Popular protests in the EU

[EnglishEdward]

No, 13 months wasn't nearly enough to assess and manage all the risks that must be weathered after quitting the EU. Giving 13 months to decide for a grand divorce settlement is just like saying you dont give a duck about the marriage, even after you had experienced decades of struggles fighting the same enemy. It's idiotic, it's rude and effin arrogant.

Which

same enemy

are you talking about?

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Another good example of a technology with a good base idea and a vision to revolutionize - well, everything - but whose consequences became disastrous, in the end, that can be analyzed retrospectively is peaceful civilian nuclear power

What are the disastrous consequences?

And when is anyone going to talk about protests in the EU?

 

[innonimatu]

In my corner it's all quiet.

But a very curious thing happened a couple of weeks ago. The police and the mass media deliberately spread stories about a "yellow jackets" protest across the country that would allegedly stop the country. Some 20000 policeman were to be mobilized, according to police commanders and the media. All cities were supposed to have protests..People were encouraged to actually miss work that day as roads were supposed to be closed... To me this all stank of manipulation, hence I don't bother mention it here. No genuine protest, this.
And come the day, the police present were much fewer that alleged (in my guess from the photos and the situations I observed) and still vastly outnumbered any protesters. There were a few dozens in the capital. perhaps a hundred in the second largest city, and about 50 in the third.

I'm fully convinced it was the internet propaganda arm of the right-wing opposition parties trying to create agitation against the current government. You see, the current government has two small left-wing parties supporting it (though not part of it) to keep that far-right away from power. And this smallish piece of left-wing influence has the usual "owners of the country" very angry, even though the socialists-in-name-only in power still do their bidding.

Fortunately Portugal is blessed with total idiots leading those far-right parties in opposition. They keep trying to be popular and failing. In this case not even those idiots showed up for their own "protest", they were busy playing armchair generals on the net and desperately trying to keep up a false narrative. Their failure quickly dropped from the news, we're cursed with the usual lackadaisical journalists (no one in the mass media would call them far-right).

For those who understand portuguese, he's one of the few good description of the failure available in the mass media. Brief translation of the most relevant description:

When camera angles widen, realism increases. In close-ups one sees faces, shoulders, anger. When cameras show the context - the Marquês do Pombal roundabout, for example [this was to be the main concentration for the "protest"] - one can best see the situation. Thirty or forty citizens, dressing yellow jackets, try to stiop the traffic. Some sit in the street, some push the police, others yell "shame".
Around this protest, twice or three times the number of policeman, linking hands, observe the protest that promised to "stop Portugal" but failed to have impact on any of the 25 places chosen by its organizers.
This portuguese version of the "yellow jackets" was born on the social networks - and it was there that it started dying. It's not yet 10am and the failure already let the organizers to proclaim that "the people is coward", using their brave keyboards in WhatsApp. The other people in the social networks were joking about the situation with the usual sarcasm. Traffic is better, some said.

This "coward people" was, mind you, the same people that marched in several hundred thousands across the same roundabout a few years ago to force the far-right government of the time to back off from its plans to destroy social security and labour laws even more that they had already done under cover of the "EU/troika". No, the people were not coward. They were not stupid either, to be used.

I didn't share these news at the time but it strikes me now that these are very relevant, because they show an attempt to create a protest as a political tool, failing.

 

[Oerdin]

There just aren't that many despite what "project fear" would have the ignorant masses believe.

 

[innonimatu]

Do we have any central european members who can tell us reliable news about what goes on in Hungary? Anti-government protests have been going on for a while, over changes to labour laws. But no strikes yet?

 

[Hrothbern]

Do we have any central european members who can tell us reliable news about what goes on in Hungary? Anti-government protests have been going on for a while, over changes to labour laws. But no strikes yet?

Would there be unions not infiltrated by Orban to such a degree that the unions are not fit for purpose ?
I understand the uprising as far as institutionalised is more likely to come from non-party local polticians.
The rest more power on the streets.
The old autonome principle
And what ideology of a more consistent type would fit the needs ?

 

[Patine]

In my corner it's all quiet.

