro, the Euro itself would skyrocket in value much as the Swiss Franc has recently. But an orderly exit of more than one country from the Euro at once combining their currencies into a 2-speed Euro 1 and Euro 2 or put out combined Euro 2 bonds for Euroland nether-regions, I find is not even being discussed publicly. And as mentioned already, that is by no small measure because the publics involved will have absolutely no say in it whatsoever. But it should not be that way.

     What little input public had been attempted, the proposed Greek referendum on some of the austerity measures proposed, was treated as the most unthinkable of unthinkables. Yet a European Union of a faux democracy with the large banks controlling not only the budgets of the poorer states as now being demanded, but verily of what discussion of “alternatives” are even permitted is seeming par for the course of a union less and less about democracy and democratic values year by year, if not day by day.

     The following I wrote in college in Estonia about the talk of two-speed attitudes toward European integration with a faster tracked France-Germany leading the way to greater integration with the nay-sayers (never more fully typified than by the UK) always saying, slow down, you are going to fast. As far as my own opinion goes, European integration has always been elite-driven and non-democratic, but though I don’t agree that is the best way to go, it may be sometimes the only way to go. But by it being bank and corporately elite driven, the attitudes and even the well being of the public in Europe is being considered less often, consistently and constantly.


Along the Road to a New Europe

          On any long distance car trip with any small child, many older ones, and more than a few  impatient adults, when traveling through areas they do not recognize one is seemingly always asked, and often asked repeatedly, the perennial question, "Are we there yet?"

          In regards to a more united Europe, the answer is that no one knows for sure exactly where "there" is. Some will always say, "Let's stop here, this looks like just as good a place as any." Others will seemingly always want to keep driving, convinced that there is a more perfect, more ideal spot to pull over forever just around the next corner.

          The thing about time is that it is always moving. With geographical locations, despite the shifting geopolitical borders we like to imagine or ascribe to them, the land of European countries in one sense never goes anywhere (erosion and sand redistribution not withstanding). In regards to being a place, Europe has a definite location. Knowing where the "there" is of its physical location is not generally the problem. Time, believe it or not, also has a definite location.

          At a certain measurable distance in time, it will be this point tomorrow or next year relative to today's planetary position, in a predictable fashion. The question therefore is not "where" Europe will be physically tomorrow, for it will always be in roughly the same place relative to the movement of the rest of the Earth. There is a point to this, don't worry. The question is, where will Europeans be in relation to each other.

          As mentioned, time is moving. The Earth is moving. Fiction about time travel usually overlooks the fact that everything in the Universe is always at a different location than it was previously. Yesterday was not here, it was somewhere else, in space as well as in time. Tomorrow will be somewhere else as well. Standing still is not an option.

          Governments give us the illusion that we can make tomorrow conform to today's rules and standards, and that indeed is their purpose, to provide a continuity of expectations that we will know what tomorrow might bring. They try to bring order to the chaos that we have no idea what will happen tomorrow. They have plans written down on what will happen tomorrow. These plans are very official looking, and often even have stamps on them.

          Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on what those plans say, things don't always turn out that way. Fortuitously, there are backup plans. If those plans don't work out either, they have very smart people on the payroll to make new plans up as we go along. That is not exactly ideal, from an expectational point of view, making things up as we go along, and is hardly suppose to be the province of governments. They do have after all, usually very large impressive buildings, often designed to be very reassuringly stoic and historical looking. And they have very many sets of rules going back ages, all to keep us from having to (and to prevent us from) simply making new plans up as we go along.

          Governments are supposed to, figuratively speaking, be keeping us all on the same page. If tomorrow is not static and can never be, if it is always different and unpredictable, their roles are to keep us all moving in step together like a herd. The term "herd" usually has negative connotations, like sheep and cattle for instance, so for those who prefer to think of the role of government as promoting individual strength and independence, lets say a herd of moose or buffalo (bison).

          Regardless, we are all supposed to stay together relative to where we are now as we walk toward that new pasture called the "future". We cannot predict what we will find there, or what the terrain will become, but it is thought that if we can stick together relative to where we are now, stay in place or in formation, we can impose today's order upon whatever may lie over the next hill.

          New governments or new governmental orders can upset that formation. We are more apt to step on each others toes or get trampled on because we are not sure of our places, and as always, everyone sees in them the chance to move to the front of the pack both to get a better view, more room to maneuver ahead, and not be downwind from everyone else. Being in the front is much nicer. Being one of the few in the lead is even better, since if you can get the others there to turn with you, you can take the rest anywhere you might wish to go.

          Returning to where I began, many are not sure where Europe ought to go. Some don't believe there are better pastures and want always to stop right here. Others in the lead know their jobs are to keep the pack moving, that they only can be in the lead while the rest are on the move, and are helped by the fact that staying too long or moving too slowly is never an option, and leads only to extinction.

          Moving too slowly at the front means risking getting trampled on by those behind. Moving too quickly at the front risks separating too much from the others with those behind being able to say "Screw that" before turning and going their own way, and making those previously in the front have to find a place further back if they wish to go with the rest at all.

          That is the challenge European integration faces in the future. How to keep moving as a pack together, moving in relation to each other, without having those who lead the integration get too far ahead of the others that the others would cease to wish to follow on that path to better integration, or risk losing the idea of better integration completely to those who would wish to move Europe in a different direction altogether. At the very heart of the debate is where is the "there". Where should Europe be in the future. If standing still for too long is never an option and the future must always be somewhere else, what form should it take?

