Alle Menschen werden Brüder

Saw this today on the Humor Indignado 99% Facebook page.

Another Prague Spring?

THE GUARDIAN

Tens of thousands of Czechs have staged one of the country's biggest protests since the fall of communism, marching in Prague against spending cuts, tax rises and corruption, and calling for the end of a centre-right government already close to collapse.

Police estimated between 80,000 and 90,000 workers, students and pensioners marched through the capital on Saturday to rally in Wenceslas Square. Chanting and whistling, the crowd held banners reading "Away with the government" and "Stop thieves".

Does this sound familiar, or what?

"This government is devastating state structures and is demeaning the unprotected with its asocial reforms," Jaroslav Zavadil, the head of the Confederation of Trade Unions, told the crowd.

Could this mean another Prague Spring?

Another Example of Shock Doctrine At Work or Fuck Morality. It's All About Profits for the 1%

Paul Jay at The Real News Network interviews Gerry Epstein: 'Banking "Technocrats" Undermine Democracy.' How, in Europe and the US, bankers (in a blatant bit of Orwellian language, a.k.a 'technocrats) take control of the political process. Epstein and Jay discuss a secret letter (now leaked) written by the European Central Bank last September,

... it gave very direct instructions, you could say, to then prime minister Berlusconi about privatization, lowering pensions, changing hiring and firing, regulations and laws—all things one would think should be the outcome of the political process within Italy.

All the interview is thoughtful and provocative for all of us to ponder.
Read the text here.

Watch:


I liked especially this (my emphasis in bold):

EPSTEIN: Yeah. In Italy, the letter from the European Central Bank to the Berlusconi government said, you have to pursue privatization of public services. And this includes water, privatization of water. And, in fact, just months before, there had been a referendum in Italy about privatization of water, and the voters had rejected it. And now the so-called independent technocratic European Central Bank is coming in and telling them to overthrow what the people have decided and engage in privatization.

Another important goal of these kinds of so-called technocratic policies is to gut labor protection laws. In Italy there are strong protections for—in terms of hiring and firing. And what they're trying to impose are these so-called labor flexibility, with the idea that this is going to generate more economic growth and more employment. But as David Howell from the New School for Social Research, Dean Baker, and others have shown, labor flexibility does not lead to more employment and more economic growth; it just leads to lower wages and higher profits.

JAY: The other thing that seems to be very much in target or focused on is pensions in all countries, the idea, I guess, of lowering pension age and qualifications. Why is that such a big issue in Europe?

EPSTEIN: Well, it's such a big issue in Europe because that's—for two reasons. One is it's a big liability of the government, and so there is a big—a high degree of budget impact on that. But the second is trying to undermine the power of labor and forcing workers into the hands of the banks. So if you reduce public pensions, not only do you make it so that workers have to take any job they can get to support themselves and work longer, but it also gives more room for private pension plans. And as we know from the debate over privatizing Social Security here in the United States, that's been one of the long-term goals of finance. Indeed, the general push of all of these policies is to gut the welfare state as much as policy and return all of these kinds of protections to profit-making opportunities for banks and other private companies.

JAY: Is part of what's happening here—if you look at sort of the underlying economic forces at play here, I mean, one part of it is—and we've talked about this on The Real News quite a bit—the willingness and desire of various elites and financial elites to take advantage of the crisis to undo social policy, New Deal type things in the U.S., welfare safety net in Europe, and all that, and take advantage of sort of the weaker hand of labor and people during this crisis is one thing. But is there also another part of this, which is there's just so much capital with nowhere to go, that because of this unequal distribution of wealth and income, this massive amount of capital in very few hands, and the real economy not a great place to invest in, so what you need to do is pick apart what's—there is of the public sector as a place for this capital to go to? Is that part of what's going on here?

EPSTEIN: Yeah, I think that's a good—I think that's an important aspect. They're trying to destroy all of the publicly provided markets to find new markets in, particularly, a period of slow growth. And in a particular a period when they're actually pushing austerity, the size of the overall pie isn't going to grow much, so they have to chip away at previously protected parts of it.

Part of what is so evil about this whole approach is the transformation, the distortion of language that is part of it, the use of the term technocrat to hide the fact that Trichet, that Monti, Draghi, all of these people have very, very close ties to the big banks. Most of them worked at one time or another for Goldman Sachs or other big financial firms. We have the same kind of thing, of course, in the United States, where we had Larry Summers, who works for the financial sector and makes millions of dollars doing so, being put forward as a quote-unquote "technocrat". We have the Federal Reserve that has engaged, as you know, in all kinds of backdoor bailouts of the financial sector again seen as sort of a technocratic solution, but we see the revolving door between the Federal Reserve and the private financial sector, using the term fiscal consolidation for gutting public services and generating unemployment. All of this is Orwellian language, which is meant to obscure what is really going on, which is the takeover of democratic control, which, as you said, is already undermined by money, and putting it firmly in the hands of the financial sector.

Hey! Watch Your Language!

"The Belgian government is on the brink of dissolution for the fifth time in three years. A bilingual electoral district, an old culprit, is to blame."

Over and Under in Europe

From Radio Netherlands, How to weave round a volcanic cloud:

Europe's airspace has been divided in to three zones: a no-go zone, a safe zone and a zone where extra caution is required. The borders between the zones are continually monitored and, if necessary, adjusted by Eurocontrol, the European flight control authority.

In any case, passenger planes will now be taking off with a cloud of volcanic ash still hanging above Europe. Special security measures and procedures have been introduced. The chairman of the Dutch Civil Pilots Association, Evert van Zwol, explains how you go about flying with ash in the air.

