After a request by one of my readers, I have decided to write something about Germany, so that you, my readers from foreign countries, get to know more about the country of Bratwurst, Schnitzel, and Bier

If you only look at some key stats, Germany is still one industrial power economy today, as it exports almost 50% of what it produces in one year, and industrial goods make up 30% of the GDP. Growth per capita was sluggish during the last twenty years (around 1.5% on average), but it doesn’t look like a massive crisis. Debt is controllable, both private (100% of GDP) and government. Average unemployment decreased after some timid labor market reforms from over 11% to 7%. The “cash for clunkers” scheme was very successful and very popular. It increased car sales by 30%, I think. Of course, it only postpones the slump for a year, so the manufacturers are already preparing for a hard landing in 2010. Further, the “Kurzarbeit” has postponed the inevitable increase in unemployment numbers to next year.

As good as all of this might sound, the economic reality looks quite different, and much more depressing. Real GDP would have decreased in the last 6 years, were it not for massive increases in exports. Consumption is decreasing since 1997. In 2003, we shortly dipped into deflation, before exports pulled us out and prevented a Japanese-style economy. Unemployment numbers have been tweaked by the government multiple times, but one has to admit that Germany’s numbers were always higher than the OECD numbers. There’s is almost no short-term unemployment. Once you lose a job, you could almost retire in an instant (if you had the money), because it’s very difficult to find a new job, especially if you don’t have a useful university degree.

That is why the “Hartz IV” reforms have been so unpopular, because they decreased the benefits for the long-term unemployed. It was sadistic to reduce benefits without reforming the labor market to get people back into work. Well, there has been a timid reform, but it has only opened the opportunity to hire people on so-called “mini-jobs” (€400 per month), where you don’t have to pay payroll taxes. As a result part-time work has skyrocketed to almost 35% of all jobs, whereas full-time employment is steadily decreasing since decades. This means that it becomes ever more difficult to find a real job. There are people with university degrees who are looking for a job for over a year, and finally give up and work as a taxi driver or something else well below their abilities. And then there is the “brain drain”. Switzerland and Great Britain are popular places to go. I’ve chosen the first one

The political system is pathetic, because every of the five parties who are represented in the Bundestag are conformist, status-quo parties. We have two leftist social democratic parties: one is red, called the SPD, the other one is black (because it’s christian), called the CDU. Then there is the Greens (needless to say: lunatics), “The Left” (successor to the Eastern German communist party), and the slightly libertarian FDP. Some Germans are naive enough to vote vor the Christian Democrats hoping that they reform the country. But they reigned 1982-1998 without doing any reforms. Ironically, the only reforms that were ever done came from the leftist SPD-Greens coalition 1998-2005, which lowered taxes and introduced less regulated “mini-jobs”.

Two months ago, Germans elected the first “conservative” government (CDU and FDP) since 1998. Soon, media began talking about “social coldness” that will allegedly reign the country. They found this allegation on the fact that the new government thinks about halting any increases in payments to the sickness funds from the employers’ side. That’s all. No tax cuts, no spending cuts, no deregulation, liberalization, privatization whatsoever. It shows how afraid people are of reforms.

There are still other things to mention: The employment protection pretty much ruins the whole economy, though huge amounts of wealth going into the money-shredder called “pensions” and red tape everywhere certainly don’t help either.

As I wrote in one of my German posts recently, the German pension system is an utter mess. You pay 20% of your gross wage (10% each by the employer and employee) into it, and you get a promised return of 1% for the ones born before 1970, and probably zero or negative returns for all younger generations, though nobody can promise anything, because it’s a PAYGO system, i.e. Ponzi scheme.

The health care system was once relatively good, but it has turned into an unreformable pile of sh*t that is overregulated, without any competition, without market-based incentives, prices, or wages for the health care employees. Government tries to contain costs by reducing the income of doctors every year. German hospital doctors are now paid the same money as Greeks or Italians.

