Choose the most important event of the last decade...

[JackRiddler]

This is a game. There is no one correct answer.

Choose an event that represents the most important development in the human history of the decade now coming to a close. To make it interesting and satisfy the common need for stories and symbols, it should be a definable event, or related events that point to a larger development, rather than the mega-trend itself.



ON EDIT: If you're going to agree OR disagree with someone's choice, please post your contribution under that choice, so that we can get discussions going. (Do we really need to have 25 new subthreads that predictably say "9/11"?)

[JackRiddler]

1. Argentina and Venezuela uprisings of 2002

I shall say the weeks in 2001-2002 when the Argentinean people took to the streets to successfully resist an IMF-dictated austerity plan, and toppled five presidents until they got one (Kirchner) who was willing to redefine the terms of Argentina's debt, i.e. default and free that country from its injust debt. Since then the country has been an economic success story (undeniable in relative terms), putting the lie to neoliberal ideology, and undergone a political transformation in which exponents of the old dictatorship were finally exposed and punished. A few months later, in April 2002, the Venezuelan people took to the streets to overturn a coup d'etat by oligarchic elements backed by the US government who had attempted, for two days, to establish a bloody dictatorship, restoring their rightly-elected populist president, Hugo Chavez. These two events catalyzed Latin America's gradual emergence from many decades of disasters caused by the neoliberal paradigm and US imperialism, with leftist and center-left governments coming to power in Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Nicaragua (as well as an election victory in Mexico that was overturned by a fraud leading to the present disasters there of drug war and impoverishment).

After so many deadly CIA coups, the Venezuelan example was a historic case in which the US security state, finally, was broken in its power to overthrow a democracy and establish a client dictatorship. The Argentinean example shows that there is a way forward for all nations currently struggling under bankster-induced debt and austerity regimes. It is possible to default and to survive and prosper. Sooner or later, it will be mimicked by many others. Maybe even this week in Ireland! Things may be going backward at the moment in the US, but the US is no longer the locus of historic developments.

[JackRiddler]

15. Dean Baker: "Ireland Should Pull an Argentina"

http://www.commondreams.org/print/62700

SNIP

Ireland is currently experiencing a 14.1% unemployment rate . As a result of bailout conditions that will require more cuts in government spending and tax increases, the unemployment rate is almost certain to go higher . The Irish people are likely to wonder what their economy would look like if they had not been rescued.

The pain being inflicted on Ireland by the ECB/IMF is completely unnecessary. If the ECB committed itself to make loans available to Ireland at low interest rates, a mechanism entirely within its power, then Ireland would have no serious budget problem. Its huge projected deficits stem primarily from the combination of high interest costs on its debt, and the result of operating at levels of economic output that are well below full employment – both outcomes that can be pinned largely on the ECB.

It is worth remembering that Ireland's government was a model of fiscal probity prior to the economic meltdown. It had run large budget surpluses for the 5 years prior to the onset of the crisis . Ireland's problem was certainly not out of control government spending; it was a reckless banking system that fueled an enormous housing bubble. The economic wizards at the ECB and the IMF either couldn't see the bubble or didn't think it was worth mentioning. The failure of the ECB or IMF to take steps to rein in the bubble before the crisis has not made these international financial institutions shy about using a heavy hand in imposing conditions now. The plan is to impose stiff austerity, requiring much of Ireland's workforce to suffer unemployment for years to come as a result of the failure of their bankers and the ECB.

SNIP

There is an obvious precedent. Back in the 2001, the IMF was pushing Argentina to pursue ever more stringent austerity measures. Like Ireland, Argentina had also been a poster child of the neoliberal crew before it ran into difficulties. But the IMF can turn quickly. Its austerity programme lowered GDP by almost 10% and pushed the unemployment rate well into the double digits. By the end of the 2001, it was politically impossible for the Argentine government to agree to more austerity. As a result, it broke the supposedly unbreakable link between its currency and the dollar and defaulted on its debt. The immediate effect was to make the economy worse, but by the second half of 2002, the economy was again growing. This was the start of five and a half years of solid growth, until the world economic crisis eventually took its toll in 2009. The IMF, meanwhile, did everything it could to sabotage Argentina, which became known as the "A word". It even used bogus projections that consistently under-predicted Argentina's growth in the hope of undermining confidence. Ireland should study the lessons of Argentina.

SNIP

[Greyhound]

32. Excellent, positive choice. Thanks.

Many of us, myself included, get so caught up in the daily disasters being wrought here that we sometimes forget that there are some few remnants of sanity left in the world.

[MineralMan]

2. The 9/11 attack. It has influenced more policy and economic

events in the U.S. than anything else in the decade. In many ways, it set the tone for the entire decade, and not in a good way. We are in two stupid wars. We've changed how we look at everyone, and how they look at us. It was a disaster that reached far beyond the actual event, and is still affecting us all.

[TransitJohn]

3. United States' election coup 2000.

Never forget.

[Warpy]

4. That's mine, too, because that's going to keep resounding

all over the world as the damage those men did lives on long after they're all dead and buried.

