Politics and Press

What happens next in poor Europe?

For the last couple of decades the best-selling author in the world has been a Swede who divides his time between southern Sweden and eastern Angola and writes stories of crimes that once seemed to exaggerate the violence that came with an increasing sense of continental dysfunction since the fall of the Soviet Union. The plots of Henning Mankell’s novels seemed to be exaggerated in their depiction of hatred and brutality beneath the surface of apparently stable societies, but recent events have made these plots seem more and more prophetic. Random acts of violence, which often centre on racial and religious clashes in what once were understood to be homogeneous societies, become more and more common and ever more threatening.
Mankell’s iconic police inspector, Kurt Wallander, seemed for a long time in the 1990s to be particularly unlucky in facing randomly vicious crimes, particularly as he was working out of one of the more apparently idyllic areas of a country that always shows up near the top of lists of successful societies. In the latest such rankings, Sweden was of course one of the Scandinavian countries topping the list, followed by Australia, New Zealand and Canada, and nevertheless Sweden is beginning to send out warning signs that even the most supposedly tolerant countries are drifting into areas of threatening intolerance. Almost inevitably these have something to do with problems between natives and immigrants. Somebody is randomly shooting people with dark skins in and around Malmö, Sweden’s third largest city and the home basis of the extreme right-wing party that won 20 seats in parliament in the recent election. As a result police have warned dark-skinned people to be careful after dark in Malmö. Similarly Chancellor Merkel’s extraordinary statement last month that German attempts at immigration have been a terrible failure made headlines everywhere. It is significant that the problems are seen to be most dramatic and threatening in countries where the unitiated would least expect them: The Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, France, Hungary – all prosperous or relatively prosperous countries with histories of enlightened behaviour, aside from the odd war here and there. If this trend cannot be reversed, it may well spell the end of any dream of an even somewhat united Europe.

Sweden votes right – wrong

The federal election in Sweden on September 19 should have sent shock waves through the western world, and it did not go unnoticed as it would have if the Social Democrats had won the election, as they have gotten used to doing since the 1920s. It’s true there have been blips before in their winning streak, but the upset winners have then not lasted more than one term, and the world continues to think of Scandinavia and The Netherlands in general and Sweden in particular as the prime examples of tolerant societies with a strong social net that is designed to make the playing field level for all citizens.

But this time something happened which may in fact spell the end of the Social Democrats’ view of themselves as the naturally ruling party of Sweden after being in in power 83% of the time since 1932. This time the blip did not disappear, but rather rewarded a conservative party that has been ruling in coalition with a group of smaller moderately right parties since the last election by doubling its vote to 30%, with its coalition partners to 49%, thus winning 172 of the 349 seats, just short of a majority. This conservative coalition will thus once again form the government, while the Social Democrats dropped 4 percentage points to only 31%. On its own this is big news, as it may signal the end of socialist power in apparently prosperous northern European societies. However it is not not shocking news.

The shock comes from the 5.7% of the vote, and 20 seats, won by the ultra-far right Sweden Democrats party, running on an anti-immigrant platform that many consider to be Neo-Nazi, and featuring an ad in the final weeks before the vote that showed 3 young women, easily identified as Moslems by their clothes, shoving aside an older woman, easily identifiable as Swedish, as they bully their way to a welfare-benefit counter. This ad would be illegal and unshowable on German or Canadian television, but in Sweden it helped make the “Sweden for Swedes” party the potential kingmaker of the next government as the conservative coalition cannot form a majority without the help of some other party. And it looks like none of the leftist parties will consider being part of it. Anyone interested in looking at the vote results in German elections in the 1920s is welcome to do so.

