Hasta La Gadget!

WASHINGTON –- Greece gave us democracy and theater, and now is giving us a gripping new synthesis of the two: the dramatic, hysterical alarms of supporters of austerity.

Facing slow growth and crushing debt, “Austerian” leaders in democracies such as Greece, Spain, France, the U.K., (and, until not long ago, Japan) clamped down on social welfare spending and eased regulation of business.

But with unemployment widespread, especially among the young, and disturbing signs of renewed recession in many countries, a backlash has begun. On Sunday, Greece chose as its new prime minister a 40-year-old leftist, Alexis Tsipras, who vows to renegotiate $272 billion in foreign loans while amping up government wages and spending.

In Greece, across Europe, and elsewhere, Austerians are responding to Tsipras types with apocalyptic warnings, many of which are overstated, comical, outrageous or just plain wrong.

Here’s a theater program guide to them (and reasons why not to be alarmed), compiled by HuffPost editors in the U.S. and at our global editions:

NO TOILET PAPER!

As the Greek vote approached, one Austerian suggested that her countrymen stock up on toilet paper. The theory: The Tsipras’ crowd would turn Greece into another Venezuela, famous for the scarcity and rationing of consumer goods, including — yes — toilet paper.

So far, however, toilet paper crises haves tended to materialize only when Austerians are around. They are said to have imposed just such a shortage on Catalonian schoolchildren, for example.

And when Tsipras moved into the official residence, he found that even toiletries had been removed by the outgoing administration. “They took everything,” he said. “I was looking for an our to find soap.” No word on the toilet paper.

THE COMMIES ARE COMING!

Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of a profit-mad China, it’s been hard for the capitalists of Europe (not to mention the rest of the world) to make communism sound scary. Now, the Austerians have the anti-austerity forces to demonize.

Despite a deep communist history in Greece, the old talk didn’t work –- perhaps because the Austerians couldn’t decide whether to accuse their foes of being ruthlessly efficient commies or naïve and inept academics. And if Tsipras’s cabinet is any indication, they lean toward idealistic economists and professors.

PUTIN IS COMING!

Okay, so the Soviet Union is gone. But there’s still Vladimir Putin, and suggestions that he has an opening to meddle in Greece and in other countries looking to escape the grip of onerous loans from the European Union and other Western international organizations.

But, especially with oil and gas prices tanking, Russia is in no position to be a lender-of-easy-resort to Greece or any other country into which Putin has not sent tanks. Even the Cubans gave up on the Russians, and have been taking aid from Venezuela, and will now take it from Uncle Sam.

THE NAZIS ARE COMING!

In Greece, Tsipras’s party found allies, if not friends, among right-wing ultra-nationalists who hate burdensome foreign loans for tribal, more than economic, reasons. That has led some to suggest that the anti-austerity movement will ultimately bring the extreme right back to power.

But you hardly have to be a right-wing nut in Greece to despise the idea of leasing the Port of Piraeus (ie., Athens) to China, which was one Austerian notion of how to save Greece.

Though there are signs of a right-wing resurgence in Europe, the anti-austerity message of the left isn’t the reason. In France, in particular, there are plenty of other explanations for why the right is on the rise –- and why most voters in France despise them. “Our fear is more against the right,” said Le Huffington Post editorial director Anne Sinclair in Paris.

THE GREEK CONTAGION IS SPREADING!

Tsipras’s Syriza party has a Spanish counterpart called Podemas. Polls show Podemas’ rising appeal. Early tests include regional elections in Andalusia on March 22, followed by nationwide regional elections on May 26.

But in Spain, conservatives and socialists alike join hands in insisting that, “Spain is not Greece,” said El Huffington Post’s Madrid-based editorial director, Montserrat Dominguez.

Spain is not nearly as deeply in debt as is Greece, and Spanish leaders still expect the economy to grow by 2 percent this year. They claim they will create 800,000 new jobs and drop the unemployment rate to 22 percent -– still miserable, but perhaps enough to prevent a Podemas sweep.

Elsewhere on the planet, Japan abandoned austerity years ago, and it seems that U.S. President Barack Obama now wants to do the same.

THE EU IS FINISHED!

