Incredible. See what I mean? It's like Nazi propaganda. Europe needs to Unite! Face the future! Invent a Theory! Become Butterflies! Angels! Be transfigured, transformed! Learn to dance! To sing in harmony! To Embrace The New!

Are they talking about the parallel campaign? Or the constitutional treaty for the EU?

What exactly has this do with competitive markets, deficit controls and the expansion of the scope of intellectual property law?

But let's not read the fine print. Or the fat print, for that matter. Let's just not read the treaty at all. Let's read the Odes To Joy from the intellectuals instead.

Because evidently they read the Schiller text from the European anthem and mistook for the constitutional treaty.

"Courage" for Christ's sake. Germany needs Courage! France needs Courage! And purity, no doubt, and masculinity, and selflessness, and virtue, and rebirth, and theory, and all that good old european stuff.

Courage to do without the infantalizing national health service. Be Men! Support Private Enterprise, increase military spending, slash the nanny state, watch SkyNews! Courage, men, you can do it!


Courage to face the tough times ahead: And it takes courage indeed, to live like the manly tough americans, without health care and facing debtor's prison.

Scandalous. Habermas, once a man of such integrity and intellect, I know is senile - his babbling about 'genocide' conveniently taking place +in+ a giant not yet privatized goldmine along the pipeline route proved that - but jeez. The most powerful argument for the pernicious effects of the practise of intellectual work appearing in fifty years.

How is the EU to become +more+ democratic than the member states? Mystically, of course, as unified Europes traditionally are.
AlphonseVanWorden | Homepage | 05.05.05 - 3:38 pm | #

AVW,

Do you think that the germans (or the yes saying left in general) either

a) are completely unaware of the privatization stuff
b) aware of it, but think Europe's worth a little foxnews.
c) aware of it, but think it's necessary reform for competitiveness's sake?

Don't know, don't care, or fully endorse?
CR | Homepage | 05.05.05 - 4:44 pm | #

I guess there are people belonging to all these categories, and the larger one:

Are aware of it and fully and rightly expect a cut of the booty.

No one at risk of having his own standard of living +reformed for competitiveness+ is supporting the Yes. Only people who have an idea to reform other people's standards of living for competitiveness (higher productivity) are supporting the Yes.


Some arguments for Yes:

Vivienne Westwood: "Don't bore yourself reading 800 pages, just vote yes, its so important."

Nicolas Sarkozy: "If you're not satisfied with the EU, vote yes, because at least it can't be worse than it is now."

Betrand Delanoé: (not a maniac, by the way) "I fear that in saying no to the referendum, the French will be saying 'merde'to themselves."

Jack Lang said he "desires to create a Europe to save the world."

Raffarin: "Yes means a endeavour; no means a disorder."


Holland: "If Le Pen hasn't spoken out in this campaign, its because others are doing his work for him."

My favourite: Arkady Vaksberg: "The sole fact that Lenin opposed a united europe is reason enough to support one."

Why do people buy this? I wish I knew. But at least not so many do as the salesmen would wish.

I'll conclude with a NO:
Daniel 'Red Danny' Cohn-Bendit said this: "What, you believe Marie-George Buffet, Fabius, Besancenot or Bové will be elected president and will be able to renegotiate the constitution? No, Sarkosy will be elected president, And that night, its Bush who will be popping the champagne."
AlphonseVanWorden | Homepage | 05.05.05 - 6:15 pm | #

Sorry, Cohn Bendit (Greens) is actually still on the oui side- I thought he;d changed his position, but no, he's still pro:

http://www.cohn-bendit.de/depot/...iews/ Lechat.pdf
AlphonseVanWorden | Homepage | 05.05.05 - 9:01 pm | #

