Democracy is caught in a vise between increasingly authoritarian governments beholden to the corporatocracy, and baton-wielding populist parties beholden to no one.

The foreign television channels broadcasting in the U.S. report on a daily basis from Greece, where the dire economic situation has driven the suicide rate up sharply, and where a nationalist party, mockingly called the Golden Dawn, takes African and Asian immigrants as scapegoats, as if turning them out of their hospital beds could make up for the economic austerity imposed by the European Union.

After being targeted by Voice of America during the Cold War, Russia’s RT delights in drawing attention to everything that isn’t right in the United States, zeroing in on stories the mainstream media ‘misses’. RT may have reported on President Obama’s latest executive order before the American press did, following a calculated Friday afternoon signing. The order gives the President full control over all communications in emergencies, and spells out the steps to be taken under tight deadlines in order for the plan to become operational.  You can see the story here: rt.com/usa/news/obama-president-order-communications-770/ and a follow-up here: rt.com/usa/news/white-house-systems-order-142/.

And then there is TomDispatch’s latest guest writer, David Vine www.tomdispatch.com/post/175568/tomgram%3A_david_vine%2C_u.s._empire_of_bases_grows/?utm_source=TomDispatch detailing the new strategy behind our more than one thousand foreign bases: fewer gigantic ones, many small ones known euphemistically as ‘lily pads’. Often located in out-of-the-way places, they enable special ops forces and such to turn up anywhere on short notice.

Not to mention the New York Times’ July 15th story revealing that our cell phones let the government know where we are at any given moment – and even, supposedly, where we will shortly be.  Or the covert airport scanners disguised as pillars that can tell what you ate for breakfast as you walk by.

To take democracy for a reality in a world where the ‘choice’ is between being tracked and spied upon by those in power or beaten up by those imitating power is a mistake that I fear we will come to regret – when it is too late.

Back in the 9th century, the Empire of Charles the Great, known as Charlemagne, included France, Northern Spain, most of Italy, Germany, and parts of modern day Yugoslavia and Hungary.  In the course of his forty-seven year reign, the French-born leader who became Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, implemented sweeping economic, educational, military and administrative reforms, which prefigure twentieth century efforts to achieve a united Europe. The division of his empire among his heir’s children returned Europe to a microcosm of relatively small, warring states.

Eight hundred years after Charlemagne’s death, the Ottoman Turks took over the eastern half of Europe, creating a multinational, multilingual empire that stretched from the southern borders of today’s Germany to the outskirts of Vienna, from modern Slovakia and Greece in the south to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the north; from Algeria in the west to Azerbaijan and modern-day Yemen and Eritrea in the east.

The countries of Central and Eastern Europe did not retrieve their independence until 1923, when the Ottoman Empire collapsed, and then it was short-lived. Soviet domination after the Second World War brought modernity to an area that five hundred years of Ottoman rule had kept in a near-feudal state. After the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the countries of Eastern Europe were gradually welcomed into the European Union after meeting stringent political and economic criteria.

The twenty-seven member European Union, officialized by the Treaty of Maastricht in 1993, is the culmination of decades of incremental steps to tame the nationalism of Europe’s individual states which had been the cause of so many wars.  In 2002, the union introduced a common currency, the Euro in twelve of its member states.  Today the Euro is used in seventeen countries and is the second largest reserve currency after the dollar.  But the world financial crisis of 2008 hit the countries of southern Europe with a vengeance, and now there is a very real possibility that Greece will have to abandon the common currency, causing turmoil in the rest of the Euro zone, with knock-on consequences worldwide.

There is more than one irony in this tale. The main incentive to 20th century European integration was the desire, especially on the part of France, to prevent Germany from ever attacking its neighbors again.  Subsuming Germany within a larger economic community has worked admirably until now.  But no one considered what would happen when Germany-as-economic-powerhouse would insist on dictating conditions to less disciplined neighbors.

The administrative center of the European Union is Brussels, not far from where Charlemagne is thought to have been born, but Frankfurt is its economic capital. And although France has a new European champion in Francois Hollande, when Germany calls the shots, it inevitably revives memories of its military occupation.  Regrettably, one has to wonder whether Charlemagne’s dream can no more become a permanent reality now than it could 1200 years ago.

At the risk of repeating myself, I want to put yesterday’s post in a wider context:

As spring makes demonstrating less uncomfortable, Europeans are taking to the streets by the tens of thousands to protest the austerity measures their leaders have come up with to combat the crisis induced by the 2008 financial debacle.

In a tribute to the movement that began more than a year ago in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, and and is still on-going, yesterday, tens of thousands, fed up with 25% unemployment, gathered in Madrid’s main square, Puerta del Sol and and in 80 other cities across Spain.

In London, hundreds of protesters gathered outside St Paul’s Cathedral, where an Occupy protest camp was removed in February, and marched peacefully through the financial district.