          Getting to be able to discuss rationally how to modify their governments peacefully into a different form in the future is a marked step of evolution. Those in power throughout history knew the best way to stay in power was to never risk changing the government, never risk having people unsure of their places, and most of all, always keeping themselves in the front of the pack. When given the chance, many or most others would like to lead, or at least move to the front of the pack. And the walls present governments always sought to set up to prevent such debate are formidable. In the U.K. there is a law still on the books (at least as recently as 2003) condemning merely openly advocating replacing the monarchy with a republic as a treasonous felony.(1)

          Many other governments around the world, including the United States, could using only present laws always if they so chose interpret working toward establishing any supranational governmental organization such as the United Nations, or what some in Europe might want to see as a European nation state, as treason, also punishable by death, or life in prison if the death penalty is not allowed. To have gotten away from that past, which is only as far behind as we or current public opinion presently wish to interpret it to be, to be talking generally without fear openly as to what better form of government people ought to be governed by in the future and how best to proceed now toward creating such a government, is progress indeed.

          While it is comforting and egalitarian to throw about such words as "evolution" and "enlightened", the question is why are we really able to discuss such things more freely now? Why is it relatively suddenly now o.k. to ask the same questions which only a 100 years ago or less in most places, and in many countries still today, you would literally lose your head over or risk considerable jail time, with such questions regarding how to replace your current governmental system with a better one?

          The answer to that is two-fold in my opinion. The only time people are really allowed to discuss openly improving upon their governments forms are when their present systems clearly are not working, and those in control currently allow or wish such discussions to take place. In regards to the current system in Europe not working, sovereign nation states in Europe free to attack each other at will with no long lasting repercussions other than human lives lost, property damage, environmental damage, but other than that, no long lasting legal problems. Seemingly, a country could just say "Oops, sorry", and a few decades later it all would be behind, and countries could continue on with each other, pretty much business as usual. With two World Wars which brought the continent close to ruin, simply being free to attack each other whenever one country wished was now considered “not a good thing” and much more of a long lasting, if not permanent, potential nuisance than it was before.

          I must take a moment to mention that this idea of diminishing the likelihood of war as being “a good thing” is not a sudden development. It is unfair to say that any country or region necessarily saw war as a good thing, though many did and do see it as potentially extremely profitable. Peace treaties, and later formal organizations such as the League of Nations and the United Nations sought to be instruments of keeping the peace.           The problem with all such treaties and organizations is that they have never, and not foreseeably will in the future, seriously undermined the "rights" or abilities of nations to attack each other in principle or in fact, and have never been a guarantee against larger countries that would choose not to follow such agreements, even after signing on to them. Similar such treaties and prior organizational structures did not prevent the world wars, and indeed if anything, made them far more damaging and organized to include other countries which had no real vested interests in them.

          This is one of the needs behind such allowing of more open talk of better international organizational structures, and of how to better integrate Europe politically and economically to prevent such histories from repeating themselves. Another factor is that the herd is getting antsy. They are used to moving faster now and go longer without wanting to rest.

          This can take them to more possible destinations in shorter time-frames with less degree to steer or stop them once they get moving, and make predicting safer courses much more difficult. In the automobile trip analogy, any rest stop now is a rare opportunity to recheck and fine tune the machine. Not doing so is no longer an option, and is the only way to prevent a blowout at much greater speeds than one ever had to travel at before.

          This time of relative peace and stability between the countries of Europe, many in their governments see as the best chance they have had in a long time to make such repairs and modifications since they do not know how long and how far it will be before they have as good an opportunity to pause and do so again. How long this “let a 1000 flowers bloom”(2) attitude will last in regards to more open and free talk of revising and rethinking how they govern themselves is unclear.

          Once Europe finds its footing, it may commit itself toward that road uncompromisingly for generations to come, and leave all talk about changing or rethinking it or talk against it as heresy. Or the opposite may happen. With economic and social progress being forced constantly to try to keep up with technological advances, Europe or humanity as a whole, may ideally design a governmental machine which is intended to be modified without ever stopping, for we might never get those rest stops or chances to idly graze about, take in the scenery, and mull over any number of possible directions we might wish to take.

          Planning ahead for a system designed to include being able to make up or remake the governmental structures themselves quickly as need be as we go along rather than set anything again to stone, should become a real viable alternative to ever closing the debate or settling on any structures which time will now inevitably only weaken and weather far faster than ever before. Rather than trying to keep the herd moving in lockstep, instead to give more room between to move around within it, to provide more flexibility to alter the formations as we move about, leaving it less likely for others to be trampled on, or never to advance to their abilities to reach the front of the herd if they are strongest for being locked in a box behind others moving more slowly in closer groupings.

          Since stopping for long if at all is becoming ever more difficult, and not being able to change direction completely is all but certain to take us over the next cliff lying ahead of the present course, the only model which will keep us safe at the higher speeds the future demands we must travel, means one that forces keeping the debates always open about constantly rethinking it.

