There is a lot of talk around the world that the Arab Spring has failed. People are worrying that it has failed because Egypt is under military rule, people are being massacred in Syria, Yemen is still having protests, Bahrain is seeing protests, Libya is still waiting for elections, and this is one year after the movement started. Very few movements have lasted just over one year with positive results for freedom. The overthrow of Communism lasted from 1989 to 1993 from the first protests in to the overthrow of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of Czechoslovakia. That the revolution is not over should not surprise anyone, this is the natural state of the world going back through history. It took Germany 45 years from the overthrow of Nazi Germany in 1945 to Wiedervereinigung in 1990. The people of the Arab world need our support in the West where we have already gone through our own changes (The American Revolution lasted from 1775 to 1783, the final system of government was not in place until 1789, 14 years after the Boston Tea Party). So, be patient, revolutions hardly ever happen overnight, and history shows us that the most successful revolutions take years to happen, and the Arab Spring is one of those revolutions.
This also applies to the Occupy movement. I must divulge my personal bias, everybody has bias, and say that I am proud to be a member of the Occupy movement. The Occupy movement has similarities to the protests of the late 1800s in response the Industrial Revolution which ended the Gemeinschaft economy and replaced it where people were no more than tools, and the wages people got were worth nothing. It took a few decades before the poor Irish and German immigrants (who were biased against because of their nationality, but that's a different topic) were able to get recognition as full Americans as you can see now by many of America's elite having roots in these immigrant populations, for instance the Kennedy family among others. Their demands were simple. They wanted a fair day's wage for a fair day's work. They wanted to get benefits that would allow them to live good lives and to be treated as more than just gears which is what was happening. After several decades laws were made in response to the General Strikes and other important events. These include minimum wage laws, people need to be paid in real money and enough to live on, OSHA requirements, people need to be safe at work, the right to form unions to negotiate with employers, the right to have a work day of 40 hours a week along with overtime for work past 8 hours in a day, to prevent people from being overworked and keep their health. Occupy has similar goals, a fair tax code, eliminate or decrease campaign contributions, destroy the power of lobbyists, and other things that give politicians to vote in ways against the interests of their districts that as Democratic representatives of the People (We the people in order to form a more perfect union...) to move away from the system that has been in place where politicians do not represent the average American but only the richest people in the country and are able to win through smear campaigns year after year. This is why I expect Occupy could take several years to fulfil the goals. This could be different from the others in this country (remember there are Occupy movements who self-identify as being in solidarity with the protests in New York across the world) and other countries with Democratic principles if we did just one thing, we could win in less than a year. We could go to the polls and vote for the candidates who will represent the interests of the American people. The Republican Party is scared of this, and they are putting barriers to vote in the Deep South and now the Midwest that make it so that many Americans who have lived here their whole life will be unable to vote. I won't go into detail, but Amnesty International has excellent reports. This shows the power of Occupy if the far-right party of the richest and most corrupt Americans are invalidating votes that will undoubtedly go to the more progressive (yet still conservative in many aspects) Democratic Party. They also both have made registering candidates in all but two states (Washington and California) near impossible if the candidate does not have support of one party's leadership or the other. We need nothing less than full election reform to deprivatize the methods our elections are done. The first step is to demand of our leaders that we want a change in how our leaders are selected and how our government is being run, which has been done. The second step is to vote for the candidates who will fulfil our goals as Americans the most. The third step is to hold them accountable and not give up on the United States of America. Nothing else is needed. Victory is in our grasp, and they know it.
The Euro, the third and last current event with the same characteristics, has been completely created by the media. The European Union has debt rates and unemployment rates less than the United States. My previous post was untrue, there are some countries in Africa that have defaulted on their debt and seen their currencies decline, these tend to be authoritarian African nations which have "Presidents" with no fair elections and are dictators, with destructionist economic policies, no industry, negative economic growth, rapid population growth, and no social safety net of any sort from the country. Europe is a totally different story. The governments of Italy and Greece have been replaced, the governments of France have everything to lose no matter what they do, and there is no pleasing the loud racist noise machines in those nations (or ours for that matter. I am referring to the people who hate Turks and believe that Eastern Europeans are coming to destroy their countries, Eurosceptics in other words). So no matter what they do Sarkozy and Merkel have already lost their next election, do not bail out parts of Greece and Italy's debts and they will lose for the economic catastrophe that can happen, bail out parts of Greece and Italy's debts and they will lose for helping their political neighbours. There is no way they can win the next election. It is not possible. Their least destructive course of action is to pay off maybe 10% of each country's debt to boost faith in investors in Europe so that demand doesn't continue to plummet, because when demand plummets the price plummets, and a panic happens because most people do not understand what is happening and the noise machines hate Europe. The Euro will continue, the cost of implementing currencies for each nation is just not worth it, and the future benefits of having a single market will benefit everyone. Since the European Community (the predecessor to the European Union) was formed there have been no conflicts among those nations in Europe and racial stereotypes between the oldest nations have diminished. International around the European Union for every nation is less expensive because of no tariffs, helping the economies of everyone. For the first time in history for the past ten years Europeans have had a stronger currency making it easier to travel around the world through better exchange rates.
Again, patience. The situation will resolve by working towards it. FDR was right when he said "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" because when faced with a daunting challenge cowardice is never rewarded.
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