Avuncular American

Climate: Earth's Recirc Button Still On

Whatever just happened in Copenhagen - and I reserve judgment 'til I've read a comprehensive debrief - the underlying problem of carbon overproduction hasn't gone away.

One thing is for sure: this post and millions like it, and the millions of emails and spam mails sent daily, will add their share of greenhouse gases to our planet's already full atmosphere.  I read somewhere that the spam sent to Hotmail accounts alone consumed the equivalent of the production of 5 nuclear power plants.  Only they're more likely to be coal-fired plants...

It's like we're in one big airplane, folks, Earth Airlines, breathing in that stale air constantly recirculated around us.  The flight never ends, and fresh air is a relative concept.  So am I going to cease blogging?  Hardly.  I'm already using public transport for most movement throughout Brussels, and I try to climb the staircase vice using the elevator in my building a good half of the time.  But I still am dependent on electricity coming - in the case for Belgium and France - from a mix of nuclear and coal-fired power plants.  I"m in the grid.

For Brussels and its surrounding countryside, the solid waste equivalent of the closed circuit effect was illustrated this past week with odoriferous obviousness.  The private sector contractor in charge of the city's main waste treatment facility decided, apparently without consulting the city (capital region) authorities, to shut down the facility and dump Brussels' untreated effluent into the rivers flowing through and out of the capital.

Into someone's back yard, that is. The backyard being the Flanders region, already prickly about the presence of the million Francophones, expatriates, and immigrants who make up Brussels, in their midst (Brussels is entirely surrounded by Dutch-speaking Flanders).  Every time I flushed the toilet, I felt like saying "excuseer mevrouw en meneer" or some such thing.

The Francophone Brussels environment minister even had to scurry home from Copenhagen to handle the PR mess, since all she could do about the other mess was to frustratedly order the contractor to re-open the plant, which will be done - eventually.

The affair shows, with visual and nasal effect, how no man is an island, or how "down the drain" doesn't end when you flush the toilet.  Homeowners with septic tanks know that the honey-dipper must come or the system backs up; for those with municipal sewerage systems, it gets more complicated.  But someone else always lives downstream.

Maybe politicians weren't the right people to send to Copenhagen.  How about some HVAC technicians to explain that polluted recirculated air remains polluted unless filtered?  Better yet, stop polluting the air in the first place.  Or plumbers, who know that garbage in will result in garbage out, unless purified to an acceptable level.

When it comes down to it, perhaps even in the hearts of the most die hard climate change deniers, it should be common sense and a sense of self-preservation that forces us to do the right thing.  But as last week's ballyhoo in Brussels over solid waste flowing downstream should show us, governments cannot count on their contractors to do the right thing or even the most basic of civic-minded actions.  Not without controls, oversight, rules and regulations.  The job of governments, and the people who elect them.

The Luxury of Sunrise and Sunset

Note to readers:  This essay (non-political, for a change) appears in the current issue of "Together Magazine," a glossy Brussels bi-monthly distributed to the legions of EU functionaries and "advocacy" people (lobbyists) in this city.  UK spelling and references to £ and € reflect the generally Brit readership among the anglophone expat population.  The magazine's theme for the issue was "luxury."

Mont St. Michel, France

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Luxury – especially if its antonym is “discomfort” – cannot surely be all bad. Carried to extremes however, its pursuit can become, in the term coined by 19th century economist Thorstein Veblen, “conspicuous consumption” that is, wasteful, unnecessary, and – in these days of economic down-turning – downright despicable.

Perhaps that’s why certain advertising agencies have banned the “L” word from their lexicon, as Adweek recently suggested. This has happened before: luxuria, or “lust” in Latin, was the first of the original Seven Deadly Sins; search Google for contemporary usage and you’ll find certain British rock groups and dodgy Italian politicians.

What this will mean for all those products – Electrolux® appliances, Unilever’s Lux™ brand line – with the sinful suffix is difficult to say. As a prefix, “lux” is another matter, however – nobody accuses Luxembourg of lustful excess, though the Grand Duchy might have to go some extra lengths to prove that it is no longer a haven for all those luxury-seeking tax cheaters.

