Taking it to the streets

I recently returned from Spain and I have to say that one thing that I really like about the Spanish is that when they get fed up with something, usually having to do with their government (local or national), they protest. And when that doesn’t work, when their elected representatives either ignore them or tell them where they can go stuff it, they riot. Of course, for someone like myself, politically more an anarchist than anything else, this kind of “in your face” response to bureaucratic obtuseness is most refreshing. In fact, when I heard about the recent riots in Burgos (250 kilometers due north of Madrid) and the 40 people who were arrested and the 11 injured policemen and how it went on for three days I wondered why nothing like that ever happens in the USA? Burgos, a town with a population of 179,000, is currently a half a billion euros in debt, and because the town doesn’t have a lot of money to throw around many of the social programs that its citizens depend upon have been curtailed or eliminated. These are hard times in Spain and while most people can certainly understand the need for frugality, the decision by the city government to build a parking lot under the town’s main road to the tune of eight million euros is not being frugal and was probably seen by many of the protestors as the straw that broke the camel’s back.

But as I was saying, if this can happen in Spain, in a small town with serious cash-flow problems, why aren’t people in the USA taking to the streets in the towns and cities that have filed for bankruptcy? Why aren’t the citizens of Detroit in Michigan and San Bernardino and Stockton in California as mad as hell and burning cars and trash cans like their cousins in Spain? Not only are their cities in debt (in Detroit’s case for over 18.5 billion dollars) but their government in Washington has been spending trillions since the crash of 2008 to bail out the infamous “too big to fail banks” and to fund the country’s never ending wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Some observers have called this orgy of “quantitative easing” (printing money like there was no tomorrow) the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in the history of mankind. But in the midst of this historic theft, with all this money going to the Nation’s defense contractors and bankers why haven’t Americans reached their point of no-return? Why haven’t they taken to the streets to demand a fair share of what their tax dollars have been subsidizing all these years? I hate to sound like a communist, but if the wealth of any nation is created by the people who actually live and work in that country then it seems to me that the average American is getting royally screwed.

Indeed, for all the vaunted superiority of the American system and way of life we have forgotten that the government belongs to the people and that if it doesn’t respond to our needs and to our communities then it must be changed. In Spain they haven’t forgotten this and I am sure that as the economic crisis grows so will the protests.

Heart to heart and heavy artillery

Don’t you love it? Don’t you love the supreme irony of it all? Just as the Olympic Games are opening in Beijing, the pro-western, US backed government of Georgia decides to launch an offensive against its in-everything-but-name independent “province” of South Ossetia. Claiming that its troops were shelling the Ossetian capital city to “restore constitutional order” the Georgian Army killed over 1,500 people and essentially leveled Tskhinvali. Among those who died as the world watched a British soprano in Beijing sing “you and me, from one world, heart to heart, we are one family” were ten Russian soldiers manning a “peace observation” post in the breakaway province.

Opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics

Moscow was not amused and columns of tanks and heavy artillery were soon rolling across the border in defense of the largely Russian population. Georgia has now declared war against Russia and is begging the USA and the European Union to intervene in some way. The Georgian president declared that his country was “looking with hope” to the US. The armed confrontation with Russia, he claimed, “is not about Georgia anymore. It’s about America, its values... America stands up for those freedom-loving nations and supports them. That’s what America is all about.” But it’s unlikely that anyone will come to their aid. Apart from the usual calls for a cease-fire, the Georgians can expect little else from their NATO friends.

Opening salvos of the Russian-Georgian war

In America’s new cold war against Russia, Georgia and its army are but pawns in the Great Game. Since the break-up of the Soviet Union in the 1990’s, US administrations have fostered regional tensions in the Caucasus and beyond in an effort to gain control of the area’s strategic petroleum resources. Promoting Georgia’s admission as a full member of the NATO alliance was a part of this plan. Just as encouraging and then recognizing the unilateral declaration of Kosovo’s independence from Serbia sent a very clear message to the world and especially to Russia. “We’re still the rulers of the world”, the Neocons seem to be saying to Putin, “and we can surround you with client states like Georgia or create ‘independent protectorates’ in Kosovo and Afghanistan and there isn’t a damn thing that you can do about it.”

The risk, of course, is that the Russians would eventually strike back. Everyone has their limits and while it’s easy to start a war, once the killing begins, you never know where it will end.