But a very curious thing happened a couple of weeks ago. The police and the mass media deliberately spread stories about a "yellow jackets" protest across the country that would allegedly stop the country. Some 20000 policeman were to be mobilized, according to police commanders and the media. All cities were supposed to have protests..People were encouraged to actually miss work that day as roads were supposed to be closed... To me this all stank of manipulation, hence I don't bother mention it here. No genuine protest, this.
And come the day, the police present were much fewer that alleged (in my guess from the photos and the situations I observed) and still vastly outnumbered any protesters. There were a few dozens in the capital. perhaps a hundred in the second largest city, and about 50 in the third.

I'm fully convinced it was the internet propaganda arm of the right-wing opposition parties trying to create agitation against the current government. You see, the current government has two small left-wing parties supporting it (though not part of it) to keep that far-right away from power. And this smallish piece of left-wing influence has the usual "owners of the country" very angry, even though the socialists-in-name-only in power still do their bidding.

Fortunately Portugal is blessed with total idiots leading those far-right parties in opposition. They keep trying to be popular and failing. In this case not even those idiots showed up for their own "protest", they were busy playing armchair generals on the net and desperately trying to keep up a false narrative. Their failure quickly dropped from the news, we're cursed with the usual lackadaisical journalists (no one in the mass media would call them far-right).

For those who understand portuguese, he's one of the few good description of the failure available in the mass media. Brief translation of the most relevant description:



This "coward people" was, mind you, the same people that marched in several hundred thousands across the same roundabout a few years ago to force the far-right government of the time to back off from its plans to destroy social security and labour laws even more that they had already done under cover of the "EU/troika". No, the people were not coward. They were not stupid either, to be used.

I didn't share these news at the time but it strikes me now that these are very relevant, because they show an attempt to create a protest as a political tool, failing.

There just aren't that many despite what "project fear" would have the ignorant masses believe.

Would there be unions not infiltrated by Orban to such a degree that the unions are not fit for purpose ?
I understand the uprising as far as institutionalised is more likely to come from non-party local polticians.
The rest more power on the streets.
The old autonome principle
And what ideology of a more consistent type would fit the needs ?

I walked by such a protest just this afternoon at Churchill Square, in Edmonton, Canada. And there was no huge police presence ready and waiting, armed to the teeth, in SWAT armour, with barricades - it was just instead being watched over by a couple of bored-looking peace officers (who, unlike full police, are unarmed and usually can only give tickets, not arrest).

 

[Ironsided]

Do we have any central european members who can tell us reliable news about what goes on in Hungary? Anti-government protests have been going on for a while, over changes to labour laws. But no strikes yet?

North European here but I have followed the developments a little but not in detail. Apparently Orban and his government has proposed that companies should have the power to order their workforce to work a hundred hours overtime per year.

Edit: Apparently without guarantee of full compensation – it’s unsurprisingly been named “the slave law” by protesters.

 

[Hrothbern]

North European here but I have followed the developments a little but not in detail. Apparently Orban and his government has proposed that companies should have the power to order their workforce to work a hundred hours overtime per year.

IIRC max overtime was 250 hours per year (on top of a 40 hr workweek) and the new law increases the cap to 400 hours per year.

To consider:
The official unemployment is low at 4% or so.
Hungary does not like immigrants, except ethnic Hungarians abroad. There is a small net immigration (Mainly Romania, I guess ethnic Hungarians). Some young people emigrating to Germany and AngloSaxon countries. Remittances of emigrants to the homeland 1.5-2.0% of GDP. (EU net funding to Hungary 2.7% of GDP).
Also: female labour participation is around 50% not that much lower than most western countries, so not much reserve left.

=> Only more GDP growth from labour productivity from capital invests and human skills possible.
=> Pressure on wages from shortage of labour, decreasing competitive position.

I think that 400 hours cap increase is a quick fix for further growth in a stagnating economy since 2008 (GDP & GDP per capita), postponing dealing with the real issues.

 

[EnglishEdward]

postponing dealing with the real issues.

What do you thnk the real issues in the Hungarian region economy are?

 

[Ironsided]

Can’t speak for Hrothbern but I think the real issue is the realisation and frustration that swinging the pendulum all the way far right was not the sure shot way to living in Beverly Hills 90210 that it seemed all those years feeling suppressed by ill configured socialism. Same goes for Poland and most former Eastern Europe really.

 

[Hrothbern]

What do you thnk the real issues in the Hungarian region economy are?

=> Only more GDP growth from labour productivity from capital invests and human skills possible.