          The human herd is strong now, and anyone who tries to slow it down will most certainly be trampled to death. The European groups, Americans, Africans, Asians, and so on, are all beginning to synchronize their movements and to move in concert with one another so as not to collide so often. Where we are headed to is anyone’s guess. We may all charge off a cliff like lemmings, or we might find newer larger pastures to accommodate our increasing abilities, speed, and range.

          Only one thing is certain in my opinion. We are bleeding the present pasture dry and most often we prefer only to run in circles where we believe it is safe. The more debate we have, the longer we keep such a debate open, the more voices we listen to, the greater the chance some safer way will become clearer than others as the way to go, and might actually lead us somewhere away from the cliffs and dangers all around our present pasture, which we will less and less be able to avoid, the faster and faster we will move ever more.

 © 2004 By Jared DuBois

 1) The Treason Felony Act 1848 (British Common Law) “If any person whatsoever shall, within the United Kingdom or without, compass, imagine, invent, devise or to deprive or depose our Most Gracious Lady the Queen…”. http://www.swarb.co.uk/acts/1848Treason_FelonyAct.html,
http://www.obv.org.uk/reports/2002/rpt20020322a.html
http://www.geocities.com/lavalon_foundation/Articles/human_rights_in_micronations.htm
2) The Thousand Flowers Movement- 1956 after the Communist Party in China called for more open dialog for new ideas, with Mao himself quoting a poem “Let a thousand flowers bloom..”. This however, was quickly followed by a party purge and harsh punishment of those who had been critical. http://www.megastories.com/china/unueco/flowers.htm

Which Direction: Tea Party, Idignados, Occupy, Bill 78; "They've already lost"

ANNA KRUZYNSKI: Sure. I mean, the tuition hike is part and parcel of a neoliberal agenda of this government, so it does—it’s not isolated from other measures that aim to privatize public services. So we—you’re talking about the notion of user fees for public services as opposed to free and accessible services through progressive taxation. 
So this is part of a larger—a larger issue, so this has been touching also health and hydro and other public services. So, this has been going on for several years, but what the student movement has managed to do is to bring this debate into the forefront, beyond the question of tuition fees. And this—we saw, over the three months of the student movement, more and more community organizations and mainstream social movements, unions, professionals from all walks of life, citizens, ordinary folks joining into the struggle. But when the government passed Bill 78 on May 18th, there was an explosion of support for the student movement, but also a real questioning of the legitimacy of this government, this government that is trying to push through austerity measures that the majority of the population do not want to see. And this government is illegitimate and needs to take the back seat now. There’s a clear movement, and people—we can see this actually happening in the last few days in many neighborhoods in Montreal, but also outside of Montreal in the regions, in the rural areas. There has been spontaneous demonstrations of elderly people, families, children, with pots and pans, doing spontaneous demonstrations in their neighborhood in support of the student movement against Bill 78. So this is becoming much bigger than what it was originally.

Maple Spring: Nearly 1,000 Arrested as Mass Quebec Student Strike Passes 100th Day

DemocracyNow.org, May 25th, 2012 

Although they are sworn to uphold the laws of the land, hundreds of lawyers marched through Montreal streets Monday in a subdued challenge to Bill 78, which limits public protests.
“We don’t want to break the law but we want to contest it,” explained Pierre, a 23-year-old articling lawyer who would not give his last name. He was among an estimated 500 to 700 lawyers, notaries and other legal professionals who marched in their black robes and in near silence from the Montreal courthouse to Place Émilie-Gamelin, where they were greeted by wildly cheering protesters gathered for their own nightly march. ...
“There are so many vaguely worded parts to this law,” Barrette added. “It gives an incredible amount of discretionary power to police. It also makes the education minister judge and jury when it comes to deciding if student groups are legal.”

Lawyers protest silently against Bill 78
 By Max Harrold, May 28, 2012

The Gazette

Members of the Class of 2012,

As a former secretary of labor and current professor, I feel I owe it to you to tell you the truth about the pieces of parchment you’re picking up today.

You’re f*&ked.

The Commencement Address That Won’t Be Given
by Robert Reich, May 19th, 2012
Commondreams.org

Well I would not give you false hope
on this strange and mournful day

Excerpt from "Mother & Child Reunion" by Paul Simon

   When I was in a graduate studies seminar in Sweden in the fall of 2005, one day the discussion took a turn and I HAD to look away, stare out the window for awhile, and not for the usual reasons. (SQUIRREL!!! , I mean, Squirrel!!!) If I were to have used the same questionable language Robert Reich used recently, I would have thought, “These people are f*&ked.” Instead, as I remember it anyway, I used a less colorful term to size up what I was thinking. “They have already lost.”

    “They really believe that Economic Shock Therapy (in the Early 1990's) was a one-off, a one time thing. It was bad, but it was NECESSARY and now everything will be hunky-dory.” Ok, maybe I did not use the term “hunky-dory,” but that was the general gist of it.

    Who the “they” were. They were graduate students from mostly Eastern European countries in a program about social revolution and social changes. They were unrepresentative of the people in their countries in that these, for the most part, had interest in social changes and would probably one day be working for change in some way, either in jobs or as activists. In other words, these were in a sense, the idealists from whom social change would either come or would have to depend upon for support. The “intellectuals” as one of the courses put it, who would or might stand behind or organize movements for social change.

