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EU integration of former soviet republics and occupied terrories was a historical fluke resulting from EU-idealism and the collapse of the soviet union. It wasn't planned, nor was it greed. There was a historic opportunity and facts were fudged to make dream reality. It probably would have all worked out too, if not for the global financial crisis of 2008. End result was a looting. West-EU firms acquired domestic firms at the cheap, production that couldn't become part of the german value chain collapsed, in the swaths of privatizations oligarchs were formed and the well-educated soviet workforce got offered job opportunities outside their homes. Everyone else had to live with the result. Now the EU is stuck in a situation were it cannot reform not expell. Everyone is dependent on everyone and barely any moves can be made without creating loss/loss situations.
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Jul 22, 2021 18:46
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Rappaport posted:As you have now several times condeded, the EU is a mechanism mostly financial to keep Jerry from bombing everyone, and fair enough. If we decide to kick out "unruly" eastern states, it's not exactly my Warhammer fantasy that will come to life, but simple facts. So, either we have the EU as it is, keeping Jerry from the bomb, or we create a power vacuum in the East. Which of these will serve better your stated goal of Do you write for the Sun or the Daily Mail or something? The idea that Germany is some sort of demonlord that needs to be appeased with regular sacrifices or else... !!! is laughable and has been for at least 50 years, especially considering that Germany is bordered by a country that actually has nuclear weapons. This isn't the only quote in which you show a really weird fixation on Germany somehow chomping at the bit to do a nazi/kaiserreich if it weren't for those meddling Rappaport posted:The EU has very neatly tied its own hands on this, and indeed very many other issues, because as you point out, it's a profit-driven, neoliberal project aimed at creating a joint market-place for German producers, German consumers and German goods. This keeps them relatively happy and from shooting their neighbours, and therefore it's a peace project. When the Treat of Maastricht was signed, surely France, Italy, Spain, the UK and the others nodded at each other and said: "let's render unto Germany what is Germany's". Really, as some others have said, it was a transnational elite project that benefited the top layers in all EU countries. You might argue that Germany is the most senior member of the EU on account of its economic might, but it is nowhere near in a position to dictate poo poo to the junior members on its own, especially not France. Remember that the mean-spirited, punitive actions against Greece enjoyed wide support with other EU members as well, chiefly the Netherlands, Denmark and Austria.
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Jul 22, 2021 23:36
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Pope Hilarius II posted:Germany is bordered by a country that actually has nuclear weapons.
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Jul 22, 2021 23:52
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Pope Hilarius II posted:Remember that the mean-spirited, punitive actions against Greece enjoyed wide support with other EU members as well, chiefly the Netherlands, Denmark and Austria. This is the main point that EU opponents miss, if you just delete the EU without instantly forming a replacement socialist!EU (note: a replacement socialist!EU will not be formed), all that's achieved is that instead of one big neoliberal bloc with minor conveniences you get a shitshow involving dozens of neoliberal shithole states mostly without minor conveniences. Short of alternate history fanfiction where eternal socialism swept across western Europe in the 1950s there's no way around that, and simply saying "EU bad" doesn't advance any leftist goals unless you're an accelerationist.
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Jul 23, 2021 01:31
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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Orange Devil posted:This is why, as I and others here have been pointing out for many years, any analysis of the EU along national lines is completely useless. Only an analysis on class lines gives useful results. The German, Greek, Polish, Hungarian, etc etc political and business elite, ie. the capitalist class and its subservient politicians, have benefited immensely from the EU. The rest of the population has enjoyed some benefits (free travel for example), but has on the whole been exploited more efficiently by being played against each other, and this is the main driver of the immense economic benefits for said international business elite. Pope Hilarius II posted:Really, as some others have said, it was a transnational elite project that benefited the top layers in all EU countries. You might argue that Germany is the most senior member of the EU on account of its economic might, but it is nowhere near in a position to dictate poo poo to the junior members on its own, especially not France. Remember that the mean-spirited, punitive actions against Greece enjoyed wide support with other EU members as well, chiefly the Netherlands, Denmark and Austria. This is an important point to make. When looking at the upper class or the intelligentsia there is very little division across national lines beyond which precise superficial or performative status indicators are present, while the working class is largely divided into the precariat (concentrated in the periphery with extra seasonal workers, though the upper class obviously wants more low-paid labour in the core countries as well), somewhat secure skilled labour (mostly in the core), and there is some middle class (again, mostly in the core). At a finer scale there is probably also a rural-urban divide which is present both in core members (compare, say, Berlin/most of Brandenburg and Sachsen, München/most of Bavaria, East/West Poland, rural Brexit-voting England/London) which at least rivals the extent of national differences.