Le déclin de l’empire européen

It should be Europe’s century. But ten years into it looks like the idealistic hopes imbedded in the idea of a united European state – first dreamed up half a century ago by its most powerful economic powers Germany and France – have shrunk as the stupendous debts of Greece grow. As it is, the European Union has the world’s largest economy, the largest number of soldiers under arms, and the largest budget for foreign aid. But you would never know it, as the economy does not work with any efficiency as the Germans once again found out as they were forced to bail out a profligate family member living far beyond its means with the lion’s share of the rescue, a tidy little cheque for $123 billion (yes, with a b) allowing Greeks to begin getting their pensions half a dozen years before Germans do. With much larger economies than Greece’s next in line – Spain, with 20% unemployment, Portugal, Ireland, all the East European states, maybe even Italy, and then there is the UK, which will have to learn to live with a massive debt – Prime Minister Merkel indicated in no uncertain terms that Germany’s patience with its unruly family, is running out. She had to be convinced that the bankruptcy of Greece could not be tolerated as the two countries share a common currency – the rapidly plunging Euro – and that Germany would have to pay the bill.

Similarly the EU military potential isn’t worth a tinker’s damn as all those soldiers are governed by individual national, not EU, structures and concerns, and there is no such thing as an EU armed forces. When one looks at Europe objectively these days, only Germany and the Scandinavian countries – and Norway has never joined the EU – and to a lesser extent France and the Benelux countries, are prospering economically and socially, and EU status has benefitted Poland. But the general effect has been an ever deepening gap between poor and rich members of what is supposed to be a united union, an expanding unwillingness for the haves to bail out the have-nots and an ever-growing suspicion that this will ultimately result in the decline and fall of a noble experiment.

Ukraine looks towards Russia

Viktor Yanukovich has apparently won the runoff election for president of Ukraine, thus tilting the European political map back towards the east, only 20 years after the events which seemed to be pushing it inexorably towards western Europe. Now the European Union, which was adamant in not considering Ukraine for membership, wallows in discontent as several members lurch towards bankruptcy – Greece, Portugal and perhaps even Spain leading the pack -and some others flirt very frivolously with the far right – Hungary in the lead. Meanwhile back in Brussels a completely no-name EU leadership predictably can’t lead as the real western european powers retreat behind traditional national fortresses.
Now one of the largest European countries has chosen to forget how much it once resented being called “Little Russia” and voted for a leader who represents the one-third Russian-speaking population of eastern Ukraine – he delivered his victory speech in Russian- and managed to win over ca. 20% of the Ukrainian-speaking western Ukrainians, tired of the complete failure of the leaders of the so-called Orange Revolution, though it is still unclear how man western Ukrainians just decided not to vote, having seen enough of so-called democracy. In any case it is clearly a great triumph for Putin’s increasingly powerful Russia, which already has a large ally in Ukraine’s northern neighbour Belarus, and a warning to western europe to get its ship in shape or risk losing much of the territory it thought it had gained in 1990.

Taxes, Healthcare and the American Way

Living in Europe provided a particular view of the relationship between taxes and quality of life, both of which are higher in most European countries than they are in the United States. While Americans are always attracted to lower taxes they do not always seem to understand the relationship between what they pay in taxes and what they get – or don’t get – in services. The trade-offs became obvious to me during three years in Munich in which I paid higher taxes than I would have in the U.S. and enjoyed benefits mostly unknown in the U.S.

The healthcare reform debate currently deadening many American’s brains is a case in point. Talk to almost anyone in Germany about their healthcare and they wonder what the hell is going on in America. The figures are well known – we pay TWICE as much, per capita, for slightly worse outcomes when measured in terms of life expectancy, infant mortality, percent of those covered, etc. And, in Germany you would never worry about having your insurance cancelled for any reason. The payment for health insurance – which is mandatory and therefore covers everyone – is through a combination of taxation based on salary and employer contributions. Health insurance is viewed as a social contract among the German people unlike the U.S. where someone can opt out even though they fully expect expensive care when they need it – a kind of anti-social contract.

Taxes in Germany also pay for an excellent education system, roads and bridge maintenance that is unknown in the U.S., welfare nets that eliminate the worst consequences of poverty, and a healthy life style that includes six week vacations for most workers, generous medical leave policies, trains that run fast AND on time, airports that treat people as though they were human, and a food supply network that ensures healthy and fresh food.

While it may be hard for many Americans to understand just how bad they have it, what is worse is their unwillingness to consider alternatives; their belief that America is best in everything. Many Americans who complain about taxes focus on Reagan’s largely mythological welfare mothers or the current Republicans’ concern over costs of possible health care reform. In addition to the huge costs resulting from our lack of focus on preventive medical measures, Americans also typically ignore the overwhelming costs of our care and feeding of our military and military contractors, and the cost of misadventures like the Iraq War, both of which become exercises in jingoism which we willingly fund while much of American society seems to be crumbling.