    They were by and large on average about 15 years younger than me, though some were 5 years closer and others 5 years further away in age. What comprises a “generation” is disputable. 20 years is the accepted definition, but since I have been considered both a baby-boomer and a generation X’er, I never thought much of the current terminology on what comprises a generation. I would say people of, say every 5 years apart, socially speaking, would seem to me to be of a different “generation,” but that is only my opinion. 

    So though technically not exactly a “generational” difference, I had more experience than many there as far as what to compare the opinions to.  And I also hate to generalize, to say this “generation” thinks this way or that “generation” thought that way. Such over-generalizations are useful in the social sciences but often are not representative and are basically often invented constructs. All people born in years XY to YZ do not all think the same way. Some attitudes shift but often that is only in the middle. Progressive and conservative views are always there and always have large numbers of people who you could drop in to most other times and they would fit in with many and also be opposed to many.

    However, because these people were as I mentioned, a segment not representative of their societies as a whole, such generalizations, which as I say are basically unfair and often unwarranted, were in this case somewhat inevitable. If these are the groups to have graduated university, studied social science related topics and enrolled in a Political Sociology program about social revolutions, one would expect that generalizations could be made at least about that sub-set of society from which most of them came, at that approximate time or age.

    So from what follows, though it would be unfair to say that they were not idealistic, what was being said seemed far from what one might expect on one hand in terms of idealism, yet on another, was probably pretty reasonable. Though, I thought, it is definitely not good as far as being a possible omen for the future.

    The topic came of where societies ought to be heading or what direction they ought to be working towards. That triggered the word “utopian” which lead to a near universal cavalcade of condemnation. Which as I stated above, is probably pretty reasonable. These were people who came from countries either ravaged by the “utopianism” of Nazism or Communism, or in many cases, of both. The word or concept of “utopia” one would think would not be in high regard or esteem.

    Yet it was more than that. It was almost like listening to business majors. Life is what it is, things have gotten better so we ought not to be talking about how to improve it. Discussing such things leads to wars, class warfare, loss of investment in our countries, lots of things which one might expect from a general public, sometimes ill informed, or by the elites of societies (which to be fair, though from poorer countries, some of these students were children of the elites of them).

    It is not that I disagreed with what they were saying. More that, if this is the best resistance to neoliberal plans to basically erode all of their social safety nets, break down their common solidarity, sell each other out for the benefit of the banks and crooked politicians, privatize everything mentality, if this was Europe’s best line of defense, from where I was sitting, that generation and the whole continent seemed, again in Robert Reich’s terms, not mine, their future’s hopelessly f*&ked. “They have already lost.”

    I don’t claim to know much, but I do think I understand how the “machine” of my country, not really my country but the banks and the corporations which use my country to work their neoliberal shake-the-world-until-every-last-penny-drops-out of every last possible source of potential for profit, how that group “thinks.” It is like one of our violent video games, you eliminate one target, reload and move on to the next target.

    Once the Soviet Union fell, inevitably it would be Europe’s Social Democracy which would be the next target and we would be as unmerciful as  our new Obama-approved extra-judicial assassinations and kidnappings reputation would make one think. There is no real opposition to us eroding most if not all of European social programs and unless we declare unending covert war against them, the social safety nets, not the people, inevitably our own people would start asking “Why can’t we have sick leave and vacation pay, or medical insurance (real medical insurance not Obama’s Russian Roulette version of subsidizing already bloated Insurancecare which you have to pay for possible benefits only a fool would believe you would ever actually get without a fight you probably could never afford to put up), or why must we accept constant chronic homelessness, hunger, people dying for lack of affordable medicines, etc.?" Take out the competition’s (any alternative models) home ground and kill peoples hopes for a better world at the source.

    It is a mistake to say this is some revelation, that this is not obvious to many. And it is unfair to say it will continue to be that easy, that “resistance will not be futile.”  But that is far from apparent. Though smaller countries I have stayed and studied in have far more developed senses of community than most places in the United States, that is by and large often irrelevant. We by and large influence every media we do not own outright. I do not mean “we” as being the United States but “we” as being the financial interests behind the United States. They often are the ONLY voices that are heard in many Western countries because they dominate the media, though albeit it must be said, not nearly so much as in the United States which is reaching Soviet Pravda levels of monolithic corporate-friendly coverage and “spin” on almost any story of political consequence, 24/7.

    But there is still the Internet, some might say. Corporate news and disinformation have competition now! Such is the case only in that it is being adjusted to. With a wealth of both quality and questionable sources of information, it is easy for the truth to be drowned out via discrediting and simply overwhelming valid alternative viewpoints to official, and often false, narratives. Intelligence services are working twitter feeds, social networks, and manipulating or trying to influence movements online as they do in physical groups of protesters. Again, there is nothing new here in saying that but many, especially younger protesters and activists do not seem to comprehend that, or what it sometimes means.

    In my post last April, Democracy DOA, I said a number of things about “the left” just rolling over and playing dead. (After some qualified praise of the Tea Party, I wrote...)