To be fair: there are some in the yes camp who believe - wronglym but genuinely - that the EU will be a kind of second superpower capable of containing or rolling back US global hegemony and disposed to do so. This at least is a sincere position and its an important point. But its very fuzzy thinking that the EU should be transformed into a neo-liberal low tax insolvent capitalist paradise in order to confront US power. There are dreams of the EU military matching the US but little discussion of financing that or what it would do, and the assumption that the EU member states would enact some kind of benevolent foreign policy is laughable. The leading members, France, Britain and Germany, were all involved in major illegal aggressions on behalf of corporations in this decade - Yugoslavia, Haiti, Iraq, etc.... But for me personally, I have some sympathy with this basis for the yes vote, at least its somewhat thoughtful if not really very clear eyed in its analysis. This position is benefiting from the extremism of the Bush regime; many people are pro=treaty because they are under the impression it will be a slap in the face of the US empire.
AlphonseVanWorden | Homepage | 05.05.05 - 9:21 pm | #

Here's Cohn-Bendit's recent statement:

Nous vivons un moment on ne peut plus bizarre. Alors que le modèle de la construction européenne unifiée par un marché commun est envié par le reste du monde, que les gouvernements les plus alter-mondialistes populistes de gauche d'Amérique latine viennent de décider d'initier une communautarisation suivant le modèle européen, il s'avère qu'une partie de la société française, et surtout du peuple de gauche, fait la fine bouche et qu'au nom d'une exaspération anti-libérale, elle pourrait même rejeter le projet de traité constitutionnel qui lui est proposé. Comme l'explique très bien Edgar Morin, rien n'est irréversible: une fois rejeté le projet de constitution, cette Europe qui a su soigner tant de plaies et de blessures issues des plus grands drames de notre histoire -guerres, totalitarismes, colonialisme- pourrait, après un "non" retentissant du peuple qui fut l'un des deux poumons de cette extraordinaire aventure, décliner suivant une spirale de désintégration pour se retrouver, au final, comme Europe des Nations, frileuse et égoïste.
C'est un fait, ce projet de traité constitutionnel, compromis hybride, est bien un socle pour des institutions et valeurs communes qui nous permet de continuer notre combat pour cette Europe qui, dans nos rêves les plus utopiques, s'appelle les Etats-Unis d'Europe. Face à la mondialisation, face à l'hégémonie américaine, un surplace européen signifie l'amenuisement de la possibilité des Européens de gérer de manière autonome et libre les conditions de leur propre avenir. Oui, l'Europe doit se différencier du crédo néolibéral mais c'est bien cette Constitution qui, pour la première fois, nous livre les armes pour nous battre contre des politiques qui découlent aussi de Traités antécédents. Ne sacrifions pas l'avenir parce que nous refusons un certain passé.


Daniel Cohn-Bendit
AlphonseVanWorden | Homepage | 05.05.05 - 9:31 pm | #

Habermas may be losing his marbles, but what's the excuse for Alexander Kluge?
Matt | Homepage | 05.06.05 - 1:58 am | #

I think there's a lot of operating from fear. Because it is in fact a big loss that there is no signable treaty. This is a setback for democratic unification, and they are afraid - intimidated by the "take it or leave it" of business. "Last chance!" Its scary. (That's where courage really comes in.)


Everyone is afraid of Bush, also. The Yes is operating in many ways with the same emotion that made many left Americans vote for Kerry. (I did.)

Also there is a holdover of former thinking about unification of a democratic kind, thinking before the EU expansion, when all the countries were pretty rich and except for Britain, had pretty strong labour organizations, solvent and high quality public services, and ideological commitment to socialism. In such a europe, possibly the leverage of Germans and French would be shared and strengthened through solidarity eurowide. This same treaty for Benelux, Spain Italy Greece Denmark, Sweden, France Germany Austria and Britain would have been much more what the left is describing - a disaster that simply by reinforcing the existing union could conceivably be transformed into an opportunity through democratic action and solidarity across europe - and not the absolute disaster it is for these plus Poland, Hungary, Latvia Lithuania Estonia Czech Republic Slovakia and Slovenia which are all abjectly servile colonies now of US and German corporations and whose populations have basically accepted their return to their position as planations of the west just as in the 19th century - now their role is to offer cheap labour to European corporations. In these conditions, western europeans have to mad to sign a treaty which does not enshrine a serious european minimum wage and state health and unemployment insurance standard. If the treaty had this, then one could describe it as a compromise with capital. But it isn't a compromise for the populations of Western europe - its all regression. You can't create what is a new country to preserve and strengthen the rights of property, without carrying up to its level +any+ of the rights of people won on national levels over generations, and look at this as an improvement in democracy. It's hard for me to see why the left would sign a treaty that does not explicitly acknowledge the right of all EU citizens and residents to food, shelter, warmth, education and healthcare and a mechanism for funding the national shortfalls in guarantees of these rights.