[DCKit]

7. +2

The ramifications will endure for decades, at the least.

[tuckessee]

8. The year 2000 was in the previous decade. n/t

[Vincardog]

22. The election theft of 2004 allowing the pResident to appoint another SCOTUS enabler

[brewens]

9. Beats 9/11 because with competent people running things 911

would have been stopped.

[Life Long Dem]

16. That's what I was thinking and my choice also.

10 years later and we are still cleaning up the mess of the last decade.

[Celtic Raven]

30. So many bad things would never have happened

during this decade if the Supreme Court hadn't selected Bush.

[Toucano]

34. +1

No 9-11 without this.

[robcon]

5. 9/11, by far

n/t

[tuckessee]

6. 9/11

A few dozen radicals caused the world's most powerful nation to go bezerk, toss by the wayside common sense & liberty and sent them on a path to bankruptcy.

[leftstreet]

10. The Immigration marches of 2006

In response to the Senselessbrenner bill

I know, I know nobody even remembers them now.

But in terms of historic significance? Millions MILLIONS of people in the streets of America. Cops essentially standing down...just watching. No swat teams, no police state terra. Cops were overwhelmed

Sadly there was no follow through. The same leaders of the same groups that got people in the streets sent them back home. BUT it was an amazing example of the power in actual MOVEMENTS and grassroots organizing.

[JackRiddler]

17. The largest protests of the decade, along with those of 2003 before the Iraq invasion

Wait! There's 14 geriatric Tea Partiers hoisting misspelled signs. Now that's what the corporate media want to honor!

[leftstreet]

23. Exactly

The M$M is killing us

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. In the US the coup of 2000

Abroad....

The rise of the South American countries and the war on drugs in Mexico...both point to our fall as an Empire.

[lame54]

12. Florida 2000...

i may technically have been the prior decade but it lead to just about everything else - including 9/11

[tuckessee]

13. The sinking of the USS Maine.

This event set the US on its imperial course.

(Hey, if the year 2000 is considered as being in the last decade why not 1898?)

[Greyhound]

21. Because a decade is ten years? n/t

[tuckessee]

37. 10 years?

1. 2010
2. 2009
3. 2008
4. 2007
5. 2006
6. 2005
7. 2004
8. 2003
9. 2002
10. 2001

That's ten years and there's no year 2000 there. Decades, centuries, etc. start with the first day of years ending in "1" and end with the last day of years ending in "0"

[emilyg]

14. 9/11

[Missy Vixen]

18. Election 2000

Our country's entire system was undermined with the Supreme Court decision. In other words, ten years of outrage sprang from it. September 11th was the coup de grace to any freedoms that remained.

I wonder how I will ever explain to our five-year-old nephews how things were before Election Day of 2000.

[CJCRANE]

19. 1-21.

1/21/10 : The Citizens United decision.

[Greyhound]

20. The judicial coup of 2000. n/t

[tilsammans]

24. (S)election of 2000 n/t

[Bragi]

25. Without a doubt -- the tragedy of 9/12

The failure of the U.S to respond intelligently to 9/11 in a manner that reflected its values was a catastrophic, global game-changer.

Pretty well everything that had been getting better socially and politically throughout my entire life (I'm 60) went bad, and got worse, much worse, real quick.

The impact of the tragedy of 9/12 continues to damage us to this day.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

26. I'm going to add my voice to those saying that it was the 2000 election.

I think that if 9/11 hadn't happened Bush would probably have found some other Cassus Beli.

[woofless]

27. I agree. Bush v. Gore changed America profoundly.

[Life Long Dem]

28. Yeah.

I think Bush was looking for a reason any reason to go after Saddam and whether or not 9/11 was a setup he had his reason. He threw the U.N. inspectors out of Iraq when the inspectors were saying Iraq had no WMD's and nothing was going to stop him. The media and the conservatives were all gung ho and the rest is history.

[spin]

29. 9/11

[etherealtruth]

31. 9/11 began a cascade of events ....

... that will take generations (if not centuries) to undo

[JackRiddler]

33. But if what if the revolts against neoliberalism around the world did the same?

9/11 and its aftermath show an empire getting desperate in decline.

Ten years later, the locus of history has shifted away from the US.

The Latin American events may in the end be viewed as more significant for having started something, rather than been the beginning of an end.

[JackRiddler]

35. 2003: United States launches unprovoked aggressive war on Iraq.

[JackRiddler]

36. 2008-2009: United States rescues banks who caused financial crash, assuring future crashes.

[JackRiddler]

38. Late 2007: We see that the only entity willing to place limits on Bush regime's global outrages...

is the military itself, with the leak of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran (showing no active nuke program) derailing the long-running PNAC push for war on that country.

[JackRiddler]

39. 2008: The nomination of Sarah Palin.

At any rate, it often appears to be when looking at the GD listings on DU.

[Odin2005]

40. 9/11. The ultimate Black Swan Event

[Nothing Without Hope]

41. The 9/11 attacks, whether or not you believe it was MIHOP like I do. n/t