The deep economic crisis in Europe has destroyed the Social Contract between Government and Population. Nowadays the Markets have the saying. Governments do what the Markets expect them to do, even to lend money to broken banks.
The crisis, that started in 2008 in USA, is destroying the fragile European peripheral countries. Yes, Europe was fragile and did not know about it. All the financial helps given to the population during the times of lots of money around need to be paid back! And now is the time to do so!
Reading the article by Josep Ramoneda, entitled Islamofobia: el enemigo en casa (Islamphobia: the enemy at home), published on EL PAÍS newspaper (Madrid – Spain) on 29th July 2011, I can only agree with all that he is saying. It is visible the unsatisfaction of the “low educated” (like they call the working class in the Netherlands) classes in Europe. This working class is voting massively to the extreme right parties, like in the case of PVV (an anti-Islamic party) in the Netherlands. As well, this working class and low middle class populations are not happy with the subservience of the Government towards the Markets, what costs them jobs and income.
The danger of creating a national terrorist, as Anders Behring Breivik, in your own back garden is the same in Norway as it is in the Netherlands. This intolerance towards immigrants and Islamism creates terrorist monsters who can not be discovered as they do not have the stereotype of a “normal terrorist” (which for an average European is an Islamic man of dark skin). This intolerance toward the different, the economic instability and disbelieve in the national European Governments create the very likely climate of that of the II WW.
The population of the Netherlands needs to think about the case from Alphen aan den Rijn, where the killer was a religious christian extremist, or about the case of the killer of Pim Fortuyn, these are just two examples of how a country creates national extremists.
If we think about this prejudice against Islamic populations, we can see that the huge North-American media circus created after the September the 11th attacks on the Twin Towers in New York only increased the prejudice and intolerance towards Islamic peoples. It is like a virus that came from the USA to Europe. But it is not so strong in the USA as it is in Europe! In the USA they have the prejudice against the Latinos who speak Spanish. As well the low classes in the USA can not handle the unemployment, the economic instability and the loss of status as a super-power, as China starts to grow astronomically.
This inflexibility of the Europeans and North-Americans can only be terribly destructive now! Flexibility marks the difference between those countries that achieve economic growth nowadays and the ones that can not even pay their debts. The BRIC economies are an example to be followed by the inflexible Europeans: they are growing because they are more flexible in a world where flexibility is synonym of imagination, intelligence, vivacity, agility and strong economic ties.
The intolerance, prejudice and the inflexibility can only lead the Europeans to terrible attacks like in the case of Norway. And attacks will not solve their economic problems. They must remember the terrible things that men can do like during the II WW. But it looks like the Europeans, with all their inflexibility, are walking in direction of the same destructive path as of the II WW. God bless us!!!
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The article at EL PAIS can be found on the following link:
