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

[E. Wayne Johnson]

I saw the picture of CGE in Riga on Mrs. E's website...

Our ascerbic and theatrical friend Max Keiser predicted the Money Geyser 
in Iceland back in 2007 and volcanic eruption that
has followed.  http://www.liberty4urbana.com/drupal-6.8/node/56

Some survivalists are suggesting the purchase of gold, bullets, and 
toilet paper rather than the
standard "lawyers, guns, money".  If there isn't much to eat, one won't 
require a whole lot of TP. 

C. G. Estabrook 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]
>
>     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 © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jan/31/global-recession-europe-protests 
>
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss
>
>