EU horsetrading over peanuts
1150: The most powerful politicians in Europe are meeting in Brussels, facing what they call "one of the most important changes the EU has ever faced".
There have been mutterings for months that, faced with this immense crisis, the EU should have been bolder, braver and come up with big plans. This summit is an object lesson why that just isn't realistic.
Faced with the immense challenges before them what have these busy leaders spent their time doing? Arguing about how exactly to fund and spend the EU's own money (OK, it's all taxpayers' money in the end, but this is being spent at an EU rather than national level), designed to stimulate Europe's economy.
It amounts to a pretty measly 5bn euros scraped together from down the back of the sofa: peanuts when spread over the EU's 27 countries.
Yet they wrangled and argued for hours about how to carve up the cash. The money will be spent on energy projects, particularly green ones, and new internet connections.
The result is a 12-page document of mind-boggling complexity ("1.020 mil., which would be financed exclusively within heading 2. Eur 600 mil. Would be covered by the 2009 margin under the ceiling of Heading 2").
Everybody gets a piece of the pie. The Nabucco pipeline project, which Germany was blocking, is back in. In return the Germans get a form of words that suggests German Telecom may get preferential, indeed protectionist, treatment in providing internet connections to rural areas. ("Various cooperative arrangements between investors and access-seeking parties to diversify the risk of investment should be permitted," if you really want to know.)
There's the "small isolated islands initiatives" for Cyprus and Malta, an interconnector for a liquid gas terminal for Poland, an Oxyfuel carbon capture project for Spain and so on.
We in the UK get an electricity connection between Ireland and Wales, an offshore wind farm near Aberdeen and four carbon capture projects. Think what it would be like if the EU had serious money to spend.
I’m Mark Mardell, the BBC's North America editor. These are my reflections on American politics, some thoughts on being a Brit living in the USA, and who knows what else? My 
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~38~RS~)
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I don't get it - sounds like quite an expensive meeting - what value did the EU meeting add to this spending?
And where did the money come from? Is there more taxpayers money sitting in EU coffers waiting to be found and spent? What was it raised for in the first place? how did they justify it at the time?
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"Everybody gets a piece of the pie. The Nabucco pipeline project, which Germany was blocking, is back in"
Although this pipeline is important for EU energy security, surely in the long term it is much more sensible to invest in major carbon capture coal, renewable power stations on a grand Europe wide scale? (Rather than the odd wind farm project for Scotland etc)
EU policy should attempt to move our continental energy supply away from oil and gas which comes from outside the European continent, as this exposes us all to future political problems that at the moment we cannot forsee. Surely major renewables and carbon capture projects (no comment on nuclear energy, not really got a possition on that) will help to make the EU self sufficient in energy supply?
"In return the Germans get a form of words that suggests German Telecom may get preferential, indeed protectionist, treatment in providing internet connections to rural areas."
Such a stipulation is a fundamental attack on the founding prupose of the EU, to create a free market and remove barriers to trade and protectionism in all of its forms.
To me, as a europhile, I see this as highly questionable.
"We in the UK get an electricity connection between Ireland and Wales, an offshore wind farm near Aberdeen and four carbon capture projects."
This is practical and desirable. The wind farm project will provide construction work for the UK in a time of recession, and the electricity connection between Ireland and Wales does sound good, but if anyone can help me, what would this achieve? Why should we applaud this specific development? (genuine question with no agenda attacked)
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"The most powerful politicians in Europe are meeting in Brussels, facing what they call "one of the most important changes the EU has ever faced".
This paragraph, and the analysis that follows, encapsulates in a few words much of the ongoing conundrum for the European Union.
The most powerful politicians in question were of course the leaders of respective member (Nation) state governments.
Their apparent lack of dynamism, in response to the growing economic crisis, is highlighted, yet this crisis is global in scale and therefore effectively outside the remit of individual National governments, acting is isolation, to manage/shape. Previous entries in this blog have drawn attention to the lack of an integrated European institutional framework capable of acting decisively, legitimately and coherently. The fracture lines of potential dispute are all too easy to spot; individual member (Nation) states making up the Union.
All of this points to one inescapable conclusion. It is the absence of a legitimate, directly accountable arena of European governance that lies at the heart of the Union's inability to act decisively.
In short member (Nation) states still, when push comes to shove, call the shots and act accordingly. Each party (Nation) to the negotiation hunkers down and argues specifically for their piece of the action, to satisfy the ultimate demands of individual national electorates.
It is the EU's hybridised form of institutional architecture that lies at the heart of this problem, delivering bad governance outcomes - indecisive, late, fragmented and disjointed, seeking to appease everyone but actually failing to address the issue in question - and this happens again and again - "fudge" is a word synonymous with the EU's decision making process and with good reason.
How might this crisis (of governance) improve - easy to say but given the sacrosanct nature of the Nation State, almost impossible to implement?
A pragmatic, rational and objective realignment of political power, with the emergence of an exclusively European polity, charged with the task of controlling and directing the EU's political response to portfolios of exclusively European resonance, directly accountable to the citizens of Europe to hire or fire at their discretion, through the tried and trusted medium of the ballot box.
Maybe I'll live to see that day, but I'm not holding my breath?
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Mark
Think what it would be like if the EU had serious money to spend.
Do you mean the increased squabbling (and fallout there of) or increased numbers of projects which on the face of it seem worthwhile (which would bring benifits to us all)?
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i think the party is over.. now to the barricades :)
Mark, everybody is saying that EU is far worse, and that EU leaders are leaders in denial.
The EU cannot do anything, because if they could, they would, but they cann't. Not EU leaders are incompetent, but also by impotent.
If this EU politicos were smartest, we would not be in this mess, but we are because of them, and now we want them to take us out of this mess, but they cann't. They would have done the smartest decision long time ago, right investments, funding right projects, so today we would be not in this hostage-taken situation. But they cann't and they are impotent.
It is very simple to get out of this financial crisis.. but lets see if the self-proclaimed elites can think of it or discredit themselves for who they really are.
The sceptics are on the side lines and watching the smart guys, when they will cry for help.
Mark, what is the exposure of EU?
maybe many bloggers here dont know, but the ECB has already printed and is printing billions of Euros, and now they are ready to disclose it like they now will start to print. So, that debt buying countries like China will be faced with an already done deal fact, and not able to counter react on time.
One example is that the ECB indirectly paid Ukrainian gas debt to Russia by newly created money, Baltics, Hungary, Romania, etc are doing the same.
That is dangerous in itself, since it will disrupt the markets even futher.
If you do something today, you do it by thinking to the future implications and insulating yourself from the negative side of it.
if ECB or FED print more money that will effectively create inflation in the future, but people start preparing to protect themselves from today, so when future comes, they will be better off. Therefore effectively we will see the interest rates rise soon.
But we have the Eastern Europe, if we print more Euros for them, then it will not only create inflation for euro, but also for their currencies more, therefore it will degenerate the crisis to a full blow up.