Universities are mostly public, overcrowded, underfunded, and rundown. Often there is only one professor for hundreds of students. Buildings are in decay. And the mean length of study for most master degrees is 7 years (5 years is regular), because students need several tries to pass exams. Those exams are really tough and students are badly prepared (I know it from personal experience). But hey, you only pay €150-500 per semester! You get what you pay for…

The politicians are all afraid of losing votes if they touch one of those serious issue, because they are considered sacred cows, i.e. allegedly social features that the majority of the society doesn’t want to have abolished. As a result, all political parties preach the same bullsh*t. They want to preserve all social features of the current system. They don’t even talk about some of the problems and how to solve them. If they dare to get into details, they’ll just say that the system needs more money. You won’t find a single person in the news talking about the real causes of our current problems, not even economists. It is hopeless. The entitlement thinking has spread like incurable cancer.

Regarding the TÜV (technical inspection association that validates the safety of many products; for instance, you have to have your car checked by them every 1 or 2 years), I can’t say much, because I know too little about them. But I doubt that the TÜV was involved in some kind of trade barriers against foreign car makers. Generally, it is much easier to import an American car into Germany than the other way round. The major factors that protected German car manufacturers from foreign competition were the import quota “agreements” with Japan in the 80s and 90s, and the government subsidies for Diesel fuel, which give Diesel powered cars a market share of 50% today (and the Japanese didn’t build Diesel cars until a couple of years ago, because there was/is no market for Diesel cars in the US or Japan).

Our gasoline is famously expensive, because we pay probably 80% taxes on it. First, there is the gas tax and then, absurdly, we pay sales tax on the sum of the original price and the gas tax. So we tax the tax, which was paid by taxed income, so we tax the tax the tax, which is really a hobby for the civil servants in this country. Have I mentioned that our civil servants cannot be fired?

Two thirds of Germans buy their cars as company vehicles because they are tax-deductible, and because buying a new car privately is increasingly unaffordable, as wages stagnate and car prices rise constantly. Our Autobahns are increasingly congested and speed limited, which is really annoying (on most Autobahns, you could comfortably drive at 120 mph, while most of the traffic does 90 mph). Repair works on Autobahns cannot be done during the night (causes: labor regulations, high wages for night work), so we get to enjoy massive traffic jams, which get longer every year. Building a couple of miles new Autobahn takes decades (no kidding). I don’t know how those repair works are done in the US, but here they close one direction and change the formerly three lines for one direction to two lines for each direction. Thereby, lines get as narrow as 2 meters, often not wide enough to safely guide a 1.8m wide car between the concrete wall on one side and the other cars in the lane next to you. That is really nerve-wracking.

So, what do Germans think of the USA? There are Germans who think of Americans as fat dumbasses who don’t even know where Europe is on a map. But there are also Germans who think of Americans as semi-fascists who are constantly at war and defend a coldhearted version of capitalism that exploits the common man. If this negative attitude towards Americans surprises you, remember that Germans sided with the French in 2002. This survey shows how many Germans don’t like the USA (it’s from 2007, so it might have gotten better because of Obama, with whom 80% of Germans fell totally in love):

A minority of us think that the USA is actually a rich country that should be a role model, at least in some points, for Germany (those guys and gals mainly vote for the FDP). However, we are constantly accused of wanting to emulate “American conditions” (kind of hard to translate, Deutsch: Amerikanische Verhältnisse). The idea behind this term is that the USA is a country without any kind of welfare system. According to what Germans get to see in TV news, the US government must spend all money on military and NASA. American capitalism is thought to be a coldhearted system with many booms and busts, constantly impoverishing large parts of society and causing high crime rates. If you show Germans the American GDP numbers, which are 30% higher than Germany’s, they will say that this is because the US has a hugely uneven income distribution and that the poorer Americans live an impoverished life, probably comparable to Eastern European countries.

So this is Germany. Still one of the twenty richest countries in the world, but who knows how deep this ship will sink. I certainly cannot recommend to move to Germany now, though I also cannot recommend to move to any other European country, with the exception of Switzerland and Luxembourg. Of course, it depends on where you come from. If you are not from a OECD country, chances are good that your home country will need at least 20 years to catch Germany, so you may come to Germany without hesitating.

Whew, that was a lot of text. If somebody got a question that was not answered by this text, please post a comment and I will try to answer it.

In case you don’t know him already, Uncle Jay makes short, 3 minutes long news clips every Monday. They are very funny, especially this one.

