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E~.r~pe at the brink

J.D.R. BROWN THE CASCADE

The crisis in Europe has entered even more troubling waters this past week, if that's even possible. Silvio Berlusconi, the now former Prime Minister of Italy, has been forced to step aside after losing a vote in the lower house of the Italian parliament to implement yet more austerity measures. These reforms were deemed necessary by the myriad of interests in the European Central Bank, the European Commission, and the governments of "core Europe" (read: Germany et al.) after the interest rates on Italian government bonds raced toward seven per cent- an incredibly high number for a country which is still solvent. The formation of a technocratic government, lead by the unelected Mario Monti, a former European Commissioner, is expected to be completed by Monday, November 14. Various coverage in European and some North American media float the idea that this new interim government will calm the markets and allow Italy to continue to borrow as rates decline,· thereby holding off complete catastrophe. I am not as convinced. Greece has just announced its own . government of national unity which is also to be lead by a technocrat rather than ari elected politician, and the bond vigilantes continue to circle as a complete sovereign default and exit from the Eurozone looms .. Europe now stands at a cross roads. The post-war project of European integration has been, up until this point, a resounding success. Despite the spectre of war between the Warsaw Pact and NATO during the Cold War, Western Europe has been without a major conflict since the end of World War II and that is perhaps the greatest evidence in favour of the ongoing European project. But the series of concentric circles that has, up until now, characterized the European Union and the various other. organs and organizations of cooperation has run its c;ourse. Lehman Brothers collapsed .at the end of George W. Bush's final term in offi_ce, and we are very nearly into the last year of Obama's first and perhap~ final term. In all this time, Europe has been unable to effectively deal with the series of fiscal calamities that have come their way. The various solutions that have been proposed up until now have been small potatoes in the very worst _way. Bailouts by Germany and further commitments to backstop Greece, Portugal, Ireland and others have done nothing to solve the crises in any of these countries, and have generally exacerbated the terrible economy calamities that ordinary persons have to deal with - especially unemployment. What we are witnessing right now is the failure of otherwise rational actors to move beyond their petty jealousies and save not just the euro, but the future of the entire European Project. There is only one proper remedy to what ails Europe, and it is certainly not tripling tuition fees and cutting pensions as David Cameron has done in the UK. No, it is full fiscal and political union: federalism. At least amongst the countries of the eurozone, a federal government with the powers of taxation and a democratic mandate would be able to backstop all of the countries now under threat from the bond markets and would be able to set up sane financial institutions. Or, at least, modify the existing financial institutions to be sane, such as making the European Central Bank into a lender of last resort. Some European elites have even begun to float this idea of federal integration· themselves, including the former German f9reign minister. But Europe remains at the brink. We will see very quickly whether the politicians and technocrats of Europe will be able to stave off economic Armageddon, and in the process we may witness the birth of a truly federal Europe. And if we do not, I cannot even begin to imagine the consequences.

ccupy _Vancouver's stru I

SASHAMOEDT THE CASCADE

Occupy Vancouver has seen a lot of grief these few past weeks. A central concern in the Vancouver mayoral elections, the media focus has tightened its lens on the small tent-city in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery. The media attention is varied, but leans to the negative in.its opinion on the protest.

Ashlie Gough's death at 23-yearsof-age, resulting from a heroin overdose, two days after a different occupier survived an overdose, brings forth critical issues surrounding the Occupy movement for those supporting and opposing it. The city of Vancouver is quickly assessing the safety of the set-up, while Mayor Gregor Robertson is quickly hopping down from the fence to the increasingly popular "dismantle" side.

The occupiers have been ordered to take a number of precautions for fire safety standards, including orders to: remove all unoccupied tents, create a separation of three feet between all tents, remove all tarps covering multiple tents, and to create a continuous path of travel within the encampment.

Ashlie Gough was visiting friends who were a part of Occupy, she apparently wasn't a part of the movement herself. Despite this, a drug-free, safe Occupy Vancouver.is entirely necessary. While the occupiers must remain unyielding on their . cause, they should comply with the city's demands and avoid seeing it as submitting to what they're fighting against. Among the most rational and reasonable of us, the base truth of the matter is this: if you don't list~n, no one will listen to you. Occupiers need to draw healthy attention to themselves, with their perseverance, community and cause. They need to keep things organised and their momentum strong.

The city's demands are perfectly reasonable. There are comments floating around on the immoderate attention the city is paying to Occupy Vancouver's safety restrictions, they are silent on the matter of the slumlike conditions of the housing for the poverty stricken of Vancouver. Of all the deaths by drug overdose on the streets of Vancouver, why did Ashlie Gough's spur Robertson to such decisiveness? What about the homeless people's safety conditions? Yet these questions don't seem valid It's not about the attention paid by the Vancouver Fire Department, Police and Mayor to Occupy. It's about the media's fixation on the municipality's attention. It isn't a fair representation, and this speculation is only creating unnecessary animosity. Because, wouldn't it be nice if it really was just good against evil? But it isn't.

Naturally, the homeless would gravitate to a warm place with a medical station, tents, safety and an attitude of caring camaraderie. These people are the victims of whose cause the Occupy movement is fighting for -the forgotten, the neglected, the needy. But the tents can't start looking like a mini-slum, even if that could be a perfect metaphor - some of the people we're trying to convince don't get metaphors. Occupiers should keep things aesthetically pleasing. We are trying to bring a"Vareness, and in this way trying to convince.