Flaunting your luxurious lifestyle to excess can sometimes result in trouble – if your conspicuous spending mismatches with your tax contributions, it can even bring the taxman to your door. The French have a term for that: “signes extérieurs de richesse” – there’s a delicious moment in the excellent 1998 comedy “Le Dîner de Cons” where the imminent visit of an inspector has the tax-avoiding leading man scrambling to stuff all his expensive artwork into a broom closet.

“Ostentation is a godsend for the fiscal authorities,” says a leading expert. But in some places, flaunting wealth is de rigueur. The Principality of Monaco actively courts URIs – “Ultra Rich Individuals” – who help fuel that casino “country” on the Med. But now, even URIs are facing straitened circumstances. The Economist, which recently ran a special report on “The Rich - Under Attack,” notes that luxury goods spending has plummeted some 34 %. “Bling on a budget,” apparently, is now the way of the wealthy. The Economist’s cover illustration is a Delacroix spin-off: French Revolutionaries led by a bare-breasted maid carrying a “Get the Rich!” placard (check the anachronous Blackberry on one of the fallen aristos). Poor dears.

Okay, there are the rich, the super-rich, and then there’s you and me. For Slumdogs who aren’t yet Millionaires, paying-to-poo in the relative comfort of a Mumbai latrine might be the height of luxury. Somewhere between that – and paying £35,000 for a diamond-studded cocktail in London’s Movida nightclub – is where I’d situate the luxury range for most readers. So here’s a suggestion: start thinking of luxury in strictly personal terms, instead of what you think those famous Joneses are up to, for you’ll never be able to keep up with them, and will be unhappy even trying.

Instead, carve out your personal luxury space and revel in it: a distinctive Belgian “beer-of-the-month” perhaps, taken in a local bistro, in a part of Brussels you don’t yet know. A €4.50 day-long public transport ticket, to crisscross the city in the quest for that special beer… (Note: non-alcoholic pleasures are permissible, but they escape me for the moment).

Here’s my personal cheapskate luxury favourite: find a seaside (or lakeside) location facing east, make a thermos of your preferred hot beverage, buy or bake some yummy pastries, and get up early enough to watch the sun rise. Variation: trade the breakfast fare for smoked salmon on fresh bread, accompanied with appropriate bubbly, and watch the setting sun opposite Ostend, or the ever-changing play of light over Mont Saint Michel.

It will set you back a couple of euros, but so what? If unstructured time, the sound of silence, and good company are precious commodities, you’ll be able to enjoy countless luxuries that those “URIs” can only dream of. Webster’s alternate definition of luxury: “a pleasure out of the ordinary allowed to oneself.” Doesn’t sound terribly sinful to me.

1920s beach scene from RootsWeb, Ancestry.com (Creative Commons)

Journée Sans Voitures - No Car Day In Brussels

This is an experiment, attempting to do a post by email. I am cheating, because to insert this nice "No Car" sticker from the Boston bloggers "Choosing No Car," I had to log on to my Typepad account.

Okay, enough geeky detail. The important thing is this: for the nth time in recent years, Brussels, seat of the European Union, is turning itself into a carless capital. "La Journée Sans Voitures" is a joy for anyone who values fresher air, walking IN the streets, and peace and quiet.

Not that our leafy neighborhood is noisy, but this morning, going out for fresh bread, it was like the final scene (minus the scary post apocalyptic music) of the end of the world in "On The Beach." No sound, empty streets. That will have changed when we take the tram a little later; last year our tram could barely move for all the cyclists and pedestrians clogging the city's many cultural and historic venues.

Brussels, a city of only about a million people, can go carless thanks to its wonderful integrated public transport system, where one simple ticket gets you on to trams, buses, metros, and trains. We almost never go into city center by car. So, looking for inspiration for a post-Detroit future? Come to Brussels next September and savor what it's like to spend a day without The Car.