Already under pressure, the European Union is more than vulnerable to suggestions that it could fall apart –- and that Greece could be the proximate cause. One theory is that Greece will be kicked out, which will cause a domino effect. Others suggest that the EU itself will end up being lenient, which will cause a different type of domino effect with the same result.

But both of these scenarios understate, or even ignore, the practicality and shrewdness of EU leaders and institutions. Not for nothing is it the largest economic bloc in the world today, and one that has proved more durable and successful than many predicted.

Tsipras, for one, has already signaled that much of what he and his compatriots want is a seat at a table for direct negotiations, and for more investment in, as opposed to new loans to, Greece.

IT’S CHAOS, AND FREEDOM WILL BE LOST!

In the U.K., Conservative David Cameron said an anti-austerity Labour government would lead to economic “chaos.” This month, he staged an unprecedented photo op with five Tory cabinet ministers lined up in a row to warn of the dangers of abandoning austerity, reports Mehdi Hassan of The Huffington Post U.K. They offered up an official looking (but not official) dossier filled with lurid claims about what Labour would do to the fiber of British life.

Such warnings remind others of similar dire predictions that came in similar confrontations long ago. When Francois Mitterand was running on a leftish ticket in France in 1981, a member of the conservative leadership suggested that a Mitterand victory would bring Russian tanks to the Place de la Concorde and an era of repression to France.

Mitterand won; the tanks never arrived. “We laughed about it for years,” recalled Sinclair.

In that same year, a close friend of Mitterand’s, Socialist Andreas Papandreou, won election in Greece. There were similar warnings about how the Cold War was lost because Greece -– always pivotal — had fallen to the East.

The Cold War eventually was was lost -– by the Russians.

Anne Sinclair (France), Montserrat Dominguez (Spain), Mehdi Hasan (U.K.), Nikos Agouros (Greece), and Kosuke Takahashi (Japan) contributed reporting.

One of the repeated tricks and techniques of reformsterism is to propose policies or procedures as beneficial for public education when in fact, intentionally or not, they are far more likely to damage public education. This argument usually takes the form of trying to redefine public education itself — kind of like handing someone a screwdriver and saying, “This will be a great hammer; just hold it like this.” Much of what is presented as an attempt to reform the public schools are actually attempts to turn them into Not Public Schools.

So let me see if I can lay out what features the real U.S. education system actually has, the better to understand when we’ve moved outside that boundary. I’ll stipulate right up front that our current public education system does not always nail each of these perfectly, but these traits still define what our public education system is (and is not).

The public education system takes all students.

We’ve divided up territory geographically so that we can be sure not to miss a single child. If a child lives within the boundaries of that school system, that school system must take that child. There are some limits in the public education system (for instance, a child who presents a clear and present danger to other students), but beyond those limits no child can be rejected, pushed out, or required to seek education elsewhere. And certainly the public education system does not require you to apply to be in the system, or go find a school to take you when your original school no longer will.

The public education system is publicly funded.

All taxpayers contribute. It may be necessary for state or federal government to shuffle some of that money around to even things out; after all, we do not provide roads decent roads only in rich neighborhoods. If there’s a requirement that parents must contribute money, time, or both in order for their child to be allowed to attend, that is not a public school.

Conversely, any attempt to cut funding or failure to properly provide for a school is nothing less than an attempt to turn it into Not A Public School. While student “outcomes” are certainly a consideration for a public school, it is does not establish equity to simply demand that all schools produce the same outcomes regardless of what resources and facilities they have.

The public education system is run by local taxpayers.

A public school system is one of the last bastions of participatory democracy. The school is run by a group of taxpayers who are elected by other taxpayers. The school board must (in fact, can only) have public meetings at which members of the public can have their say about the decisions of the school board. Taxpayers get to have their final say about school board decisions by voting.

If a school is run by people who don’t have to meet in front of the taxpayers and do not have to listen to the taxpayers, it is not a public school. If the people who run the school cannot be removed from office by the people who live in that local school district, it is not a public school. If school policy is set by a people who do not have to answer to local taxpayers, that is not a public school.

The public school system is run transparently.

The complete financial records of a public school are always available, in full, to any taxpayer and/or voter in the local school district. Any school that says, “We don’t have to show our financial records to you,” is not a public school.

The public school system is not run for profit.