Smaller protests have taken place in the Portuguese capital Lisbon and in Germany’s financial centre, Frankfurt.  German demonstrations come as the 13.2 million people eligible to vote for the state legislature in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous and industrialized state, elect a new regional government.  Not all Germans agree with Chancellor Merkel’s austerity measures, which have included greater freedom to fire workers, putting about one fourth in temp positions.

1,000 marchers converged on Tel Aviv to protest the cost of living, with marches also reported in other Israeli cities. Prime Minister Netanyahu has just consolidated his power by bringing the main opposition party Kadima on board, none too soon to undertake domestic reforms. Fareed Zakaria noted today that he can no longer invoke the fragility of his support to delay making peace with the Palestinians, while Iran’s Ahmedinejad noted that this failure represents a greater danger to Israel than any military attack.

The common thread in all these situations is epitomized by the oft heard criticism of the international Occupy Movement of failing to offer concrete proposals for change. But at this point popular pressure, combined with brutal government crackdowns, may make the emphasis on reform too little, too late.

If you think this is an exaggeration, Iraq Veterans Against the War are circulating an on-line petition asking the commander of the Illinois National Guard to refrain from sending in the National guard when they gather for the NATO Summit, where they will as I wrote yesterday:

“…..ceremoniously return our NATO service medals to denounce the disastrous 11-year war in Afghanistan.

The Illinois National Guard Deputy Director of Domestic Operations recently stated publicly that he stands ready to deploy National Guard troops on peaceful NATO protesters.

Send an email to Major General L. Enyart, head of the Illinois National Guard, and urge him not to activate troops against fellow veterans.”

A few minutes after I signed the petition and hit ‘send’ I received the following email:

‘Symantec Mail Security detected prohibited content in a message sent from your address. (SYM:13657982411663453303).’  

It was from the IL-ExchangeService@ng.army.mil, Recipient, MG Enyart.

When I went to look for the Vets’ email in my inbox, it had been remotely moved to the trash.

While European protesters have inherited a long tradition of solidarity, the heritage of American activists emphasizes individualism. As a result, the latter campaigned for changes to SOPA in the name of the free sharing of artistic works. It was, it seems, less motivated to prevent the Patriot Act from assimilating citizen organizing through “wire, oral and electronic communications’ to terrorism, which brings us back to the beginning of this post.

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I don’t know if it’s still being taught in K-12, but I learned that ancient Greece was the cradle of Western Civilization – you know, the Parthenon, the original Democracy 101.

The Golden Age of Greek culture, known as Classical Greece, occured five hundred years before the birth of Christ.  The death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC marked the beginning of the Hellenistic period, which ended with the annexation of Greece by Rome in 146 BC.

Greek culture conquered Rome, but the importance of “Greece proper” (that is, the territory of modern Greece) declined sharply. The great centers of Hellenistic culture were now Alexandria and Antioch, capitals of Ptolemaic Egypt and Seleucid Syria, their influence reaching as far as Afghanistan until the advent of Christianity

Roman rule marked the end of Greek political independence for centuries. After that came the Greek Byzantine Empire, which in turn was conquered by the Ottoman Turks whose rule lasted to the early nineteenth century. (Turkey ruled over all of Eastern Europe for 500 years, creating the economic lag that many in the West thought was the result of Postwar Soviet rule.)

Following the Ottoman defeat, Greece had several interim governments, until the Kingdom of Greece was founded in 1832. It lasted until 1924, when it gave way to the second Hellenic Republic. Republican Greece was largely dominated by the revolutionary and statesman George Venizelos, known as the father of modern Greece.  After several premierships and revolts, he was exiled in 1935, and Greece again became a Kingdom.

When the Second World War broke out, the Greek King was allied with the Germans. As in many European countries, it was the Communist Party that organized the resistance, first against the Germans, then the Italians. The world war was succeeded by a civil war in Greece, as progressives fought for a republic, with the Communist Party remaining legal until 1948. With British—and later the US – help, the monarchy won the day. The Marshall Plan, enabled Greece to begin to develop. But in 1967 a military junta took power in a coup, ruling Greece until 1974.

From 1974 until the present, power has alternated between conservatives and socialists. Greece joined the European Union in 1981 and adopted the Euro in 2001. New infrastructure, funds from the EU, and growing revenues from tourism, shipping, and light industry brought Greeks an unprecedented standard of living.

During that period, left and right alternated in power.  But from 2004 to 2009, as the international financial crisis was building, Greece was led by the conservatives. The socialist George Papandreou took over a country deeply in trouble, and as in many countries across the globe, has not been able to satisfy both his people and international finance.

Whether or not the Greek crisis further imperils the Euro by spreading to Italy – a much larger economy – it marks the end of the civilization to which it gave birth.