← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Blond Knight
Thread ID: 18451 | Posts: 16 | Started: 2005-05-30
2005-05-30 05:28 | User Profile
VIVE LA FRANCE!!!
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[url]http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2005/05/30/france_votes_no_to_eu_compact[/url]
The Boston Globe France votes no to EU compact Repercussions seen across continent
By Charles M. Sennott, Globe Staff | May 30, 2005
PARIS -- French voters resoundingly rejected the proposed European Union constitution yesterday, handing a devastating political defeat to President Jacques Chirac of France and perhaps a fatal blow to the treaty that seeks to pull the 25 member countries together in a closer union.
A bitter, divisive campaign concluded with a high turnout for the referendum, estimated at 70 percent. According to the Interior Ministry, the ''no" camp won with 54.9 percent of the vote, while 45.1 percent voted ''yes."
The ''no" vote was seen by analysts and commentators as a political earthquake that would probably transform the landscape of French politics and cause wider repercussions across Europe, where discontent is breaking out over stagnant economies and a political elite perceived as out of touch with the demands of voters.
Nine European countries, including Germany, have approved the constitution, but opinion polls indicate that the Netherlands will join France in rejecting the treaty in a vote set for Wednesday.
The ''no" vote in France, one of the founding members of the European Union and the principal architect of the constitution, in effect kills the proposed treaty -- at least in its current form -- because it requires unanimous approval by the 25 countries.
In a short address on national television shortly after the polls closed, Chirac, who had campaigned hard for a ''yes" vote, said he accepted the voters' ''sovereign decision," but conceded it created ''a difficult context for the defense of our interests in Europe."
Chirac added that he would make a decision on the future of his center-right government in the coming days, hinting at a possible shake-up of the government.
At EU headquarters in Brussels, Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker of Luxembourg, the EU president, said the constitution's ratification process must continue.
''The ratification procedure must be pursued in other countries," Juncker said at a news conference. ''The European process does not come to a halt today." He said EU leaders would review the situation at their next regular summit on June 16 and 17.
There is a slight chance for the constitution to survive. An EU provision states that if by October 2006 at least one nation has ''encountered difficulties" getting the constitution accepted, then a summit will be held to decide how best to proceed.
Dominique Moisi, senior adviser at the French Institute of International Relations, based in Paris, said, ''If the Dutch say 'no' decisively, it will be difficult to see any way the treaty will survive."
''Tonight has to be seen as a historic turning point for Europe. The European Union will survive, but its future is irrevocably changed," Moisi added.
He said the EU will fall back on existing treaties that hold together the newly enlarged bloc of countries representing 450 million people
Page 2 of 2 -- The constitution was intended to formally consolidate those existing treaties, to coordinate legal systems and security policies, and to provide the EU a president and foreign minister so that it could more authoritatively speak with one voice in world affairs.
Daniel Keohane, senior research fellow at the Center for European Reform, an independent, think tank based in London, said of the referendum results: ''It's a knockout blow for Chirac, but I would say it is only a black eye for the European Union. Life will go on."
There are several possible paths forward, Keohane said, including another vote in the countries that reject the document or a new vote in all 25 countries on a scaled-down and revised constitution referred to as ''treaty-lite."
But the 300-page, complex, and far-reaching constitution took nearly three years to assemble through a convention that was hard fought and fraught with tension, and Keohane and other analysts say the process of revising it could take just as long and be equally divisive.
''In the meantime, the European Union will limp along," Keohane said. ''The danger is that there will be stasis, which will have profound consequences for European economies and for foreign policy."
The Bush administration had publicly expressed its hope that the treaty would pass, since a more unified Europe is seen as a key to repairing the trans-Atlantic alliance, which was frayed by the war in Iraq.
But the foreign policy issue that could be most immediately affected by yesterday's vote is the ongoing effort, led by Europe, to force Iran to bring its nuclear program into compliance with international agreements.
''Iranians now know the EU is weak, and that's a problem," said Keohane.
In the end, analysts said, it was a grave miscalculation by Chirac to hold the referendum. Under French law, the treaty could have been approved by parliament and almost certainly would have sailed through.
But Chirac fatefully chose to put it to a referendum out of confidence that the French voters would see the merits of the document. Instead, it bitterly divided the country.
Chirac's ruling center-right party and the leadership of the opposition Socialist Party had touted the constitution as the best way to create a European superstate to challenge what is widely perceived in Europe as American hegemony in global affairs.