‘A little bit of disciplined historical imagination is all it takes to blow away enormous piles of so-called historical criticism.’

~ N. T. Wright, “Surprised by Hope” (when arguing that the disciples did not make up the resurrection of Christ).

I taught my girlfriend this word yesterday, and she thought it was the cutest thing ever. Today, she has called me “earthling” numerous times.

Governments around the world are picking up a fight against civilization. First there was the ban on incandescent light bulbs, now they are going to force us to buy flat-screen TVs that use less than half the amount of Watts than the current ones. According to activist governments like the one in California, we shall live in darker homes with dim flat-screen TVs until we get blind and can’t read the news, so that they can finally do whatever they want to.

New Zealand has already taken it one step further: Last year, the former Labour government planned to impose limits on water use in showers, as low as 6 liters per minute. Although, California can top this madness easily, for their politicians were so mad that they tried to ban the internal combustion engine (yes, that’s the thing that propels our cars) in 1969. Unbelievably, the Californian senate voted 26-5 for the ban. Then, thankfully the madness was stopped by the Californian assembly.

The green nazis will try everything they can to bring us back into the stone age.

Finally got some time to get this up and running again

grab it now!

http://batterypoweredgames.blogspot.com/2009/11/angstron-micro-edition-v11.html

“I did not see it at the time, but now I have the privilege of perspective. Whatever happened, it had to happen the way it did. It was God’s plan, and He works everything together for good.”

The preacher who asked us to rip our prayers said a similar thing yesterday as she was reflecting on her inability to have children. Perhaps I missed the point, but she seemed to be claiming that God had suppressed her desire for children because He had greater things in mind for her. Perhaps so.

But this kind of theological reasoning still worries me. It seems we will do everything to preserve the idea that God always gets his will even when the most horrendous and fearful things take place. When my father died, people said two different things to me. ‘It’s never easy to understand at the time,’ some would say, and I immediately picked up the implied suggestion that we would understand it later. Others, however, said something I consider much more comforting, even today, ‘It’s meaningless. It’s totally pointless, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.’ Amen.

The first caring person might have said what he said after having carefully thought about the problem of evil. ‘Surely, there must be a reason for all of this while the fact remains that we cannot see it now.’ The second explanation was way more pastoral, way more empathic. The person didn’t claim to have some kind of special insight about how these things work and made no inference that God willingly killed my Dad to bring about greater things.

The years have passed. Today, I’m a theology student. One might suggest that God killed my Dad to boost the spiritual journey that eventually led me here. The very idea is just appaling. So God killed one pastor in order to shape a new one? This does not comfort at all, it only brings about fear. I certainly hope I’m not going to stand in God’s way of achieving something, because then he might just kill me off. We have thus turned God into some kind of extremely utilitarian deity. “The ends justify the means” only works within boundaries. If a girl is raped and bodily dismembered, would you say it’s okay if it’s simply for “the greater good”?

There are other problems as well. What about the other people who suffered the loss of my father? Perhaps someone else would’ve had greater faith if he had lived? Who knows what might have happened? Even if God knows, we should never claim to have such divine insights. We should stay away from such speculative interpretations of our past or hypothetical present. Our pastors should stop claiming that God intentionally brings about disasters to produce good outcomes. I think it’s more likely that God unwillingly permits disasters and then intervenes to make the most of it. Sometimes, things turn out good in spite of the disaster.

It’s interesting, really, how far we’re willing to go to defend the lie that the will of God always happens. The very nature of sin should tell us that it doesn’t. The existence of the Devil implies that God’s will is not taking place. The prayer “your will be done” proves that it’s not something we should take for granted. So why are we going such great lengths to say that it does? I suspect the Devil is prompting us to blame God for everything.

Detail of Sakawa calendar

 

By Marleen de Witte

In the streets and homes of Accra, the impact of the global financial crisis appears slow. Analysts say this is due to the weak integration of the largely informal local economy with the global financial market. But this is not to say that people do not experience financial crisis.