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Jul 23, 2021 01:40
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Guavanaut posted:Hope you mean France and aren't talking about the secret Swiss program, because that's secret. Belgium looks from side to side and wipes off sweat.
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Jul 23, 2021 02:06
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Pope Hilarius II posted:Do you write for the Sun or the Daily Mail or something? The idea that Germany is some sort of demonlord that needs to be appeased with regular sacrifices or else... !!! is laughable and has been for at least 50 years, especially considering that Germany is bordered by a country that actually has nuclear weapons. This isn't the only quote in which you show a really weird fixation on Germany somehow chomping at the bit to do a nazi/kaiserreich if it weren't for those meddling I'm mostly going by Paasikivi's wisdom there, you could just as well replace "Jerry" with the French in whatever I've said, but francophobia is very US-dominated after their last romp through the middle East and that's just... Unbecoming, you know? Aside from calling me a doo-doo-head, what is your point, precisely? If the EU isn't a continental peace-project, what exactly is it? Why is it there? To further commerce of coal and steel, yes, but is that a moral good in and of itself? As a side-note, I think it's wild that we're just throwing around nuclear armaments like they are candy in this conversation, it sort of puts the Swedish nuclear program in perspective, jesus christ 
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Jul 23, 2021 03:54
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That French-US adventure also pretty much completely killed the idea of disarmament, too. It's become pretty clear- give up your nukes, and the big boys can do whatever hosed up poo poo they want to you no matter how much you appease them.
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Jul 23, 2021 08:22
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Rappaport posted:As a side-note, I think it's wild that we're just throwing around nuclear armaments like they are candy in this conversation, it sort of puts the Swedish nuclear program in perspective, jesus christ
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Jul 23, 2021 10:11
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Guavanaut posted:It's definitely the biggest driving force for peace in Europe over the industrialized warfare of the first half of the 20th century or the millennia of casual warfare as sport that preceded that. You can't play Risk when one of the players has soaked the board in naphtha and is holding a cigarette lighter, but there's a very small chance you end up playing something far worse. The Soviet Union definitely felt that way, and in a way de Gaulle also figured this was a bad idea. But the past is the past, eh?
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Jul 23, 2021 10:16
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Rappaport posted:The Soviet Union definitely felt that way, and in a way de Gaulle also figured this was a bad idea. But the past is the past, eh? The brits also went nuclear based on "without nukes the yanks won't have to listen to us and we'll be nothing more than airstrip one"
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Jul 23, 2021 10:21
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Most nations after the US went nuclear in an attempt to ensure the US would treat them as more than a colony. Except maybe Pakistan, India and Israel.
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Jul 23, 2021 11:07
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Gotta love the juxtaposition of high-minded “values” with “8M out of 38M people voted for a fascist party, let’s jettison the entire country, that’ll help LGBTQ issues” Consider that being a member of the EU, with whatever pressure there is on these issues helps the folks inside their country to push back against the fascist dipshits. Ejecting Poland would be the best thing that could happen to PiS ideologically, and cement their power base.