Industrial Infrastructure - Not Just For the Museum

Throughout August and September, Europe’s cities, regions, and nations have been marking various “heritage,” “open house,” or “patrimoine” days. This weekend it is Brussels’ turn, but we also intend to take in some sites in northern France. Value for money doesn’t get much better: most of the sites are free, and some only open for this event.

Last weekend it was the turn of Belgium’s two largest regions, Flanders and Wallonia. We checked out several places in Wallonie, concentrating on the rich industrial heritage of what is now a region known for its depressed economy. In the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries, it was quite the opposite.

As you can see from the photo of the stupendous canal elevator at Strépy-Thieu, Wallonie and Belgium have seen fit to create marvels of the 21st century, just a few kilometers from the UNESCO world heritage site of its 19th century predecessors. Strépy-Thieu and its attendant infrastructure show how investment in transport alternatives for trucks clogging motorways exist, and can be made to thrive again.

For those who still know what a factory is, and who know that “industrial zone" doesn’t only refer to prefab warehouses to store Chinese goods destined for our shelves, check out the “European Route of Industrial Heritage” (ERIH), which has a store of information on its website.

One of Belgium’s most interesting ERIH stops is the Ecomusée (eco as in economic) du Bois-du-Luc, in the former coal belt of La Louvière south of Brussels. The road signs still tend to say “musée des mines,” but once you find the place, there’s no missing its purpose. It’s a veritable company town, built when capitalists had a paternal hold over their workers, even providing housing, shopping, and medical care on site. Quite an innovation for the 19th century.

But the paternalism only went so far. That impressive entrance you see in the photo, separating the courtyard of the mining site from the “cité ouvrière,” separates more than residential from industrial. That heavy steel gate between the brick towers is called, rather ominously, a “porte guillotine,” and though it may not have chopped any heads off, the message was clear to striking workers: do not try anything stupid. A far cry from today’s impunity with industrial property, when strikers in France kidnap management or strap homemade explosives to the machine tools.

But I digress. Much as I laud the work of these institutions which safeguard the industrial past in all its forms, I want future generations to admire what should be our industrial present. And that means retaining an industrial base, no matter how “yuppie” or gentrified our cities might become.

Recently I read in Belgium’s Le Soir (”Industries SDF à Bruxelles?“) that space for industry in Europe’s capital is disappearing at the rate of some 8,600 square meters per month, which, says journalist François Robert, “means there won’t be anything left, if this rate is maintained, in less than a year.” Sorry, folks, that just won’t do. Brussels, or Belgium, or any country for that matter, cannot live by bureaucrats and university students alone. And as much as tourists like to admire Brussels’ impressive sites like the Grand Place and the Atomium, I have yet to see a country achieve 1st world status (or retain it) via package tours.

So admire these wonders of the industrial world that have been preserved for posterity, but avoid crying “not in my back yard” when some entrepreneur wants to set up a little workshop down the street. Your future economic health may depend on it.

Belgium & Bolivia: Surfeits Of Democracy?

Other than a dusty bilateral maritime trade treaty involving guano (in 1836 both countries were in the first bloom of independence: Belgium was only 6 years old, and Bolivia 11, and it still had a coastline), I don't suppose there is a whole lot linking the two countries.

But this morning on the BBC, I learned of President Evo Morales' plan to grant autonomy based on ethnic lines (read "indigenous population," from which he hails).  Many countries have such arrangements, and Bolivia no doubt has much to atone for in its treatment of its Indian population, who constitute the majority.  But here's the catch: apparently this will create what amounts to five layers of government.

This is where Belgium comes in.  Belgium is probably a world leader in layers of government, which at times can border on the surreal.  There is the national (federal) parliament in Brussels, the city which is also home to a Flemish regional assembly that doubles as a body for the Dutch-speaking speaking community.  Then there's the Brussels Capital Region assembly, and finally the Francophone community's parliament.  Not to be confused with the parliament of the French-speaking region of Wallonie, which sits in Namur.  I may have left something out.