Moreover, the situation is being set up that EU citizens from the new countries will go to the west for health care. Then the health services in the west will become insolvent, and on the national level - this is already on the table in France from Chirac's party - the 'public-private partnership' in health care will be raised as the only solution, and in fact required by the free market doctrine enshrined in the constitution. And all the existing +superb+ health services - Germany and France for example - w
AlphonseVanWorden | Homepage | 05.06.05 - 8:59 am | #

...will be destroyed and descend to British nightmare highly profitable conditions. The treaty already has provisions to help insurance companies maximize their gain in this eventuality.,

In this situation, the burden will be on +isolated national populations+ to solve the crises in their public services. The +French+ public all alone, with only the French treasury at its disposal, will be forced to find a financial solution to a europewide cost; they alone, isolated, will be fighting in conditions imposed on their welfare state by europe, against their own governments and the corporations they serve; against the EU's required liberalism; but they will not be themselves +in the EU+ in this battle, they will not have the +advantages+ of unification, Swedes and Poles will not be involved in the French health system crisis, but one national population at a time will face this supra national problem, with no option to tax europewide to support services provided to the europewide population.


It's a very sophisticated divide and rule plan in this respect.

So, an ingenious arrangement for the would be privatizers of the health services. How does the pro-treaty left plan to confront this inevitable consequence of the treaty? (A consequence solely of EU expansion, which is one reason why the expansion was undertaken +before the constitutional treaty+ and not the other way around. Because with the original EU, the privatizers of healthcare would not have been able to create this opportunity for themselves, because only a small portion of the British have reason and means to travel for healthcare.)

No pro-treaty leftist will say what the plan is. Cross that bridge when we come to it? This is the weakness of the mainstream left, in comparison to the business parties, who calculate the future consequences of present actions, and know the short and long term profits and advantages of every action and every piece of legislation they support and enact.
AlphonseVanWorden | Homepage | 05.06.05 - 9:14 am | #

Furthermore, I know for a fact that Habermas does NOT appreciate the work of David Lynch (but that's another story).

Thanks for helping put this in the proper light, Alphonse. If only we had anything approaching a serious debate worth getting passionate about in this country...
Matt | Homepage | 05.06.05 - 9:47 pm | #

Thanks for allowing me this platform. I am using every one I can get.;^)

I'm with the old man 100% on David Lynch. I can't get anything out of those films except "other people are so scary and threatening, especially if they look slightly unusual." (My Marxism is indeed as crude as that!)


On the not dispiriting note: I think the British general elections are inspiring for the NO in France but also for the disastrous American scene in this sense: it is a defeat for the scare tactic which encourages the most hopeless form of lesser evilism, a scare tactic which has become basically the only campaign method left for business government in the US and elsewhere. Labour threatened the public: we're the best you can get! If you run away from our not-as-bad-as-it-could-be policies, you'll end in the arms of the Devil! The pro-treaty campaign is saying the same thing - this is all you can have, humanity! If you don't take this, it can only be worse! It's good to see so many Britons had the courage to call that bluff.
AlphonseVanWorden | Homepage | 05.07.05 - 5:31 am | #

Yah. Go here.
Matt | Homepage | 05.07.05 - 11:26 pm | #

More "propaganda" here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/ 0...agewanted=print

More hospitable here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/...- 103532,00.html

Yet one wonders how Gunter Grass reconciles these two positions: pro-treaty, anti-capitalism...

Niceties about "progress" aside, where is the argument? Do intellectuals have an obligation to even make one? WTF?
Matt | 05.09.05 - 1:07 pm | #

I confess to still being confused.
Matt | Homepage | 05.09.05 - 1:08 pm | #