Re: [Peace-discuss] Sous les pavés, la plage?

[John W.]

On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 8:53 PM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at uiuc.edu> wrote:

[A topic discussed on tonight's News from Neptune/TV Ed. (ch. 6 at 7pm and
> soon online) but few other places in US media. I was in Latvia several years
> ago, and what's described here is hard to imagine. --CGE]


What's your opinion of the EFFICACY of angry people in the streets, Carl?
Historically, does this type of protest, more often than not, lead to
positive change for ordinary people?  Or is it just a venting of (certainly
in some cases legitimate) emotion, which could just as easily lead to civil
war and genocide?




>        Governments across Europe tremble
>        as angry people take to the streets
>        Ian Traynor, Europe editor
>        The Guardian, Saturday 31 January 2009
>
> France paralysed 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 – yesterday – 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.
>
> Athens
>
> Alexandros Grigoropoulos, a 15-year-old middle-class boy going to a party
> in a rough neighbourhood on a December Saturday, was the first fatality of
> Europe's season of strife. Shot dead by a policeman, the boy's killing lit a
> bonfire of unrest in the city unmatched since the 1970s.
>
> There are many wellsprings of the serial protests rolling across Europe. In
> Athens, it was students and young people who suddenly mobilised to turn
> parts of the city into no-go areas. They were sick of the lack of jobs and
> prospects, the failings of the education system and seized with pessimism
> over their future.
>
> This week it was the farmers' turn, rolling their tractors out to block the
> motorways, main road and border crossings across the Balkans to try to
> obtain better procurement prices for their produce.
>
> Riga
>
> The old Baltic trading city had seen nothing like it since the happy days
> of kicking out the Russians and overthrowing communism two decades ago. More
> than 10,000 people converged on the 13th-century cathedral to show the
> Latvian government what they thought of its efforts at containing the
> economic crisis. The peaceful protest morphed into a late-night rampage as a
> minority headed for the parliament, battled with riot police and trashed
> parts of the old city. The following day there were similar scenes in
> Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital next door.
>
> After Iceland, Latvia looks like the most vulnerable country to be hammered
> by the financial and economic crisis. The EU and IMF have already mounted a
> €7.5bn (£6.6bn) rescue plan but the outlook is the worst in Europe.
>
> The biggest bank in the Baltic, Swedbank of Sweden, yesterday predicted a
> slump this year in Latvia of a whopping 10%, more than double the previous
> projections. It added that the economy of Estonia would shrink by 7% and of
> Lithuania by 4.5%.
>
> The Latvian central bank's governor went on national television this week
> to pronounce the economy "clinically dead. We have only three or four
> minutes to resuscitate it".
>
> Paris
>
> Burned-out cars, masked youths, smashed shop windows, and more than a
> million striking workers. The scenes from France are familiar, but not so
> familiar to President Nicolas Sarkozy, confronting the first big wave of
> industrial unrest of his time in the Elysée Palace.
>
> Sarkozy has spent most of his time in office trying to fix the world's
> problems, with less attention devoted to the home front. From Gaza to
> Georgia, Russia to Washington, Sarkozy has been a man in a hurry to mediate
> in trouble spots and grab the credit for peacemaking.
>
> France, meanwhile, is moving into recession and unemployment is going up.
> The latest jobless figures were to have been released yesterday, but were
> held back, apparently for fear of inflaming the protests.
>
> Budapest
>
> A balance of payments crisis last autumn, heavy indebtedness and a
> disastrous budget made Hungary the first European candidate for an
> international rescue. The $26bn (£18bn) IMF-led bail-out shows scant sign of
> working. Industrial output is at its lowest for 16 years, the national
> currency - the forint - sank to a record low against the euro yesterday and
> the government also announced another round of spending cuts yesterday.
>
> So far the streets have been relatively quiet. The Hungarian misery
> highlights a key difference between eastern and western Europe. While the
> UK, Germany, France and others plough hundreds of billions into public
> spending, tax cuts, bank bailouts and guarantees to industry, the east
> Europeans (plus Iceland and Ireland) are broke, ordering budget cuts, tax
> rises, and pleading for international help to shore up their economies.
>
> The austerity and the soaring costs of repaying bank loans and mortgages
> taken out in hard foreign currencies (euro, yen and dollar) are fuelling the
> misery.
>
> Kiev
>
> The east European upheavals of 1989 hit Ukraine late, maturing into the
> Orange Revolution on the streets of Kiev only five years ago. The fresh
> start promised by President Viktor Yushchenko has, though, dissolved into
> messy, corrupt, and brutal political infighting, with the economy, growing
> strongly a few years ago, going into freefall.
>
> Three weeks of gas wars with Russia this month ended in defeat and will
> cost Ukraine dearly. The national currency, at less than half the value of
> six months ago, is akin to the fate of Iceland's wrecked krona. Ukrainians
> have been buying dollars by the billion. In November the IMF waded in with
> the first payments in a $16bn rescue package.
>
> The vicious power struggles between Yushchenko and the prime minister,
> Yuliya Tymoshenko, are consuming the ruling elite's energy, paralysing
> government and leaving the economy dysfunctional. Russia is doing its best
> to keep things that way.
>
> Reykjavik
>
> Proud of its status as one of the world's most developed, most productive
> and most equal societies, Iceland is in the throes of what is, by its staid
> standards, a revolution.
>
> Riot police in Reykjavik, the coolest of capitals. Building bonfires in
> front of the world's oldest parliament. The yoghurt flying at the free
> market men who have run the country for decades and brought it to its knees.
>
> An openly gay prime minister takes over today as head of a caretaker
> government. The neocon right has been ditched. The hard left Greens are, at
> least for the moment, the most popular party in the small Arctic state with
> a population the size of Bradford.
>
> The IMF's bailout teams have moved in with $11bn. The national currency,
> the krona, appears to be finished. Iceland is a test case of how one of the
> most successful societies on the globe suddenly failed.
>
> guardian.co.uk (c) Guardian News and Media Limited 2009
>
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jan/31/global-recession-europe-protests
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