The biggest question is, how do you create jobs for people?
by injecting money?
and this will be the biggest challange,...
the EU leaders lack the IDEAS, they cannot imagine.. no imagination.. what to do, no creativity.. they just think as they are used to think, and they cannot think else, or different.
they want to copycut from past models
they want the circle to continue.
now not only they have no time but no money as well.
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Mark
Think what it would be like if the EU had serious money to spend.
___________________________
Mark, they will missuse it as they already have done.. and are doing..
always involved in 't'junction projects,ideas,investments,etc.
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The comment misses the point. The 5 billion is unspent money which would normally return to the coffers of Member States.
Think of the EU budget as a very small common household pot (capped at 1.4% of GNP) into which all contribute in accordance to means and make withdrawals according to need! The haggling is about the assessment of need. If all Member States do not benefit to some extent, the willingness to contribute at all would be called into question. The richer Member States, and notably the country (Germany) that ends up with about 50% of any net cost (i.e. netting out payments and recipts), are perfectly aware that they might be better off funding the expenditures themselves. But any coordination and common EU interest e.g. energy connectors would be lost.
That the package could be agreed is evidence of the strenght of the EU, not its weakness. It also, of course, helped resolve a major internal political dispute with regard to the Nabucco pipeline.
It is to be hoped that later posts will concentrate on the real substance of the meeting.
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"We in the UK get an electricity connection between Ireland and Wales, an offshore wind farm near Aberdeen and four carbon capture projects. Think what it would be like if the EU had serious money to spend."
We in the UK are a Net Contributor to the EU so we are simply getting some of our own money back. Just think what it would be like if we could spend our own money on our own priorities.
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Maybe some here may skip it,
but printing money has already been done long time ago by ECB and the FED, they waited for it to see the effects, but they couldnt see any improvment, so they decided to announce it, so to see the effect they are waiting for..
how can you notice it?? look at the prices of consumer products.. they are increasing.. now there are also other prices like houses in deflation, but we so some increase in housing because of this new money.. and the gas crisis was solved by this way, and bailouts are done this way.
Now imagine Banks are writing down, every business is writing down.. but so should do the countries which are affected, and they will write down also.. so countries are less valued.. but where the countries find the money?
they print it
can the banks do the same.. and instead of writing it down, just print it.
yes, the ECB and FED are doing it for them.
but the ECB and FED can mantain the book value, but they cannot mantain the real market value.
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(same as FED) The ECB through the EU leaders have centralised and monopolised the 'financial rights' of all EU citiziens. We have financial rights and our financial rights are stolen, thus we have no rights at all.
they control our freedom, and they are playing with our freedom.
AIG had to pay EU banks, because these EU banks were bust and they are very exposed not only to Eastern Europe, but also to US.
And what does this means?
Now they just inject money to make markets green.. if it is printed or taxpayers it doesnt matter anymore.. its worthless..
some destroyed Europe physically, but some will destroy it financially
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Having spent the last couple of years - with others - trying to counter eurosceptic arguments with rational ideas rather than idealistic claptrap, I am profoundly disappointed in the cobbled together, miserly, dismal proposals that have emerged from this school yard wrangling. It's bad enough that the best they can do is '5bn euros scraped together from down the back of the sofa' (beautifully put). That they want to spend a large lump of it digging up Germany to lay cables when all you have to do is rent a dongle from your mobile company to get broadband is mind bogglingly trivial. Those of us who believe in the European project will come away from this experience convinced that we cannot progress further without leadership of decisiveness, vigour and vision. In other words, a completely new generation since this lot are simply not up to muster.
By the way, where was the saviour of the planet while all this was going on? Not one soundbite? Not even a whimper of protest? Rather than facing up to the public, it seems that the enfeebled Jedi master is content to simply fade away into the Scots mist.
It is to be hoped that the electorate Europe wide will use the forthoming EP election as an opportunity to give the EU political establishment a damned good hiding. So yes, bring on all the crazies - The No2eu party (See Andrew Neil HERE), Veritas (and Mark HERE). Let's get a few nationalists in there, some Basque separatists - in fact anybody so long as the political establishment gets the message loud and clear. Enough is enough - especially when it amounts to not a lot.
The sceptics are very fond of pointing out here - incorrectly as it happens - that the Parliament is nothing more than a toothless talking shop. Very well - make use of it to tell the people who hold the real power exactly what you think of them. There is nothing wrong with the European project that ridding ourselves of this bunch of talentless ne'er do wells cannot fix - assuming, that is, we survive the crisis.
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BBC news Europe today:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7954811.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7954985.stm
what is the point
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#10 - karolina001 wrote:
"The ECB through the EU leaders have centralised and monopolised the 'financial rights' of all EU citiziens."
You just don't get it do you? The ECB is nothing to do with the EU. It is independent and it's authority is restricted to monetary policy within the Eurozone - not the EU in exactly the same way as the BOE or the Fed. Fiscal policy, on the other hand is the province of individual member states' governments. Your views you are entitled to. Deliberately misleading is another matter.
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@karolina001!
I much prefer the EU leaders to spend a little money well than throwing hundreds of billions of Euros away in the worst style of the spendthrift profligate US govenment or UK government. Compare the less than 5 billion EUR authorised (it is money that was saved from previous budgets) to the 180 billion USD the American have so far thrown away on AIG plus several hundred million USD on private American banks such as Citicorp, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan et al., which monies will have to be borrowed from the European Banks and the Chinese banks which therefore will be denied to EU borrowers.
Its good to see the German authorities insisting on proper management of monies which ultimately all have to come from taxpayers' pockets, both corporate and individual. The Americans financial authorities are proposing even more wasteful spending on their bankster gamblers. Why? because the individuals concerned come from the same fast easy bucks environment.
Germany and several other countries are demanding that the entire financial sector is governed by proper, secure, ruthless regulation and supervision of all the financial markets and instruments, so as to be able to identify high risk players/institutions, control and contain them to limit the damage they can cause and make that knowledge public and transparent on the basis of cave emptor: buyer beware!
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So, all peanuts, wrangled over by heads of national governments - so much for the eurosceptic claims that this is a superstate!
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@ Karolina001 6
"Mark, they will missuse it as they already have done.. and are doing..
always involved in 't'junction projects,ideas,investments,etc."
Don't be so quick to condemn investment projects, that is unless you are a subscriber to a new-rightist doctrine of 'way- forward' orientations. Then I can see why major investment projects and similar 'expansionist' policies concerning spending would concern you. But for me, I don't mind in the least if the EU launches 'projects, ideas..' that would bring forward the strategically vital gas pipeline or the wind farm development.
This is to my mind a vital investment in the entire European Union economy. But then again, I'm used to being thought of as a 'wet' (i'll never be 'one of us', rather the Reform Group...)
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"..5billion: Peanuts when spread over the 27 EU nations.."
Surprise, surprise! "...they wrangled for hours about how to carve up the cash.."
The ridiculously weak, vacillating and ill-judged response of the EU hierarchy to the Economic Crisis facing its membership is a classic expose of all the so-called benefits the pro-EU lobby have been proclaiming turning out to be its EUrocratic achilles heel.
'Strength through unity': The big4, UK-Germany-France-Italy have all taken care of their own economies first.
