Dominique Benard

This user hasn't shared any biographical information

What is gender?

Posted in Citizens, Education on January 16, 2012

By Harriet Bjerrum Nielsen, professor at Centre for Gender research, University of Oslo.

Some weeks ago, Indaba-Network published an article on gender and gender prejudices. A large discussion started.  Today, Harriet Bjerrum Nielsen, professor at the Centre for Gender research, University of Oslo, tells us more on Gender. Let us hope that this will sharpen our debate and encourage youth groups to challenge gender prejudices and engage on issues related gender equity.

What is gender? Girls and boys, women and men, of course! Certainly, but is it so simple? Not all women are like each other, nor are all men. Different ways of being and behaving often cut across the gender divide. It is also a common observation that men and women may appear and behave in ways that do not match the different cultural expectations of what is seen as appropriate in relation to biological classifications. So to what degree does gender belong to the body, to self-presentation – or to the eyes of the beholder? The question arises because gender has many facets.  It is a dimension of bodies and physical reproduction, individual identities and personal experience, social relations and everyday interaction. It is central to divisions of labor, to the structuring of institutions such as families, schools, markets, and states. Last, but not least, it is also a forcefull frame of interpretation in our minds that imposes hierarchical dichotomies on differences that are actually much more varied and distributional. The personal, symbolic, social relational, and structural dimensions of gender are deeply entangled with other lines of difference and inequality, such as age, sexuality, social class, nationality, and racialized-ethnicity.  These entanglements contribute to shape the organization, salience, and meanings of gender in specific contexts.

Gender differences are distributional rather than categorial

A source of confusion is that gender as a concept is used to signify two quite different things: a categorical difference (meaning either/or) and a distributional or statistical difference (meaning more or less of something). The only close-to-dichotomous observable gender trait -  often named as the core of biological sex – is genital difference. All other gender dimensions — whether they are biological (hormone levels, secondary sex attributes, brain structure, motor performance), psychological (differences in motivations or cognitive capacities) or behavioural (differences in preferences, and ways of being and behaving) — involve complex variation, not dichotomy.  In most cases the variation within each gender group is bigger than the average difference between the two groups. Thus, almost all gender differences are distributional rather than dichotomous or categorical, most gender traits seem to be socially influenced and changeable over time, and they do not come in neat and one-dimensional packages in the person. A boy or a girl may be “typical” in some respects and “atypical” in others. So what is gender if what we see as  “masculine” and “feminine” traits can be found in both girls and boys? Questions like these have led gender researchers to conclude that divisions and hierarchies of gender do not follow from the difference between women and men.  It is rather the opposite: when gender is constructed as a difference empirical variation in its many dimensions becomes reduced to a simple dichotomy (Magnusson and Marecek 2012).

This does not mean that gendered patterns of behaviour are a mirage or that the patterns that do exist have no sort of biological basis (even if we do not know exactly what that basis is). The point is that there is no clear or straightforward connection between near-dichotomous dimensions of biological sex and the complex, multi-dimensional and context-dependent nature of gender differences.  Gendered patterns — with or without a biological basis — inform cultural norms and expectations about what is seen as typically feminine and typically masculine. Instead of recurring arguments concerning more or less biological determination, it has been suggested by Simone de Beauvoir and Toril Moi to view the body as part of our situation in the world. It means something what bodies we are born with – as it would mean something if I were born with one arm or eyes in my neck – but what it means depends on how it is interpreted in a given culture and society, and on my own actions. Biology does not have any meaning in itself.

Gender as cultural norm

Distributive gender patterns are found both on structural, symbolic and personal levels although they may vary both between and within societies and social contexts. Different cultures have different norms for what counts as desireable masculinity and femininity. However, also within the same culture there will often be several ways in which one can be masculine or feminine. Different social classes, ages and ethnic groups, for instance, will often have different ideas about what a real man/boy or a real woman/girl is. Within a society there will be ongoing symbolic struggles between such masculinities to gain hegemony, for instance by ridiculing or morally criticising each other. Some become dominant, while others are subordinated or marginalized.

Personal gender concerns the ways we fit into, identify with or protest against available cultural models of gender. Gender is a personal matter and a reality for each and every one of us, but it is also a dimension of social relations created between people and shaped through processes of interaction. While the individual perspective frames gender as something we “are,” the interactional perspective emphasizes gender as something we “do”. This perspective calls attention to the dynamics of power in social constructions of meaning. Gender as doing and gender as difference are not mutually exclusive perspectives; when children learn to “do” gender in their families, in schools, and with peers, they also “become” gender in certain ways and this will again form their responses to new social situations.

Gender as hierarchy

What characterizes gender as a frame of interpretation is not only the  tendency to split and dichotomize phenomena into two distinct groups, but also the tendency to read this dichotomy as a hierarchy: Things defined as feminine also tend to be seen as secondary or even inferior to things defined as masculine. This is also sometimes called the male norm: Men and boys represent the universal norm from which women and girls deviate. Gender as framework of interpretation may lead to gender stereotyping. This is the case if a gendered pattern of distribution is interpreted as a categorical distinction. Here the variation within each group and overlap between girls and boys is ignored.

People often tend to believe that the specific gender system their culture endorses is natural and even biologically founded. Why do we have this inclination to naturalize our own norms of gender? One reason could be related to the fact that in all known societies, structural and symbolic gender play an important role in the stability of the society. To question the naturalness of a society’s gender system challenges the stability, power distribution and values of that society. Gender arrangements are also important elements of cultural and personal identity – and thus also invested in emotionally. But ideas of desirable gender orders belong to the normative field, not to nature. There is a world of difference between saying ‘this is natural’ and saying ‘this feels natural to me’.

If you have been interested with this blog article, you can discover more about gender in a brilliant resource developed by Harriet Bjerrum Nielsen: Just click on this link.

, ,

Leave a Comment

Innovation in education?

Posted in Economy on December 12, 2011

Between November 1 and 3,  2011 in Doha, Qatar, the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) was held (for information on the event, please see www.wise-qatar.org). The overview of the site suggested to me some thoughts.

Instruction vs. Education

Bangladeshi students

Much of the WISE debate at Doha concerned instruction, the transmission of knowledge at educational institutions ranging from literacy programs to the university levels. The problem is important since there were still 774 million illiterate people in the world in the early 2000s, an improvement given that there were 870 million in the year 1990. Yet illiteracy still affects a large part of the world’s population, with strong disparities between countries and a greater proportion of girls and women still mired in illiteracy. Of course, at the other end of instruction, in higher education, the proportion of students who participate is as inadequate as primary education is insufficient. The question of the overall rise in educational attainment remains a huge problem in much of the world.

But the title of the summit focused the participants’ attention on education, that is to say everything that prepares a child to become a well integrated adult in his/her society. This includes  school instruction but not only of the formal kind. I have in mind also the education of mothers, often very young in developing countries, and the empowerment of fathers. I have in mind all the teenagers who are left to their own devices in the megacities. I have also in mind what we call “life skills”: that which you learn by acting together, the principles of democratic and political life, the basic rules of management, the non-violent ways to put a pressure on power holders — the list could go on indefinitely!

I do not think that all this requires heavy new structures, but a willingness to mobilize society as Gandhi did in his time. I do not think either that this is a reflection for “rich” people only because the world is changing for all with globalization. Having enough to eat is essential, as is instruction, but educating is also necessary to free up stifling social constraints that exist all over the world.

Finance

WISE awards a prize for innovation in the financing of education and has worked in this area a great deal! As I am a citizen of the French Republic, which made school compulsory, free, and secular 130 years ago in accord with a vision of national solidarity supporting public state-funding, my vision may be distorted. Of course, there are other possible methods of funding.  Yet are they really better when we see the military budgets of poor countries (and rich countries as well, by the way), or all the money diverted by corruption? It becomes a matter of choice!

I also know that mass instruction is a ‘profit center’ for investors, as such education amounts to a captive market. Of course, teaching provided by civil servants is not a guarantee of neutrality. Ideologies of the twentieth century have proven that. But ‘private’ schools have no better guarantees of neutrality as they must submit to their funders,who have their requirements.  If the schools are organized by religious groups, they have ”their” programs.  And if the schools are fundamentally elitist, it leads to the doubling of the time each child must devote to studies, like the schoolboys of Korea … Where is the innovation in that? When will international bodies have the courage to be politically incorrect and insist that education is not a commodity but a collective duty to respect each child put into this world?

Innovation at the ground level 

Having taught for forty years, I learned a simple thing that was also present in the experiments mentioned at the Doha summit.  Namely, innovation is always at the ground level, in the mysterious chemistry that appears between a group of students and the teacher. It is at this basic level that new strategies are constantly invented to make possible the transmission of knowledge. In order that this “chemical reaction” occurs, two convictions are required.

