Europe

[Colonel Sun]

[Endovelico]

In Bremen Frau Merkel's party got another beating, the FPD disappeared from the local Parliament, and the Greens got more votes than the CDU. All good news. Hopefully, after next federal elections, the German government will again think European, and stop treating southern European countries as colonies.

[YMix]

[Joao Paulo]

Meanwhile, in Spain, Zapatero and the socialists suffer a big fefeat.

[Azrael]

[Azrael]

[Torchwood]

[Colonel Sun]

[Torchwood]

Europe is an allegory for the ages of man. You’re born Italian: they’re relentlessly infantile and mother-obsessed. In childhood you’re English: chronically shy, tongue-tied, cliquey and only happy kicking balls, pulling the legs off things, or sending someone to Coventry. Teenagers are French: pretentiously philosophical, embarrassingly vain, ridiculously romantic and insincere. During middle age, we become either Swiss or Irish. Old age is German: ponderous, pompous and pedantic. And finally we regress into being Belgian, with no idea who we are at all.

(A.A. Gill)

[Sparky]

Very good.

[Endovelico]

[YMix]

The irreducible autonomy of Silesia
31 March 2011 Hospodářské noviny, Prague

Silesians. They have their own language, a long history and they live in one of the richest regions of Poland. Today their calls for autonomy are echoing louder and louder. When they enjoyed unexpected success in regional elections last autumn for the first time in twenty years, Warsaw woke up to a problem in its territories along the Czech border.

At the congress of the Movement for Silesian Autonomy, in Katowice, a triumphal mood reigns. Delegates, some hundred and thirty of them who arrived in early March, some in traditional Silesian garb, exchange friendly greetings and embraces with the crowd. Silesians make up a good tenth of the population of Poland, so it is understandable that the electoral success of the movement calling for autonomy has caused a political upheaval in Warsaw.

The congress is being held in a historic building which today houses the Lower Silesian Regional Assembly, or Sejmik. The monumental building, however, was built for the Government and Parliament of a Silesia that enjoyed autonomy between the two world wars. At that time, it was even eyeing independence. The autonomous Silesian government had its own treasury, levied its own taxes and fees and drew up some of its own laws. That’s just what Silesians are longing for again today.

“It’s odd that the Czechs couldn’t care less about what’s happening at their borders, and yet a good chunk of historical Silesia is within the Czech Republic and they’re also our important neighbour.” I’m told this by one of the delegates, who keenly appreciates that the Silesian eagle is on the Czech national emblem. He asks how our Czech Silesians were able to get it there. Explaining to him that the Czech Silesians, unlike their Polish counterparts, have no desire for emancipation, let alone strong autonomy, proves really difficult. It’s obvious that he has trouble grasping the idea, and the problem is not just the language barrier. Although, in truth, like many other delegates he speaks with a Silesian accent and uses many pure Silesian expressions. Even native Poles often have a problem understanding Silesians.
As if they never existed

In dealing with Polish Silesia, particularly the part that includes the industrialised and mineral-rich Lower Silesian Voivodeship, or province, Polish politicians have been asking for trouble for the last twenty years. “The politicians who drew up the new Poland after the fall of the communist dictatorship were, like the communists before them, convinced that a multiethnic country is less stable than a nationally homogenous state. That’s why they have been acting as if there’s no such thing as a Silesian,” explains Marek Plura, a member of the Polish Parliament from Premier Donald Tusk’s ruling party, Civic Platform.

“Ruch Autonomii Slaska (RAS, or the Silesian Autonomy Movement) is creating a lot of work for all Silesians. It has allowed us to say once again with pride that we are Silesians, and it has unleashed a debate about history and our language,” is how he explains the policy of engagement, which is indeed in favour of emancipation in Silesia, but at the same time opposes autonomy. The same attitude is also shared by another influential Polish politician who came to the congress, Tomasz Tomczykiewicz, Civic Platform’s parliamentary leader. It seems that both showed up for the event not just because they are Silesians, but also to take some wind out of the sails of the radical RAS. Proceedings at the Congress, however, quickly reveal that Silesians cannot be so easily tamed.
Young and educated

The leader of the Silesian autonomists is Jerzy Gorzelik (born 1971), who holds a doctorate in art history from the University of Silesia in Katowice. One of his great-grandfathers was among the rebels in the 1919-1921 uprising, when Silesians fought for independence from Germany. He certainly does not come across as a charismatic leader. A small, quiet man, he seems perfectly cut out for a career as a university teacher of art history – not as the leader of a breakaway movement.

“Autonomy is our fundamental platform and we won’t water it down,” he protests when I ask him if, now that his movement has participated in regional government, it’s not time to draw in the horns a little. According to this man, who refers to himself consistently as a Silesian, not a Pole, Silesia should achieve autonomy by 2020, and that autonomy should have the same outline as it did seventy years ago. “With Warsaw we want only shared defense, foreign policy, currency and national infrastructure. The rest, mainly finance, should be the responsibility of the autonomous government,” he says. He admits that Silesians want to manage the revenues from taxes on its territory because, among other things, it is one of the richest regions of Poland. The Silesians are the ones who subsidise the poor regions bordering the Ukrainian and who of course pump a lot of money into Poland’s bureaucratic machinery nation-wide.

“Let us be very clear: we will not renounce solidarity with other Polish regions. However, the transfer of money to them, as well as to the central treasury, must be transparent. As it is, our money is disappearing into a black hole.”

Only Gorzelik belongs to the original core of the RAS, which grew out of Silesian nationalism and the nostalgia of the older generation for the pre-war autonomy.

Thirty-two year old Piotr Dlugosz shares the same opinion. “We want autonomy not because we resent the rest of Poland, but because we believe it will better help us to defend our rights and handle public funds. Autonomy for us is not a journey into the past. On the contrary, it’s the future – a way to resolve the current political crisis in the European nation states,” insists the specialist in German culture from Opole, who believes that the modern movement for autonomy will gradually spread to the other countries of Europe.

[Endovelico]

[Endovelico]

[Torchwood]

Spot on, Der Spiegel, and if you read editorials in the Financial Times, they say much the same, but less eloquently. Conversely the crawling-to -the - bankers tone of the Economist is repellent, and one can hardly expect any better from the Wall Street Journal. This is no longer an issue between conventional left and right, the biggest opposition to the bailouts in the US came from the right; indeed the social democratic left tends to be more in awe and fear of the bankers.

If this farce continues, then the fear is that if popular anger gets no results through normal democratic channels, extremism will benefit: probably the neo-fascist right rather than the extreme left.

[Mr. Perfect]

I always enjoy TInker's rants about there being no such thing as socialism, or socialists, or communism, or communists, or whatever that is all about. Because the world is chock full of socialist and communist groups and parties trying very hard to be communists and socialists. Looks the the Portuguese ones just tool a loss. Sorry Endo.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13658998" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Socialist leader Jose Socrates said he accepted responsibility for the defeat and resigned as head of his party.

The victorious centre-right Social Democrats (PSD) led by Pedro Passos Coelho are expected to form a majority with the conservative CDS.

The new government must implement a demanding austerity programme as a condition for an EU bail-out.

Exit polls gave the PSD between 37% and 42.5% of the vote, ahead of the Socialists who scored between 24.4% and 30%.

[YMix]

Posts on European affairs go in this thread, Mr. Perfect.

[Endovelico]

[Endovelico]

Essential reading for all who are interested in European affairs and the financial crisis. Too long to post, so I will only give the link:

Will Greece Let EU Central Bankers Destroy Democracy?


By MICHAEL HUDSON

[YMix]

[Endovelico]

[noddy]

force their hand - with a cohesive independant spirit within your country, you pay them back on your sustainable terms and see what happens in terms of the passive agressive turning agressive.

doesnt sound like you have much to lose either way.

[Endovelico]

I used to wonder about the use of Madame la Guillotine during the French Revolution. It always seemed to me that the innocent were beheaded and the guilty walked free. But I'm starting to see that sometimes what matters is the beheading, not whether the guilty are caught or not.

[noddy]

i wonder why some of us are grumpy libertarians who prefer getting less from a smaller group than the sweet sounds of more from a larger grouping.

good test of portugal, our test will be coming when the we cant pay the chinese debt - my guess is we will roll over and give em all our assets :/

have been finding the EU stuff fascinating myself - a bigger more complex version of the state versus federal that plays out in usa/aus... just how much culture is really shared and how much remote authority scales to deal with maintaining peoples sense of ownership of the system.

[Endovelico]