         To people on the left who have been so bothered by the Tea Party, not that some of that xenophobia, racism, and being used as tools for Randian billionaires to screw themselves, the poor, the weak, middle-class, and everyone else does not worry me sometimes, but what have progressives done besides roll over and play dead? If it seems astounding that a very small minority of admittedly extremely well-funded number of people can so completely hijack the Republican Party to their own ends, is it not more astounding that the majority of left-leaning members of the Democrats have virtually ceded that they have no power to influence an increasingly right-wing corporate-sponsored “alternative” party? That is in many ways even more sad. Yes I believe in Third parties (though in the American system they are not likely to win without major financial backing), but really, is having the majority of the people, even the majority of those of that party actually to be able to steer the direction of their own party itself, is that really so inconceivable or unmanageable? Or is it just accepting the defeatism of it all, because that is the easiest road to take?

          What is even more disturbing than both a majority of Americans, and a majority of progressives, having no interest in or representation by either of the only two national political parties in America, is the systematic undermining of the mechanisms of democracy of itself. 

It was true at the time, though obviously anyone could say since then, “well what about the Indignados, the Occupy Movement, the Quebec student protests, etc.?” Yes, for someone who has studied protests and revolutionary social movements, I have to say something is afoot, so to speak, but as yet, as Buffalo Springfield said, “something’s happening here, but what it is ain’t exactly clear.” (For what it's worth, it was Steven Stills who wrote that song, whatever it was called. )

    Though the Occupy Movement definitely had its moments, mostly I was nonplussed. It seemed to reawaken a dead or dormant “political left” but it really lacked the number or the interests of enough people to do little more than shift some of the political debate away from pro-austerity, on time, all the time. In that it was significant, but short of even what little the Tea Party accomplished. As I said in the post here Democracy DOA, I saw hope in the organization of the Tea Party for democracy. It eventually turned out to be elite driven, far from the chaotic “People’s Assemblies” of the latter Occupy Movement, but they did not have a previous example of what to avoid as the Occupy Movement did with the Tea Party.

    Whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, Conservative or a Liberal, Anarchist, Communist, Socialist, or Libertarian, almost universally the mood in early 2009 was disgust at what to many or most seemed to be the banks and Wall St financial corporations holding a gun to the head of Congress, and saying give us trillions of dollars interest free or we will blow up the economy.  And the response not only was to give them whatever they asked for, the greatest and most successfully robbery probably in the history of the world, but to then unilaterally disarm the ability to ever say no to anything they may ask ever again. The Tea Party, in its infancy was a reaction to that. But then as it matured it was easily turned 180 degrees by the most wealthy not only to not be a threat to them anymore, but into an army of zombots protesting for even greater deregulation of the banking and stock industries.  And again and again they have gotten such watering down legislation passed.

    The Occupy Movement by and large was successful at resisting that being co-opted by its leadership into something else, but in doing so, it did not present a coherent message or unified front as far as to what they hoped to accomplish. There was no coherent “end” to work towards or, like the “War on Terror,” any way to know when it is over or would be won.

    Yes, I know movements have to expand and tend to evolve, and to do that they often become more vague and less coherent, but they have to have an end game plan or they are not really going to do much good in the long run. Maybe that is not the point or is not a bad thing, and that sometimes just trying to be heard or by people becoming more politically active, you are accomplishing something.

    Many writers I read, long desperate for any sign of resistance to the drone of austerity, austerity, austerity, have seized upon the Occupy Movement in the United States as a catalyst or a “sea change.”  Mostly I saw that as hype. The Spanish Indignados, the Italian protests, and the Greek protests of the last year have been more significant in size but that I saw mainly as a domestic reaction to draconian cuts which were being felt so severely I was more amazed that more were NOT protesting.

    However as some of my previous instructors liked to focus on questionable elections as a focal point as triggering a social movement or change, sometimes successful electorally, sometimes not (Georgia 2003, Ukraine 2004, Mexico 2006), I look for things that triggered the mainstream public and press to get involved, what I called in the second post here at TruthRevival.org, the “No Maas Moment.” That being when the public or press is no longer intimidated, and greater attempts at intimidation backfire as often as not. The greatest fear of any dominating elite is a public no longer afraid to demonstrate. And by publicly exposed stifling of their attempts to demonstrate, that calls in to question their own legitimacy.

    Since as I have said, my studies often focused on the fall of the Soviet Union, I saw that turning point in the events of January 13th,1991 in Vilnius, Lithuania, where I later lived for a few months. As I wrote in one of my school papers, the TV tower was visible from my apartment window and often I rode my bike past it. For me it was a symbol of when a people are pushed so far, they will no longer back down, and then, and often only then, will their lives be changed for the better.

    For the people who do not know of the events of that day, Lithuania had previously voted to secede from the Soviet Union and the TV station had, in Sarah Palin terms, “gone rogue.” They defied the attempt to censor what they were saying and gave it, shall we say, a less than favorable coverage, that the Soviet Union even under the famed Glasnost of Gorbachev, would not tolerate. And it went out on satellite live, all over the world. With much of the Western world watching it live, Soviet paratroopers landed at the top of the TV tower and killed people working their way toward the booths to take the station off the air, and eventually put their own people in again for their own “spin” on what was going on.

    For me, that was the tipping point, the point where for most of the pubic, there would be no going back. The pubic was galvanized by the overreach and pretty much, things took on a momentum of their own after that. Not to say that before that, the pressures for change were insignificant, but after that, it became increasingly impossible for people to think they could continue to live under that kind of sh*t.