Oh yes, provinces.  Actually, I've been living on and off in Belgium for upwards of a decade, and other than ubiquitous road signs announcing the limit of this or that province, I had never thought of them as jurisdictions, with administrations and therefore administrators.  But yes, Belgium probably leads the world in the number of people on the payroll of one level of government or another.

Don't get me wrong: I am a former public servant, and see more of a role for government in addressing society's ills than most of my compatriots.  But there are limits to representative democracy, and there's a reason that the United States is a republic rather than a direct democracy.  You can have too much of a good thing.

Even in the US, there are way too many jurisdictions.  Just look at a map of, say, the Miami area, and you'll see the city of Miami, neighboring Miami Beach, and Dade County, but also a bunch of mini-municipalities that insist on having their own government structure, replete with a police force where, I bet you, the chief of police has four stars on his lapel or shoulder, in the best tradition of some foreign armies, where a sergeant can have as many stars as General Petraeus.

So, all power to the Bolivians, but maybe they should rethink those extra layers of government.  They haven't done much good for the Belgians.

Europe's Multiplicity of Messengers

At a recent Brussels conference on the international media, it took an octogenarian to cut to the heart of things: the creation of the European Union has helped prevent war on a continent that has known many wars, and was at the center of two World Wars in the last century. Ferdinando Riccardi of Agence Europe, an institution that predates the European Union which it covers for subscribers, has been aware of this message for the fifty-plus years he has been reporting from Brussels. War is news, but absence of war is, well, absence of news.

That “message” is not new, in fact it is of such glaring self-evidence that it is now almost invisible. Too bad, and too bad that the campaign for the European Parliament is such a yawn, as described recently by The Economist’s Charlemagne. The European Parliament, says Charlemagne, “is worse than dull: it does not work properly. Like a student union, only with better expenses, it spends an inordinate amount of time on subjects way outside its mandate, such as foreign policy and defence.”  Most Belgians are aware of regional elections scheduled alongside the European Parliament elections next month; voting for MEPs is almost an afterthought for many.

For the international journalists gathered at the conference organised by IERI, “who speaks for Europe?” is more than a matter of whom to phone for an interview. Labib Fahmy, Brussels correspondent for Al-Jazeera, spoke of “misunderstood Europe,” the victim of its multiplicity of institutions (Commission, Council, Parliament). Sounding like an Arab Henry Kissinger, he asked “who is Europe?” American readers will be surprised to learn that Fahmy’s struggle to explain Europe to his audience (“Inside Europe”) has languished, while, “despite difficulties,” the Stateside program “Inside Washington” carries on.

Quentin Dickinson (a Frenchman with Scottish forebears) of Radio France Internationale (RFI) has covered the European Union from Brussels for years, and has seen the evolution of Europe’s spokesmen. From the days when spokesmen knew more about the subject than about spin, to today’s tendency to hire “communications” experts, with the result that the experienced journalist hardly consults them if he or she is looking for hard news.

Last word to the dean of the international Brussels correspondents, Ferdinando Riccardi.  When Agence Europe was started, the European Union had morphed from its precursor, the European Coal and Steel Community.  That economic, technocratic underpinning - for what in reality is a unique experiment among nation-states, that of surrendering pieces of sovereignty in the name of national interest - still dogs the EU.  “Brussels,” instead of being synonymous with lofty ideals of peace on the European continent, is in most Europeans’ minds another way of saying mindless bureaucracy.

Let’s see what happens if and when the Lisbon Treaty is ratified.  Will there be a super-spokesman, or will he or she just be another “president” with a small “p?”

Brussels Forum 2009

Thanks to this nice bank of computers at the Press Center of the Brussels Conrad Hotel, I am, for the first time in my life, live blogging as a "journalist."  The 2009 edition of the Brussels Forum, put on by the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMFUS), is under way.

