(no subject)
Dec. 12th, 2003 05:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
liadnanI've started writing posts about three times and deleted them... I'm tired, depressed, and have little to say at present: caught between feeling lonely and feeling antisocial. Whichever way I go this evening I suspect it will end with feeling drunk...
To entertain myself, I've been reading the final draft of the proposed EU Constitution (it's an odd use of entertain, but my own). As some of you know, I am fairly sceptical about the Europe we have, though not about the idea of Europe... but in any event this is illiterate and incomprehensible bollocks. Particularly the preamble, which was discussed on Today this morning. "We the people" it surely ain't. And, as Peter Jones pointed out, the rather pompous quotation from Thucydides is mistranslated, or at best very loosely translated, at least in the English edition.
Then it starts talking about "re-united Europe". When, pray, was "Europe" last united? (No, not the Roman Empire, which didn't extend to most of Germany for a start.)
Ho hum.
To entertain myself, I've been reading the final draft of the proposed EU Constitution (it's an odd use of entertain, but my own). As some of you know, I am fairly sceptical about the Europe we have, though not about the idea of Europe... but in any event this is illiterate and incomprehensible bollocks. Particularly the preamble, which was discussed on Today this morning. "We the people" it surely ain't. And, as Peter Jones pointed out, the rather pompous quotation from Thucydides is mistranslated, or at best very loosely translated, at least in the English edition.
Then it starts talking about "re-united Europe". When, pray, was "Europe" last united? (No, not the Roman Empire, which didn't extend to most of Germany for a start.)
Ho hum.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-16 05:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-16 07:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-16 07:34 am (UTC)Europe in principle is a fine idea. Europe in practice is the Common Agricultural Policy; a tendency to be a Rich Countries Club; a Court of Auditors that refuses to write off the accounts because it says it cannot account for more than half the money; an undemocratic procedure; and a group of nations whose desire to overcome a history of mutual antagonism has so far failed to overcome the problems of the lack of a common language and two wildly divergent notions of what The State and Law are all about.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-16 08:10 am (UTC)And it's all that mutual antagonism and lack of a common language and differing legal systems that makes the whole thing so fascinating. I mean, the very notion of Europe 'uniting' is somewhat absurd, given all of those things. However, so far something has been created that is 'working' on one level or another, and that means that more progress is as least feasible, if not absolutely possible. And that's wacky. Moreover, I really wonder at the 'why' behind it all ... is it simply for protection and the creation of a more powerful force in the world as each of these countries are pretty much used to ruling the joint? (check out that preamble, man ... 'creation of civilisation' ... ) I mean, I can't imagine a more powerful motivator for compromise than the fear of becoming a collection of second class countries in a New World Order. Which means they'll have to figure something out ...
Babbling. Sorry.