"We are not anti-American, we want the real America, your America."
-- Former Danish Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, president of the European Socialist Party, to Howard Dean (Reuters)
OPORTO, PORTUGAL--Reuters is reporting that the dominant European Socialist Party, whose elected officials control just over half of the governments in the European Union, want to reforge security-ties with the United States--just not with the GOP. Beginning today, the party is holding a two-day conference in Portugal, and they are warming to Howard Dean and his Populist agenda as DNCC chairman--it seems Rahm Emanuel, Chuck Schumer, Joe Lieberman and Hillary Clinton weren't welcome. The reasons for this are clear--they are viewed as right-wing elements by European Socialist politicians who hold a significant-majority in Continental politics. Clinton was too-busy holding a press conference on violence in video games, while real people were out making history. Welcome to the new world, folks, and it's Socialist. More-and-more nations will continue to swing Leftwards, which can be viewed by American workers as a very hopeful-development indeed.
I know-I know, who doesn't want universal health care? Who doesn't want weekends-off, fewer work-hours, and more vacation and sick-time? Why, employers and dummies, of-course. For those of you out there who fear excessive-taxation, I ask you this: how many rich people do you know? Progressive taxation means they pay higher-taxes so we don't have to pay for everything, they do. They pay their share, or they face boycotts from all of us, and embargoes from worker-friendly governments, and even general strikes if we have to do it. Strangely, it could all come-down to Iraq, an illegal war. Most observers--myself-included--knew that this would all have to play-out, that it was a disaster from-the-start, but I would never have predicted it would increase the credentials of the Left globally. Neither did the rest our two-party system, and their quaking. Their bosses are scared that their time in the sun is over, as it is for all nations, eventually (read your Adam Smith).
This outcome was predicted before the war even began in European policy-circles. This is something the right in America has held-back with their irrational Red-baiting, and we can thank them for this result. They have blundered so-profoundly in their corrupt incompetence that they have insured many-more nations will move Leftward. Recently, Bolivia and Ecuador have. But the neoliberal policies (favoring World Bank and IMF loaning-policies that basically indentured nations to Western elites) of the Clinton years also insured most of this. Nonetheless, domination of Latin America by Europeans has been ongoing for nearly 500-years, and the election of Evo Morales in Bolivia (who is indigenous) is a watershed. Hopefully, it is the beginning of a permanent reversal of that trend. Cuba deserves their share of credit by simply holding-out against Washington and American elites--they showed it could be done. Mexico is also showing tendencies towards a move to the Left, including uprisings in Oaxaca and Chiapas.
Latin America has also had enough of a purely market-dominated world, and Populist governments are emerging almost monthly. It didn't all happen overnight, it took a lot of meddling and exploitation to foster these reactions, and the ongoing-efforts of Populist networks throughout the region. Tens-of-thousands of them were murdered by State Department policies from the postwar period until very-recently. Even with all the CIA-backed death squads, they just couldn't mend Humpty Dumpty, and our puppets were either voted or forced-out. Not even hundreds-of-millions in drug-interdiction funds to Colombia's oligarchs (dishonestly used for counterinsurgency) have made so much as a dent in FARC's control of the South.
But the reasons for the shift in Euro-American relations are simple, and can be summed-up in the results of the November midterm elections. The American public has had enough of the war in Iraq, and were always uneasy about it. With scandals coming day-after-day, and many of them being related to policies surrounding the conflict, a breaking-point was reached. The landslide routed the GOP's 12-year hold on Congress, and ended their hold on every branch of the Federal government--and left the Bush administration with virtually no allies whatsoever. This hold once enabled President Bush and his foreign policy team to run-roughshod over a number of EU nations, and in Italy and Great Britain, the neocons had Silvio Berlusconi and Tony Blair as their crucial allies.
Blair's support was especially crucial as a means of legitimizing the invasion, but with such revelations as Abu-Ghraib, torture, flouting of the Geneva Conventions, the missing $9 Billion, secret rendition programs in several EU nations, no WMDs, no coherent war-aims, an unwinnable conflict descending into civil war, and on-and-on, this legitimacy has finally eroded towards the point of lack. It seems calling European leaders 'cheese-eating surrender monkeys', and Europe in-general as 'Old Europe' (a very-serious insult to diplomats and politicians there), wasn't working to insure their cooperation and fraternity. Knowing nothing about diplomacy, the neocons simply threatened and badgered. It was all they had to offer.
Now that both houses of the legislative-branch are in Democratic hands, they feel there's an historic opportunity to recast these relationships in a positive and more-equitable direction that was unthinkable with the GOP. It is a development that Americans should find heartening, they still like us. They just knew we nearly had a total-coup here (still not out-of-the-woods yet). All of this is important due to the geopolitical-mess the Bush administration has created, and collective-security and diplomacy are crucial if we want to clean this mess up. It can only happen with genuine international cooperation, not one through coercion and brow-beating. That never works, and it never will. It has nothing to do with governance, and more to do with a seizure-of-power. Europe will expect us to deal with these criminals in our legal system. If we don't, they cannot trust us. Howard Dean is that leader who can accomplish this. He can still make a great President, it's up to him. BOO-YAHHH!!
BUCKAROO BANZAI & THE HONG KONG CAVALIERS:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061207/pl_nm/europe_socialists_us_dc
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/07/AR2006120701081.html
Forget the "L-word", Let's Say the "S-word":
http://clubs.ccsu.edu/recorder/editorial/editorial_item.asp?NewsID=107
What the Assholes (the right) are Saying:
http://www.theconservativevoice.com/article/20684.html
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