The American press is of course part of the problem but at the end of the day the blame is ours for being too lazy to pursue the ramifications of our knee-jerk negative reaction to any suggestion that our taxes be raised..

In Praise of Herta Müller

Since the announcement of this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature was met with virtual ignorance and stunning disinterest in North America, my brother and I have decided to break the silence. The prize went to Herta Müller, whom we first met in 1985 in our native München when she was allowed out of her native Romania for the first time. The reason seemed clear enough. Though she was unable to work as a teacher in Romania as a totalitarian government clamped down and imprisoned writers it didn’t like – including her then husband Richard Wagner, an equally talented and prolific German-language author from Romania – she had won one of the most prestigious prizes for young writers in Germany, and for a work first published in Bucharest, Niederungen (Lowlands, translated into English as Nadirs). It seemed that she was profiting from a tendency of the Caucescu government to overlook weaknesses in its citizens if they won accolades in the big world, just as it would when Romania became the only Soviet-dominated country to not boycott the Los Angeles Olympics. Herta Müller was reminding the world that Romania was a country that produced great artists, architects and writers, even if this one wrote in the wrong language. And Niederungen was more of an attack on the German world of Romania than it was on Romania itself.
So it seemed to us as we talked with this young and nervous visitor to Germany. Three years later she had left Timisoara for Berlin, where she still lives, and for the next twenty years she has published something like a roadmap of dead ends and dangerous detours that was the fate of the Romanian-Germans as they tried to get out of a country that did not have a bloodless revolution as the Communist world collapsed, but a violent one whose repercussions still linger. And yet for the next 25 years she did not tell the darkest story of the brutality she and the Romanian-Germans confronted under Caucescu and his predecessors, as it would have affected the lives of too many friends and colleagues. Now she has told it and the Swedish Academy got it right when they wrote of her searing focus on the rootlessness and dislocation that is the fate of so much of European and for that matter world populations today. There is no doubt that she has personally been scarred by it, and there is also no doubt that she is a worthy recipient of literature’s highest prize as she has written stories that make it clear how that happened and what it means.

Why Europe doesn’t work

At the very moment while most of the world leaders were in New York to spout wisdom – are some of them for real or was this an audition for a B horror film? – and wax on about climate change,etc – only the Prime Minister of the Maldive Islands was convincing – over in Europe the lackeys of three of the supposed major enlightened states plus a few minnows were busy casting a vote that showed what farcical members of the so-called united nations they are. It was a rather small matter unless you take saving the ecology of the world to be something other than some sort of hippy conspiracy, but it underlined how hopelessly anti-social and greedy some extremely prosperous European powers are.

It only had to do with one of those fish species that are going to disappear in European waters if maritime nations continue to allow their fisherfolk to wipe out every living thing they can get their nets around. But it is a big fish – the bluefin tuna – that is noticeable by its presence as well as its absence. And the bluefins are returning in numbers to the waters of the Canadian maritime provinces where last year only one-fifth of the catch was allowed compared to that taken in European waters. Fish biologists all agree – if the Europeans continue to savage their bluefin population, it will be gone within a decade at the latest, so the European Union had an easy choice in its recent vote on the matter – stop all bluefin tuna fishing immediately. And so the vote went for the great majority of the EU members. But not for all, and the EU constitution demands unanimity.

One could perhaps understand why Cyprus and Malta voted to put the immediate livelihood of their fishermen over that of their future, though their vetoes certainly underline the absurdity of the EU constitution. But the small island nations didn’t have to worry about the reaction of that part of the world that is actually worried about the environment to their nihilistic votes. For in New York, the governments of super-prosperous France, Spain and Italy no doubt spouted on about their dedication to saving the world, but in Brussels they also vetoed the bluefin resolution, thus condemning one of the premier fish just hanging on in European waters. Shameful isn’t the word we’re looking for, but what is?

Is the European Union collapsing?