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Jul 23, 2021 13:06
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suck my woke dick posted:This is the main point that EU opponents miss, if you just delete the EU without instantly forming a replacement socialist!EU (note: a replacement socialist!EU will not be formed), all that's achieved is that instead of one big neoliberal bloc with minor conveniences you get a shitshow involving dozens of neoliberal shithole states mostly without minor conveniences. Short of alternate history fanfiction where eternal socialism swept across western Europe in the 1950s there's no way around that, and simply saying "EU bad" doesn't advance any leftist goals unless you're an accelerationist. This. All the 'EU delenda est' posters in the thread never actually outline how we'd get the glorious replacement SocialistEU. Because the reality of it is if the EU collapsed tomorrow we'd just get a patchwork or even more neoliberal, even more-right wing, nation states. Left wing political parties and political views are unfortunately getting weaker and less popular every year in Europe, not more. If anything the EU's bureaucratic, stuck in the past systems are dragging most constituent nation states to the left of where they would be otherwise these days. Current ongoing improvements to things like workers rights, GDPR etc would have very little chance of being implemented in right-wing run European nation-states (ie, most of them).
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Jul 23, 2021 14:30
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Blut posted:This. All the 'EU delenda est' posters in the thread never actually outline how we'd get the glorious replacement SocialistEU. Because the reality of it is if the EU collapsed tomorrow we'd just get a patchwork or even more neoliberal, even more-right wing, nation states. That's where the coercion begins, isn't it? If you don't support what is happening now, Luigi is going to stomp on your goombas, and won't that be a crying shame? If the EU has no other reason for existing other than benefiting the export of steel and coal, why is it there?
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Jul 23, 2021 14:33
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morothar posted:Gotta love the juxtaposition of high-minded “values” with “8M out of 38M people voted for a fascist party, let’s jettison the entire country, that’ll help LGBTQ issues” Unless there are actual voter suppression efforts, it just seems to me that enough people are not voting or they have majority support. PiS is not the only party in the coalition, they have plenty of help. I'm not interested in funding the efforts and personal pockets of fascists. I'll welcome any LGBTQ immigrants (or refugees post hypothetical Pexit) but the idea that we'll just have to keep giving authoritarians money or things get worse for the people they persecute doesn't sound any better here then it does with Saudi-Arabia. If staying in the EU actually helps these people, great, but the whole problem seems to be that Poland and Hungary don't give a gently caress about EU and the fascists remain popular, so... Rappaport posted:That's where the coercion begins, isn't it? If you don't support what is happening now, Luigi is going to stomp on your goombas, and won't that be a crying shame? You don't need to support what is happening now. Just don't pretend the death of EU would make things better. Or that it is irrelevant to try and make it better by other means of you're not erasing any and all neoliberalism. DarkCrawler fucked around with this message at 15:13 on Jul 23, 2021 |
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Jul 23, 2021 15:09
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Rappaport posted:I'm mostly going by Paasikivi's wisdom there, you could just as well replace "Jerry" with the French in whatever I've said, but francophobia is very US-dominated after their last romp through the middle East and that's just... Unbecoming, you know? I had no overarching point to make about the EU. If you're asking me if the EU's purpose is not containment of Germany (or France), then what is, that's already been answered: it's become a neoliberal project built to be friendly to trans-national economic elites. The confusion flows forth from the fact that is also more than that - at least ostensibly - and could (theoretically) be more still. How to get there? I don't know, and it doesn't matter, because it's not my job to know and I'm not in any position of influence to affect any change in that regard (I did write a book that devotes a chapter to it, sort of, but it's in Dutch).
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Jul 23, 2021 18:50
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DarkCrawler posted:You don't need to support what is happening now. Just don't pretend the death of EU would make things better. Or that it is irrelevant to try and make it better by other means of you're not erasing any and all neoliberalism. If we just point-blank stopped having the EU at the moment, I'm very convinced there would be very bad ramifications (and none that entail Jerry nuclear bombing France or vice versa, even), but that's sort of the point, isn't it? An entrenched system will, by definition, resist changing its functions. It is truly a mystery to me how one would go about "making things [within the EU, I assume?] better" when there is a systematic frame-work built around the idea of not making things better at all. Hell, we even have Hilarious Hiiri over there with his book chapter, and he out-right says he can't figure out any solutions to our knot here, and furthermore that it's not even his job to do so, so go gently caress ourselves! With all this, do we really think voting for a new MEP will "fix" anything? Never mind that MEPs are more or less useless, and it's the commissioners who actually decide on anything, and those positions are not democratically elected but handed out via a shady system of "which country's major political party needs a retirement job at the moment"? Does anyone think Europe as an aggregate would have wanted Jyrki Katainen to handle anything, let alone be in a position of power? Or Jutta, I guess, let's be fair here, both sides and all that. The EU, as it was founded and as it operates, is the perfect anti-thesis to "making things better". It's easier to vacation in France, or what have you, sure, but that is at the expense of having a trans-national organization whose main operating principle is clamping down on and destroying actual leftist governance. Admittedly it is biased of me to desire a left-wing governance rather than a neo-liberal one, which you assure me can be "made better" somehow, but I remain skeptical.