The first is that teaching is a skill that must be learned. Training teachers is as necessary and subtle as the training of airline pilots! However, learning to teach is a matter rarely and poorly studied and the time devoted to teacher training too often seems an unnecessary luxury to education officials:  not only the initial  but also the ongoing training. Pedagogy, the ability to guide children in their learning, is not innate, it is not a gift that we have or don’t have, it is a body of knowledge including learning processes, child psychology, ways of increasing interest for school subjects, and many more areas!

The second conviction stems from the fact that teaching has been and needs to remain scientific. As in any science, we must observe the reality, the group, and each child, and make experiments to draw from them the “laws” by which the group and each student will evolve, generalize the experiments that work, and start to continue this learning process step by step! We cannot use “ready to wear” in teaching, but only “tailor made,” and we cannot ensure that that which was effective with one class will be effective with the next.

The lessons of the pioneers

This is why I think that teaching truly, at any level, is a process of continuous innovation at the ground level, at the time and where the class and its teachers are living. Then, teaching becomes an ever new, exciting profession, always full of surprises! But how to collect these billions of innovations in a world conference?

WISE asked Charles Leadbeater to observe innovations around the world. He has written a report entitled “Innovation in education, lessons from the pioneers,” doubtless very interesting. But in the meantime, while reading it, I continue to say to all those who participate in education and instruction: watch and innovate, invent and try again, consider the importance of play in learning, even with very limited resources; and do it  with heart and intelligence. Children grow forever.

IndabaXchange

You who are following the work of  Indaba-network, a large number of you certainly have interest, commitment to, and experience in the field of teaching or education.  No doubt a number of you have experienced innovative projects. I invite you to join the groups working in the field of education in IndabaXchange and share your experiences, suggestions, questions, or rants!

The first innovation in this area is to exchange in order to avoid the “blues” of the poor lonely teacher!

Michel Seyrat

, , ,

5 Comments

Together, let’s make a difference in Mussende, Angola!

Posted in Uncategorized on December 4, 2011

Do you know what is poverty?

Angola is a country that has recently emerged from a civil war, accentuating the social differences that already existed and worsening its extreme poverty.

Mussende is the centre of the Kwanza Sul district, located 750 km east of Luanda, capital of Angola. It is inhabited by about 5,000 people. Industrial activity is negligible, so the economy is based on agriculture and hunting.  Among its important features:

  • Rural populations cannot provide for themselves their own basic needs such as health, education, food and housing – because they lack water, electricity, healthcare facilities, natural gas (or cylinders) and an efficient educational system.
  • In rural areas like Mussende, families are organized in small villages and their houses are far apart from each other. The houses are very poor, consisting of a single chamber built of adobe bricks and thatch. The lack of drinking water, bleach, disinfectant, bathrooms, and toilets causes the conditions to be unhygienic in both private homes and collective facilities.
  • Water is extracted from wells or rivers, though in some cases people must carry heavy buckets 2 to 5 km from the source to their homes.
  • There is neither an electricity network nor natural gas supply, while gas cylinders are sold 150 km away at unaffordable prices for the Mussende population.
  • Local families are large, eight children is the average. Women are responsible for sustaining their families. They work at home, on their private farms, breeding livestock, selling their goods on the roadside and even engaging in exchanges for oil or salt.
  • As they lack access to electricity, Mussende residents have no means to preserve food, resulting often in food poisonings due to spoiled provisions.
  • Literacy levels are very low, reflecting the poor educational system. Schools are built of adobe and have neither seats nor desks.  There is only one blackboard and one teacher for all levels. International organizations and NGOs donate all the school supplies, and they consist of one notebook and one pencil per student per school year.
  • In addition to the conditions described above, there is lack of medical care, resulting in life expectancies of 43 years for men and 38 for women:  low by any standards, and very unusual in that, unlike the norm in most of the rest of the world, Mussende’s women, on average, live shorter lives than men.

Far from there, a youth group in Argentina…

In mid-2009, Griselda, Martín, Federico, María Celeste, Jesica and Eunice, undergraduates, graduate students, and lecturers from the Faculties of Chemical Engineering and Water Sciences at the University of Litoral, in Argentina, decided to create a group called ‘Unconventional Green.’  Their project was to develop alternative energy production mechanisms for their local community. This group, along with local producers at the ’La Verdecita’ Agroecological Farm, built solar collectors, solar-powered stoves, and a biodigester (equipment that can turn organic waste into useable fuel) on this farm and in District III April 29, an area within the city of Santa Fé, Argentina.