There was a time not long ago when optimists mused on the possibility that Europe under the flag of the European Union headquartered in Brussels might soon be a kind of United States of Europe. It would function as a large national unity built out of what once had been independent parts. In short it would become something like the USA or perhaps even more like Canada which likes to admire itself as a successful mosaic rather than as a version of the US melting pot.

In one important way, that has happened. It is now less of a hassle to drive from the Atlantic Ocean to the Black Sea than it is from Detroit to Windsor. The border guards and custom bullies have disappeared and no one will ask you for a passport as you cross borders that once made you think twice before attempting to cross them, as the US border does now.

But in a deeper sense the European Union is proving to be an impossible quagmire of special interest groups and local bureaucracies, especially now that the current economic crisis has made clear which economies were built on a house of cards, really on a kind of pyramid scheme. This applies to almost all the East European countries once strangled by Soviet hegemony – Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania – who all got into the EU on the assumption that their economies would continue to grow, and now are on the edge of bankruptcy, or following the lead of non-EU Iceland, have actually gone bankrupt. But that also applies to former Celtic tiger Ireland, which spent money like a drunken sailor in the supposed good times, and now is in desperate need of help from Mother Brussels which is reluctant to give it. The Irish, showing their independence streak, held a referendum on the proposed new constitution of the EU last year, and turned it down, leaving the ship adrift without a captain, since the constitution must have the unanimous approval of 27 countries. On October 2, they will vote again on the issue, and no one expects them to turn it down again since the EU is now seen as the cow waiting to be milked. Needless to say the East European countries will also approve this constitution in the hope that the have countries like Germany, France, Great Britain, Sweden, Finland and Denmark will be forced to give financial support to the have-nots. But it is now a very good question whether such a referendum, if held, would gain approval from the citizens of the economic powers themselves.

where you want to live

The Economist has just published its annual ranking of 140 major cities for their livability. It’s no surprise that Vancouver, Canada’s urban showpiece on the Pacific with a matchless setting, is once again ranked first as a place to live, but it is the absence of cities – and countries – that would have been favourites not long ago which says something about how the judgment of quality of urban life has changed. Three of the first six cities are in Canada (#1 Vancouver, #4 Toronto, #6 Calgary) and 6 of the first ten are in Australia (Sidney, Melbourne and Perth) and Canada. The other four in the first ten are capital cities of middle-size European powers (#2 Vienna, Zurich, Helsinki) plus UN-centre Geneva.

Former stars like Paris (#17), Berlin (#22) or Rome (#51) no longer cut the mustard for quality of life. Countries without a history of military colonialization trump countries who came to prominence by invading neighbours and even far-off lands, and now have to live with the consequences. Countries with a current atmosphere of tolerance and with middle-power armed forces run a steadier, friendlier ship in the modern world than those with atomic weapons and nervously-guarded borders.

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The End of a German Legend

Remember that old joke about the poor woman who got involved four times in search of Mr Right and always came away disappointed after she took up with an English cook, an Italian politician, a French engineer, and a German lover. Well the English can still eat toad in a hole and spotted dick, the Italians are on their 52nd post-war government, the French can still design subs that run into other subs in the open ocean, and the (north) Germans still get low marks as romantic types. But on March 4, 2009 the Germans lost their right to make fun of anybody else’s engineering skills. For on that day the 8-story building housing the entire archive of the historic city of Köln collapsed into a devastated pancake as if it had been blown up by explosive experts.

But it hadn’t been. It had been undermined by the construction of a new subway line, despite numerous warnings from the building’s occupants that the building was being shaken into fundamental danger by the nearby construction. The warnings were ignored and the building collapsed so quickly that it was a miracle that all the occupants of the building managed to rush out before it pancaked. It turned out that the mayor was incompetent, the engineers were hopeless, the bureaucracy had not functioned and there’s nothing more to be said about the lovers. That leaves only the archivists and the restorers to pick up the pieces, and they still seem to be competent. But those pieces are proving very difficult to find in the crushed rubble that must be bottoming out in ground water that will not even be reached for many months. Experts are now predicting that this engineering fiasco has already resulted in the destruction of many irreplaceable pieces of history going back almost 2000 years and ultimately it will prove to be the biggest disaster for German history since the bombings of World War 2.