Human skills is not only your education level, your technical craftmanship. It is also very much how you get the most out of a team, from worker to foreman to lowest level white collar managers.
Quality and capital assets productivity are made by people at all levels of a company feeling free and encouraged to contribute to changes. To taking responsibility.
No robot robotniks awaiting orders and programs from "managers".

My main opinion on this for Hungary is that the human skills are stiffled by the Habsburgian bureacratic tradition and the communist bureaucratic tradition (that included political inhibiting of constructive flexibility in business, a negative flanking support and a negative faciliating by the government).
All East-European countries have that post-communist effect (Poland probably the European champion in amounts of official physical stamps needed for the most simple admin transactions), but Hungary is far more affected. And in Poland constructive optimism of the new generation is far higher. Very modern as well. Czech Republic was since centuries already at a far higher level of knowledge and craftmanship than other East European countries.
The over-control from the communist period only induced a strong informal defense system, filling out all the many forms, but never giving transparency, giving management info of a quality that can be used at all levels of society. And that during the 50 years were western countries developed transparency.

I would even describe Hungary as a culture where people fear their governments (all levels). And that is not based on more recent newsmedia, but based on having been very regularly in Hungary for my job the last 15 years before I retired 3 years ago. With the caveat that my experience was mainly for metal industry, but industry is 25-30% of GDP. Besides this industry, the only other perk Hungary has, or better had, was its highly fertile soil for vegeatables and fruit. Hungary was before the USSR collapse the garden of the USSR without much of competition in the Warsaw-pact.
My experience with other East-European countries regarding human skills and its development after 2000 is much better, but facing the same basic issues.

 

[Patine]

AngloSaxon countries.

Just to be pedantic, the term "Anglo-Saxon countries" is very outdated. There are no "Anglo-Saxon" countries anymore, and haven't been since William, Duke of Normandy, on a claim of decent from the father of Edward the Confessor as a maternal grandfather, conquered what was essentially the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Wessex, along with the six other Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms of Sussex, Kent, Mercia, Northumbria, Essex, and East Anglia (as well as the Brythonic Celtic Kingdoms of Dumnonia/Kernow, - now Cornwall - and Cumbria), in firm and solid vassalage to Wessex at the time in 1066. Every English-speaking country today (which I assume is what you're referring to) is far too ethnically heterogenous to be remotely and truly called "Anglo-Saxon," and, indeed, in these countries, of which I live in one, only the most far-right-wing, ultranationalist, historically-revisionist-and-nostalgically-romanticist, xenophobic groups endemically refer to these English-speaking countries as "Anglo-Saxon countries." Something to keep in mind if you should travel to an English-speaking country.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Doesn't bother me, but

More importantly if you refer to anglo-saxons; people might think you are French, like General Charles de Gaule.

 

[Hrothbern]

As a kid we never talked about the UK, was a too long word anyway (Verenigd Koninkrijk), we all simply said Engeland.
And the first book I did as a kid ever read on something in the UK, while playing on the streets Ivanhoe, was about Hengist and Horsa, who tricked King Vortigern in giving them a piece of land much bigger than anticipated by making a very long very thin fishrod line out of the hide of one ox.
Hengist and Horsa are BTW perhaps much older than that story around the 5th century where they led the Angles, Saxons and Jutes in their invasion in England.
My kid's bias on a England without English people

Anyway. Always good to be educated on sensitive stuff

 

[innonimatu]

In the meanwhile, as was to be expected, protests are growing again in France.

The government would not relent in its pursuit of reforms to reshape the economy, government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux said on Friday, branding the remaining protesters agitators seeking to overthrow the government.
Twenty-four hours later, he was fleeing his office out of a back door as protesters invaded the courtyard and smashed up several cars. “It wasn’t me who was attacked,” he later said. “It was the Republic.”
[...]
Some 50,000 protesters marched through cities and towns across France, including Paris, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Rennes and Marseille.
In Paris, the street marches began peacefully but degenerated when some protesters threw punches at baton-wielding officers, torched electric scooters and garbage bins along the Left Bank’s upscale Boulevard Saint Germain and set cars ablaze near the Champs Elysees. Clashes erupted in other cities too.
Both yellow vests and “casseurs”, hooded youths from anti-capitalist or anarchist groups, appeared to be involved.
Labour Minister Muriel Penicaud said the prolonged unrest was hurting foreign investment.