These technologies offer many advantages.  They are:

  • low cost
  • complementary to other energy services
  • non-polluting
  • simple to build
  • built of easily obtainable materials
  • require only ordinary tools for construction.

The work of this group attracted the interest of Sister Cristina Mondino, auxiliary at St. Mary’s Parish, part of the missionary group called Solidarity Network for Angola. As a result of this first contact, and with the intention of transferring their expertise in the construction and installation of biogas digesters and solar stoves, the young scientists were invited to take part in a cooperative experience in Mussende, Angola. Part of this joint group is committed to travelling to Angola while most will continue the work home in Santa Fé.

Together, a project for social change

Their project aims to provide educational tools, theories, techniques and best practices for the construction of alternative energy equipment.  Such equipment can advance the effort to reduce energy consumption and its cost, benefiting local families.

The proposed alternative energy equipment would include water heaters, solar stoves, and biogas digesters:

  • Both solar stoves and water heaters have the advantage of transforming solar radiation into heat. In the first case water is heated for human use: sun rays are concentrated in the focus of a parabolic reflector.  This allows users to bake or boil various foods as well as to process products such as jams and sweets.
  • Energy from biomass digesters is a renewable because it uses organic and inorganic matter (often waste) and is formed in a biological process.  Generally, the energy (often in the form of methane) is derived from organic substances that constitute living things (plants, humans, animals, etc.), or debris and waste. The utilization of biomass energy is performed directly or by conversion into other substances that may be exploited later such as fuel or food.

As a further advantage, these technologies contribute to the preservation of the environment, particularly the biodigester.  It generates fertilizer (applied to urban gardens) and methane (fuel for home cooking).  In addition, these facilities are simple to construct and use, require easily accessible building materials, and are low cost.

It is therefore feasible to carry out theoretical and practical workshops with residents of Mussende who have never received any previous technical training. The theoretical and practical workshops involve the Argentinean team constructing the equipment together with the recipients, thus leading to a direct incorporation of knowledge. In Mussende, volunteers will have the support of translators, provided by the missionary group, in order to accomplish their tasks.

The project will be implemented in three stages:

1. Theoretical and practical workshops:

  • Informing and raising awareness of the benefits of alternative sources of energy.
  • Training on the correct treatment of organic waste (separating and classifying, ways of organising the neighbours to collect organic waste to ‘feed’ the biodigester).
  • Training in the technical aspects, construction and maintenance of the equipment, as well as its proper use.
  • Training in the use of the products produced as fertilizer for gardens and methane gas for use in family kitchens.
  • Training in the transfer of knowledge to others through teaching methodologies.

2. Construction and commissioning of equipment.

3. Assessment of the experience.

  • Internal assessment of the joint team.
  • Reflection and self-criticism in order to detect possible weaknesses, taking into account the views of all participants.
Not only is there a very good chance that the project will be successful, it also has two very important additional advantages.  First, for a low cost and through the minimal use of already available resources, it will radically improve life for a community of 5,000 people.  Second, the project has a crucially important educational component.  When Mussende community members learn how to build, maintain, and utilize these energy tools, they can teach other communities to do the same.  Everywhere in the world, ordinary people can and do learn practical techniques for improving their lives when they have a chance to observe how they work among their neighbors.  Mussende’s residents would train others.

We can now all participate in this innovative project 

Indaba Network works in support of youth groups committed to achieving a more just and equitable world. In order to achieve this, it has launched a fundraising campaign to support this project: ‘A bit of energy for Angola,‘ to help these young people to travel to Angola. We have implemented a platform to raise small contributions. We invite you to join the project and collaborate for the Mussende community to achieve, by next summer, a significant part of the change that they need to build a better life. A small contribution can make a big difference. Everybody can contribute! In exchange for your contribution, you will get a certificate. Our objective is to raise at least US$ 5,000.

Don’t wait! Go NOW to our system of crowd funding and  give your contribution:

  • Energetic Donor : US$10
  • Energetic Plus Donor : US$20
  • Super Energetic Donor: US$50
  • Solar Energetic Donor: US$100
  • Main Energetic Donor: US$500

You can also communicate with Griselda, Martín, Federico, María Celeste, Jesica and Eunice, through the group they have created in indabaXchange.

Indaba-Network

Leave a Comment

El sistema, music for social change

Posted in Citizens, Cultures on October 29, 2011

  • We are living in a period in which culture is not given sufficient importance. Art is not just a game, it is an opportunity for personal, social and even economic development.

