Notes on European political culture
30
Oct
2010
Rapid reactions in Greece
European history was made on Thursday as the EU Rapid Border Intervention Team (RABIT) was deployed for the first time every in its history. The team, one of several operated by Frontex, the European Border Management Agency, created in 2007, was deployed on the request of the Greek government in order to help to stop the increasingly high numbers of irregular immigrants crossing into Greece–and the EU–from Turkey. (Reports by EU Observer and European Voice). As Frontex Exective Director said, ‘Frontex stands ready to assist Greece by activating the RABIT mechanism in this urgent and exceptional situation’ (Frontex announcement).
The move seems in part provoked by the release of a UN report only a few days before describing the conditions of undocumented detainees in Greece as ‘catastrophic’ and documenting episodes of torture and ill-treatment by police.
According to Frontex, more than three-quarters of the 40,977 people intercepted while trying to enter into without proper documents into the EU in the first half of 2010 entered across the Greece-Turkey border.
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6
Oct
2010
Europe: The travel advisory
U.S. State Department issued last Sunday a Terrorism alert aimed at American citizens traveling or planning to travel in Europe until roughly the end of the year. The alert which urges ‘extra caution’ but ‘does not discourage Americans from visiting Europe’, does not actually mention Europeans. Nonetheless it implicates them massively.
The advisory is remarkable if only in its semantics: Americans in Europe, and by extension Europeans in Europe, you are under threat: globally, homogeneously, without nuance or distinction. Complete, full, integral threat. Threat without specification or detail, without determination or differentiation, without prescription or framing. Simple, perfect threat.
Europe, the proud homeland of any number of universal Enlightenment principles, universal rights, liberties and privileges, meets itself in the door: universal threat. No matter who you are, where you are, what you are, you are equally under threat.
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2
Oct
2010
Security and prosperity
The romance of security and economics goes way back, at least in modern times. Historians tell us that before the modern age, security was more akin to peace of mind. It was a spiritual matter and a largely religious one. From around the Feudal period, society’s need for a more objective security became visible, and with it the willingness to pay for security. The transition to modern times saw the transformation of security into a commodity.
Today, in the post-post-Cold War setting, security is not only inseparable from economics; it is entirely unthinkable without it. In our time, security has become industrialized. We look overwhelmingly to industrial innovation to give us solutions to security challenges. Societies put their trust in technology and in the hands of the industries that produce them.
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