Stewart Brinton of The Province wrote one such message of misunderstanding "I suspect someone associated with Occupy Vancouver got her the drugs and may have even injected her and left her in the tent where she was found. There are dark, drug-addled energies at Occupy Vancouver," he wrote.

Do you really think that these people are living on the cold streets in front of the Vancouver Art gallery to party, do drugs and avoid paying rent? Do you really believe people with the passion and dedication enough to plant themselves in the mids.t of the ugly grey concrete-in a movement that has spread across the world-facing winter, violent riot police officers, and ill-informed, selfrighteous citizens like Stewart Brinton, are just lazy druggies?

But occupiers can't brush hiin aside. Brinton isn't the bad guy; some don't believe there are any of those. It's just people trapped in a system that makes it too easy to be selfish. It's a system that suppresses compassion and understanding by.separation, a system of warped values that creates this terrible detachment. Brinton is the type that occupiers are trying to help understand what's wrong with this system. "Time to tear Occupy Vancouver down," Brinton wrote: "It isn't what it pretends to be." That's fine for you to say. Is your democracy what it pretends to be?

Intervention, occupation, and nation building in Middle Eastern Libya

JOE JOHNSON THE CASCADE

Intervention, occupation and nation building best define Western policies towards the Middle East. Over the past decade it's been Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and now Libya, who have all seen what it means to have external involvement in their sovereign affairs. Of course, their experiences are unique for each country, but one question has reappeared every time. Why this country?

The simple answer would be the Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan; Saddam Hussein's WMDs in Iraq; terrorists in Pakistan; and the revolution in Libya to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi. However, this isn't a simple world we live in and rarely is anything so straight forward. Each of the reasons here are based on the fact that the international community, with the West in particular, has some kind of interest to advance. . Perhaps this question can best be analy~d by taking a deeper look into Libya As a country whose change came with the Arab Spring, the people now have an opportunity to become a beacon of freedom across the region. It had been four decades under Gaddafi's rule when the rebels finally pushed through with the backing of NATO. But now the question becomes how did they get to that point, and for that matter, could they have done it without intervention?

The rebellion against Gaddafi began on February 15, 2011, as a small conflict between the people and Gaddafi's security forces. It th~ broke out to the initial stages of a revolt, and then a full blown revolution. Soon after, the National Transitional Council was formed to direct the resistance. However, a month after the rebellion began the Gaqdafi's military gained the initiative, pushing back as far as the rebel's ho~e base of Benghazi. Intervention had to take place to prevent a massacre, and so NATO stepped in with substantial air power, eventually leading to the success of the rebels in overthrowing Gaddafi.

So once again, the question changes: Why intervene with Libya and not in countries such as Syria, where horrible acts of abuse are being committed against its own citizens?

According to Scott Fast, Professor Emeritus in Political Science, Gaddafi, "In practice, his policies ... had, reputation for doing a pretty good job in terms of housing and food and that sort of thing, if you compared it to other North African countries:'· Now, Gaddafi was a supporter ofterrorism and committed brutalities on his ·people. But these brutalities are not on the same level as the crackdown by Bashar Al-Assad, President of Syria, who has had 3,500 of his own people openly slaughtered on the streets.

To further answer the question posed, Edward Akuffo, another Professor of Political Science, identified "it is all because Syria, as Assad has said, is the fault line of the Middle East and any kind of intervention there might have very bad replications with regards to instability to the whole of the Middle East. So that is the calculation that policy makers have to make in terms of intervening in a place like Syria:'

And now this is where things get messy, while a further .question comes forth. Do we accept that while we provide military protection for some people, others are out of reach due to political implications? Of course, there are economic actions that can be taken, but in Assad's case these have limited effect. It's a hard fact to take that we' live in a world where people can live and die at the hands of their government, while all we can do is take a political course of action.

However, let's move onto a final q~estion: is it possible to successfully occupy a nation in hopes of rebuilding it for the better?

Fast often uses this Russian prov. erb in his classes, ''We know you can tum an aquarium into fish soup. The question is can you tum fish soup back into an aquarium?" When a government is overthrown, a vacuum is created. Fast went on to say, 'There are business fragments, and socialist fragments, and religious fragments, and secular fragments, and dorninational fragments, that all want to now ... use this opportunity."

This is why occupations designed to facilitate the move from a transitional government to a strong and sovereign state often take at least a decade. But with that, and if history is any indicator, the odds for success still aren't optimistic. The Americans have been in Iraq for eight-years and counting. Their withdrawal is looming and future of Iraq remains questionable.

The issues that face nations in this fragile time are very serious. Take the guns that found their way into the hands of all the rebels.in Libya. Akuffo made the point that, "now the international community will have to find a way of getting those guns out of the hands of potential · people like terrorists", as many will begin to flow freely. ':Africa has one of the highest incidents of small arms and light weapons circulating around that region. So the truth is that the rebuilding of Libya is linked to the general peace and security of the African continent because of the amount of arms that is circulating right now in that part of the world," continued Akuffo.

The Arab Spring has brought on a wave of change in numerous countries. Some will succeed in freeing their selves from the oppression of dictators, while some won't. But the time will come when all governments must face their people. rn close with this line from Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator: ''The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people, will return to the people, and so long as men die -liberty will never perish..:'