Ireland ratifies the Lisbon Treaty
Old Europe is history
Well. Ireland has voted 67-33 in a referendum to ratify the Lisbon Treaty, which would pretty much create a United States of Europe centrally governed by the EU apparatus in Brussels.
It seems to me a sad day, despite a recent half-apology for dem Bilderbergers.
Last year, of course, the Irish rejected the treaty/constituiton, drawing the ire of the continental powers. This time around, the Times story suggests, fear born of the current economic crisis and a media blitz did the trick.
I wonder what Wim Wenders thinks about it …
Here’s first thoughts from Richard Moore, an American in Ireland for ten years or so, and author of Escaping the Matrix:
From rkm@quaylargo.com:
Sad news today. The normally intelligent people of Ireland capitulated to a fear-mongering propaganda campaign, and voted for the Lisbon Treaty, 2:1.
National sovereignty in all of Europe is now a thing of the past. The “Treaty” is in fact a constitution, and all European national constitutions are now subservient to the terms of this self-amending Treaty.
‘Self-amending’ is all important: it means that the Brussels bureaucracy can add add new amendments to the Treaty at any time, and those amendments also supersede national constitutions. The Irish people were told that the Treaty “does not bring in military conscription”, “does not affect taxation”, and many other things that people in Ireland are not in favor of.
This was all lies. True, the Treaty itself does not talk about those specific items, but because of self-amending, those specific items can now “be brought in” at any time in the future. And Ireland’s voting power, in opposing measures, is very greatly reduced by the Treaty.
If the Treaty were a ‘good’ constitution, all of this might not be a bad thing. But it’s not. The structure of the EU government is very much less democratic than any of the current European governments.
Most of the power is vested in the EU Commission, none of whose members are elected. It’s like a Politburo, with lots of power and no accountability. And its polices are very much oriented around neoliberalism, globalism, privatization, and deregulation – the very things that have brought the global economy to a standstill and accelerated unemployment in Europe.
Both Holland and France had voted against the constitution, when it was openly called a constitution. So the bigwigs repackaged the very same thing and called it a “Treaty”. They did this so the people of France and Holland wouldn’t get another chance to vote it down. The “Treaty” could be passed by the legislatures – except in the case of Ireland.
The people of Ireland, God bless them, voted against the “Treaty” the first time they were given a chance to vote. But they weren’t able to keep their heads in the face of the overwhelming media blitz about how the world would fall apart if Ireland voted No a second time.
Europe is now under the firm control of a handful of unaccountable elitists in the EU Commission. Where they will take Europe is anybody’s guess, and there will be no democratic voice present in setting that direction.
Today will live in infamy, as its consequences become visible.
END QUOTE
ed says:
The video at the bottom above is the opening scene of Wim Wenders’ lovely Lisbon Story.
(Dubbed in Italian — the original being English.)
The narrator — driving from Berlin to Lisbon in 1994 — expresses slightly yet-skeptical joy as he whizzes thru the border stations without stopping to show a passport, thanks to then-recent EU centralizing deregulatory reforms.
The new inwoner then declares, again with some hesitant wonder, Yes, this [all of Europe] is my country. My … country!
Thus, Lisbon Story, fifteen years old, opens airing the big question that today’s Irish vote on the Lisbon Treaty raised and perhaps settled.
I have long thought there’s no cure for what industrialism did, sociopolitically, to Western societies.
No cure, that is, aside from a great disaster.
No cure, I mean, for massive centralized states — and for the kind of fear that drove the Irish vote. Erich Fromm nailed this in Escape from Freedom.
Peasants were roughly self reliant. Proletarians cannot be, and anyone with a family to care for is imprudent not to fear, and take Consenting steps away from personal freedom. This is the sausage grinder of industrial society.
It’s hard to hope for great disaster — and almost irrational to do so as a cure.
But at the same time it’s impossible, for many, to embrace the technological Megamachine (David Watson’s word and good book). Hence the chronic
Outsider.
Richard Moore’s writings maintain, with admirable erudition and articulation, a Utopian search.
I imagine Europe will remain the best place in the world for a Westerner to be, as long as I’m around to watch and wonder.
October 5th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
ed says:
Somebody at Human Rights First thinks the treaty is a good idea.
October 6th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
surfwalker says:
Americans who haven’t lived in Europe long enough to have experienced the committee culture over here almost certainly fail to appreciate the deep differences between European and American democracy.
European democracy pretty much boils down to election and vote-counting formalities. The kind of voting irregularities that happen in America are unthinkable here. Hence European snobbery about being more democratic than America.
But the European experience also lacks a substantial dimension of government by the people — the very thing that Americans consider essential. There’s very little interface between the career politicians — most of whom get their start in party youth organizations and work their way up over decades — and the citizenry at large. Free speech is tolerated in the sense that you don’t get thrown in jail for voicing unpopular views — but public debate is much less inclusive and much more highly scripted than what you have in the States.
All that needn’t have been an unqualifiedly bad thing. American democracy, after all, has had its excesses. A Europe that made cautious and clumsy progress — almost in parody of itself — towards more substantially democratic arrangements over a long period of time might have been a nice place to live.
But the prospects for that are pretty dim now.
October 10th, 2009 at 1:38 pm