pouët.net

With all the austerity measures being put in place across some European countries by their governments & the EC and then protests which seem to quickly to turn into violent anarchy - I ask what's going on?
Clearly things here in Australia aren't so bad, sure petrol costs a shitload and the government is taking heaps of tax off us (the workers) whilst they and most of the countries biggest corporations CEO's get nice big, fat payrises/bonuses. But it's not so much that I'm going to don a gas-mask, find some cops to try and beat up and wreck some shop-fronts. Is it social vigilantism/justice or is it just thugs using a protest as an excuse to cut loose?

Don't get be wrong - this isn't meant as an EU bashing thread, just asking. To me the violence seems disproportionate to what the protests appear to be about.
Soundtrack.

The basis of the issue is the single European currency which will never work correctly with completely different governments and cultures. The problem for a country like Greece is, being tied to the Euro, they cannot devalue their currency, make themselves more competetive and lift the country out of depression. Staying with the Euro will eventually have a catastrophic effect.
Mix the above with the self grandeurising politicians living in a globalised cloud cuckoo land and ignoring the basic fiscal weaknesses plus banks making insane decisions and it's a huge recipe for distaster.
Add to this the fact that in a very short space of time, prices in the less well off European states shot trough the roof and salaries didn't, then mix in the same people being asked to bail out the bankers and government and you get the idea. Basically everyone is royally pissed off.

and with good reasons.

i approve of the guy in the gasmask.

I loled with the pic.

Is that what happened to Ireland? Or was it just greedy banks fucking up (yet again with other people's money and @ other's expense).

Me too, even to the point of going to a protest. But not too the point of running rampant in the streets - that's probably why I wouldn't go. Who really wants to face police brutality first-hand?

lulz.
Bunch of violent video-game playing reprobates. See Tipper Gore was right!

More or less Ringo except in Ireland they had a perfectly safe and reliable economy based on agriculture and technology. Then, along came the Euro, in fact, lots of Euros. The stuff flooded into the country and everyone decided that construction, housing and service industries were a great way to make money. Then the bubble burst and they no longer had the basis for the original economic strength and ended up in the same position as Greece.

Bet he bottled tho ;)

Cheers horai - thanks for that. We've had a bubble burst here (mainly property) but clearly the AUD$ is just getting stronger than the greenback. Also where I live in Western Australia we are having a primary resources boom (mining) that seems to be mainly fueling a large part of the Oz economy. So until we've dug it all out or the prices of iron/copper/zinc/natural gas bottom out then we're good.
The sad thing is it's almost all exports - we have little or no secondary/tertiary industry infrastructure.

*getting stronger against the greenback*

Portugal is going same way as Ireland and Greece. Except people are too numb to go to the streets and riot. Spanish folks seem to be waking up to the same reality and getting mobilized though.

Problem remains in the corruption and generalized distrust in politicians.
Economic crisis doesnt help.

Wish folks in Portugal had the balls to stand up against it like what happened in Iceland. But i don't see it happening. Maybe in Greece and Spain (and i heard also France is getting pissed off).

I don't really see a problem with the Euro per se, i see this more as a need for a political transparency revolution, to make the people who truly fucked up with the banking system pay for their mistakes instead of passing the bill down the chain of command to the tax payer.

Don't know about other countries, but atleast in Portugal two big problems are the economic lobbies connected with the politician / top managers 'buddies' system: where politicians favor certain companies who milk state funds and then curiously go work there in a high manager role and soon after retire with large double and triple accumulated pensions. It's publicly known and no one is doing anything about it couz there are no laws against it, none being proposed and the ones that are in affect don't sentence anyone when the issue is investigated. in the rare cases that it gets to court, it's usually prescribed due to having happened too much of a long time ago.

Anyways, the perception in most of the other countries, from my expierience, is that Greece (And also the other PIGS countries) were or still are a bunch of lazy, easygoing people. The only difference is that the own people's view on that is different from country to country. In Italy the people just say the politics are overreacting on the debt debate, in greece the "poor" people blame the "rich" for the situation. And so on...

But the truth is, when the majority of people are not smart enough to be aware of certain things, how can you expect that smart people will be in power? In fact, stupid people will most likely vote for other stupid people.

And in _every_ political party, big company, big anything, you make it to the top not because you are good at something, not because you are smart in any way, not because you have ideas that could solve things, no. You make it to the top just because you WANT it. Work hard, or at least look like you do and you'll make it. Sometimes it's just luck, sometimes money or blowjobs.

Sounds not convincing? Watch some documentations/read some stuff about inner party structure and the reasons why people get promoted. But ofcourse this stuff is normally top secret, so dont take official stuff too serious. ;-)

So, what to do to change these things? ....when you actually dont know who's in power, even if you could choose, when you know that even voting for one you know he/she will try to change things but fails in the end because the support is thin.

(Raising taxes for rich people? Shorten the diet for politicians? Make the law that politicians should be in no way lobbyists for big companies who assure new laws fit to their money strategies? How could you think of such a ridiculus thing!)

...and even if you're going to go onto the streets, you know that even if you're thousands, the millions in your country actually are either too afraid to say something or even just dont care...

....sometimes, things go a little more violent.

exin: in Portugal we don't have acceptable options for voting. It's a bounce between two major parties, one of them colligating with the 3rd largest party, each taking turns always promising things that they never uphold. the main alternative to this are left wing parties which have suffered from the hippie irrealistic syndrome for ages, so they never get anywhere near majority. and then there are a bunch of smaller parties which people never really care to know better because they know they'll never get a seat in the parlament. actually in Portugal the disbelief in the voting system always wins, we have abstainee majority. More people didnt vote, than people voted for the party who won. Null votes are also usually higher than our 4th largest party. And this, instead of being perceived as required political change, is dismissed as lazyness of the people to go vote. While some do agree it is lazyness, most of them claim it's lack of acceptable candidates. Petitions and protests pop up to challenge this, but never lead to any actual political change.

PS: Who has acceptable parties for voting anyways? Its the same here. You choose between shitty and shitty and maybe insane and insane with tendancy to world domination. The funny fact in the last vote was that nobody actually had somnething to promise to cange things for the better. Voting Campaigns that consisted that the other party is bad or evil. :D

I'm always voting. Even if its a small party that actually has something to say. I dont vote for popular people, or parties that i think that might win.

Ofcourse, if you substract things on a party that you find shit, the list of available options becomes obscure.... :D

Gargaj: Is that an ice Scraper or what? :D

Kinda OT

@Gargaj - "Here's 20p now clean my windscreen pig!"

go and make a politically sound movement about it.

I'd also like to play devil's advocate and point out that most veteran EU participants have a bit of a qualm paying taxes on whatever helps the EU expansion and retiring late in their late sixties. Only to be told there will be major cuts while this Greece thing needs more money to help retire social workers in their early fifties -not to mention continue tax evasion as a whole.

actually the thought of forming a new political party did occur to me. but i dont think i would have the patience to deal with it properly.

there were all types of solutions tried in the past, but as you can see none helped => robotic liberation and human annihilation!