La republice, c'est moi? Macron and the people in his service seem to think so, but that is an old french tradition. As old as the people occasionally disproving it in a very visible way.

 

[Patine]

In the meanwhile, as was to be expected, protests are growing again in France.



La republice, c'est moi? Macron and the people in his service seem to think so, but that is an old french tradition. As old as the people occasionally disproving it in a very visible way.

And an even older French quote on the matter that could represent a more entrenched, self-entitled, apathetic, and ineffectual government one day: Moi l'tat.

 

[innonimatu]

Greece has long been ignored, it's treated as some kind of abandoned roadkill by most of the international media. But there have been ongoing protests there also:

The cavernous halls of Athens’ central civil court are usually silent and sombre. But every Wednesday, between 4pm and 5pm, they are anything but. For it is then that activists converge on the building, bent on stopping the auctions of properties seized by banks to settle bad debts.
They do this with rowdy conviction, chanting “not a single home in the hands of a banker,” unfurling banners deploring “vulture crows”, and often physically preventing notaries and other court officials from sitting at the judge’s presiding bench.
“Poor people can’t afford lawyers, rich people can,” says Ilias Papadopoulos, a 33-year-old tax accountant who feels so strongly that he has been turning up at the court to orchestrate the protests with his eye surgeon brother, Leonidas, for the past three years.
“We are here to protect the little man who has been hit by unemployment, hit by poverty and cannot keep up with mortgage payments. Banks have already been recapitalised. Now they want to suck the blood of the people.”
The tall, bearded brothers were founding members of Den Plirono, an activist group that emerged in the early years of Greece’s economic crisis in opposition over road tolls. The organisation, which sees itself as a people’s movement, then moved into the power business – restoring the disconnected electricity supplies of more than 5,000 Greeks who could not afford to pay their bills. Auctions are their latest cause. “Solidarity is the only answer,” Papadopoulos insists.

However the greek government is now using "anti-terrorism" legislation and police in an attempt to stop these protests:

Most notable in recent months is the way in which pressure on the Greek banks has driven a rise in evictions and home foreclosures. If once Syriza itself raised the slogan “no homes in the hands of banks,” today it is cracking down on protestors trying to stop the auctioning of houses. New laws threaten prison for those who interfere with the auction process — in fact, arrests of the government’s critics have already begun.
[...]
This has laid the ground for a major battle between the government and a dynamic movement that is standing up against the auctions of foreclosed properties. This movement has, indeed, taken on new impetus after the relaunching of auction sales in autumn 2016. For many months, the mobilization of determined groups of activists in court rooms succeeded in cancelling hundreds of those sales, significantly slowing down the entire process. This is undoubtedly one further reason why the banks have failed to meet their targets.
[...]
A symbolic threshold in this escalating repression was crossed on September 26, the day Panagiotis Lafazanis, a veteran of the Greek radical left, was called to respond to charges for his participation in weekly protest actions against auction sales of homes by notaries.
Lafazanis was Minister for Energy in the Syriza government before Tsipras’s U-Turn, and the leading figure of the “Left Platform,” which at the time mobilized most of the left wing of Syriza. He is now the secretary of Popular Unity, a political front created in the summer of 2015 mostly by the forces of the Left Platform, which split from Syriza and were joined by other organizations of the radical left.
This is the first time since the fall of the dictatorship in the 1970s — during which Lafazanis was persecuted for his underground activities in the student movement and the youth organization of the then-illegal Communist Party — that a leader of a left-wing party has been prosecuted for political reasons.

What is equally remarkable is that the proceedings have emanated from the “Department for the Protection of the State and of the Democratic Polity,” a special branch of the Greek Security Services which is supposed to track down activities related to terrorism, or activities that generally threaten democracy. The department was created in 2000, at the time of a “modernization” drive in Greece as it made its way to joining the European Monetary Union, and was upgraded in 2011, after the country entered into the bailout regime.

For some reason the european institutions that we hear are very concerned about civil liberties in Poland or Hungary are deadly quiet about political repression in Greece...

 

[Patine]

However the greek government is now using "anti-terrorism" legislation and police in an attempt to stop these protests:

It's only a matter of time before the (un)Patriot Act in the U.S., and similar "anti-terrorism" legislation in the U.K., France, Germany, Canada, Australia, etc., are used in such ways, and worse, I'm afraid...