French political analysts were in a frenzy on television news programs last night. Most were predicting a profound reckoning for the political establishment in the near future.
''Chirac will go down in history for shooting himself in the foot," Moisi said.
The ''no" vote was made up of an array of political parties from the far right to the far left. It also included dissident members of the Socialist Party who saw the document as an abandonment of the ideals of the French left, leaving the French vulnerable to the forces of globalization and diluting the unique culture and character of the member states.
[B]The rightist parties were adamantly opposed to the constitution and played on fears that it would create an influx of immigrants from poorer Eastern European countries who would take away French jobs. The right also painted the accession talks looming this fall for Turkey's admission to the European Union as threatening the Christian identity of Europe.[/B]
Opinion polls before the vote had indicated the French would reject the constitution by a slim margin. But in the end, a large number of undecided voters seemed to go solidly against the constitution.
Marie Deleal, 48, a portrait photographer who emerged from a polling station at an elementary school in the Paris neighborhood of St. Germain des Pres, said: ''Until the last moment, I could not decide. But I decided to vote 'no.'
[B]''It's not that I am against Europe," she added. ''I am not. But I don't like the Europe we are building. It is getting too big and diluting our culture. I feel like a 'yes' vote is good for the big companies, which will benefit, but not for our culture, which is what I care about. I try to vote with my head on most issues, but this time my gut told me 'no.' "[/B]
At City Hall in the Paris neighborhood of the Pantheon, an 18th-century mausoleum where ''The Great Men of French Liberty" are buried, voters cast their ballots under the watchful gaze of the ghosts of Rousseau and Voltaire.
Michel Robic, 60, a manager of a school for continuing education, said he voted ''yes" without hesitation.
''I didn't read a word of the document. It's too complicated, but I know that France must be with Europe. Those who are voting 'no' are doing so to punish the government, but that is ridiculous, and it is something in our character to have to say 'non' to everything."
''But while we are in a corner saying 'non,' the Americans and the Chinese and India are all going to be working and moving ahead, and we'll just keep saying, 'non, non, non.' "
2005-05-30 06:19 | User Profile
Yes this good news!
2005-05-30 14:39 | User Profile
The French people are quite brave to reject the EU Constitution. They're trying to defend their culture and way of life, their jobs, their sovereignty and oppose the monstrous, soul-killing, culture-crushing beauracratic nightmare of the EU.
I hope the French lead the way and turn NWO on it's head. Others will follow.
2005-05-30 15:13 | User Profile
Great news!
I think you've correctly identified why the French rejected the EU Constitution. These are reasons the rootless, deracinated, globalist American elites can never understand. So it will be interesting to see how the Neocon media react to it.
[QUOTE=xmetalhead]The French people are quite brave to reject the EU Constitution. They're trying to defend their culture and way of life, their jobs, their sovereignty and oppose the monstrous, soul-killing, culture-crushing beauracratic nightmare of the EU.
I hope the French lead the way and turn NWO on it's head. Others will follow.[/QUOTE]
2005-05-30 15:32 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Stuka]Great news!
I think you've correctly identified why the French rejected the EU Constitution. These are reasons the rootless, deracinated, globalist American elites can never understand. So it will be interesting to see how the Neocon media react to it.[/QUOTE]
The Neocons will react with the usual contempt for the French. Look for the boobus americanus to follow the lead. What the Neocons will fail to mention is that alot of French rejected the constitution as a way to protest Turkey's entrance into the EU. No EU, No Turkey!! Since Mr Jorge Bush has been trying to force Turkey's entrance down the throats of the Europeans, look for the Neocon media to follow with the usual villifications, like "racist" and "anti-Semitic" and "Old Europe".
Vive La France!!
2005-05-30 19:01 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Blond Knight]The ''no" vote in France, one of the founding members of the European Union and the principal architect of the constitution, in effect kills the proposed treaty -- at least in its current form -- because it requires unanimous approval by the 25 countries.[/QUOTE]
Unanimous approval by 25 countries? Even with simple majorities, that's going to be very tough.
2005-05-30 19:19 | User Profile
Turkey is a dumpster of churkas whose rightful place is in Mongolia.
Crusades should have been directed against Turks rather than that worthless place in the desert.