    But the events of that night did not end there. Even after taking the station, the troops still intended on taking over the parliament building. That to me was the real turning point, or the beginning of a “sea change.” From my paper written about the events of that night…

Credit must be given to the willingness of those who had the power then to have stopped it from going further than it did. Should the leadership had wished it, it could easily had turned into another Tiananmen. At some point, not soon enough for those who had already died at the TV tower, the plans to retake the Parliament building were called off when they realized that many of the people were willing to die to defend their brief taste of freedom and their ability to create their own history for themselves. As the then-Lithuanian President Vytautas Landsbergis recounted in CITY PAPER in 1997, on why the army did not continue the planned assault,

 “I think they fully intended to do it. But they did it badly, and they did not expect such brave resistance from unarmed people. This resistance meant that much more   time was spent on the occupation of the TV tower than they had anticipated. The other factor was the coverage of the terrible casualties by the Western press. This created a reaction in the West almost immediately. There were huge crowds around Parliament. One KGB officer, explaining why they did not take the Parliament, later explained in his sick way: "We didn’t take it because there was too much meat," he said. You understand the mentality of these people.”

          In any society, however free or otherwise, there will always be the temptation to turn back that amount of freedom, to impose ever greater control for ever more elusive or expansive ideas of security or predictability. That control is not accomplished just by guns, nor by money. It is enforced by cutting the tongues of those who would speak out against them. It is enforced by taking away peoples ability to create and pass on their own sense of history and their own cultural identities and not have that sense of identity which is imposed on them  by their society to be something that they would not agree with. The mistake is not in taking that path, in moving that far backward, for that backward transgression hopefully only brief, is just a natural part of the progression. The mistake is in not realizing that that is what is happening because always people would rather not see it that way, and cling to their illusions that they are already free and need to do nothing, than to instead open their eyes enough to see that is hardly the case. It is the media’s responsibility whenever they have that foot in the door of freedom, that brief fleeting opportunity to speak around those in power who would silence them or limit them, to force open others eyes and see that freedom is never found here, it is only on the way to being somewhere else. And getting to there is never assured, never safe, but it is also never more threatened than by those who would control what we can say and think, as the means of taking us there.

           Like I said The Occupy movement, the movements in Spain, Italy, and Greece, they are not insignificant, but I can’t see any billionaires losing any sleep about them. Their taxes won’t go up, or if so only marginally, their unimpeded control over governments will hardly be lessened due to worries about such sins as “populism,” democracy, or even that new terror of terrors for them, “Social Democracy.” They are all containable, controllable, and as easily diverted to work against what they are protesting against now as the Tea Party was. Yet there are other potential things happening every month that may yet lead to be that turning point. I don’t think it needs to be a questionable election, or in the case of what we have patented, questionably questionable elections . It only needs to be an overreach beyond that which most people are willing to accept and then they get off the sidelines and start protesting too.

        At its best the Occupy Movement could not inspire numbers of 100,000 or 200,000 in a city of over 7 million people. If I am reading things right Montreal just had a march of 400,000 in a city of less than 4 million. That is the kind of general involvement of the public I believe is necessary to effect real change. I don't like to make predictions but it is possible what is going on in Montreal might be the beginning of things really changing that has been, I believe, prematurely ascribed to the Occupy Movement.  Significant numbers of the public, standing with or marching with Occupy, are still not there yet.

    The Occupy Movement has thus far reached no such level of public support or any turning point. And despite some cases of police brutality and questionable “protection” from the police in general, (though that has varied from city to city with many police departments less hostile and even supportive of protesters rights), there has been no vast over-reach by the powers that be to make the public shake off their “Dancing with the Stars” soma stupor.

  
        Again, I think the events in Montreal are the beginning of, at least there, possibly measuring up to such a potential turning point. Surely not even the conservative government there is stupid enough to order lots of people to be killed as was the case in Lithuania, but I think that the Bill 78 may be a thankfully less violent substitute for egregious overreach. For those not familiar with that, it attempts to basically outlaw most forms of political dissent in ways, even for me who has studied Communist and totalitarian states, find most odd, especially given that Canada is hardly Poland of 1980. But as some astute students there have pointed out, the key factor is to what direction are things heading. With Bill 78, that is abundantly crystal clear.

 

        Not only does it ban any gathering or protest march of more than 50 people without prior police permission, it will hold any student union or organization responsible if even one of their members defies a ban on protesting. With fines of tens of thousands of dollars per violation one could argue its sole purpose has been to criminalize dissent completely and break any student organization or union it wishes financially within days of any defiance of basically police state measures.

        THAT was the kind of overreach it took to get hundreds of thousands of people into the street, and off of their derrieres, so to speak. The protest movement in Quebec as been changing as it has been growing, as I stated movements must do if they are to affect change or last. What started out as a student protest about tuition fee raises has morphed into a general protest about privatization, ever lessening social services, and austerity measures. Most of these themes are common to many protests now, but the push back I think has been noteworthy.

        The seizing on the idea of which direction we are heading is noteworthy. As one magazine tried to minimize it saying the strike and protests are only over a $325 increase spread over 5 years, that would normally kill anyone’s sympathy. Constant stressing that they already have the lowest tuition in North America is particularly effective by a hostile media. But the direction angle trumps it to me. From Democracy Now…


    Anna Kruzynski: “… were at an intersection here. It’s either we move toward a Scandinavian model of free education, or we move toward a U.S. model with high fees. So its not about – I would say to Canadians and to others elsewhere, “Wouldn’t it be nice if fees were low everywhere?”” That roughly articulated more than once (that was an exact quote but one of many similar reiterations of the same idea) was a devastatingly simple, yet appropriate comeback.