They do. Many face a crisis of survival on a daily basis. People complain about the high cost of living, the escalating prices of food, fuel, and school fees. Without proper jobs or with salaries that are insufficient to pay for all living cost, many people struggle to get through the day. One real effect of the global crisis on ordinary Ghanaians’ lives is that remittances from relatives working abroad, who keep many families back home afloat, are coming down. But even so, there is nothing so new or extraordinary about this situation. This is not a ‘crisis unlike any we have seen in our lifetime,’ like Obama said about the crisis in America. As one Ghanaian web commentator put it: “As far as 80% of Ghanaians are concerned, there has been a credit crunch all their lives.”

The term “credit” traces its etymological roots to the Latin word credere, to trust, to entrust, or to believe. The credit crisis is also literally a crisis of trust, of belief. We have tended to trust the financial system of the neoliberalist economic order to the extent of taking it for granted as a self-regulating process. Now, with the collapse of banks like houses of cards, this taken-for-grantedness, this unquestioned belief in the value of money, has suddenly broken. In Ghana money has never been taken for granted, but instead is often highly mistrusted. People’s strong desire for wealth goes together with a deep-seated suspicion about the sources of wealth, especially if acquired suddenly and shown conspicuously. This suspicion of money finds many expressions, one of which is the urban legend of Sakawa that held the Ghanaian public in its grip when I was there last summer.

So-called ‘Sakawa Boys’ are a frequent appearance in the streets of Accra. Driving brand new luxurious cars that are far too expensive for their young age and donning flashy clothing styles that are obviously inspired by the American rap scene and its blingbling jewellery, they raise many a suspicious eyebrow. At night you see them hanging about in Internet cafes. How could such young boys lead such expensive lifestyles, especially without being engaged in any well-earning job, many people wonder.

The answer can be found in a wide range of media. Calendar-posters, tabloids, radio, television, video movies, and video documentaries expose in word, sound and image what happens in the darkness of the night and in the hidden shrines of juju men and mallams. These popular media sell like wildfire and Sakawa ‘news’ reporting has become a lucrative venture that blurs the boundaries between news and fiction.

Sakawa is a new term used to denote Internet fraud (also known as ‘419’) by young boys, mainly directed at white people overseas, and made successful with ‘occult’ rituals performed by indigenous shrine priests (popularly known as juju men) or Islamic mallams. These rituals range from sleeping in a coffin for several nights if not weeks, walking naked in a cemetery at night, or bringing hard-to-get-by offerings, such as menstrual blood or even human parts. The boys then receive a magical belt, which is in fact a snake, or a magical ring. Tapping the computer keyboard with the finger that wears such a ring sends the spiritual power right through the Internet connection to the email receiver overseas. The victim will then not be resistant to requests for sending large sums of money. Cash starts flowing, but not for long…

The video jacket of the video movie Sakawa Boys reads:

“In a quest to fulfil each other’s money problems, one old friend introduces them to a simple way to make quick cash. But forgetting the consequences behind this better shortcut, they live a very rich and prosperous life, until everything starts getting worse … “

Numerous cases have been reported in the media of Sakawa boys having turned deaf and dumb, gone mad, or, more dramatic, turned into snakes, dogs, vultures, or other creatures. Calendar-posters show their pictures, the eyes or other facial features of the boys photoshopped into the animals’ heads. “Don’t you see it’s really him”, people commented. Sakawa stories can easily be read as a critique on quick money. They express and also feed the suspicion that sudden and conspicuous wealth can be immoral, because it is acquired at the expense of others and also because it is used for individual pleasure instead of being socially distributed.

The stories confirm that such immoral wealth is ultimately unsustainable. In one scene in the film Sakawa Boys, one of the guys who has become rich through Sakawa ritual, opens the boot of his car to take out some money, only to find out that all the dollar bills he had packed in it have suddenly turned into blank, worthless paper. Baffled, he stares at the papers in his hands, unable to believe that what he had taken for granted as real money, and (relatively) hard currency too, turns out to be nothing at all. A bafflement that we have all seen on the faces of American bankers, stockbrokers, and other finance professionals. And that some of us have felt ourselves when we realized that our savings in Iceland or Wognum had suddenly evaporated.