The public school system is a public service. If you like, you can think of it as a managed public good, like a park or the municipal water supply. As such, it never produces a profit for anybody. This includes directly (as in an explicitly for-profit charter) or indirectly (as in a not-for-profit charter that pays profit-creating fees to a building owner or school management company).

The public school is stably staffed with the best professionals the available money can buy.

A public school hires certified professionals, and it pays with a competitive salary and it structures its system to encourage the staff members to stay in the school for the length of their career. Teachers are evaluated with a system that considers the full range of skills and qualities that the school district values, and those who do poorly receive support or, eventually, fired if they cannot get their act together. A public school tries to be a source of stability in its community.

Schools that use any of the pay systems that are designed to cut total operating cost by paying the total teaching staff bottom dollar are not public schools. Using an evaluation system that does not really evaluate the full range of teacher qualities, or which injects an invalid random element, is an attempt to turn the school into Not a Public School. None of these “merit” systems, VAMvaluations, “career ladders,” or short-term hiring practices designed to run a school on the cheap contribute to the quality or stability of the school.

The public school is a long term commitment.

Public schools represent a promise by the community made to every child, present and future, that they will be given the best education we can get them, no matter what, as long as there are children who need it. Public schools do not close for business reasons.

You can break these rules.

There are plenty of perfectly good schools that don’t meet these standards, and their existence is not a pimple on the face of the universe. But they aren’t public schools.

Another way of understanding the reformster position is that they have tried to convince us that entities that are not public schools actually are. If they want to have a conversation about how to change our traditional public education system into something else, that’s a perfectly legitimate conversation to have.

But to have that conversation, we need honesty. Reformsters need to just say, “We want to replace the traditional American public education system with a different kind of system,” and then we can have that conversation. But insisting that we are trying to bolster or improve public education by stripping its defining qualities is both destructive and dishonest.

Originally posted in Curmudgucation

I consider myself lucky. I am 40 years old, a woman of color, and I have never had a terrible experience with police officers. I also consider myself lucky because I live in Harlem, NYC, and live with the safety net created by some of the world’s finest first responders.

But the older I get, the more I see and understand that for too many Americans, including family members, including neighbors, police presence has long felt like occupation. And with the rapid militarization of America’s police, an experience once reserved for those in ghettos is now available to anyone caught in the wrong place at the wrong time in cities, suburbs, and rural areas across the country.

After Mike Brown’s killing and the subsequent non-indictment, and Feminista Jones’s call for a national moment of silence over the summer, I attended my first anti-police brutality protest. I was nervous –I’d never protested the police before. But when I arrived at the park — along with a few hundred other extremely peaceful protesters — I was reassured by the professional and calm response by NYPD. Protesters had their say. No one became violent. And that was that. On the same night, protests led by multiple groups in Union Square would march down avenues and shut down Times Square. And for weeks, #BlackLivesMatter and #ICantBreathe protests and die-ins would continue, sometimes dramatically shutting down highways and disrupting commuters’ and shoppers’ holiday routines. When NYPD officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu were so horribly killed, they were murdered by a lone actor, not as part of anyone’s movement as too many were quick to accuse.

The vast majority of protesters wanted peace, acted in peace. I know of no protests in these past months that would have necessitated a long gun reaction from police, presuming the police intent was to deescalate and not instigate. So many of us watched the Ferguson protests, and asked, our hearts open and hurting: why would the police respond with such hatred? Why couldn’t they come in peace? Or, at least with the professionalism of most of NYPD?

So I find myself deeply troubled by Commissioner Bratton’s announcement that NYPD has formed the Strategic Response Group, a 350 officer unit that is: “designed for dealing with events like our recent protests, or incidents like Mumbai or what just happened in Paris.”

Commissioner Bratton lumped together the recent anti-police brutality protests with terrorist acts of murder. If one asks, how could he possibly do it? I suppose the answer lies in these two words: “disorder control.” No matter that these recent protests were to say that black people are human beings, too, undeserving of systematic brutality, no matter that millions of Americans of every hue and background rose up to agree, he used those two words as more justification for the force that will have “extra heavy protective gear, with the long rifles and machine guns — unfortunately necessary in these instances.”

But when exactly were they necessary in these past months? Are we to conclude that the best and brightest at NYPD watched the Ferguson response and their takeaway was not disgust, but we need to be more like them?

