generalspeaking

Stop The World, I've Got to Get Off!

Some member countries of the European Union would seem to have something in common with Muslim countries whose vast legions of unemployed young people were hugely instrumental in leading vociferous and sometimes successful protests against their dictatorial governments, insisting that they too wanted the freedoms and opportunities that were available elsewhere in the world.

Called the "Arab Spring" in North Africa and the Middle East, European youth who are also hugely unemployed have taken to emulating the protests and city square sit-ins of their Muslim counterparts.

In Spain unemployment stands at 21%, the highest in Europe. There too young people have gathered in Madrid, in the Puerta del Sol square, to make their presence and their discontent known. "The Arab Spring has crossed the Mediterranean", claimed one of the youth organizers, inspired by the "Facebook revolutionaries" of the Arab community.

"All of Europe is following", she observed, referring to protests camps that have been established in Paris and Athens.

The austerity measures that their governments have been impressed upon to impose upon their countries suffering financial stress have not been well received in Greece in particular, and France as well, by a population comfortable with their employment perquisites and public holidays.

In Madrid and Barcelona, young people in the makeshift camps are treating the protests like resort holidays, mingling with one another and enjoying comradeship-in-adversity.

In Europe when authorities make an attempt to clear the squares, they do not resort to live ammunition as has been famously done in Yemen, in Egypt, in Libya, and in Syria. Rubber bullets are used and people do get injured in the clashes between the riot police and the protesters, but this represents civil disobedience in the traditions of the West, not the material of revolutions as seen in the Middle East.

The proposed and actual cuts in social spending in Greece, Ireland, and Spain have been belligerently resisted by the populations there, with accompanying violence. In the squares where the youth have set up camp, erected tents, provided for medical assistance and day care facilities, along with generators to supply electricity, computers for public use, and a vegetable garden installed, there is a festive air about it all.

"If we last out for another couple of weeks, we'll be eating lettuce", an encouraging sign relates. "Two months more and we'll have tomatoes", as though they're in for the long haul, having nothing better to do. Area shop keepers are less than enthralled by the protesters keeping business away. Young and unemployed and insisting on a better life, the youth are confident they will prevail.

It's tough to take away broad based social benefits that countries have installed at times of easy credit and comfortable national wealth. But when global finances collapse and countries adapt to the necessity of bracing themselves against a long haul back to prosperity, some of those benefits now taken for granted, have to be truncated or removed. Bail-out provisions insist upon that.

Persuading the entitled and the aggrieved is another story altogether.

Labels: Economy, European Union, Political Realities, Social-Cultural Deviations

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, June 01, 2011