2005-05-30 20:27 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Happy Hacker]Unanimous approval by 25 countries? Even with simple majorities, that's going to be very tough.[/QUOTE]
Hacker, it's approval by each country's Parliament OR Referendum. So that improves likelihood. It's understood that had Chirac chosen to put the vote to the French Parliament, EU Constitution ratification would have PASSED. But he chose to put the vote to the people, so it wouldn't be able to be able to be refuted at a later date. I believe this says something about the "will of the people" as opposed to the "will of the representatives" , which mirrors our own condition here in the USA, and in Great Britain too, wouldn't you ?
2005-05-30 20:57 | User Profile
[COLOR=Purple][B][I] - "Crusades should have been directed against Turks rather than that worthless place in the desert."[/I][/B][/COLOR]
1) Palestine is not "desert"
2) Against whom do you think did Crusaders fought from Asia Minor all the way to Jerusalem? That's right - [B]Seljuk Turks[/B]. They quite possibly prevented Turks from overunning Constantinople 300 years earlier than they finally did.
Educate yourself on historical subjects before blathering about them.
Petr
2005-05-30 21:21 | User Profile
The crusades helped Constantinople by sacking it in 1204 and plundering its wealth.
[url]http://gbgm-umc.org/umw/bible/crusades.stm[/url]
What was the legacy of the Crusades? Williston Walker et. al. observes:
Viewed in the light of their original purpose, the Crusades were failures. They made no permanent conquests of the Holy Land. They did not retard the advance of Islam. **Far from aiding the Eastern Empire, they hastened its disintegration.** They also revealed the continuing inability of Latin Christians to understand Greek Christians, and they hardened the schism between them. They fostered a harsh intolerance between Muslims and Christians, where before there had been a measure of mutual respect. They were marked, and marred, by a recrudescence of anti-Semitism....
2005-05-30 22:52 | User Profile
Petr and madrussian,
I fear one can debate as to whether the Crusades hastened or delayed the end overrunning of Constantinople for a long time. I have tended to think more positively about the Crusades in the last few years.
I will add it is shameful to Europeââ¬â¢s honor that the degenerate Turks sill occupy the European city of Constantinople.
2005-05-31 15:37 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Stuka]Great news!
I think you've correctly identified why the French rejected the EU Constitution. These are reasons the rootless, deracinated, globalist American elites can never understand. So it will be interesting to see how the Neocon media react to it.[/QUOTE] Neal Boortz, a necon talk show host whom I absolutely despise, said that the French rejected the treaty because, get this, they are lazy! That's right! Forget about it destroying their entire way of life; their refusal is simply because they don't want to have their workweek lengthened and their pensions lessened. Boortz is, by the way, one of the vilest creatures to ever walk the earth. Whenever I listen to even a few minutes of his show, I throw up a little in my mouth.
2005-05-31 15:46 | User Profile
Boortz is a member of the Libertarian Party. I have been told by people who know that he is as big an asshole off the air as on. He went over the neo-con cliff after 9/11 and I stopped listening to him. I would attribute some of his newly found love for big government to the fact that he broadcasts in the heart of Bush Country.
2005-05-31 16:13 | User Profile
[QUOTE=xmetalhead]The French people are quite brave to reject the EU Constitution.[/QUOTE] Yes, it looks like they were under a tremendous amount of pressure. Of course the FReeper types, always eager to accuse the French of cowardice, would have been frightened into voting oui, because that would be the "lesser of two evils". :disgust:
2005-05-31 17:04 | User Profile
WSJ.com OpinionJournal
REVIEW & OUTLOOK 'Europe' Revisited The French vote down the EU constitution.
Tuesday, May 31, 2005 12:01 a.m.
The European Union's constitutional treaty began life three-and-a-half years ago as an attempt to bring the EU "closer to its citizens." After Sunday's resounding defeat in France, of all places, the treaty may be said to have achieved a kind of ironic vindication.
The French vote is a victory of democracy against an opaque and elite process that few people really understood. It is also a defeat for those leaders, notably French President Jacques Chirac, who have been unable to deliver on what they promised from a united Europe. The defeat shouldn't be seen as a renunciation of "Europe" writ large, so much as for a particular narrow vision of the Continent.
The document itself is a monstrosity running to 485 pages. As a flavor of its character, consider that one of the treaty's "annexes and protocols" concerns the right of the Sami people to husband reindeer. The treaty was drafted by a convention called into existence in December 2001 and chaired by former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing. The convention process was supposed to involve Europe's citizenry in its drafting, but in reality it droned on for two years in nigh-perfect anonymity.