        I have said in other things (the Introduction to TruthRevival.org, Kindle Version), the corporations have simply bought shares or interest in all the major “respectable” left parties across Europe and in North America. This has effectively neutered or destroyed Western Democracy across the board as you get the same neoliberal policies, from Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama, as Thatcher-Blair-Cameron. Long before the recent rises of the extreme left and extreme right this year, 2012, I read of the same thing years ago in a Finnish newspaper on the rise of extremist parties and groups there. “These are the only groups offering any alternatives so people will vote for them even if they don’t agree with them on everything.” Lather, rinse, repeat across the continent since then.

        As far back as 2004, I put Papandreou on the front page of PolSci.com because of something he wrote about politics needing to be done differently. Since then he has obviously gotten more attention for the austerity programs he put into place as soon as he retook office. While the Greek crisis is complicated (as mentioned in my previous post), it seemingly matters not who you vote for, and voting for the left, as with Papandreou or Blair or Obama, means the austerity measures (cuts in government spending, services, privatization) will go forward with less push back than if you voted for a right or center-right candidate. Austerity is being sold as inevitable, and for those who are put it power, it is the path of least resistance because, as one American Senator put it, “the Banks own the place” (meaning Congress and the Senate). And the public push back has been pathetic at best and hilariously ineffective at worst.

        “It ought to be free.” Those five little words said again and again in the protests in Montreal about the tuition increase proposals are what you never hear any mainstream “Leftist” politician say about higher education. In America as elsewhere, the question is always about “how much higher” fees will be, about how much services which are free or low cost should be privatized. Never will a politician of a mainstream center-left political party try to move the ball opposite in the direction. As I mentioned to a fellow student in Sweden while walking back to the dorm, it is almost as if every country has one major “business friendly” party which will bleed the poor or middle-class faster and less apologetically and a major “alternative party” which proposes all the same bloodletting crippling programs, but “feels your pain” and will do it more slowly.

        An Estonian blog which I read since I left college a few years back, featured an administrator talking about the educational cutbacks (this was probably before the 2008 crash and devastating cuts to education) mused, “How am I to meet our targets for improving education with a much smaller budget?” Not really “getting” Estonian humor sometimes, I could not tell if he was being serious or making a joke.

        But on a scale few in Europe could imagine, public education across the board in America is not only under fire, it is being euthanized with smaller budgets, school closures, and a corporate media using these ever lessening qualities of education to blame the teachers for the deterioration. And all as an excuse to push for breaking unions and rewarding private-for-profit corporations the only few taxpayer dollars the banks have not figured out how to steal yet. Besides privatizing Social Security that is. Obama’s second term may have success where Bush’s second term hit the rocks. Obama will deliver the Democratic votes in the Grand Compromise to achieve what right could not be delivered in Bush’s second term. And when the public complains, and they will, they will vote in an even more pro-privatization pro-austerity candidate (in 2016, if not 2012) as a reaction. And the fake-left and then go further right tandem moves ever rightward ever onward.

        If there was even a vague political “Left” left in America, they would have long ago used the fiscally caused “education crisis” (about a real as the Postal Service Crisis and Social Security Crisis, all accounting inventions) to push for BUILDING thousands of public schools, not CLOSING thousands of public schools. The dialogue would be how can we make education MORE affordable for MORE people instead how fast or slow can we increase the rates and decrease the number of people who can afford it.

        It is not rocket science. Any big D democrat (or Liberal or Social Democrat) long ago would have been talking about hiring teachers instead of bragging how he or she cut more government jobs than their Republican (or Conservative party) predecessors did. In America, you would think there would have long ago been plans to convert existing closed 11th & 12th grade high schools into free 2 year public Associate Degree colleges and some existing 2 year colleges into 2 year finishing schools for Bachelor degrees. And retraining teachers to teach at the higher levels, our own Marshall Plan for education. Instead of selling out on the idea that health care is a right, now completely debunked in America by the Democrats, the “center-left” parties of the West would have been trying to expand that to saying, as a thousands of picketing students in Canada have, that higher-education too ought to be a right, cheap if not free, and not increasingly just a privilege for fewer every year.

        NOTHING creates a sea change on its own. Maybe I was right in Sweden to think that this generation has already lost. But the 25 years olds today, at least to me, are not necessarily of the same generation as the 25 year olds I studied with just 6 years ago. A vast crippling underrated under-reported and very much still little understood financial crisis may have motivated this “new” new generation to become far more idealistic than those who I met in Europe. Those, like in America, who are quite willing to just sit back and appreciate the gains of other generations hard work, striking, protesting, and picketing, without realizing what little you have, those with much will not hesitate to steal from you through bribing your governments. And not as increased taxes either. That is the ruse they will use to strip your countries coffers blind. Less taxes, less government, less services, less education, less resistance to anything they ask of it or of you.