Don't stay tuned - I can't imagine that I'll be able to type and listen at the same time.  And I certainly don't want to Twitter my time away.  Right now BBC World's Nik Gowing is conducting the first event of the Forum, taping next weekend's (Saturday March 28) episode of The World Debate.  The topic: "How Relevant is Europe To The US Under Obama?"  It's a relevant topic in its own right, and one that haunts Europeans, who read much into President Obama's seeming downplaying of Gordon Brown's recent visit, or that his first phone call as President was to Mahmoud Abbas and not, say, to Nicolas Sarkozy (poor Sarko is apparently chafing from Obama's letter to his predecessor, Jacques Chirac).

It will be worthwhile watching, this debate of talking heads.  "Mars" (in the person of neocon Robert Kagan, Iraq war monger now with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) and "Venus" (pretty much everyone else, starting with Carl Bildt, the Swedish Foreign Minister) battle over the question of fundamental differences (Kagan) or shared values (everyone else) between Europe and the United States.  UK minister Lord Marc Malloch Brown rounded out the European side.

Dr. Anne-Marie Slaughter, Director of Policy Planning at the State Department, is one of the glass-half-full majority.  Turning Henry Kissinger's dictum about Europe - "who do I call?" - on its head, she said that she can mange with three - not 27 - numbers: those of the EU troika.

One of the best lines was from Carl Bildt, who knows that to do business in Washington, Europeans certainly need more than the White House or the State Department's number.  Illustrative of the Potomac-on-the-North-Sea representation here at the Forum is the presence of a strong US Congressional delegation, including Senators John McCain, Ted Kaufman, Mel Martinez, James Risch, Jeanne Shaheen, and George Voinovich; on the House side, Representatives Alcee Hastings, Darrel Issa, Ron Kind, Ellen Tauscher, and Michael Turner, with staffers from both chambers in tow.  Senators Robert Casey and Bob Bennet, co-chairmen of the Codel, also addressed the opening session.

In the audience, some interesting faces, including Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, staying on-message about Russian intervention in his country.

Probably the most substantive presentation was that of European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, who tried to erase the false dichotomy between stimulation and regulation, the roughly respective American and European positions on the world financial/economic crisis.  Both are essential, said Barroso, who defended European efforts at injecting sufficient liquidity as equal or greater than those of the US.  Barroso reminded the audience that the European safety net is not only more extensive than that of the US (more generous unemployment benefits; universal health care, etc.), but also lasts longer (unlimited in some European countries vs. 9 months in the US).

All in all, an interesting beginning for the Brussels Forum.

Brussels Groups Advise NATO: Game Over or Go Global?

In this town of 1 million souls, there is a higher than usual concentration of policy wonks and political activists.  That's often so in capital cities, but in Brussels' case this is much compounded by its hosting of multilateral organizations like the European Union and NATO.   Today it's Hillary Clinton and her counterparts from NATO's 25 other member states, tomorrow it could be an EU ministerial, which - unless the topic is controversial - usually are lower profile affairs.

The Brussels police have a fleet of sinisterly dark trucks equipped with powerful water cannons, and I expect them to be out in force on March 21, when a coalition of pacifist groups (deploying "civil disobedience" tactics) will stage "NATO Game Over."

Photo: Vredesactie.be

One of the advantages of living here is exposure to a wide range of opinion, and the opportunity to hear it first hand at numerous conferences organized by groups representing all colors of the spectrum.  Last week it was pink verging on red, with tinges of Green, at the "Defense Without Borders?" conference, organized by several leftist peace organizations, including the CNAPD.

Although there were what I would call professional activists present, the conference included several academic experts from  Brussels universities and think tanks, as well as elected officials from the left.  Though often critical of NATO and of things military in general, these were reasonable realists in the sense of admitting that collective defense (preferably, in their eyes, through the EU or even better, the United Nations) is a fact of life.

Not good enough for some on the far left, who castigated anyone who took a moderate, even moderately critical, stance.  For these "pros of protest," climbing fences and getting themselves arrested is preferred over other forms of discourse.

On the centrist, free-market "Liberal" (in the European, not the US sense) side, whose political hue is blue, the atmosphere was decidedly more sedate.  Yesterday, the Brussels office of the "Friedrich Naumann Stiftung" organized, with the Transatlantic Institute, an equally well-attended review of NATO's achievements and challenges on the eve of the 60th anniversary summit.  NATO was represented by Dr. Stefanie Babst, Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Public Diplomacy Strategy, and veteran journalist Brooks Tigner of Jane's Defence Weekly provided an independent view.

Chatham House non-attribution rules prevent me from quoting, but much of the discussion centered around competing views of NATO as a defense (but not "military") alliance, and NATO as a forum for every conceivable threat ranging from illegal immigration to combating climate change.  Rather than another dry theological debate on the desirability of NATO's continued existence - the audience did not need to be convinced of that - the debate was over the achievable versus the desirable.

Sure, it would be nice to have an agreed strategic vision between NATO and the EU, but both organizations function by consensus, and beyond problematic matters like Turkish membership in the former and not the latter, there is the matter of the neutrality of certain EU members like Ireland and Austria, not taken lightly in either country.

Yes, NATO could discuss the impact of climate change in the far north and how sea lanes and maritime borders will be affected, but let's not make it sound like the defense alliance is now going to go all environmental.

To be fair, those calling for Alliance focus on non-traditional threats (cyber warfare, piracy, terrorism) are not advocating abandonment of nuts-and-bolts collective security of the kinetic type.  There was interest in building on NATO's comparative advantage in some areas - cyber security for example - that touch on legitimate non-traditional areas of security concern.

But for every call for branching out into sometimes esoteric subject areas, or transforming itself into "Global NATO," there will be member states ready to say, "not us, that's the other guys' job," as one NATO veteran put it.  Other guys, as in the European Union or the UN.  That's the beauty of consensus, and it should comfort the pacifists.

NATO's game, despite the fence-climbers' fondest wishes, is not over.  But "global NATO" has begun to show its limits, which may be somewhere between Tora Bora and Waziristan.

Brussels: Capital of Europe or Small (International) City?

"Etats Généraux de Bruxelles" sounds grander than "Citizens' Forum of Brussels," but that is what has been going on over the past several weeks, culminating in an end-of-March final plenary session. I attended one of the conferences last night, "Brussels as an International City," with a Power Point summary of the brussels-international-city (.pdf) study done by a team of "cultural geographers" from Brussels' main universities, ULB and VUB.

A city of a little over one million that houses institutions like the European Union and NATO, and almost a third of its inhabitants from other countries - that qualifies as international, so that's that, right?

Actually, no. Part of the problem is that Brussels - whose name recognition rivals that of Coca Cola, and beats by far the other constituent regions of Belgium (what foreigner, outside of a select few, has ever heard of "Wallonia" or "Flanders?") and of Brand Belgium itself - is synonymous with "bureaucracy." The European Union is at once one of Brussels' major sources of income, and the bane of its efforts to improve its brand or, as was used last night, its "city image."

People pay good money to visit Brussels, whether on business or on holiday. The more than 5 million overnight stays per annum account for some 30,000 jobs. And yet Brussels struggles with its self-image.

European institutions - ably represented at the conference by several articulate "Eurocrats" (though the often pejorative use of the name shows the challenges facing the image folks) - are only now, more than 50 years into their prolonged "temporary" stay in the Belgian capital, coming to grips with how best to fit into the city that houses them.

Brussels, before it became the de facto capital of Europe, was and remains the capital of Belgium. Oh yes, that's yet another image problem. Brussels, officially bilingual French-Dutch, probably has many more anglophones than Dutch-speakers in its midst, and perhaps many more Arabophones than English and Dutch speakers put together.  Cacophony to some, opportunity to others: The Brussels Enterprise Agency (BEA) tries to put the city's assets into context for foreign investors, as does Brussels Export (image above left).

Geographically surrounded by Dutch-speaking Flanders, Brussels' periphery is Ground Zero in the Belgian language wars, which are really political wars masquerading as linguistic ones. The natural region of Brussels - were it not for the political boundaries that are limited to 19 "communes" in the urban center - would in other metropolitan areas stretch to include its economic hinterland.  Some, like writer Marco Martiniello, quoted in yesterday's Le Monde, have even likened Brussels' unenviable political situation to the French acronym for UFO - OVNI - "objet politique non identifié."

So, Brussels has politics (Belgian and European), language (Belgium's own, plus those of polyglot newcomers), and geography to contend with.  A tall order for any city, but an immense challenge given the current morose economic context.

Luckily, the very convening of the "Etats Généraux" and the efforts of BEA and other home town boosters provides cause for hope.  After a stint at NATO in the '90s, we decided to return to Brussels and make it our permanent home.  There's truly no place more international - comforting for lifelong nomadic expats like us.  That feeling of allegiance by Belgians and expats alike was evident last night, though several speakers pointed out that the "Méditerranéens" who constitute a large chunk of central-western Brussels inhabitants were largely absent from the Forum.  At least the lacunae was noticed.

Far from taking its orphan political status lying down, citizens (and hangers-on like us) of Brussels are starting to look closely at their fate.  There's even a new political party in the making, "ProBruxsel," which nicely misspells its very name to show bilingual (even trilingual) inclusiveness between French, Dutch, and English-speaking inhabitants.  A similarly trilingual forum, Brussels Studies, has ambitions to be a "scientific" (meaning academic) meeting place for serious work on the idea of Brussels.

Brussels has started to identify its brand.

(A version of this post first appeared in "Errant European" on Blogactiv.eu)

Postal Service: Privatization In a Time of Cholera?

In case you haven't noticed, around the world, in former bastions of free enterprise, market economics, and damn-the-unions, we don't need no government handouts capitalism, things are changing.  Handouts are being handed out, and chicken feed they are not.  Now we understand that AIG, in addition to the $150 billion it already received, needs another $30 billion.  Nationalization is no longer the privy of Latin American populists, only it's not called that in polite North American circles.  Bailout is the preferred term.

Today in Belgium, however, postal workers are striking to protest incipient privatization.  You might well ask why, in light of the way that the private sector has managed to mismanage the banking, financial, automobile, and possibly many other economic staples, they are now to be rewarded with the gift of previously successful public services?

As David Gow explains in The Guardian, it's because

The EU's postal market will be fully open to competition in 2011 and Belgian unions fear this could hasten trends to cut costs by shedding labour and/or moving staff onto part-time or temporary contracts.

As Eric Renette explained in Brussels' Le Soir last Friday, these proposed part-time and temp employees would be "pensioners, students, housewives, trying to earn extra money."  Oh yes, and these would likely be non-union jobs.  Sorry, but I'd like to entrust my mail to someone with a little more at stake than somebody from the temp agency.  You know what they say about checks in the mail.

We've seen this before.  Anyone been on a train in Great Britain of late?  Privatisation, as it's spelled there, was applied to the country's rail network, turning it into a non-network patchwork of a bunch of private companies that converted public symphony into a private cacophony.  Director Ken Loach covered this sad story in his little-seen 2001 film, The Navigators.

Don't get me wrong: unions are not perfect institutions, and the "you can't get me I'm part of the union" (though The Strawbs' anti-union message backfired) attitude certainly did damage in places when carried to extremes.  But in the case of privatization in the time of nationalization, I'm afraid that I'm part of the union (actually, I do belong to the diplomats' union, though it is called a "professional association").

In this time of "whither capitalism?" doubt about what direction economies should take, maybe we should have a moratorium on privatization.  Let the private sector get sorted out - often with taxpayer money - before we hand it any more free gifts for the stockholders.  At least in the US - where labor unions and working people were personae non gratae during the Bush years - organized labor now has a receptive audience in the Oval Office.

Capitalists, don't sweat it.  Union people, workers - they have a vested interest in your success.  It's their bread and butter after all.  Workers - capital's best friend.  The postal system - if it ain't broke...

(Image: La Poste)