 

[Hrothbern]

Greece has long been ignored, it's treated as some kind of abandoned roadkill by most of the international media. But there have been ongoing protests there also:

However the greek government is now using "anti-terrorism" legislation and police in an attempt to stop these protests:

Those protests are about a plan of the Greek government to hold about 25,000 auctions of houses owned by people not able to pay the mortgage.
(That's 0.1% of the roughly 2.7 million households living in their owned house(Greece has 3.6 million households) => affects 0.07% of the population)
The very poor owners not able to pay lawyers acoording to the Guardian article. (which raises for me the question: is there no (effective) pro bono lawyer right in Greece ?)
Those protests of the 25,000 involved can be simply ignored by the Greek government as long as other Greek people have no solidarity.
But Greece has a very special unit that is apparently deployed:
From that Jacobin article:

What is equally remarkable is that the proceedings have emanated from the “Department for the Protection of the State and of the Democratic Polity,” a special branch of the Greek Security Services which is supposed to track down activities related to terrorism, or activities that generally threaten democracy. The department was created in 2000,
It is notable that since its creation the department has taken no action against the fascist Golden Dawn party, nor any other far-right or terrorist organization.
https://jacobinmag.com/2018/10/syriza-repression-foreclosure-banks-tsipras

The govt back to the Junta methods.
That's where the solidarity for the people has to be found !

Also from that Jacobin article:

Since the beginning of the crisis, there have been two major recapitalizations of the banks, one of which was undertaken by the Syriza government. The total costs have exceeded €45 billion. This was financed entirely through public borrowing, to be repaid by taxpayers. Despite this extraordinary imposition on the Greek public, the banks currently hold the European record for “bad loans” and have effectively stopped actively supporting economic activity.
At the same time, the banks are expected to support economic activity through providing fresh credit. Quite naturally, however, banks have tended to reduce their fresh lending while trying to clear their balance sheets from bad loans. Yet this cut lending has actually undermined recovery and growth, thus making the bad loan problem worse for the economy

Greek economical growth, especially by selfemployed and small companies is stiffled by a lack of financing possibilities by banks.
Burdened by bad loans as explained above, being 45% of total bank loans, being roughly 90 Billion Euro, which is a staggering 50% of Greece's GDP !
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...to-reduce-banks-bad-loan-burden-idUSKCN1NR21P
(Bad bank loans in healthy economies are currently between 1-5% of total bank loans. Total bank loans in healthy economies typical 150-200% of the country's GDP)
Total bank loans in Greece at about 100% of GDP is low. Indicating that not enough money from banks is financing growth of companies in Greece. => stiffled economy.
The investment catch up needed for Greece to have enough physical assets for a healthy economy without real unemployment is roughly 100 Billion Euro.

The real problem of Greece stays that since the end of the Junta in 1974, and especially since 1992, tremendous amounts of money has been pumped in the country by government and company borrowings that did not end up in a thriving economy for all, but was extracted by foreign lenders, by more luxury purchases by median and richer Greeks imported from other countries, by richer Greeks investing money international.
If that all would not have happened Greece should have by now a GDP of 215 Billion Euro (instead of 180 Billion Euro), an unemployment of 5% (instead of 20%), and a govt debt of 60% or 130 Billion Euro (instead of 325 Billion Euro), with enough physical assets (100 Billion Euro more), with only 5% bad bank loans, 10 Billion Euro (instead of 90 Billion Euro).

The money burned and extracted totals: 195 + 100 + 80 = 375 Billion Euro
Roughly 5-10% of GDP per year over that uncontrolled period since 1974.
Roughly totalling to 37,500 Euro over that period per Greek citizen of today.
Current average wealth per Greek citizen BTW 90,000 Euro.

What Greece governments fails to do is:
* to stop the corruption and mafia (that's where that special unit, “Department for the Protection of the State and of the Democratic Polity,” , should be deployed)
and NOT directed at the petty stuff, the informal economy of the lower income groups, making some money on the side. The old way of money redistribution by the poor.
and NOT directed at the poor who try to organise.
* to tax back the wealth that went to, was extracted by, the rich Greeks. These are the real ones laughing now.
* transform into an effective government.... a body that can govern a country and an economy !!!

What we have now is politics-unhappy people-politics-EU-politics-repression-politics.