I have never been someone to decry or dismiss NYPD as an organization. I know there are so many strong and good police officers who have a very difficult job to do and do it well, and when put in gray situations, do the best they can. Also, I find hope in the policing change that encourages more community engagement by police on their beats. But I can’t help but be alarmed by the hyper-militarization of our police force. By policies that put so much trust in enhanced firepower.

In a recent post, I asked both Commissioner Bratton and Mayor Bill de Blasio to consider going the Toronto Police Department route and declaring that from now on, the new paradigm would be zero deaths. That as an agency, they would work to preserve human life when possible. That as an agency that runs on stats, this would become the stat above all stats.

Are these two words — zero deaths – just too radical to be spoken aloud in America?

There is still time to listen to the people of New York City who are saying enough is enough. We want common sense. Not overwhelming force.

Very often I look at the pictures of my grandmother Paula. She was warm and loving. I imagine my conversations with her, sitting on her lap. I hear her. Her voice makes me feel strong and indestructible. I look at the pictures of grandfather Pál too. He is sitting at his desk, white shirt and vest. He has a mustache, like most Hungarian men. He is a little rough, but very proud of his three boys Bandi, Pisti and Dénes, my father being the youngest. Then I remember the photograph of the three young men taken in 1939, the one which has been hanging in our home forever. There is a little piece of paper glued to the glass. On the paper, my grandfather had scribbled a note: “If anyone finds my sons, please hand them this photograph.”

I never met my grandmother or grandfather. On July 17, 1944 they left for Auschwitz in the fruit cars ( a lot worse than cattle cars, these had no ventilation at all) provided by the Hungarian Railways (MÁV) crowded together with hundreds and hundreds of other Jews from the town of Pápa, in Central Hungary. It is known that the Hungarian gendarmerie and the municipality was helpful in rounding them up, herding them into a ghetto a few weeks earlier. I try to imagine their journey, and how they survived the excruciating travel they had to endure, before they arrived to Auschwitz to their certain death. They might not have made it. Or if they did, they were among those who were sent to the gas chambers upon arrival. They were old and frail.

This week the civilized world is remembering the liberation of Auschwitz 70 years ago. We are honoring those who perished and celebrating those who had the luck and the will-power to survive. This is important, but for me it is just another week when “memories” pop up suddenly, for no apparent reason, without any rational explanation and mostly without context. The Holocaust has grown under my skin; it is with me every day. My personal window on Auschwitz is open, and I can’t close it.

I am proud and grateful, that unlike many Jewish parents in Central Europe, my father chose to share with me the horrors of the deportations, the persecution of Hungarians of Jewish descent and the Nazi extermination camps at a very young age. I was 10, when he first explained to me, that there was a village in Poland, where something very bad had happened to our family.

I was a grown man in 1979 when my father decided to visit Auschwitz, the one time he had the strength to do so. Father wanted to “see” his parents, his cousins Tibor and Éva, his uncle Lajos, his niece Zsuzsika, four month old at he time of deportation, “for the last time.” Father, who had been hardened by the front, the Jewish forced labor brigades of the Hungarian army, the five years of POW camp in Russia, held my hand like a child as we walked through the gate of the death camp. He then broke down crying endlessly and whispered into my ears “I can’t take it any longer.” Years later,the night before he passed away, he went on and on about the Holocaust. He told me: “Not a day has gone by, that I have not thought about it.”

It was good that many European leaders were in Auschwitz to commemorate this week. Poland is to be thanked for the respectful manner in which they did this. But to see the last major commemoration of the Holocaust before the eye witnesses are all gone become embroiled in present day political bickering is sad. I am a staunch critic of Vladimir Putin, but he should have been there too. The Red Army liberated Auschwitz, and that’s a fact. President Obama should have been there as well. Not in order to please or impress Jews, but in order to send a strong message about his feelings, which I am now uncertain of. He should have walked past the gas chambers, past the Appelplatz, past the barracks, past Dr. Mengele’s torture chambers. He should have been there, so that he would get a little closer to feelings of pain that survivors, millions of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those who died in Auschwitz feel 70 years on.

A pain that just would not go away.

In the surprisingly competitive world of long-distance ballooning, the world distance record is the holy grail — more or less the equivalent of the marathon record. Somewhere just off the San Fransisco coastline, two guys just broke that record — and they’re still flying.

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