'Pan-European structures': This crisis has shown again the ineffectiveness of wholly inept one-size-fits-all EUrotocracy Federalist policies.
'EU collective agreement ensures parity': The crisis has highlighted the dangers of the EU to the longterm prosperity of the UK and all mainland Europe. A Federal EU is too large, too slow, too costly, too unresponsive for the needs of individual Nations and Citizens.
'The EU Parliament represents the European Citizens': Has anyone looked at its Debates since the turn of the year? Do MEPs even know there's a worldwide economic collapse underway!?
The EU is talking "..peanuts.." because that is about all the venal, corrupt, undemocratic edifice is worth in reality.
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#14 - mikewarsaw
I entirely agree that German insistence on proper and enforceable regulation is to be welcomed and I have some sympathy with the view that US and UK actions may be seen with hindsight and extravagant and imprudent but 5 billion for heaven's sake. It's derisory. If this was not so serious, I would be rolling around in the aisle.
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@ 18
"but 5 billion for heaven's sake. It's derisory."
Its certainly less than hoped for, however there are some successes in this, most importantly, (and as I was arguing for last night), the pipeline and other construction projects have been brought forward rather than be cancelled. Vital keynesian style expenditure on projects that will help reduce unemployment rather than ignore it all.
So, I'd hoped for more - but the essentials of what I for one sought are all present, the only thing I can't say I liked at all was the naked cave-in to German demands for protectionist concessions (which is what that wording essentially adds up to). This is at odds with my europhile views, it stabs the heart of the project, but is not the end of the world I suppose.
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I'm surprised that Germany has agreed to the Nabucco pipeline project, how are the German political elite going to explain this to their Gazprom overlords?
Anyway I find the €5 billion plan to be inadequate although the projects themselves are fine (they're both creating jobs and doing something about the 'upcoming' energy problem) the amount of money their spending is pathetically low.
The inefficiency within the EU is becoming a huge problem thanks to the inadequate institutions which needed to change a decade ago.
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The present EU debate is quite normal then. They chew on a gnat, and swallow a camel.
Let's get out from under. There are too many layers of political bureaucracy weighing us down, and we, the UK voters, don't even trust the top ( ie EU ) layer.
Only then can we sing with real gusto "Britain never never never shall be slaves!". Tra-la !
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The way I see it, Germany got it's way. They didn't want any EU (read German-funded, in the main) money to be spent on "supporting" national measures. I assume MS Merkel fought hard to make it as difficult as possible for those nations seeking an EU/German budget boost.
I hope that's the way it was - but I'd love it to be so.
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#19 - deanthetory
That was the quid pro quo. Germany gets its broadband infrastructure but concedes the pipeline. The rest of us get royally taxidermised.
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"Think what it would be like if the EU had serious money to spend."
But the EU does have serious [taxpayers'] money to spend and a great deal of it is squandered.
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21. At 5:49pm on 20 Mar 2009, newsjock
Only then can we sing with real gusto "Britain never never never shall be slaves!". Tra-la !
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SuperMac realised in the fifties that the EU (EEC as then) was the direction to move in. The empire is dead, and Britannia has retired. Get over it all.
The EU is where we trade with the most (over 30% by now), it provides us with human rights legal protections (that is until europhobes in my own party end this possitive), it also provides (at present over 1 million UK citizens ar aborad) with the right to work aborad across the continent. Please tell me why the EU is "holding us down", (by "us" do we read "nostagic imperialists?").
But to threnodio, yes- institutional reform is despirately needed, this is why the Lisbon treaty was so important. But guess who were responsible for blocking that one? (the French, Dutch then Irish- all stirred but by pathetic europhobic rants about EU-anti-democracy etc)
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To threnodio (11):
Wireless networks can never match the power of wired networks. A 3G wireless Internet connection is more or less useless as its speeds in reality can't be guaranteed and with heavy congestion in the cell you are in, your speeds will drop dramatically.
Laying down fiber optic cables on the ground is a sensible thing to do. In longer time span by going from normal 1Mbs connections to 100Mbs or Gigabyte connections becoming average, a range of new application can be introduced that will benefit the growth of the economy by increasing and making production more efficient.
For example, just try to stream real time HD quality broadcast with a 3G connection, it just doesn't fly.
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"Think what it would be like if the EU had serious money to spend."
Er ... it would be like the US Congress with its special projects?
'Twas ever thus and 'twill ever be thus.
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Mark Mardell wrote: "It amounts to a pretty measly 5bn euros scraped together from down the back of the sofa: peanuts when spread over the EU's 27 countries.
Yet they wrangled and argued for hours about how to carve up the cash. The money will be spent on energy projects, particularly green ones, and new internet connections."
Hang on there. It may seem like a small amount of money, but you must consider the context. Governments usually have to prepare a budget of many billions, however that budget is nearly entirely spoken for. Every detail of the national budget is scrutinized by the opposition, and also by other factions within the governing party. So on a national level, there is not so much wiggle room for the leader and his cronies to push funding towards very special friends who manage very special projects. most of the money spent in national budgets goes to established departments, and what is left over is open to intense scrutiny by the press, by lawyers from the opposition, and by watchdogs within the party who seek ammunition to organize leadership coups.
It is not so easy to push national spending towards pets.
EU spending, however, is pretty much free money. No national press or national courts can bring any investigation to bear upon the spending of EU money. As numerous audits have found, the EU simply doesn't keep detailed records of its procedures or its programs. And so the net result is that the leadership of the national governments can push EU spending towards very special friends, and there is simply no way they can be caught out.
This is where the advantage of having europe wide political parties, at the same time as having only nation wide anti corruption mechanisms, comes into its own. Consider the following scenario: The christian democrats in france are headed by gentleman A. Now gentleman A is receiving huge political sponsorship from corporation B, which is owned by gentlemen C. So Gentlemen A can;t just give huge new contracts in france to gentlemen C via corporation B, because some nosey reporter would find out, and so would the opposition.
So what Gentlemen A does is meet with Gentlemen D from Poland, and arrange for Gentlemen D to push an EU project to corporation B, thus ensuring gentlemen C makes vast profits, and so has his due reward for sponsoring gentlemen A in the french elections.
In return, gentlemen A in france pushes his slice of the EU pie to gentlemen E, who owns corporation F, which somehow gets a massive EU contract on France.
This is what happens when you have government operating in the shadows, and the shadows cast by the EU are very long indeed. This is why the EU is so desperate to avoid a parliament with any power, and why the commission has been controlled by the two biggest pan european parties since its very beginnings.
If he EU were governed by elected officials, the party to whom these officials belonged could be brought down by scandal, and courts could find corruption.
The EU has absolutely no mechanism to bring down the CDP or the SDP, and it intends to have no such mechanism. That is, if you follow, rather the whole point.
5 billion is not so much money when compared to a national budget, but when you consider that it is money that can be spent behind closed doors, without accountability of any kind, by the ruling elite of a few national political parties, it is a very big deal indeed.
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#25 - deanthetory
If you will permit, you have made an error but at the same time hit the nail on the head. What the French and the Dutch rejected was the proposed constitution. Only then did they come up with the notion of Lisbon. Because it was a treaty, not a constitution, it did not have to be put to the popular vote. (At the same time, the authors turned what was a fairly straight forward document into a mass of legalese in order the muddy waters). Only the Irish have had a referendum on Lisbon.
However, this is exactly the point. By using a device to circumvent the democratic process, the current leadership simply underlined what is wrong with the current EU. It is not the idea or the institutions. It is the quality and vision of the incumbent leaders who appear to me, almost to a (wo)man, a bunch of second raters. Not only that but two of the big players have to submit themselves for election in the coming 15 months and at least one of them (no prizes) will lose the election even quicker than he lost the plot. Small wonder they are electioneering instead of playing statecraft. On a fine day with three years still in office, Merkel would cheerfully have conceded the pipeline (or an alternative route from Russia avoiding Ukraine) but no, there is an election coming up so she plays hardball. If his approval rating had not slumped and his industrial relations were not in turmoil, Sarkozy would never have allowed himself to be seen as the bad boy of Europe (see next thread), if there was not an election in the UK shortly, Cameron would not be cosying up to the European hard right to placate potential UKIP defectors and Brown would be quietly getting on with saving the UK economy instead of trying to save the world. But, hey, when you know your numbers up, its wise to line up your nice lucrative little number on the world stage in advance.
Unfortunately, Europe is currently full of politicians and not a statesman amongst them. Time to move on methinks - starting with the EP elections.
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#26 - Jukka_Rohila
Yes of course - it's rubbish compared with a wired network. Every German should have one and I am sure you are as delighted as I am that the EU tax payer is going to make it possible.
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threnodio and Comment 29.
"Unfortunately, Europe is currently full of politicians and not a Statesman amongst them.
Time to move on methinks - starting with the EP elections."
To take and slightly paraphrase something you kindly used elsewhere:
Whilst I would want to see a different result than yourself I do entirely agree with your idea.
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as a small note Russia isn't cataleptic about Nabukko; it's long considered a deal done. Though of course would be lovely to avoid competition somehow, but prevailing views are it's unavoidable.
By now Nabukko viewed in ? like? weather category. That you can't do anything about. Having said that, we still console ourselves with "let them build the tube, anyway there won't be gas to fill it."
The EU, apparently, :o) views the combination from the other angle.
Let there be a tube first! when there is a vacant tube - those willing to sell gas via it will appear!
Hard to say which approach is correct. Kind of, a vacant new tube indeed simply calls for gas to be in it. Where there is a tube there is a way.
On the other hand, you know. Building a tube without gas contracts to fill it at some point, an expensive enterprise.
a question of what is first, chicken or eggs, kind of; future will tell. Angela Merkel can be both German-prudent-economical, and indeed German contracts with gazprom protecting. What goes if goes via Nabukko - is lost gas transit fees via German land, Nord stream pipe arriving to them.
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Hi alice, glad you brought up the pipeline thing. I note today that Turkey has been forcing school children to learn that the armenian genocide never happened. So this is the same turkey that is a preferred partner for the EU, in terms of energy security. A nation that is turning Islamic fundamentalist before our eyes, and which would almost certainly enjoy having its hands on the gas tap for the EU. Oh well, such is the price of being Russo-phobic.
On a more optimistic note, Arshavin is doing very well. His wonder goal against Blackburn rovers has convinced everyone he is at least a minor god in the football world. If his wife can shut up about English women being fat and ugly, I can see him becoming a great benefit to UK- Russian relations.
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Sitting in the United States, what we've been hearing from years from Europe is that they aren't the US. This means no free-for-all capitalism, health care is provided by the government, stay out of non-European military adventures, protect workers from cheap foreign labor, etc. Now, somehow, some politician in Europe is supposed to have a transcendental vision. In more comfortable times, a politician with vision is scary.
From 1995 (the arrival of the Internet as a consumer service) business and social paradigms have been shifting more or less relentlessly, not only in the Western world, but in China, India, Russia, and Africa. While the overall reality has shifted, most workers (say, factory workers, farmers, teachers, and sales clerks) have sailed on with little regard or concern for these events. If you have a job, you’re fine, if you don’t, you’re hoping for a break with the understanding that the job you’ll eventually get 'looks like' something that one would have done in the 1970's or 1980's: make cars, sell clothes, drive trucks, fish, or farm.
If you were entering the University in 1994, there was no such thing as a web page designer, but by 1996, there were hundreds of thousands of people setting up web pages either for hire or for their own nascent business or agendas. The idea of page layout and user interface and graphics design would be something the parents of your best friend worked on, the ones that did classified advertising for the paper. As a 12-year-old returning to class in 1986, the idea that you would do such a thing for a living would be inconceivable.
Along with the web page design came the business of setting up server farms, with the network administration; running fiber optic cable; designing databases; or programming. Obviously there were spy satellites, but who (and why) would be looking at satellite images over the Internet? Cell phones were emerging as a technology in the 1990s, but that was for talk. Texting, buying ring tones, social networks, what is all this stuff?
While a vast technological infrastructure crystallized in the global economy, people continued to make cars (far more efficiently), build houses (faster, better, cheaper), fill their stores with clothes and TVs and washing machines from China, and fly around to places that had either been off-limits (Eastern Europe) or out of reach for the typical wage earner. Without understanding how much easier it was to make and distribute this vast array of consumer goods, people continued to make investments in an environment of obscene glut. Once the creditors realized their principal was at risk, they pulled the plug.
What has been demonstrated is that there are too many people in many occupations, and almost none in others. It is very difficult to hire a database administrator or computer programmer in the United States. There are a whole raft of other occupants that have long training periods: nurse, technical writer, technical sales representative, petroleum engineer, etc. where employers are desperate to find anyone at all. In the 1960s a high school degree was sufficient to find work, by the 1980's a well paying job could be had with that plus the two year junior college degree (Associates), and an MBA paid real money. To a large extent none of this means anything anymore, it becomes necessary to prove that one has mastery of some obscure technology, which might be as simple as setting up virtual servers or as complicated as engineering a biorefinery.
Perhaps more succinctly, it means being able to describe a concept using a piece of software, whether it’s a CAD drawing, musical composition, picture, schedule, budget, or project. Once this abstraction has been expressed through this designer, it is necessary to render an expression of it, whether this is a physical part, art performance, corporate restructuring, or financial service. When dealing with, for example, renewable energy systems, this means continually monitoring equipment for breakdown, applying accumulated knowledge of network dynamics to load balancing, and to working with municipalities and regulatory authorities in removing capacity bottlenecks. This is very high level work which has traditionally be assigned to people that were in some form of ‘elite’: the people that owned factories or City finance wizards or lawyers or civil engineers. Much of this is now 'democratized' and is left in the hands of people that might have finished high school but not necessarily a four year college/university degree.
Someone in Paris clerking at a furniture store and spending the evening at the Café with neighbors and friends is going to have a severe mental block sitting at a blank screen. The town you live in is to be savored, not messed with. You run the stamping machine, you don’t design the dies. You sell furniture, you don’t design the interior of someone's house. And so on.
This is true regardless of whether one lives in the US, India, China, or anywhere in Europe. It was the habit of Europeans to resist 'Americanization' in the 1960s and 1970s, with the advertising, fast food, consumer culture, etc. At this point, it could be called 'Technicalization', and Americans are just as resistant as anyone else. A lot of teachers in the US are livid at having to master anything more on the computer than email, word processing, and spreadsheets.
The global citizen has had an enormous toolbox set in front of them. Few wish to even rummage around in it, much less master any of it's components.
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mnpoor, I am not sure I follow you. You seem to be suggesting that we live in a brave new digital world, and that people have fallen behind they don't know how to use the "enormous toolbox" that would allow them to get great jobs in the IT sector.
The jobs you describe as being abundant, such as "nurse, technical writer, technical sales representative, petroleum engineer", these are not such difficult jobs to learn. Nurses have long training periods because they are a unionized profession, and keeping people training is a way to keep them underpaid. "Technical writer" could mean anything at all. A sales rep is a sales rep. And a petroleum engineer is just an engineer who deals with hydrocarbon compounds.
I think you are peddling the techno myth: the idea that as machines replace human beings, all sorts of new jobs spring up all over the place. Now I can see how that myth suits a lot of folks, but I don't think it is true.
The reality is that so many folks have houses that people don't need so many of them built. Machines make cars, and most other "stuff". CNC machines have destroyed countless jobs around the globe. And computers sell all this stuff, destroying jobs for sale reps everywhere.
Every time a machine destroys a job, a corporation is more efficient. Every person without a job is forced to look for a new job, or at least part time work for a government department, pretending to work.
This techno babble that tries to persuade us that industry needs "highly trained experts" is desperate to escape the bare reality of corporate capitalism: Only people who own the means of production are valuable. The rest either work in the few remaining occupations that cannot be replaced by machines, or they are useless dead weight on the economic machine.
But anyway, maybe I have misunderstood your point. I see the first world war as the world destroying all the unwanted physical labour that had been replaced by heavy industry in factories, and the second world war as destroying all the town labour that had been replaced by light industry. Now we have CNC and the internet, we have a whole bunch of useless people again, and not enough government jobs to go around.
Maybe we'll all become journalists instead of marching off to war again, or perhaps capitalism will evolve beyond the party system that serves the ever more concentrated ownership of resources.
But we can't all become database administrators in the private sector. Not in the real world.
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democracythreat, absolutely share your comment on Arshavin.
So, he is not only a predator, having left for money his St. Petersburg, but also his wife is criticising English girls? To spoil our hardly began to look normal recently more or less better relations?
When morals' collapse occurs - it affects all spheres at once! Wow, what a shame to St. Petersburg.
It's not that we didn't want to let him go at all. We didn't, but, like, the guy is young, kind of understandable wants to try his hand (leg) at a foreign club. But given the unconditional support and adoration of the city, who fanned its football team through all the losses of the last 20 years, believing the team is "good" - against all the odds and facts, they say no team losing for 30 years in a row absolutely all games ever had such home support, with full attendance and adoration club in contrast to team's achievements. And after the city, I don't know, but played not lesser a role in Zenith finally getting victorious, than its sponsors, got victories - Arshavin was leaving abroad with such a happy grin. Could have said at once - "I pity leaving you". No way.
Beat him up a bit there and we will a bit when home on holidays, as corrective measures. Hallucination from sharp success, that's what it is, the boy got totally spoiled.
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#35 - democracythreat
So you do not subscribe to the view that automating mundane tasks drives us towards more creative means of earning a living and more constructive use of our leisure time?
I ask because I am old enough to remember the time when, we were told, television would destroy the art of conversation and the internet would destroy the art of writing. In fact the former, when it was not being overtly populist, has stimulated more debate than any other medium and the web is where that debate is taking place, sometimes in very florid and articulate terms.
Come the revolution, it is perfectly plausible that it will be led from a work station and concluded without a drop of blood being spilled.
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threnodio wrote:
#35 - democracythreat
"So you do not subscribe to the view that automating mundane tasks drives us towards more creative means of earning a living and more constructive use of our leisure time?"
Well, dogs don't earn a living. I mean, some do. Sheep dogs do, or at least the used to. Now most sheep dogs are just luxury items for families who can afford a big back yard. The sheep are herded by folks on motorbikes and so on. But animals are born into the world, and they survive as best they can.
My point is that "earning a living" is a charged term. It is axiomatically class based. People who inherit even a moderate amount of wealth don't have to earn a living, and folks who have no access to resources, such as education, get shut out of highly advanced economies. So the former end up pretending to work so that they can "fit in" (hedge fund managers, freelance journalists, economists et al) whilst the latter end up begging from the state, or involved in crime.
So when society was based around subsistence agriculture and hunting, even then folks didn't always "work", unless rape and pillage could be called the work of the age. And then, as society advanced and technology created more "leisure time", this time was appropriated by the shamans and the warrior class, and the lower orders were made slaves and vassals.
From that system of servitude to the power of the fist and the power of superstition, we evolved towards the concept of property. Remember that "property" comes from the word "proper". It is a relationship between individuals, and what is proper to each, rather than a description of bare material items or resources. The law still understands this fact, which is why the law speaks of competing rights in property, rather than exclusive ownership.
Now property, and the system of succession through family (we use predominantly Salic law) was established (mostly by the church) as the dominant paradigm long before the nation state ever came into being. Nationalism, and the party based politics it in turn created, are very recent inventions. They have been established upon the bedrock of ecclesiastical law, which enshrines property, and thus the preceding doctrines of the warrior class (the rule of the fist) and shamanism.
And we can hear these echoes of previous stages of social evolution within our own society. The royal family still send their sons to the military, even though that has become a farcical exercise. The church still has tax free status.
So when you ask me about working for a living and leisure time, I am not quite sure what you mean. You presume I need or have access to the former, and that the latter is not my birthright.
I put it to you that a man who is willing to fight and die before he sacrifices his leisure time is either extremely noble, or a savage criminal. Or mayhap both.
Just so, one who believes he must work for a living as an article of faith, well he faces the conundrum of the sheepdog. If he is replaced by a machine, he ought to hope like hell that someone makes him a pet. He ought join a political party, in other words.
And so, it seems to me, the world turns.
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#38 - democracythreat
"I put it to you that a man who is willing to fight and die before he sacrifices his leisure time is either extremely noble, or a savage criminal. Or mayhap both".
I would describe him as extremely stupid. But to fight and die for the right to choose for himself and express that decision freely is an altogether higher calling.
Very interesting analysis though. Thank you.
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Alice, Arshavin is not a "spoiled boy". He played the second half of the Blackburn game, and scored that wonder goal, with 8 stitches in his foot. So he is no way a spoiled, or "soft" guy.
I have promoted him to captain of my FPL team.
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democracythreat, what's FPL? Googling once showed me money quotes for companies and fibernet fpl-s and what not. By spoiled Arshavin I mean you should have seen it here the adoration, I think in this city he could do approximately all. Traffic stopped and traffic police cleaned him the way. Wonder how he walks now in England, first of all traffic strangely doesn't stop secondly, .. but secondly I think many recognise his face on your side already as well.
Soft I hasn't said who is soft here, and as to scores don't worry there'll be many. He's got own supranatural capability to know that milli-second when he rolls out of back rows, and somehow rolls over to the competitor gates. Like a crab. :o) May be by side. You won't see him in front line battles, he'd look lazy, but to save a game last minute you've got nothing like him. Things should look real tragic (for a Russian, sets us off) and then voila.
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If I tell you what FPL is, it is going to probably waste a lot of your life, and also the lives of your friends.
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what, worse than blogging? means stronger glasses, paler palier ? more pale looks. and other scares.
BTW found one advantage since I caught the virus (last autumn only) - it is an extraordinary economic life style. when I sit stare silly at the screen - it excludes wandering around the town leaving money here and there.
though I heard some talanted individuals manage to stare at the screen and leave money in the screen, simultaneously.
I tried once, in 2004. Spent 90 dollars to get a bank card that works on internet (2 attempts), to buy an address book that cost 25, was made by an English company, selling them WW from St. Petersburg, United States. Then the bank mixed up 2 St. Petersburgs, then it made a 2nd attempt and sorted it, then I paid for the precious sample to be sent to a cousin in London, by couriers, then she went to the post office, and sent it to me. Then I visited my post office the next 3 months, asking why don't they want to give it to me, and they kept saying probably stolen by entry Customs' in the airport, because "a golden cut" is gold and gold is prohibited to be sent by post. The next 3 years I looked for an address book locally, with letters in Latin and not less than 3 pages per letter.
And a month ago my bank without any warning charged me 350 dollars for the card that was used once in 2004 but "property of the bank, and you neither cancelled the service nor returned the piece of plastic to us." For the card ownership /usage, the annual fee of 30 dollars, for 2005, "plus the fines of 60% a year for the debt to the bank un-paid."
I threatened them with going to law, for why wouldn't they either tell me or charge me earlier, there was always money on my account. Kind of curious to wait 4 years and then charge "for the debt plus accumulated percentage on the debt".
But they don't seem scared much so far :o); Austrian bank, by the way. Not the real, registered "a 100% owned by whoever started it in Russia", as they can't have a branch, y local law, to service private people. All have to register "anew". nly "using the same brand".
I told the branch manager - "it is because of the crisis! that you got mad. you must be about to collapse, therefore collect money from all sources possible and impossible!" Which he of course denied and said at the last meeting in Vienna our ww director told us we are doing extraordinary fine.
Anyway what I wish to note if your FRL is something like buying something on the internet - it's a very hard work and ? 90+350 for something that costs 20. and then Russian post steals it anyway.
So I guess we are safe and well guarded against internet shopping.
And if it's something else I don't know. Yet!
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42 - democracythreat
I had to Google it. Great football fan I'd make:-)
(Alice, I'll tell you if you promise not to let on how you found out).
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so, democracythreat, if you want to tell very much - tell. I suspect it is something from what mnpoor wrote about in 34. From the category described "designing databases, server farms, spy satellites, user interface".
mnpoor, :o) I hope you don't mind, I even copied the whole list, to be able to tell students I teach (English) how this all in called in English. Because I don't know myself! and the group I teach is like me. LOL. absolutely all russify "database" to turning it upside down and poor database becomes "bazadate".
sample "..one has mastery of some (obscure) technology to describe a concept using a piece of software whether it is a CAD drawing, musical composition, picture schedule, budget or project. Once this abstraction has been expressed through this designer, it is necessary to render an expression of it, whether this is a physical art, art performance, corporate restructuring, or finance sector" I understand what you say, but would never be able to formulate it like this. "apply accumulated knowledge of network dynamics to load balancing" will take me some time :o) to explain it tomorrow, but it is explainable.
"..to working with municipalities and regulatory authorities in removing capacity bottlenecks"
Some ideas will definitely arrive to ? local knowledge say, pool, for the first time tomorrow, in the "English language teaching" format. LOL.
Overall I think it's a very useful list you happened to mention; like a menu, gives ideas. to chose from. especially in the limited job market time of crisis!
on the discussion, I don't think what democracythreat wrote and you did contradict. much. I hope.
technicalisation is raging of course, but then it is not, how to say, carpet bombing, LOL. as democracythreat (I think?) wrote. there is still aplenty of room for "hunting".
and as to subsistance agrigulture we all know well enough
"kitchengardening" might become our common future! :o) Shortly.
democracythreat is it that you mean we should all have rights as minimum as dogs have? Like I think some very tired and over-worked character , of Jack London, BTW, I think it was those times of great depression, 1930s. He worked and worked and came home ate smth his mum? wife? shoved onto the table, and slept, and woke up at the ? some horn? beep? of his factory, (awful early), and children always needed smth, and he was beating against the wall, and moved in somnabulic state for a long time (very well described. I often remember the poor chap when I get cornered as well at some emergencies, when there is no allowance to be made to yourself , out of the question to make a break. more in the state "do what is due and the rest is - simply don't think - simply do it. forgot the phrase in English saying this. "what the country expects you to do? anyway, what is expected somehow).
Sorry got distracted. Any way one day that poor chap comes home and informs all he is not going to work any more. his wife asks - and , what do you mean? and how about kids, bread, we have 20 cents left. forgot what he said but he goes out into the field, lies under a tree, stretches, and thinks - I will lie and won't move. I will sleep or lie, will not do ever anything. will not work. he is in full bliss. doesn't care ab anything, not a thought. only that he will be a real man now, a human being - will not work.
that's questioning the same right, for leisure.
on which encouraging note :o) good night so far.
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Hint: Barclays. FPL. Has to do with football.
Actually, this blog should really have a league of its own.
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"democracythreat is it that you mean we should all have rights as minimum as dogs have?"
No, I just meant that, like dogs, we are animals born into a world and we must do the best we can.
For some that means working on a farm, having a useful existence. For some it means learning wag the tail and being appreciated as a household pet. And for some, it means being shot, or locked up, or starved, because you are a pest, and a burden on the economy of more powerful animals.
Now the guy in the Jack London novel (Jack also wrote a lot about dogs: White Fang is a great book, so is The Call of the Wild), he prefers to lie down and die, rather than to fight. He could have chosen a life of crime, rather than watch his family starved to death on slave wages. He could have sat down, made a disciplined decision that he was at war for his survival, and planned his campaign. He could then have embarked on a life of what we might call "crime".
But I do not think there is such a thing as crime, when people fight for their survival. At that point, it is just a question of how much spirit is left in the body of the animal.
And you know, especially if you read white fang, that not all dogs are born equal. Some fight a lot harder for their dinner than others. Some die, some prosper.
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Football O. And - no candy, in the wrapper? Nothing else? in this "FPL" ?
O.
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LOL.
OK, I looked up this, Fantasy Premier League. (Thanks, threnodio).
(Barkclays would have helped me nil, as a "hint". Simply a bank. :o)
directdemocracy, I mean. Of course, that is, great! wonderful. football. oh. LOL.
well.
well I know. football has cheerleaders, so not a so a , a, thing afterall. so if this blog will form a league..., you've got some willing to obtain some cheers. which is not bad for a start. :o)
- And - I've got some excellent ideas of who can be used as a ball!
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directdemocracy's #47,
i don't think Jack London there was interested in solutions; rather at depicting the culmination of events/troubles' art. Catching the moment, like photo camera, to describe the state of a man. Found some poetry in it, or raised it to a ? live painting , maybe, condition.
Pen masters can't always prophet and moralise, :o) Sometimes they remember what they are here for. Art for the art's sake, and all.
hope it was one of those his moments :o)
"White fang" sure I know, but you'd agree one can't read it more than once. I mean, of the dog owners' category :o)
Overall had (and have) a lot of Jack London, one of the most popular (and recommended ideologically-politically correct) writers in the USSR. Alongside with Kipling! LOL. Carrying of the Cross. of the white man. you know. :o)
Local bunch like Tolstoy, Bunin, were found, you know, too softy. :o)
Always despairing about humanity and how it manages its ways oj oj oj, plus a strong Christian angle.
And also in this case tastes of people and state co-insided; Jack London (and Kipling's) heroes resounded with the mind-set of the people. Always something happened with London't characters, cornered in some way, and in constant over-coming and perennial struggling condition. Which was like us, so voila. The northern snow troubles sounded in absolute accord, since USSR undertook to discover lands and explore what we actually owe, but nobody in his right mind ever went there. North and Siberia, and polar areas, to "infrastructure" them, and do something meaningful about the places. which were before simply separate settlements. and "map". So all the Nordic tales and freezing ones went well. Basically, absolute "home" stories. Expansion, hostile nature, expiditions and overcoming, what's called here "to do via (I) can't".
Can't tell what we found "our own" in the stories about Southern seas, but somehow we did. My absolutely favourite ones are (don't know what's right name in English, never saw in English) - "Stories of the Southern Seas" and "On the straw-mat of Macaloa". Horrible horrible Solomon islands. Aloha Oe. and on adventures of some captain ? Griffon? Griff?
"A small bill to Suizzin? Hall". :o)
Read to holes; and very much stained and spotted! I have Southern Seas in two copies, one is allocated as "dinner set" - many a pleasant dinner and supper I had! over/with that book in dangerous proximity to something eatable. :o) Can't eat without reading.
and Tomlinson.
Looked up and up, and saw against the night
The belly of a tortured star blood-red in hell-mouth light.
And Tomlinson looked down and down nd saw beneath his feet
the frontlet of a tortured star milk-white in hell-mouth heat.
wow.
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I read white fang more than once. I liked the dog fighting scenes.
Does anyone read George Orwell in Russia?
Probably from what you say, maybe folks would like John Steinbeck. He wrote a good story about struggling against unfair odds, and dying somewhere horrible under a pile of something worse. I sort of think the american writers took over from British writers in the 20th century.
When I was studied russian literature, we were told Tolstoi and Dostoyevsky were the great writers, but I liked Pushkin and Chekov more. They had more story, and less theory. But the best russian novel i ever read was by a guy called "M Ageyev". It was called "Roman s kokainom" , but i never understood if that meant "novel with.." or "romance with.."
Anyway, that book was really amazing writing. I thought that was where russian writing had to go, after Anna Karenin and Crime and punishment, and all those books that were too big.
For example:
"I would stroll down the boulevards and try to catch the eye of every passing woman. I never, as the saying goes, 'undressed them' with my glance, nor did I feel any carnal desire for them. In that feverish state, which might have inspired another, say to write poetry, I would simply stare into the eyes of all women walking in the other direction and wait for a similarly terrifying, wide-eyed look in response. I never accosted a woman who responded with a smile, because I knew that anyone who smiled at a look like mine could only be a prostitute or a virgin."
To me, this is real russian literature of the 20th century. But nobody I know has ever heard of M Ageyev, and I never saw another book by this guy. Is he well known in russia?
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
sorry, directdemocracy, I stepped on the minefield somehow, replied but see above. there must have been a word in Russian in latin letters, that's why. it differs; in my experience the toleration limit is btw 3 and 4 words. at times I can get away with 6 in a row! in other seasons not more than two.
LOL. A sign in the minefield - "Was checked: Mines - nil. Nearly nil."
Not to repeat myself, George Orwell no, John Steinbeck no, M.Ageyev no.
Orwell a book-shelf classic, honourable position, not for reading but for pulling citations. Steinbeck ,oj? what if the moderators tonight are Grapes of Wrath admirers? Then I know why I was moderated. Heavy, boring, way too much down to the ground. M.Ageyev a mystery to me, including M. instead of full name any place I google, certainly a pseudonim, on purpose. The book popular here, saw on book-store counters, didn't happened to read mayhap mistakingly. Like your "mayhap" very much. Other books of his so far haven't heard of. The word you asked I'd read as "love affair" not "novel", the preposition "with" implies love affair. A novel can also be "with" but normally books aren't combined with oj. what if I were moderated for calling cocaine "food"? LOL. Awful, awful narcotics of course, calls to mind sweet and sour 1920-s, unsure what they did with it. Inhaled as asthma inhalers, most likely. If to trust the movies.
Anyway will see shortly "Nil" or "nearly nil". LOL.
As a matter of fact, I am given a second chance now to improve my post, and only a very weird Russian will skip :o) a golden chance to treat moderators with some poetry.
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Dear moderators, the "poem" is 1924, ownership rights expired, translation from Russian my own, will translate now, so in terms of authorship rights "Mines - nil".
democracythreat, if M.Ageyev is really a successor to the "real Russian literature" - this can be tested (by you); he ought to be "bathing" in the river and be connected. to echo with this and that, build up on the previous authors. it's all tied and ought to resound; continuation and talk between them, dead or alive doesn't matter. Now, anyone who dares to call his book "A love affair with cocaine" calls (in a local mind) one immediate association. And has to stand up to the expectations! BTW. There is a classic song of Vertinsky of 1924 - Cocainette.
So, is it a lawful :o) continuation of the theme? or is M.Ageyev an alien, trying to sneak into the grand rows :o) see yourself, as you have read. the link:
Why do you cry here, desolate, silly baby?
Crucified by cocaine in the wet boulevards of Moscow
Your pathetic thin neck is barely covered by fur strip
All got bluish, wet, and funny - as you!
You've been poisoned by now with autumnal slush of boulevards
And I know - that if you dare to speak up, a shout - you'll virtually jump off your mind
And when you'll eventually die on this boulevard bench, my horrid one
Your lilac. dead body. will be. enshrined. by the dark.
So, don't cry. please. no, don't cry no! no! my poor, lonely "baby-chka"
Crucified by cocaine in these wet boulevards of Moscow
It's better, really, wrap up your thin chicken neck in the fur mantle
And go - walk.. I don't know.. - where nobody will ask - Who you are!
