Jean-Claude Junker suggests EUsceptics visit the war graves in Europe.
Eurosceptics should visit a military cemetery, Jean-Claude Juncker said yesterday, as he warned that the “enormous stupidity” of two world wars could return to Europe.
I have. I went to Pozières to see the memorial for my great-uncle who was killed in action in 1918, defending Europe from the consequences of its follies. So, er, preaching to me about visiting the war graves is nothing more than shroud waving as far as I am concerned. It is stooping to a level I thought even these immoral bastards were incapable of managing, yet this referendum is sure bringing out some pretty vile behaviour.
Yes, I have stood, with tears in my eyes, at the sheer fucking monumental waste, among row after row of white stones marking the graves of young men known only to God and this arsehole dares to preach to me.
Fuck off already.
Bollocks! This is just another attempt to wage war in Europe by economic means this time around.
Fourth Reich – Red House Agreement – Greater Germania.
Time Britain once more stood alone. Worked last time around…
And are we not about to have a war in Greece?
I’ve not visited any of those cemeteries but I have seen the long lists of names on plaques in churches, in village chapels and on outdoor memorials. I have taken the time to contemplate what their sacrifice meant and what it means today. Weren’t they fighting against the imposition of a totalitarian dictatorship? Still, I can’t help thinking that this kind of stuff works in our favour, you can almost taste the desperation.
Yes, you can. And, frankly, I’m surprised by it. I hadn’t expected so much so soon.
Floods of “migrants”, expats becoming illegal immigrants, tarrif barriers, the departure of just about any company of note, collapse of shares and the pound, and now this? Fuck me, its only been two weeks!
It does give some idea of the sheer desperation that even the slightest possibility of the primary milch cow drying up generates (yes, I know Germany pays more but with a currency rigged in their favour they get it back in spades).
What next, alien invasions, a zombie apocalypse?
Dioclese has picked up on the idiotic kettle initiative being put on hold until after the vote.
https://dioclese.wordpress.com/2016/03/05/stick-the-kettle-on/comment-page-1/#comment-11130
Yes, I know. There is so much to choose from…
Germans are a bit like Muslims, the latter don’t have the self-discipline to stop themselves raping women, little boys and little girls, and killing non-Muslims. The former cannot stop themselves invading France so we have to set up political structures to stop them acting according to their natural inclinations. Maybe Germans should visit military cemeteries in the hope that they might conclude that in the twentieth century engaging in global conflict is unacceptable, with or without the EU.
Oddly enough, it’s only the Brits, Americans and Commonwealth people who tend to do the war graves thing. The French just wish the whole thing would go away and the Germans likewise prefer to forget all about it.
To see names of two lost relatives, who would have been my great Uncles, on the Menin Gate in 2003. Remembering Grandma’s little shrine of a room at the family farm for one who died when the Lusitania got torpedoed.
Both act as sobering reminders of what happens when alliances pull nations into major wars.
One of the problems with political entities like the EU, the USA and even China, is their sheer size, and the underlying assumption that such single supra-national and super-cultural entities imply: “one size fits all”.
Democracy doesn’t scale at all well: it only really works at local and regional levels.
This is how Switzerland has managed to avoid getting involved in dozens of wars: each Swiss Canton is effectively a sovereign state, but unlike the States in the USA, they’re closer in size and scale to counties, rather than newer countries, so each vote matters proportionally more.
Conversely, if China were to switch to a democracy overnight, each vote would literally represent only a *billionth* of the population’s overall voice. It would be drowned out by the noise, and consequently be of intrinsically less worth, not just figuratively, but literally too.
The USA is seeing similar problems today: what we’re seeing now is the inevitable result of the increasingly binary, “one size fits all”, approach to legislation that takes little account of the inherent differences in the legislative needs of varied rural and urban cultural needs.
The EU is struggling for very similar reasons. We hear politicians bemoaning the possibility of a “two-tier” setup as if this were somehow a bad thing. It isn’t. It’s the very reason why the EU has been struggling to cope with the massive influx of migrants. Laws designed in Germany are not guaranteed to work equally well in Italy, or Greece, because they have very different cultures and needs. Any law that *does* try to take those differences into account will inevitably be very, very complicated and filled with loopholes, caveats and unexpected consequences.
The EU will fail precisely *because* it should have been two-tier (or even three-tier) from the outset.
The concept of trading blocs and unions isn’t an inherently bad idea, but they need to be smaller, more focussed, and adaptable to increasingly rapid socio-cultural and technological changes. The EU is none of those and needs to go. This doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be replaced by multiple, smaller, blocs or unions, but in its present form, it is no longer fit for purpose.
The EU was, incidentally, also of very limited use when the old Yugoslavia fell apart and erupted into a very bloody civil war, so the peacekeeping argument doesn’t wash either.
Interesting and thought provoking. Thanks.
I’d also add that I believe the EU is essentially naive. I also hold Catherine Ashton – and those in her department at the time – for the conflict that is Ukraine
Apropos Sean and the Smoking Scot’s comments; the EU was more than partly responsible for the conflict in the Ukraine with it’s attempt to expand further Eastwards.
God help you lot if they ever get the EU army they’re trying to put together.