"Partly matter of sight. You have to realise that there is, thankfully, only a relatively small amount of ash in our vicinity. It is concentrated in layers which you can see quite easily. There are areas where there is a kind of grey veil and other areas which are much clearer."

Rollercoaster
That means it's a question of evasion: flying around or over or under the ash. And because you can normally spot a ribbon or a layer in the air well in advance, the passengers needn't be subjected to a roller coaster ride. There is time to take gentle evasive action.

"So you start to turn the aircraft. There's a great deal of 'banking' involved in take-off procedures any way. When you're taking off in a westward direction, but actually heading east, you'll need to negotiate a number of turns. In that sense, there's no real difference."

An Extraordinary Situation

"Tens of thousands of passengers have been left stranded across northern Europe as a cloud of volcanic ash led authorities to ground planes."

I feel for the people in Iceland who were evacuated because of the volcano-eruption and I am very well aware that all the poor people on airports all over Europe who are uncertain about when they will be able to arrive at their destination.

A joke from an Icelandic man in Aftenposten... "....You pay our debt...we stop the ashes."

There's always the train!

NA JA, EINE ANDERE NACHT DER LANGEN MESSER

Austrian far-Right leader Haider goes to his grave, taking secret of last hours in gay club with him

ILLEGAL TOXINS DUMPING BY WEST IN AFRICA

DUTCHNEWS.NL [Tuesday 5 August 2008]

The illegal dumping of used electronic goods by the Netherlands and other Western countries is causing serious soil pollution in Ghana, according to tests carried out by the environmental organisation Greenpeace, reports ANP news service on Tuesday morning.

Large quantities of toxic materials, including lead and dioxins, have been found in the ground at scrap metal dumps in Ghana, says Greenpeace.

Almost 80% of the used electronic equipment that is sent to Ghana comes from west Europe and much of this is from the Dutch manufacturer Philips, the organisation says.

The dumping of used electronic devices is illegal but the Dutch system for collecting this waste is ‘as leaky as a colander’ Greenpeace campaign leader Kim Schoppink is quoted as saying by ANP.

Schoppink calls on Philips to make sure that all electronic equipment is recycled in the Netherlands.

In a reaction, a Philips spokeswoman told ANP that the company condemns the illegal transport of used electrical appliances which she says is outside its control.

The opposition Green Left party on Tuesday called on the cabinet to take a tougher stance on the dumping of electronic appliances. The party wants to know whether Greenpeace’s claim that only 15% of the annual 300,000 tonnes of the Netherlands’ electronic waste is recycled, reports ANP.

A report published in June by the by NVMP, which is responsible for the recycling system of electronic goods, concluded that 80% of the country’s used electronic equipment is recycled. Some 9% remains unaccounted for, the report said.

Willem Canneman, chairman of the NVMP told ANP that ‘the solution is not with producers but with the law’.

One solution could be to tackle the system for exporting second hand goods, he told ANP. ‘But that must be on a European level,’ he said.

HOLLAND AVOIDS FLOODS....THIS TIME

Just picture masking tape covering the windows at Huis ter Duin!

Dutch and English folks living adjacent to the North Sea held their breath for a few hours this week, but the storm surge brought the highest water levels since the disastrous floods of 1953.

In the Netherlands, Rotterdam Port halted all ship traffic until Friday evening. The Maeslant Barrier protecting Europe's largest port was closed Thursday for the first time under storm conditions since its construction in 1997.

The magnificent photo above shows waves pounding against the lighthouse in IJmuiden, the Netherlands on Thursday, just a 20 minute drive west of Amsterdam. (Marco de Swart/Reuters)

Scientific Conference on Monarchies in the EU

From the Dutch anti-monarchy Republicans (Republikeinen) there's an announcement of a conference on 19 October 2007 sponsored by the Law Faculty of the University of Leiden: EU Monarchies in perspective. You can register to watch it for free, too.

From the outline of the conference:

The process of European integration started in earnest in 1957. This process has both formal and informal consequences for the constitution of the member states. This conference will focus in particular on the position of the non-elected heads of state (as found in the United Kingdom, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark and Luxembourg). The principal question is how these consequences can be interpreted from a multi-disciplinary perspective (constitutionally, historically and religiously).
---
On the one hand, the process of European integration could cause a gradual erosion in the sense of national citizenship and the underlying nationalism of a member state. This in turn may weaken the natural base of the monarchy in member states, particularly if the monarchy is closely connected with national sentiments. Occasionally, this nationalism has an almost transcendent dimension (for instance “God, Fatherland and Orange” in the Netherlands). Will European integration be strong enough to evoke comparable sentiments?

On the other hand, the process of European integration could bring about a nationalistic backlash which would strengthen the position of the monarchies. Such a reaction is imaginable if citizens are fearful that integration will negatively affect their sense of socio-economic and socio-cultural security.

In this scenario, citizens prefer the sense of security of the nation state, traditional nationalism and its transcendent sentiments. In analyzing these tendencies, it’s interesting to pay attention to the differences between member states. In Flanders, for instance, national sentiments are non-monarchal or even anti-monarchy. In the Netherlands on the other hand national sentiments and Monarchy go hand in hand. During the conference these questions will be addressed, as well as questions on how EU monarchies relate to EU constitutional principles, past, present and future.

Eurovision 2007

Americans go apeshit for the Grammys in February, but in May Europeans get their turn with the Eurovision Song Contest. I couldn't care a rat's ass for either, but whenever I'm in the Netherlands in May and Eurovision comes around, it's like Super Bowl Sunday.

Eurovision 2007 was held last weekend.

Loyalty to one's country always plays a role in viewers' picks, but, as Martin Wisse explains, this year's BBC coverage of the contest was bigotry run amok.