Although there is no direct link between Sakawa and the global financial crisis and stories about ‘money magic’ date back much further, the parallels between the events in America, and elsewhere, and the current Sakawa hype in Ghana are not far-fetched. The central lesson of the credit crisis – that money, in whatever form, may not be what we believe it to be – has long been thematized in Ghanaian popular culture. Sakawa stories comment on the immorality and unsustainability of quick money, created by obscure or mysterious means – was it not the financial sector’s creation of virtual money that started the bubble that eventually burst? The stories also question the widespread dream of owning a big house and a hummer – also the middle-class American dream that lay at the basis of the current global crisis – and the evil that this dream can lead to.

Marleen de Witte is a postdoctoral researcher working at the department of social and cultural anthropology at the VU. She works on the NWO funded programme  ‘ Heritage Dynamics’.

IBFAN, The International Baby Food Action Network has been defending breastfeeding on an international scale since 1979.  If you are looking for some scientific data to boost your breastfeeding arguments, their site is fantastic.

This page gives a nice summary of the health advantages of breast-feeding for both mother and baby, touching on issues from bone density to ear infections, obesity to ovarian cancer. The information is not anecdotal. All claims are sourced from scientific journals and UN documents.

A couple highlights:

• Obesity: In a number of countries (Germany, Czech Republic, the UK, the USA) research demonstrates that breastfeeding reduces the risk of obesity and overweight.

• In Denmark a recent study confirmed that breastfeeding affected brain development as measured in the child’s ability to crawl, to grip and to babble in polysyllables: the longer the duration of breastfeeding, the higher the child’s capacities.

• Breast cancer: Studies from the US, China, Japan, New Zealand, the UK and Mexico show that women who breastfed their children have reduced risk of developing breast cancer and that the risk declines with increased duration of breastfeeding.

Tough to argue against that!

Explained by Sir Humphrey:

May I give an example more appropiate for our times: What cars do most people want? In Germany it’s Volkswagen and in the US it’s Toyota. Yet, what companies do we subsidize? Opel and Chrysler…

But subsidizing the market leaders makes, of course, no sense, either. They are already strong enough. As a result of this logic thinking, subsidizing makes no sense at all. You see, sometimes you can teach economics without teaching economics. You just need common sense.

The flu is closer at hand than ever before…
But it’s still okay to make jokes about it, right?

“Anthropology, the study of human cultures and societies, is exceptionally relevant as a tool for understanding the contemporary world, yet it is absent from nearly every important public debate in the Anglophonic world. Its lack of visibility is an embarrassment and a challenge” (Thomas Hylland Eriksen 2006, ix).

We, anthropologists from the VU took up this challenge three years ago with the organisation of a seminar entitled “beyond relativism”, with Thomas Eriksen himself as the chief guest and speaker. Since then we have made this into a yearly event. The main ambition of the yearly anthropology day is to use our anthropological knowledge to shed more light on topical issues or problems which are dominating public debates. Thursday, the 26th of November we will address the complex relations between religion and conflict. In public debate, religion – especially Islam – is considered a prime source and trigger of contemporary conflict. Plenty of anthropological research shows that such ideas make a caricature of reality and lack context. Then what do we have to say about that complex connection? How can anthropologists contribute to this fascinating and important theme?

Programme

A kick-off by Martijn the Koning and Johan Roeland about Dutch youth in search of a pure religion will be followed by lively debate. Three exciting workshops on Muslims in Europe, fieldwork in conflict situations, and the role of religion in the Middle East conflict will give ammunition for further discussion. The day will be concluded with a screening of film material shot by three former master students on their experiences as anthropologists in the field.

Lectures – workshops – debate – film – free entrance – drinks afterwards

Make sure you don’t miss it!

Venue: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Morning: Buitenveldertse laan 3, Metropolitan building, room Z-007 / Z-009 (ground floor, to the right of the main entrance)

Afternoon: Boelelaan 1081, W&N Building: C-648 / C-629 / C-640 (the long, low building behind the main building of the VU, 6th floor).

Bento #88 had almost been called Garbage Bento because that’s where it ended up… But such a name suggests the contents was a load of rubbish and that, of course, is not true. It just didn’t get eaten because I got sick in my stomach and couldn’t eat anything substantial. Because it got made, packed and brought to work on Tuesday it still is a bento worth mentioning though

Roasted pumpkin & radicchio with a rosemary-olive salsa (in container) and parmezan cheese, cream cheese & chives stuffed sweet paprika, dry roasted peanuts, gherkin, marinated olive and potato croquet. On the side some fresh mint and honey for tea.