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Jul 24, 2021 03:45
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DarkCrawler posted:Unless there are actual voter suppression efforts, it just seems to me that enough people are not voting or they have majority support. PiS is not the only party in the coalition, they have plenty of help. Voter suppression or not, PiS has the votes of only 25% of the in-country population (seeing as there is a statistically significant diaspora, too). Making sweeping generalizations that “Poland doesn’t give a gently caress about EU” based off that is at best disingenuous and oversimplified. Sounds like you need to decide whether you’d like to prioritize spite & money, or human rights. Nobody likes to see money go to fascists, but ultimately, it’s just money. Kicking PL out of the EU saves money in the short term; it’s not clear to me that it’ll save money in the long term, but it is pretty clear to me that human lives and rights will suffer for it.
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Jul 24, 2021 14:43
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Rappaport posted:If we just point-blank stopped having the EU at the moment, I'm very convinced there would be very bad ramifications (and none that entail Jerry nuclear bombing France or vice versa, even), but that's sort of the point, isn't it? An entrenched system will, by definition, resist changing its functions. It is truly a mystery to me how one would go about "making things [within the EU, I assume?] better" when there is a systematic frame-work built around the idea of not making things better at all. Hell, we even have Hilarious Hiiri over there with his book chapter, and he out-right says he can't figure out any solutions to our knot here, and furthermore that it's not even his job to do so, so go gently caress ourselves! So what's your solution then, if you have any? Rappaport posted:he EU, as it was founded and as it operates, is the perfect anti-thesis to "making things better". It's easier to vacation in France, or what have you, sure, but that is at the expense of having a trans-national organization whose main operating principle is clamping down on and destroying actual leftist governance. It's a feature, but not a principle. Also, the EU (and its precedessors) have changed and shifted over time. It was hardly founded as a neoliberal project (because neoliberalism didn't even exist in 1958). It became neoliberal over time as neoliberal ideology itself expanded into its member states at an accelerating rate after the fall of the Iron Curtain, which coincided with the social-democrats all over Europe having become a multi-generational part of the entrenched elite. And while I freely admit there is no panacea to the EU's ills, I think if a few countries at least could take the lead in establishing a new Seperation of Powers (this time not just including the decision-making, judicial and enforcing parts, but also the capitalist and media parts), there could be a way forward. It's not like even small states can't influence Europe, on the contrary. Two examples include the broader acceptance of gay marriage after the Netherlands and Belgium made it legal in the late 1990s, or the introduction in said countries of 'ombudsmen' which was inspired by Scandinavian political praxis. I think the left dropped the ball big time when the last two windows of opportunity presented itself to affect change in the EU (the Nice Treaty and the Credit Crunch) because at that time it seemed to me many genuine left-wing movements had a focus that was too local or were outright hostile against the EU as a concept. As long as capital and media aren't fully or partially seperated from the other three branches of power, genuine left-wing movements will always face a terrible uphill battle, but it can be done. Don't be fooled into thinking that because most people don't vote left, that they aren't receptive to left-wing ideas. I think media-savvy politicians like Bernie Sanders and AOC continue to prove that you can gain support from the people even in a media environment that is almost completely hostile to your ideas. Why couldn't a pan-EU left-wing movement produce similar people?
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Jul 24, 2021 15:01
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Blut posted:This. All the 'EU delenda est' posters in the thread never actually outline how we'd get the glorious replacement SocialistEU. Because the reality of it is if the EU collapsed tomorrow we'd just get a patchwork or even more neoliberal, even more-right wing, nation states. This thread is awash with Chapo Traphouse fanatics breathlessly saying the EU stands for nothing but the enrichment of the twelve secret billionaires and that it all needs to go yesterday. It's stunning how everytime I check back in it's the same dozen or so giving the same takes on different developments. quote:Left wing political parties and political views are unfortunately getting weaker and less popular every year in Europe, not more. If anything the EU's bureaucratic, stuck in the past systems are dragging most constituent nation states to the left of where they would be otherwise these days. Current ongoing improvements to things like workers rights, GDPR etc would have very little chance of being implemented in right-wing run European nation-states (ie, most of them). I remember being stunned listening to some poster go on about how outside of the overview of the EU nations would skew less rightwing and be more honest, now that they had no oversight and a buoyant sense of rightwing nationalism.
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Jul 24, 2021 15:49
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I find it just funny that the EU outright has zero interest in even justifying its existence to the general population. The Remain campaign for Brexit was a complete joke despite Leave being expected by all sides to lose. Of course, there's really no answer to the demonstrable fact that right wingers have been able to use the EU as a scapegoat for the country's problems pretty much with impunity.
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Jul 24, 2021 16:33
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What do you want it to do, exactly? It's stated aims and existing benefits are widely known, it doesn't have a mouthpiece like state-run news media or private affairs, it doesn't interfere in the elections and referenda of member states, it's unwillingness to lie like the Brexit campaign did means it can't just make up exciting soundbites to counteract the nonsense it gets tarred with, it can just provide the truth and refer people to it. Which it already does. If the EU spent too much of it's time explaining why it believes in celebrating the cultures and histories of member states and a belief in equality before the law and rationalism and corruption-busting and xyz the same posters who are saying it's a corrupt body of lizard-worshipping capitalists would come out and say it's now a propaganda piece for the lizard-billionaires. Nilbop fucked around with this message at 18:13 on Jul 24, 2021 |
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Jul 24, 2021 18:11
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Pope Hilarius II posted:It's a feature, but not a principle. This, and I mean no offence, comes off as the worst kind of battered wife syndrome there is. You wrote a whole chapter about this, too? Well. And, to make matters better, you say Pope Hilarius II posted:And while I freely admit there is no panacea to the EU's ills
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Jul 24, 2021 18:23
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morothar posted:Voter suppression or not, PiS has the votes of only 25% of the in-country population (seeing as there is a statistically significant diaspora, too). Making sweeping generalizations that “Poland doesn’t give a gently caress about EU” based off that is at best disingenuous and oversimplified. I don't care about "saving money", spend the money on other less well-off EU countries for all I care. I care about not funding corrupt fascists. Don't misrepresent the argument.
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Jul 24, 2021 18:34
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DarkCrawler posted:I don't care about "saving money", spend the money on other less well-off EU countries for all I care. I care about not funding corrupt fascists. Don't misrepresent the argument. What about international aid? A lot of the time the money ends up (directly or indirectly) in the hands of far more heinous regimes than Hungary. Also the money doesn't go to the Hungarian government directly either.
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Jul 24, 2021 19:39
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Nilbop posted:What do you want it to do, exactly? It's stated aims and existing benefits are widely known, it doesn't have a mouthpiece like state-run news media or private affairs, it doesn't interfere in the elections and referenda of member states, it's unwillingness to lie like the Brexit campaign did means it can't just make up exciting soundbites to counteract the nonsense it gets tarred with, it can just provide the truth and refer people to it. Which it already does. Adhering to it's loving guiding principles would be a good start , like not funding apartheid states institutions and bussiness, or tut-tutting about human rights violations in member states but then doing jack poo poo because we really need that budget, because the eu did gently caress all to solve this back in 2011 on the monetary and fiscal front. Of course, having the grown up in the room be a loving loan shark with zero empathy doesn't help, but that's all the price of doing business. Meanwhile, the eu thats responsible for a whole third of Euronews revenue has a advertising and communication budget of ????? Because it turns out it's hella hard to find a exact figure for this, in another example of stunning transparency. In short, and in a spirit of understanding, cooperation and compromise, as a grizzley communist I would really really like for the liberal, progressive , humanist eu to start being loving THAT.
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Jul 24, 2021 20:01
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Remember that time when the eu was rocked by several lobby scandals , and after six goddamned years this poo poo is still full of loopholes. Gotta keep fighting that corruption!
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Jul 24, 2021 20:39
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So what do you want it to do exactly? It doesn't interfere in the internal affairs of member states. It already has guidelines in place explicitly to prevent Israel from using funding on land it's seized from Palestine and I'm willing to bet it will be closing the loopholes identified in an article published as recently as 2019. You're unhappy(?) that Euronews has an advertising budget? Euronews is not owned or funded or administered or related in any loving way by the European Union.
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Jul 24, 2021 23:57
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Rappaport posted:This, and I mean no offence, comes off as the worst kind of battered wife syndrome there is. You wrote a whole chapter about this, too? Well. And, to make matters better, you say So what do you propose and what are you currently doing? You can start actually making fun of my book once you learn Dutch or once I complete an English translation. You seem like you're constantly moving the goalposts with additional 'et tus'. Like "okay so if the EU isn't about containing Germany, what is it about then huh?", "and oh so it's all neoliberal, well, what are you doing about it?", "oh so you offered some road forward in a silly book? not good enough, haha!"
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Jul 25, 2021 01:39
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Pope Hilarius II posted:So what do you propose and what are you currently doing? Maybe I have been moving the goal posts, I apologize. My entire unhinged rant, such as it is, was intended to say that the EU is, by design, an undemocratic mess, rather infamous about looking unfavorably towards left-wing governments under its purview, and dare I say it, a neo-liberal construct. My point isn't that your h-index wasn't high enough to bring about a peaceful solution to the woes of the EU, nor am I asking you to. It just seems silly to look at ostensibly sensible people work themselves up into defending the EU, when really, it isn't all that good to begin with. And, to re-iterate a part of my unhinged rant from earlier, some of this exactly the type of battered wife mentality that surrounds the issue. The EU is there, and leaving it, as per Brexit, is a nightmare, so therefore we must all accept that the EU is there, despite its flaws, and since there is no escaping, because they will render unto you economical ruin if you do! So, we must all agree that, within the acceptable frame-works as laid out by the EU, we can work to improve the EU. None of this really seems sensible, or agreeable, to me. But you are correct, I am a deficient poster, I have no road-map to re-working the EU. How could I? The system I am criticizing is highly resistant to change! What do I propose? That sensible enough people quit carrying water, or repeating the EU's propaganda lines, for the EU. Funnily enough, it speaks a bit about the European project that your book chapter, which I am confident is a very insightful treatise on the issues of our times! is inaccessible to me, and indeed a vast number of our European friends, given that it is written in a language that few of us share. I mean, if this were a comedy, one couldn't really find a punch-line better than that! If the EU isn't really about keeping Fritz from shooting Franz, that is fine, I am perfectly okay with accepting that premise. But this, to me, leaves open the question, what is it about, then? Steel and coal tariff regulations, alright, I will grant those, but we don't really need the massive political apparatus of the EU just for those, now do we? So what is the fundamental purpose of the EU? You malign me by insisting that we shouldn't really question these issues without apparent and on-hand replacement solutions, which is fair enough, but I am not sure we've seen an answer from the opposing side, as it were, either.
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Jul 25, 2021 08:41
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That's a lot of words to say "I have no idea what I'm talking about so I'm just jaqing off for a few paragraphs". You know you can read the Maastricht Treaty, right? Rappaport posted:The EU is there, and leaving it, as per Brexit, is a nightmare, so therefore we must all accept that the EU is there, despite its flaws, and since there is no escaping, because they will render unto you economical ruin if you do! This Brexiteer framing is hilarious. Exiting agreements that were designed to reduce friction, specifically rejecting any and all multilateral agreements that reduce friction, then framing it as an evil plot when friction returns. It's so breathtakingly intellectually dishonest.
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Jul 25, 2021 09:06
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Antigravitas posted:This Brexiteer framing is hilarious. Exiting agreements that were designed to reduce friction, specifically rejecting any and all multilateral agreements that reduce friction, then framing it as an evil plot when friction returns. It's so breathtakingly intellectually dishonest. That's the thing though, I'm not saying it's an evil plot. In the horror movie sense, at least. Just how it was made out to be, and guess what, it's a really bad idea to leave! So, what are your options now? Do we say the EU is a good master? In some ways it is, students have an easier time going abroad. We all have the same money, too!
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Jul 25, 2021 09:25
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Rappaport posted:We all have the same money, too!
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Jul 25, 2021 10:56
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Nilbop posted:It doesn't interfere in the internal affairs of member states. You keep insisting on this, whic is demonstrably false. See Greece, the Monti government in Italy and the letter the ECB sent to Spain.
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Jul 25, 2021 11:37
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Private Speech posted:What about international aid? A lot of the time the money ends up (directly or indirectly) in the hands of far more heinous regimes than Hungary. When it is literally about preventing starvation and helping war refugees, the benefits outweigh the negatives. EU money isn't keeping Hungarians alive. People in those regimes can't also vote out their governments. The money is appropriated through contracts given to the oligarchy and party faithful. No meaningful difference. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/12/how-hungarian-pms-supporters-profit-from-eu-backed-projects DarkCrawler fucked around with this message at 12:22 on Jul 25, 2021 |
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Jul 25, 2021 12:19
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Nilbop posted:So what do you want it to do exactly? The eu pays 16 million euros a year to Euronews under a FPA.it's one of their largest clients. They disburse between 150 million euros and ???? billion between their communication and outreach programs. Each developing fund as a communication budget. That's a lot for a entity who doesn't have a "state media" or doesn't "promote itself" I want the eu to stop bribing looney brained morons like Erdogan.(gently caress you turkey, Ypg for life) I want them to enforce their own articles, especially the lip service about human rights.(gently caress you hungary and Israel) I want them to finish the monetary, fiscal and banking union.( gently caress you Germany) I want them to manage to not gently caress up their own climate targets.( gently caress you italy) I want them to reform transfer pricing (gently caress you Ireland) I want them to ban eu offshores.(gently caress you cyprus) .nothing fancy on these , just follow the recommendations of the goddamn oecd and the EC board of auditors. I want them to stop putting economics over the well being of its citizens.(unfuck you Greece) I want a eurozone wide deposit insurance scheme.(gently caress you Netherlands) I want eurobonds.(gently caress you Austria) I want ecobonds.( gently caress you Sweden) I want a 2 trillion euro green energy program fund.( gently caress you again Germany, I guess) I want a eu SWIFT.( gently caress you usa) I want them to dump the Dublin accord regulations in the Marianna trenches.(gently caress you Poland) I want them to change the ecb mandate, because only price stability is a really 70's concept.( gently caress YOU SCHAUBLE) I want a new workers bill of rights, including a right of first refusal everytime any company is sold. (I ran out of fucks) I want them to finish it's loving lobby register. I want a structural fund to finance large co-ops. I want them to declare the US as a terror funding state. I want them to guillotine every past and present high ranking member of the commission, including rotating presidency heads of state. I want them to then exume the bodies of the people who's signed the Lisbon treaty, burn them so I can piss on their ashes. I want them to ban anime, except for one punch man.(no wait, gently caress you japan) I'm willing to compromise on a few of these, as not all of them are achievable through the current framework of the eu and it's legislative and executive bodies. Antifa Poltergeist fucked around with this message at 14:59 on Jul 25, 2021 |
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Jul 25, 2021 14:53