The Austrian government, in 2011, gave an award to Maestro José Antonio Abreu, a Venezuelan musician, economist and politician.  Abreu is the founder of a project that has proven to be one of the most important examples of incentives for socio-economic progress in any country.  J.A. Abreu was awarded the ‘”Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art” for  his work making culture a means to forging social integration. A model created through cultural spirit has become one of the most important social development models worldwide.
Known as “El Sistema”, it was born in Venezuela in 1975 as a foundation comprised of several children’s and young people’s orchestras.  Its mission is to draw them away from violence, delinquency and drugs.

In Venezuela there are serious problems such as truancy, violence, petty crime, drug addiction and unemployment. In this context, “El Sistema” has managed to reduce such social distress and encourage the determination, among its participants, to pursue a goal and to acquire the tools necessary to get a better chance for personal, social and professional development.

In this way, the growth is not only understood as a means to gather together and reconcile several strong wills, but also as an organizational synergy that gives voice to individuals.  ”El Sistema” is rooted at the base of the social pyramid because many of the participants are from the poorest strata of the population. Playing in an orchestra, in fact, is not a mere performance exercise.  It contributes to the emergence of a dynamic similar to the one found in broader human society, where individuals’ thoughts are listened to, shared or disputed by the rest of community.

“El Sistema” is a project based on a number of strengths, making it unique. First, the system of orchestras is  organized in a Central Foundation, which controls the performance circuit as well as the many sets of orchestras, choirs and local musical centers, spread out across Venezuela’s territory. In addition, since 1979 the project has continuously grown along with the emergence of a strong leader, with a multifaceted education: the Maestro J. A. Abreu. Finally, the Government is the main project underwriter: on one hand, this is definitely an incentive for gaining more intense support from private individuals, while on the other, it means that the program has never been left to the mercy of fragmented supporters.

“El Sistema” began to expand beyond the borders of Venezuela from the year following its foundation as a cultural and social institution, beginning with the building up of an orchestral system in Latin America. Now, there are programs borrowed from the Venezuelan approach in over 25 countries including many beyond the Latin American region: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, South Korea, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Scotland, USA, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, England, Italy, Jamaica, India, Mexico, Nicaragua, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago, and Uruguay.

“El Sistema” offers experiences accessible to every human being, regardless of ethnic, cultural and social diversities, by implementing the processes of social integration through music. Furthermore, it contributes significantly to the socio-economic opportunities available to a country. It has proven that music is and can be an instrument of social integration and communication, invaluable from the individual community to the global levels.

In fact, in other parts of the world new music projects with a social-development purpose are being born, as is happening now in Afghanistan and Argentina. The common denominator of these initiatives is the ability to share a mission and to join resources from ethical, institutional and financial points of view. In this way, each community can reach the common goal of socio-economic integration and development, through the sharing of music.

This theory is also an invitation so that everyone may try to achieve something useful for more equitable global development, increasing the value of culture and, in particular, music.

Maria Francesca Ghellere

4 Comments

I don’t have the same values as the Boy Scouts of America

Posted in Education, Organizations on September 4, 2011

The website “Women’s Views on News (http://www.womensviewsonnews.org) has just published the following news:

The Boy Scouts of America has removed lesbian mother, Denise Steele, as a scout master of her son’s troop after becoming aware of her sexual orientation.

The organisation prohibit atheists, agnostics, and “avowed” homosexual people from leadership roles, and its right to discriminate has been repeatedly upheld by state and federal courts.

In 2004, the organization adopted the following policy statement: “Boy Scouts of America believes that homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the obligations in the Scout Oath and Scout Law to be morally straight and clean in thought, word, and deed.

“The conduct of youth members must be in compliance with the Scout Oath and Law, and membership in Boy Scouts of America is contingent upon the willingness to accept Scouting’s values and beliefs.

“Most boys join Scouting when they are 10 or 11 years old. As they continue in the program, all Scouts are expected to take leadership positions. In the unlikely event that an older boy were to hold himself out as homosexual, he would not be able to continue in a youth leadership position.”

I have been Scout from 1954 and enjoyed very much Scouting at national and international level, but after having read that news, I have to say that I don’t have the same values as the Boy Scouts of America.