CSA (& organic): pumpkin, radicchio.
Organic: black olives (salsa).

In just one hour I will be on a real Sunday Salon: a swap meeting of the Boekgrrls where we exchange copies that we no longer need. And talk about books of course. A LOT I’m just bringing a small pile and plan to take home even less

Biggest news of the week: yesterday I was surprised with the kind gift of Cloud Atlas — the music. I was at a loss for words when I got it. Especially since there was no reason to get any presents; my birthday is still a few months away and I am to old for Sinterklaas too Thank you so, SO much dear Else! The music is really beautiful. David Mitchell is one of my all-time favourite authors (if you didn’t know yet I will have to talk about the cd some more another time because otherwise I’ll be late for my meeting.

In the mail this week: The Decorative Art of Japanese Food Carving (Elegant Garnishes for All Occassions) by Hiroshi Nagashima, which I wrote about earlier. I just couldn’t resist Even though I usually refuse to buy cookbooks that are not completely vegetarian.

Finished reading: The Old Capital by Yasunari Kawabata. And I am definitely going to read more of this acclaimed author! It was really beautiful. I guess both Gail Tsukiyama (The Samurai’s Garden) and Ellis Avery (The Teahouse Fire) were influenced by Kawabata. Next read? I haven’t decided yet!

The Sunday Salon is a virtual gathering of booklovers on the web, where they blog about bookish things of the past week, visit each others weblogs, oh — and read

The political landscape has changed. The new communists are called “democratic socialists”, and the new socialists are called “social democrats”, or “liberals” in the English speaking hemisphere. I will now explain why:

The politics of the 20th century were dominated by the struggle between communism and capitalism. This struggle emerged as a result of the social tensions caused by early industrialization in the Western countries in late 19th century. When industries developed, many workers were dissatisfied with long working hours, demanding work under constant supervision, and few significant improvements in their living standards. Meanwhile, Karl Marx founded his theory of socialism/communism on false grounds concerning the value of labor and he also didn’t realize that a planned economy was not able to guide the actors in an economy to the best allocation of capital and labor, because, due to the absence of price signals, it lacks the necessary information about demand.

The second half of the 20th century proved socialism wrong. The former communists/socialists have become social democrats or “democratic socialists”, whatever that means. They reluctantly accept that capitalism is the only functioning economic system for human beings. So they focus on the question of the distribution of income instead. Mind you, there are no communists in the classic meaning anymore, i.e. who propose a planned economy with state ownership of the means of production, but that doesn’t mean that we are safer from the dangers of leftist policies today. Due to the acceptance of capitalism as a basis for modern society, the social democrats, democratic socialists, or liberals, whatever you want to call them, who were once the moderate left have become the new extreme left of politics.

However, the extreme left is not revolutionary anymore, because an alternative theory about economics and society to the mainstream neoliberalism doesn’t exist nowadays, and will probably not exist in the next decades. So what we basically have is a society that debates about different types of capitalism. The political left campaigns for massive income redistribution, which, ironically we already have in most Western countries. The norm is that the net contribution to government finances for almost 50% of the population is zero, once  you include the transfers from higher to lower income households).  Practically all taxes are paid by the upper 50% of society. Consider this: a democratic majority can vote for more taxes without having to pay for them! How is that going to end?

So, if we already have societies with huge income redistributions, what does the political left want to achieve in the future? You see, it’s a dead end, except for those countries, who still lag behind in redistribution and expenditures, e.g. Singapur and Hong Kong. In every other developed country, the goals of the political left have already been achieved during the last 50 years.

This brings me to the most important point: The political left is going to be the new conservatism. After it has reached the point where more redistribution is economically not feasible, they will defend their model, just like neoliberals defended capitalism against the leftists in the 20th century. I know, Milton Friedman said this already 40 years ago, but now it’s becoming true (Friedman was a little bit too early with his remark, because there was still much leeway for more income redistribution and rises in government expenditure). The important question now is: will the libertarian minded people get their act together and organize a large opposition to this new conservatism?

