Re: [cicdd] France rejects shit (+wddm for info)

[richard(at)cyberjournal.org]

John Suhr aked:

> >
> > OK, all you wise ones there.  Here's a major
> development.  What does
> > it mean?  Is the EU dead?  Can it be
> revived, if so?  Or, is unity an
> > impossible dream?

Georges Metanomski responded:

> > There is a good principle: to know what one's
> > talking
> > about before prattling wisecracks about others
> > being
> > "wise".
> > Referendum had nothing to do with EU. The French
> > jumped
> > on the opportunity to tell the corrupted,
> > incompetent
> > gang at the steer to go to hell. Including media
> > tycoons
> > who in 90% argued for OUI.
> > ...All want EU, but not shity as this gang makes
> > it.
> > NON is the real chance to consolidate EU on some
> > bases
> > else than a loony bin.

RichardMoore responds as well:

Apparently, Georges is convinced that further consolidation of the EU is a good thing, and he seems to assume that all sensible people must share his belief, which leads him to conclude that the Non vote must have been a protest about something else.

John, in asking "Is unity an impossible dream?" seems to be agreeing with George's faith in consolidation, but he leaves open the possibility that some French voters may actually be against EU consolidation, as opposed to expressing a protest of some other kind.

Personally, and I think I'm a sensible person, I can see all kinds of solid reasons why further consolidation is not a good thing, and that indeed consolidation has gone way too far already. Based on the kinds of activism that characterized the Non campaign, and the kind of issues that were raised in the streets, if not in the media, I think it is clear that many French people do have serious reservations about the consolidation process itself, even if many were, as Georges assumes, expressing some other kind of protest.

If my assessment of the Non vote is correct, regardless of my personal views on consolidation, then the answer to Georges may well be,"Yes, unity, a dream of yours, may be a fading one."  For the French vote, given France's importance in the EU, brings a considerable level of legitimacy to expressions of wider misgivings about consolidation - misgivings that may have been submerged by a feeling that "nothing can stop the bandwagon".

As we read today in the New York Tiimes:

            France's rejection makes it more likely that the Netherlands,
            where polls show that 60 percent of voters plan to reject the
            constitution, will vote no in the referendum there on

            Wednesday. Nine other European Union members have approved it.

Notice, in this excerpt from the same article, how the Times spins the meaning of the campaign, so as to encourage the kind of assumption made by Georges:

            Proponents of the "no" fueled voters with fear of a more
            powerful European Union where France no longer has influence,
            and of an increasingly "Anglo-Saxon" and "ultraliberal" Europe
            where free-market capitalism runs wild.

What right does the Times have to claim that Non proponents were scheming to "fuel fear", rather than expressing their legitimate concerns about neoliberalism and a deterioration of democratic responsiveness to the concerns of French citizens?

RichardMoore