The statement “homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the obligations in the Scout Oath and Scout Law to be morally straight and clean in thought, word, and deed“, is a discriminatory judgement based on several prejudices that are challenged by modern science :

  1. Homosexuality is a sexual orientation, it is not a sin. It is an element of the personality of some people, a percentage of the population which is almost the same in any culture and at any period of the history. Young people, boys and girls, discover at the adolescent age their sexual orientation. A minority become aware that they are homosexual. It is dramatic, nearly criminal, to tell these young people that their sexual orientation is not “morally straight and clean”. Many adolescents commit suicide for this very reason.
  2. In almost all countries, homosexuality between consenting adults is no longer considered as a crime, except in some extremely intolerant societies. However, people who have prejudices against homosexuality maintains a confusion between homosexuality and pedophilia. Within youth groups, homosexual people are no more a threat than heterosexual people. Pedophiles are the threat, but they can be heterosexual as well as homosexual. BSA should know that because some years ago, one of their top leaders, one of those promoting prejudices and discrimination against homosexual people, was convicted of pedophilia.

In my view, it is dramatic for young people in America and for the Scout Movement in general, that one of the largest national Scout organizations keeps and promotes this kind of medieval position.

All those who believe in an open and positive education, according to the views of Baden-Powell, the founder of the Scout Movement, should put a pressure on the Boy Scouts of America in order they change their disastrous policy.

Dominique Bénard

, ,

4 Comments

The crisis, for how long?

Posted in Uncategorized on August 1, 2011

The beginning

After the fall of Lehman Brothers in 2008, the global financial crisis continues to spread. Many states have let their deficits grow in order to prop up economic activity and to rescue their banking sectors. Once “saved,” the markets are beginning to question the sustainability of public debts, even those debts that have been formed to rescue them and attempt to pull them out of the chaos into which they had plunged.

Around the world, the public debt of the euro area, greatly enlarged because of its support for faltering banks, will soon be seen as the weakest link. Not because of its size (the euro area’s debt is much lower than those of the U.S., UK or Japan) but because of some institutional failures.

Indeed, the Lisbon Treaty prohibits solidarity with member countries in case of a serious crisis in one of them. Furthermore, the European Central Bank (ECB) is not authorized to acquire securities to finance the public debt of countries in the euro area. So euro area nations must enter the capital markets which see them as ‘privileged’ terrain for maneuver. The speculators will step into this gap.

The mechanism

When a bank lends money to a borrower, it runs the risk that the borrower cannot repay (a payment default). To cover this risk the bank will go to another financial institution to buy a kind of insurance. The insuring institution agrees to cover the lending institution’s debt should there occur a default of payment. The holder of the title (that is, company that is insuring) pays the lending institution, in exchange for a premium, service on a fixed date. This premium is known in international finance, a “Credit Default Swap” (CDS).

The greater the perception of risk of default by the borrower, the higher the cost of the CDS. When, for example, a rating agency lowers the rating of Greece, it means that the international financial risk of default is higher, therefore increasing the price of a CDS. However, the CDSes are stand alone products: investors can freely buy and sell CDSes in bonds that they do not hold. They obviously have an interest in the prices of CDSes increasing. “It’s like someone acquiring fire insurance on the house of his neighbor. It would then be well advised to set fire to collect insurance,” summed up the Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou.

The game of speculation is open: The main method is to make purchases or sales “short,” speculating on the increase (or, in this case, decreases) of any security in the future (that is, its term) . Meanwhile, while doing this, speculators can “bet” on the future fate of considerable sums of lent money while utilizing only very small amounts of cash.

This sets up a vicious circle: the more the rating agencies lower their rating of a country, the more CDS open market prices increase, the more speculators make money, the more the country’s debt grows, the more the Government implements austerity measures, and the more the country ratings decline again, and so on. The old loans are only partly covered by new borrowing and the debt continues to grow despite any repayments.

In the Greek crisis, the government has already eliminated hundreds of thousands of civil service positions (nine out of ten retirees will not be replaced). At the same time salaries, pensions, and paid leave time are cut, indirect taxes increased, and reimbursements for health care expenditures are reduced. The result is a more liberal and socially unjust policy in Greece.

The situation is the same in Ireland.

This is exacerbated by the adoption of liberal economic policies which tend to systematically reduce taxes on the richest on the pretext of encouraging growth. The result is to increase government deficits while destroying all the mechanisms of social solidarity.

How long?

States nearing bankruptcy, having too generously rescued banks, now go begging the IMF and the ECB for loans to cover their monthly obligations. These circumstances require them to choose between serving their publics or going under. Voters have no say in these emergency discussions. Greece, Ireland, Portugal, have become protectorates administered by Brussels, Frankfurt and Washington. Can the dream of a united Europe resist these pressures? How long will the people accept paying for the excesses of a deregulated financial system? The “Indignant” are beginning to make their voices heard.

5 Comments

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 30 other followers