If we combine the two findings that I described above, we come to an astonishing conclusion: the left end of our current political spectrum can be called extreme conservatism. Let me show you that this is indeed a fitting term. The leftist politicians try to defend the established social economy/society against every possible attack. What are these attacks? For instance, as I wrote in one of my recent posts, socialized health care also has problems with overconsumption, and therefore exploding costs. In these systems the governments rule that all citizens have to eat healthier, do more exercise, and stop drinking and smoking, in order to keep health care costs low.

However, since citizens of a free society tend to show low compliance to unpopular rules, governments will have to actually observe, control, and punish people. And this is already happening. Just take a look at Japan, New Zealand, Australia, or Britain. The term “food police” will be familiar with citizens of those countries.

It isn’t really different with economic policies of the left. The biggest risk for their social economy/society is globalization. Globalization puts pressure on unproductive parts of the economy. The lack of productivity mostly stems from overregulation of labor markets and financial markets, or from high taxes and large social expenditures. That is why they try to prohibit international tax competition, free trade, and deregulation of economies, by proposing some bullsh*t like Fair Trade, or common social standards (which include a mandatory minimum level of taxation and social expenditure) across the European Union, for instance.

So, as you can see, leftist politicians try to preserve their social policies with authoritarian rules. That is why extreme conservatism is indeed such a perfectly fitting term for them. You could even go so far to say that their extreme conservatism is not unlike the fascism of old days, which also tried to “preserve” society by isolating itself from international competition and by introducing authoritarian rules over their citizens. However, high living standards have led to indifference about politics in our societies, which is why politics are not as radical as they were.

What about the political right? As already mentioned above, they were once the conservatives who defended the achievements of the 19th century (capitalist economy, libertarian society) against socialism during most of the 20th century. Today, they are very much erratic, because the political spectrum has turned 180 degrees and they don’t know what to do now. Once again, the growing indifference about politics in society helps to reduce radicalism, but thereby it also becomes harder to fight for libertarian reforms, which the political right should do right now. As can be observed throughout the world, most right-wing parties are rather centrist, and thereby also part of the new authoritarian conservatism. In some countries like the USA they mix it with religious conservatism in order to distuingish themselves from the leftist parties.

The logical consequence of the current situation in the political spectrum is that society will have to become more radical once again before we can expect some reforms. Radicalism is created by social and economic unrest, which will indeed become reality, if the current economic problems are not solved in the near future.

We are a multi-lingual, multi-cultural group, which gives us even more opportunity to share information with all Moms.  We will provide links to websites in both English and Castellano and provide a translated summary of the most important articles that we find in English that aren’t available here in Spain.

If you are looking for information on a particular topic, please let us know in the comment section.  Between the various English and Spanish speakers in the group, we should be able to find a book, website or article to address your needs.   Your imput will be especially important as this blog develops.  Looking forward to hearing from you!

To much annoyance I’ve been singing “Hello, hello” to Serina lately. This is where it comes from…

Interesting documentary on Monday 23 November at 20.55 hrs on Dutch channel 2

Door Maaike Matelski

Kill one person, and you’re a murderer. Kill many, and you become a hero. It is this type of global injustice that the International Criminal Court was set up to prevent. The court, which is functioning since 2002, has the mandate to prosecute genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. It is the first international body that can legally hold accountable sitting heads of state, as became clear when an arrest warrant was issued against Sudanese president Al Bashir earlier this year. At the moment, the first trial is ongoing and more trials are on their way, all of which deal with crimes committed in or around central Africa. Meanwhile, the court has been increasingly criticised for its selection and timing of arrest warrants. One of the main questions is whether the court’s focus on justice can sometimes stand in the way of peace. This debate is particularly important in Uganda, where arrest warrants were issued against leaders of the notoriously violent rebel group The Lord’s Resistance Army in 2004. The ICC has made little visible progress in Uganda since the start of its investigations. Meanwhile, the LRA has found a scapegoat in the ICC which they hold responsible for the lack of progress in their peace talks with the Ugandan government. Is the ICC always acting in the best interest of the victims? Should it adapt its strategy to opinions on the ground? Can it maintain credibility if it holds off investigations to give room for local solutions? These issues are addressed in the documentary ‘Peace versus Justice’ which will be broadcasted Monday 23 November on Dutch television.

Maaike Matelski is a PhD student at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology.