Not exactly. When Iceland’s financial industry crashed the socialdemocratic Samfylkingin won the general election in 2009 an set course for stricter laws, enabling all the jailed banksters. The current government won the elections in 2013 and is a typical conservative party.
2 Likes
A Conservative party called the progressive party?! We actually have that in Argentina, too, so I’m not doubting you.
Who have got the best shot now?
The US would never allow other countries to follow the US’s own rules.
Consider the US’s (successful) attempts to strong-arm foreign banks into honoring US FACTA banking laws. If they have any dealings in the US - and most do - they must report all banking information on “US persons” to the IRS or face massive fines.
“US persons” includes many people who don’t hold a US passport. Not just former Americans, but their spouses and children who have never considered themselves US citizens or been to the US. Needless to say, many consider it a privacy violation by a foreign country. Canada eventually signed an agreement with the U.S. and passed its provisions into law allowing and forcing banks to comply.
Think of the implications of mirroring that.
Ted Cruz, despite giving up his Canadian citizenship, will still be a “Canadian Person” under banking laws. All his banking information - even if he becomes President - must be reported to the Canada Revenue Agency. Canada could investigate him for off-shore companies, etc. And that means that a foreign government could pressure a US President in ways Americans might not like.
The same goes for others in Congress. There are eighteen foreign-born members of Congress, and likely many more with foreign-born parents and spouses. Imagine the hissy-fits when their banking information is automatically sent to Germany, France, India and elsewhere.
The same goes for millions of Americans. And millions of foreigners residing in the US because the US taxes them at a lower rate.
It ain’t happening.
At some point its up to the citizens to go do what the government won’t.
Its very upsetting for everyone.
Generally governments back down and take action when the rule of law is about to get burned in the public square by an angry mob.
No, they don’t. By that point they’re ignoring the rule of law themselves.
What works better is the protests and popular uprisings within the rule lf law. Iceland is demonstrating that. Canada, fed up with the ruling Progressive Conservative Party, effectively voted them out of existence in 1993. The US Republican Party is getting its own wake-up call: If they survive Trump/Cruz, they’ll almost certainly lean further away from clown car politics in the future.
2 Likes
Wikipedia has a list of polls. afaik the extraordinary election was canceled and another politician of the progressive party will become prime minister.
That’s an excellent point.
I was thinking of Kennedy and civil rights. He needed to get out in front of a popular movement that was threatening to explode if it wasn’t addressed.
It forced Kennedy to take positions he otherwise would not, and gave him the political capital to get things done.
So I think perhaps a better way to phrase it is that mass protests and civil disruption can put governments between the horns of a dilemma. Right now… banksters are not prosecuted because banksters can give governments and their leaders better reasons to not do so, then to do so.
We’d have to give them better reasons to do so, then to not do so. Legally and nonviolently. Yes…
However… some places do not allow peaceful protests. Or even dissenting opinions. What then?
2 Likes
The common answer - still with a lot of truth to it - is “elections.”
Of course that doesn’t work when your country is run by effectively “one party with two heads” - because wealthy and corporate donors are funding favored candidates in both parties to get the same results.
The answer to that - in the US - is apparently “primaries.” There seems to be a popular uprising in both parties against the status quo candidates.
Beyond that there’s “an informed public.” Politifact is doing an excellent job of this: Comparing politicians’ claims with the real facts in a way that the traditional press has rarely done. comparing their promises made with promises kept. And they’re expanding into state politics, one state at a time. We’ve barely scratched the surface on what internet can do for citizen reporting and record keeping.
Romney’s “magic Etch-a-Sketch” didn’t work in 2012.
1 Like
But the citizens have to find out about the things, and also receive analysis of their relative weight and significance. Most people in the world don’t have offshore accounts or shell companies, and don’t really know how they work or who’s telling the truth-the left insisting that this is a scandal, or Macri and the Twitter pundit he put by decree into heading the anti-corruption office (who didn’t meet the prerequisites for the position and also has been quoted saying that if Macri weren’t married, she would be so in love with him. No shit.). After living through a couple years of what happens to a society when almost all the news is like Fox News, I am convinced that it fucks with our ability to process information to the point of being psychological torture on a mass scale. How can you spend years hearing from every tv and newspaper that the left is corrupt, that the left steal, that the left launder, that Obama loves the right, because those good straight arrows in the rich USA hate corruption, that only the right can save us from this horrible bleeding away of all the country’s money by those highway robbers on the left, and then get it when a dozen small blogs and the one major leftist newspaper try to reorient you to the fact that the right is stealing and laundering?
Here about 75% of all news and commentary outlets are run by the same monopoly of uber-conservatives, who helped put Macri into power. In exchange he decreed-away some important anti-monopoly protections put into place by the last government. So, while everyone heard about the Panama Papers over the weekend, the news yesterday ran nonstop coverage of a police operation to surprise arrest a businessman linked to the old government, who was landing his plane in Buenos Aires to appear in court on Friday on charges of money laundering. That’s right-he traveled to the capital to appear in court, yet after never arresting him all this time while awaiting trial, suddenly they nab him on his way to the courtroom and make a huge spectacle of it, while not mentioning the Panama Papers except to say that Macri is relaxed because he is innocent. So, you get just as much social media of teary-eyed conservatives, astroturfers and bots resharing the picture of the businessman in his cell and “thank you president Macri for finally putting an end to corruption and impunity”.
You could go to the internet, but the monopoly news company is also the major internet provider for the country. At my place, for example, the only news source I can stream live on my computer is the far right, Macri loving channel TN-all the other channels just buffer endlessly, so I have to wait hrs or days for YouTube uploads, since I don’t have a tv.
The other, left wing half of the country are scrambling to agree on when and where to protest, but it’s a pain because every labor union and org is also holding individual protests every day over the waves of layoffs and political persecution of the left. Which don’t get hardly any tv coverage, or worse, they shoot video an hour before it starts, when only the first to arrive are setting up. We live resharing on Facebook and Twitter images comparing our amateur pics of the protests with the news coverage, but it gets old.
When Argentina was as close to its financial crisis as Iceland is, people didn’t hesitate to raise hell. But 12 years of the K government restored a great deal of comfort to the middle class, who have spent the last couple years taking their holidays in Miami and Europe, buying new cars and gadgets, and remembering that they are conservatives who can’t stand all this blah blah about governing for the people, while 2 years on nonstop news exposes of the Fox News indignation induction machine style convince them that no government ever stole more from them than the progressives, and that a government for and by the very rich would finally solve the problem, because the super rich already have all the money they need and therefore won’t steal like those dirty scoundrels who come from the middle class. People actually say this.
Also we’re so close to the elections only 4 months ago, so many who voted for Macri still want to defend him, while those alley burnt don’t want to hear ‘I told you so’.
Plus, the fact that the yuppie monetary fund class and old money aristocrats embezzle, evade taxes and launder money isn’t really news. Everyone actually knows this since always. The deal is whether or not you want to use the scandal to oust them or not, and whether you can be convinced that you have a chance of ousting them if you spend the next couple days missing work out in the cold rain with a stupid sign.
1 Like
Not even close 
Singing Revolution: 300,000 people - about 25% of Estonia - sang together for independence.
Baltic way: 1-2 million people hold hands forming a chain across three countries (18% of total population, 28% of original citizens who wanted the occupiers out)
3 Likes
I dunno. I think if you can’t protest, you’re probably not going to get a fair election.
I’m not one for burning it all down or anything… But I do think a protest is a big surging mass of rabble who scares the shit out of the elite. They only hear the rabblerabblerabble noise a giant group of people make, then ask their pals what the hell is going on outside.
It’s supposed to be scary. It’s foreshadowing. It’s a sign of rising dissent.
If it’s done from a free speech zone half a mile from where anyone’s going to see it… well… It’s not much of a protest then. It’s the status quo.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