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"The word you asked I'd read as "love affair" not "novel", the preposition "with" implies love affair. A novel can also be "with" but normally books aren't combined with oj. "
Cool. That is very interesting. It is always translated as "novel" in the west. Now I can go win that argument with some friends! Thank you for that.
This novel was important because it dealt with the psychology of political activism in Russia during the revolution. The main character is portrayed as very clever in school, and his friend who is also very clever is a revolutionary, or he becomes a revolutionary. The novel discusses what drives people to revolutionary politics, and the suggestion is that they do it for the same reason people become addicted to cocaine: it makes them feel great, and they become dependent on this rush, the feeling of control and power.
So to me, the novel is all about the difference between having the intellectual honesty, or the "morals" to reject ideology that gives the satisfying rush of power, and to keep thinking about things in a productive way.
The addict in this novel is cruel to his mother, he is heartless to his community, and he only has friends for intellectual reasons. He has no love in his soul. But he is smart, and an engaging speaker. I guess the subtext is that belonging to the party is the same, morally, as belonging to cocaine. You are the slave, not the master, and you must following the party line wherever it takes you, even if it means to forget love and to treat even your own mother in a cruel and totally self serving way. And all the time, your mind is full of grand ideas.
I say it is where russian literature should have gone, because it follows on from Crime & Punishment, exploring the depths of reason and the morality of cruelty. And it is not afraid to discuss class, either. And the writing is entertaining, too!
I am amazed Steinbeck and Orwell are not widely read in Russia.
The guy who wrote the novel, I think his real name was Marc Levi, and he went to live in Armenia in 1942. He never wrote another book. That is what wiki tells me, anyways.
But, for me, this book was the best study of revolutionary thought i what I have read from russia. It took the context of the revolution, and discussed what it meant to be a human being at this time. I think it is a great book. Nobody can read it without thinking "How do I treat the people in my life? Does my fascination with ideas make me a cruel person? Did I trade love for power, or just for the sensation of power?"
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oh well. I don't remember when I had such a substantial introduction of a book, so I'll keep an eye for it, in the stores. Forgot when I bought a book last this winter! keep staring at the screen. 1942, mentioned; means it's an "old" book, popular again. as it is widely represented on the "read on the site, or load" bookworm's sites. as I thought, a pseudonim.
overall if it's about intricate movements of soul of revolutionaries - that's why masses aren't interested. :o) we're bored with their "intricate" moves. you can't imagine a less exciting subject (in Russia) than looking deep into a revolutionary soul. :o) the very word "revoluionary" makes you yawn and make a condescending grimace. :o) - to soften, what I say. LOL. somehow I feel I better.
What is inspiring in Steinbeck and Orwell. Do these appeal to the best in humanity? Make you up-lift over reality, to find in yourself strength to do something above the low level of expectations? A shimmering light, any place? That is the answer. I think.
But then don't take me as a standard sample. that's my feeling ab it, no records. my half-brother, for example, surely reads Steinbeck. one and the same book I see him with, for years. he likes to re-read it. "mayhap" :o) I should also add we're in excellent M.Christmas and H.Birthday relations. lately streamlined to H.Birthday. which reminds me I still have to award him with his birthday present of last July, and pick up mine. I don't doubt when I see him next, Steinbeck will be some place nearby. so myself and Steinbeck are in personal, I would say, relations. LOL.
to aggravate it further, my literature tastes overall have sadly frozen at 15-year old teenager conditions. I'd put my hand onto smth, the expression, that "weaves/breezes golden dreams onto silky eye-lashes".
directdemocracy, think yourself; if you want a good company. would you take Steinbeck with? That'll be a strange company. I'd take, I don't know, someone non-agressive, someone of good fairy-tale tellers, Joseph and his brothers - that a good, friendly, wise company. Arden commentary to Shakespeare - that's company. O! The Black Arrow, Stevenson, O! my favourite book of all ages. haven't met another admirer yet :o) (over the age of 10)
Anyway.
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The most impressive Steinbeck story to read is "Cannery row". It takes a good writer to make such a subject desirable and such characters attractive.
Orwell is interesting because he has turned out to be a remarkable prophet, and probably the only fiction writer to correctly distill the corporate military industrial complex as the most powerful political force, more powerful even than the nation state.
You know the novel 1984? Well, in that novel he describes the world as three main empires, with a perpetual war zone in the area that is now Africa, the middle east and west asia. He predicts the rise of the EU, and of china. He also predicts the invention of a television that can look back on you, and keep track of you in your home. Internet, anyone? And sure, if you are one of the proles, the internet is not a surveillance device. But if you work in a law firm, and you work for one the big corporate departments of the state, you life has become a permanently connected feature of state life.
So I think Orwell was important because he could see beyond the nation state, and he could understand that political systems were very likely to become utterly corrupted by power.
But for sure, the most striking thing about 1984, when you look at the world today, is Emmanuel Goldstein, and the "War on terror". Orwell created a world where the political powers NEED an enemy. So they invent one. Goldstein and his terrorists do not exist, except on the news broadcasts. But on the news, they are everywhere. Everyone is full of information about these "enemies", but they do not exist.
Now al-qaeda is exactly this creation. It doesn't exist. It never has. It is an entirely fictional creation, of the sake of our news broadcasters.
Now this may sound radical, but it isn't. there is not even a conspiracy. There are certainly groups of radical and violent arabs (and non arabs) who want to kill americans with bombs and so on. Sure. No question. That is not in dispute. But this idea that they have some sort of massive, organised institution that strectches around the world, always operating in the shadows, and in total control of all the violence done to all americans, this is fantasy.
Again, it is not conspiracy. Nobody decided "OK, we need to make an enemy". It was simply that the press needed a name, a handle that they could grasp. It was the press, not the government, who demanded to know "Who did this?" after 9/11. Now the CIA originally put forward a big list of terrorist groups, not all of which had names that were short enough or "english" enough for the press. And so one of the many nicknames for some training camps run by Osama bin laden was chosen as "the name". Al qaeda.
And it grew. How it grew. Now we have Obama going on television to speak of the war against Al qaeda in iraq, and in afghanistan. But it is completely ridiculous, completely fabricated. The people who hate the US and who want to kill soldiers are not part of some huge tenacious web of organized violence against america. They are not members of some organized institution. They just hate America and the west, because western soldiers killed their family members, and tell them how to live, and take their resources on their terms.
But the media and our politicians have learned that newspapers can be sold, and policies disguised, by a constant reference to an imaginary enemy. Al qeada have replaced the soviet union as the enemy that legitimizes the use of state power for profit, and therefore, like Emmanual Goldstein, it can never die.
So that is why I think Orwell is a profoundly important writer. He is a true prophet, because he understood the political system of the world, and he understood the nature of the media.
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directdemocracy, that important I never questioned. surely a break-through, in comprehension of the systems; and in the forecast - one of the kind. we don't seem to have another? about current "us".
sharp , what's it in English .."he ... a lance ..at face of ignorance" that was ab Shakespeare but fits.
what I meant is for reading and re-reading, as I said, "a company".
Orwell is too close to reality, as we daily observe it. :o)
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