The prevailing view among European elites was summed up by a senior EU bureaucrat we spoke to last month who said about the French and the constitution: "They haven't read it. If they had read it, they wouldn't understand it. If they understood it, they wouldn't like it." Nonetheless, he thought that the French should vote yes anyway.
Then, about six weeks ago, something unusual happened: Opinion polls suggested for the first time that the French referendum on ratification might fail. And even more remarkable, a debate erupted. It was messy and often uninformed, but at bottom people had started to ask themselves, what should the EU be?
In answering that question, the French may well have done the right thing for the wrong reason. The opposition included much of the political left, which derided the constitution as an ultra-liberal (in the classical sense of liberal), Anglo-Saxon thing, destined to strip Europe of its social-welfare model. At the same time, Mr. Chirac asserted that the constitution was France's only bulwark against the encroachment of Anglo-Saxon-style capitalism.
Meanwhile, Mr. Chirac's main political opponent in his own ruling party, Nicolas Sarkozy, argued for the constitution on the same grounds that the no camp argued against it--that it would help France by forcing it to reform its bloated welfare state, create more jobs and increase economic growth. We think Mr. Chirac's view of the actual document is the closest to the truth--that it would have enhanced the leverage of French socialism on the Continent--which is why it's just as well that it was defeated.
Probably the underlying sentiment among "no" voters was their rejection of the paternalism with which this constitution, along with so many other EU initiatives, was sold to the public. Europeans are increasingly tired of being told to take their medicine and not ask too many questions. An AP story got to the heart of the matter in quoting one Emmanuel Zelez, a film editor, who said, "I voted 'no' because the text is very difficult to understand. Also, I'm afraid for democracy. The way the EU functions is very opaque. Many people there are not directly elected."
The French vote is also broadly helpful to American interests in Europe. At the margin the treaty would have made it easier to promote a common European foreign policy, and that would have meant the French and German view of Europe as a counterweight to American power. The constitution's failure will make it easier for the U.S. to fashion future coalitions of the willing.
One lesson Americans shouldn't draw, however, is that this is somehow a defeat for the common European currency, despite its 1% speculative fall against the dollar yesterday. The euro's impact may well have contributed to the French defeat by exposing the failure of socialist economic policies. The repudiation earlier this month of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's Social Democrats in their heartland of North Rhine-Westphalia had similar economic causes. The low-tax challenge from other European nations is precisely what many supporters of the euro, including us, had hoped for. The euro has been a liberalizing force in Europe, while the constitution was designed to be centralizing force.
Now that a genuine debate over the shape of the EU has begun in Europe, we hope it continues. The Dutch hold their referendum on the constitution tomorrow, and another rejection is expected. Once this document dies the death it deserves, the europhiles may conclude that the next time they draft a constitution they'll have to listen more closely to the people it purports to represent.
Copyright é 2005 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. [url]http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110006756[/url] ============
I read this as the Journal's main complaint as being against government control as verses plutocratic control.
Good for the French.
Boortz has that remark posted on his website. I believe that he is being paid off by the Likud party based on comments he has made. Incidently, if anyone is confused on why Boortz got on the anti illegal immigration band wagon it is because he was robbed of $300.00 at an ATM by a Mexican. It couldn't have happen to a more deserving son of a ....
2005-06-02 19:48 | User Profile
[QUOTE=madrussian]Turkey is a dumpster of churkas whose rightful place is in Mongolia.
Crusades should have been directed against Turks rather than that worthless place in the desert.[/QUOTE]FWIW: the Turks have been better warriors than Arabs for about a thousand years. Maybe the Crusaders knew how to pick their fights? :smile: In the end, of course, they picked a few to many. The betrayal of the Greeks (Third of Fourth Crusade?) is surely a dark stain on the West. For whoever said it, I agree with the bitter pill that Constantinople is still held captive by the Turk, and that the Haga Sophia still has Muslim Shields up on the walls.
EDIT: For Sertorious
[QUOTE] The prevailing view among European elites was summed up by a senior EU bureaucrat we spoke to last month who said about the French and the constitution: "They haven't read it. If they had read it, they wouldn't understand it. If they understood it, they wouldn't like it." Nonetheless, he thought that the French should vote yes anyway.
[/QUOTE] How typical of the European Bureaucrats. I like to misquote Shakespeare, now and again, and on this topic I offer th following:
Bureaucracy, thy name is Belgium!