[Nettime-bold] the war has already started

A few disparate thoughts about the latest collective fantasies.

I happened to be in Madrid on that Saturday of February 15 in what turned out to be THE place if one wanted to enjoy the anti-war global party. Around 2.000.000 people attended a huge manifestation, that went on with the inevitable flags, banners and drums, but also with fliers, posters and distribution of protest post cards, already filled with the address of the prime minister, ready to be signed, stamped and sent. On the wall of the hotel where I was putting myself, a graffiti was saying “Aznar, if you want oil, go to Galicia!” – a foot note sending to the ecological disaster brought by the crash of a (allas) Dutch tanker, where the government played a pathetic part characterized by inefficiency.

The crowds, merry-happy and having an obvious pleasure at the performance, were an interesting mixture of very old survivors of the peak times of the leftist politics (the Civil War from the 30s, that is), and the descending line of their children, and grand children. After the event, the performers invaded the tapas bars, and got down to the regular business of eating and drinking, while peeping from time to time at their own image on the TV inevitably hanging in one corner of the room. The protest march got a lot of coverage; the images of the human river flowing among majestic government buildings was alternated (through zapping by a person behind the bar, I suspect) with a talk show where the prime-minister Aznar was performing with his eternal slightly disgusted facial expression. A fat bald man pointed at the screen his fork filled with “jamon” and said in mutual disgust: “I cannot recognise myself in that man, nobody here can”.

In Amsterdam the protest was held by something in between 50 and 70 thousands. The reactions were mixed. Some media outlets found the numbers good, considering the scale of everything Dutch. Some compared the event with the anti-missiles protests from the 80s, and pointed at the recent absenteeism of the Dutch citizens in matters of broader interest. Fact is that the society here is exhausted by what I suspect was a bigger than acknowledged effort to maintain prosperity. As De Volkskrant was pointing out, the real disease of the Dutch society now is not a new lust for rightist values, but the obsession with consensus. The most mind-blowing scenarios, like coalition governments between (say) US Reps and Dems are right now in the works in Holland. If the precedent elections saw a sad coalition between centre right (CDA) and far right, now, after the very anticipated ones held last month, the centre right and the social-democrats (PvdA) are in the process of painfully giving birth to yet another coalition. And that despite delicate innuendoes from the last that the solid options that the former have for the US policies are not really…. hm.

A sociologist advanced the idea that the country has made a choice for provincialism against internationalism, focusing on its own problems and dilemmas. But if one looks at the long years when no one bothered to see that the educational system is going down the drain and so is the health system, the public transportation etc., one cannot really see how the provincialism compensates for anything. Fact is that during the famous 8 years of purple coalition, when the Netherlands became a pillar of successful liberalisation, no social outcry was generated by what is proven now to have being a serial killing of social democrat values under the cover of tolerance.

Today I open the newspaper and see what I was expecting already from some time: globalism hits back and the save haven of European accountability goes to the junkyard. The Ahold concern, counting as main subsidiary the most aggressive supermarkets chain of the Netherlands (Albert Heijn – expensive and mediocre, don’t bother), was reporting (through its US and South American divisions) wins doctored up with some 500 million for 2001. Of course the Amsterdam stock exchange is in shatters. Swell, that is gonna bring some more job cuts in a market where one bankruptcy after the other and one restructuring after the other are the staple news. Well, after KPN (Royal Dutch Telekom) and A. Heijn having trouble, we wait for the two other pillars of Dutch economy – KLM and Heineken. Prosit!

And it all gets back and turns around the WAR, of course. In private, people in the Netherlands are worried and slightly confused. A good friend, mother of two, was saying with amazement: “I do not know what I believe anymore, really. I understand that all that looks wrong, but deep inside I feel that it should just happen, quickly, so that we can get over it and go on with our lives. I might be egoistic, but I fear a deep recession if all this continues.” We all fear the deepening of recession in a country that was for too long getting used to a too good life, and learn to spend over the income, make debts, get high loans etc. On the other hand nobody REALLY believes that once the war is over things will get better. Five years is a minimum term that most of the people (with more or less expertise) put to the recession to reach its bottom.

Somebody visiting from Israel tells me over a coffee the latest gossip from the front line. People there tend to think that military operations already started in Iraq, secretly, far from the media and under the cover of the desert. I do not know in whose hands is the satellite system, but if it is in the hands of the global stewards, as it should, then the hypothesis might become interesting. Israelis seem to know something about surprise invasions happening far from the media, and actually they extrapolate this theory on Iraq to alleged actions of their own military in Southern Lebanon. Well, it would be a nice symmetry, to have the 2^nd Golf War beyond the media.