November 10, 2009

Yesterday the world celebrated the twenty year coming down of the Berlin Wall. November 9, 1989 was when Berlin started to be united. The world's governments were ecstatic about this. This was the beginning to the end of the Soviet Union. Shortly after this regimes in the former Soviet Block countries started to fall and new democratic governments took their places.

The West was salivating. Here were previously untapped riches. It was like the California Gold Rush in 1848. The corporations, businesses couldn't get there fast enough. It was also like after World War II when the major powers took their shares of the spoils in people, talents and business.

But not everything stayed as rosy as they hoped for.

The Soviet Union broke up, I think in 1988. Hungary changed its non-soviet government in 1989. And all other "brother" countries shortly after that. That's when trouble started. All nationalities that lived in "brotherly togetherness" decided that they hated each other viciously. Enough to kill, enough to go to war over it. This is what happened in the former Yugoslavia, Albania and in some of the former Soviet Republics. All ancient hatreds came to surface.

If nothing else the old communist rulers at least kept the peace internally.

Economically things weren't much better. When the old regimes changed they decided to privatize previously nationalized businesses. The ones close to the fire got the best deals. In every former socialist country the practically stole the country. They bought up businesses for fractions of their values and either sold them to western investors for much higher price or themselves became unimaginably wealthy.

Why is it that in today's Russia, which was under communist rule since 1917 and every business was nationalized, today there are more billionaires than any one place in the world? Because they stole their own country blind. And this happened in Hungary, East Germany, Poland, Romania and everywhere else.

In most of these countries there is a smithering of middle class. And, they are suffering while trying to make a decent living. While the upper class prospers the lower class grows. There is out of proportionate unemployment. Unemployment benefits are mainly unknown while dispossessing people is not uncommon.

Oh, I forgot to mention that now that the Gold Rush is over the West packed up and left.

Neo-Nazi crimes, anti-Semitic insults and anti-Israeli sentiment are on the rise. There is a skepticism in the general population about if is this any better than what they had before. What they had was peace, work, job security, lower prices, no money. But nobody had any money so there was equality!

What they didn't have than was the freedom to travel. Now, that they belong to the European Union and part of the free world they have the right to travel wherever they want to and get jobs wherever they can.

But in the old days the selected few could travel then, too. Now it is still the selected few who can afford it.

The Western governments are only interested in having countries they can count on with votes, military assistance and whatever they need. They are really not concerned with how the general population feel or how they live.

Neo-nazism, anti-Semitism, racist discriminations against minorities are internal problems they don't want to know about. The fact that there is widespread unemployment or poverty is non of their concern.

Major corporations close factories and move to another country at the drop of a hat thereby creating an entire layer of people who are totally incapable of finding work.

Now, I ask again, why is this any better than before?

I am not a communist, I am totally against what it did to the world. But I see how those people live now versus how they lived before and question why is it better now than it was then.