        Frankly, at times in some ways it was embarrassing to have to talk about America’s lack of safety net. Whether it was rich Western European countries students, or very poor Eastern students, when the topic was mentioned about sick leave or vacation leave came up I was stumped. For reasons mentioned on my other blog, in “Evolve or Die, New Eyes, Blurred and Blinded,” I had a hard time remembering negatives. Meaning, if I could not remember something, I was not likely to go out on a limb and say it does not exist. “How many weeks does your country give for vacation?” “3 weeks,” answered one. “Six weeks,” boasted another. When it came my time to answer, I did not know what to say. Because I could not remember the number did not mean necessarily to me at the time it did not exist. “None, I think. I mean it is voluntary to give 2 weeks, but not everyone does or gets it.” It was correct, unfortunately for hundreds of millions of people.

        As I began this, I did not think that their social safety nets will withstand the forces that will be brought to bear on them, mainly from my country but more through the forces that turn my country and its leaders into puppets. To be brutally honest about it, “We are coming,” I would have warned them, and your way of life, your social insurance, not having to worry about being homeless because you got sick for a week or a month or a year, this way of life you have will not last. Because you are too secure, too assured, and think you are too safe, you have not got a chance.

        “The Swedish model is simple in a way,” I remember an instructor saying. “When the economy goes down, the government hires more people. When the economy improves, it cuts positions. This keeps everything on a even keel and the economy running smoothly.” Yeah, ok, but what about corporations making money off of foreclosures, if you try keep people in their homes. We cut jobs when the economy is bad and replace public service jobs with more prison labor.  The government saves money and more money is created for private enterprises too! Which method do you think will win out over the long run if governments cared more about their bottom line, lessening taxes and expenses, and more about their business interests than their people?

        Sweden was an attractive target for the neoliberals. It was successful in its Social Democratic model, not as successful as Norway, but with a lot less revenue to work with (Norway has oil), it was more of a success which other countries could emulate, and passed itself off as such. “Bush’s brain,” Karl Rove no less, was personally dispatched to “advise” the Swedes how to run their government (and elections too no doubt).  The drop in social spending recently has been the stuff of neoliberal dreams. Sweden, according to this week’s ‘The Local,’ now ranks below average among developed countries for social insurance, this down from the 2nd highest as recently as 2005. Don’t think Karl didn’t earn is millions of Swedish Kronas. Less than 7 years from second best to below average.

        I am lucky through my union that I have 3 weeks vacation and 3 weeks of sick leave per year. This is unfortunately fairly rare. Public unions are under fire constantly not because this is extravagant, but because they have mostly not fought or fought hard enough to try to have such benefits extended to all. By not doing so they have made themselves increasingly vulnerable to a public being stripped of such benefits and say, “Why should you be so lucky?” 


As in the movie Kung Fu with David Carradine when his character asked how Master Po could hear the grasshopper, Master Po asked back, “How is it that you cannot?” Too many for too long never tried to turn the question of “entitlements” around, and simply accepted that it was a good thing, a “job perk,” something “special,” some kind of a bonus, a “benefit” of things that should be basic human rights. Sick leave, vacation time, such things are treated as “gifts” to American workers, to be treated better than others, when the rest of the world has long understood them as basic rights.

        But as we have grown lazy and are ceding our lesser social protections to nothing every year, so too are European countries learning to want and accept less because they are conned into looking at how they are still higher than the rest while the bottom is falling everywhere instead of rising. Ever rising again is not even a goal. It is simply to get less poorer less quicker than the others.

        When I was young both parties in America had both plans for full employment and for national health insurance. When I was in Europe a half dozen years ago, still there the discussion was on how to create full employment, and their social insurances were considered safe and as untouchable as Social Security was before Obama. That is now considered verboten in Europe as well. And creating many new government WPA-type work program jobs, there now is as taboo a topic as it has been off the table for decades in America (unless you count hundreds of thousands of jobs building and staffing new prisons, spying on people, a long pined for domestic “security” program the equivalent of the KGB, and our other new departments other countries never would have imagined creating). Austerity lite (France, Hollande) or austerity extreme (Germany, Merkel) are all that are on the menu, no mixed salad, just a melting pot of race to the bottom for “competitiveness” because they, like American unions, never lobbied to make their gains solid by making them universal, and expecting all others to have them too. Well isn’t that (NOT) special!

        I started this off with my take on graduate students attitudes about “utopias” 6 years ago. It is not that I think that most should be working toward some utopia, but by not doing so, by not working towards what seems impossible now, you will end up with living in a dystopian future every time. I think through what I have been hearing recently, not just by the protestors or activists, though they are never insignificant, but by the average people on the streets in Quebec, people are beginning to realize this. The conversation should not be about how much better you may or may not have it compared to others, but in which direction things are heading. (In the Baltic example, those states had much more freedom and were far better off compared to most in the USSR, but they too rejected that “look how good you have it compared to others.” They knew where they wanted to be and did not settle with false comparisons.) And it is very hard for me to imagine anyone in America or Europe is happy with the way things are heading, but whether they are willing to do what is needed to change that direction, most are just not there yet. But every day is a new chance for that to change again.

    As before I will leave off with one of my favorite quotes from my notes. (Yes, I still do quote myself.)
    From the Seabirds post…

    You can't change things if most don't want them to change, or have been convinced they don't want them to, or that things cannot be any other way. That is like a stream which merely moves around whatever obstacle you put in its way. What people want or expect from life can be changed though. Changing that moves the whole river in a different direction.

    Try to move some rivers soon, or get used to always living underwater.