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Rappaport posted:And, to re-iterate a part of my unhinged rant from earlier, some of this exactly the type of battered wife mentality that surrounds the issue. The EU is there, and leaving it, as per Brexit, is a nightmare, so therefore we must all accept that the EU is there, despite its flaws, and since there is no escaping, because they will render unto you economical ruin if you do! So, we must all agree that, within the acceptable frame-works as laid out by the EU, we can work to improve the EU. I think my - and others' point - is that Brexit was an own-goal of unimaginable proportions, half incompetence and half driven by wanting an even more neoliberal system (as far as the elites are concerned, of course). The battered wife analogy doesn't quite work and actually betrays that you seem to buy into the concept of nation-states somehow being completely at the mercy of the EU they themselves are part of and they themselves help create and govern. Again, the class lens is way more productive in viewing the problematic aspects of the EU instead of political sovereignty. I'm not defending the EU as it is, it's just that this is kind of like if we were discussing the evils of Hitler and someone would continually butt in discussing Hitler's syphilis, his bad taste in art and his poor strategic skills - all of which may be true, but not really relevant to his ethics, so that when people point that out, it looks like they're "defending Hitler". Rappaport posted:Funnily enough, it speaks a bit about the European project that your book chapter, which I am confident is a very insightful treatise on the issues of our times! is inaccessible to me, and indeed a vast number of our European friends, given that it is written in a language that few of us share. I mean, if this were a comedy, one couldn't really find a punch-line better than that! ? People write about global issues in their native language all the time, and have done so for centuries. And it's not like I wrote everything in Hopi or Manx. Rappaport posted:If the EU isn't really about keeping Fritz from shooting Franz, that is fine, I am perfectly okay with accepting that premise. But this, to me, leaves open the question, what is it about, then? Steel and coal tariff regulations, alright, I will grant those, but we don't really need the massive political apparatus of the EU just for those, now do we? So what is the fundamental purpose of the EU? You malign me by insisting that we shouldn't really question these issues without apparent and on-hand replacement solutions, which is fair enough, but I am not sure we've seen an answer from the opposing side, as it were, either. I'll try to summarise: - The EU exists and it is mostly bad. - The EU is bad because every political system of note on the world is corrupted / designed by neoliberals - which includes nation-state governments themselves - Ending or leaving the EU is no solution to any of this and may even make things worse (good luck negotiating a trade deal with China, Portugal!) Modest proposal: a political movement that works across Europe to further leftist goals, infiltrate institutions and try to influence public discourse. I mean, the fascists are already doing this. Why not us?
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Jul 25, 2021 15:33
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Pope Hilarius II posted:I think my - and others' point - is that Brexit was an own-goal of unimaginable proportions, half incompetence and half driven by wanting an even more neoliberal system (as far as the elites are concerned, of course). The battered wife analogy doesn't quite work and actually betrays that you seem to buy into the concept of nation-states somehow being completely at the mercy of the EU they themselves are part of and they themselves help create and govern. Again, the class lens is way more productive in viewing the problematic aspects of the EU instead of political sovereignty. Do they govern, though? I have a MEP, I helped vote them in (so voting matters!), but do they really make a difference? I would posit they do not. You are free to disagree, after all, the EU is a free marketplace of ideas, is it not? Since you brought up the class lens, which methods do you propose the leftist allegiance, such as it is, use to assault the EU? Or, more to the point, reform the EU such that it becomes more suitable to those desires? It shouldn't be so difficult, after all, to point out the tiny flaws within the EU project that keep it from being a force for good. You quite accurately point out that the EU is indeed a party of their member states, what a keen insight! I have yet to hear from you any sort of proposal as to how said member states should go about organizing their business without, as you say, the "own-goaling" of their own economies. Because, after all, this is a union of values, is it not?
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Jul 25, 2021 15:49
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Pope Hilarius II posted:Modest proposal: a political movement that works across Europe to further leftist goals, infiltrate institutions and try to influence public discourse. I mean, the fascists are already doing this. Why not us? because there is no money to back it the fash have rich coffers behind them
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Jul 25, 2021 16:09
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