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FOLLOWING THE EUROPEAN UNION

 
 
australia
 
  1  
Tue 14 Dec, 2004 02:31 am
Yes, but Brazil has the largest debt of any of the south american countries because of the iguazu power plant.

Brazil will be the retirement place for a lot of europeans, especially the north east. If you got o Natal, Fortaleza, Pernambuco, there are heaps of dutch, germany, norwegian guys there. It is a good lifestyle and good climate.
0 Replies
 
Lash
 
  1  
Tue 14 Dec, 2004 06:24 am
I have officially changed my mind about the EU. I didn't think there would be any real problem, and thought a little economic competition may be good for the world as a whole--and the lessened hegemonic gulf would actually improve global relationships....

I hope the EU fails. If it succeeds, it will have set off a global shift of clamoring for one upmanship that I think may militarize the world. It will make the Cold War look like a picnic.

In example-- You are the leader the most powerful country on earth...You take note of several countries whose people and leaders hate you...You see them marshalling forces, and growing a military...Do you just watch?
0 Replies
 
nimh
 
  1  
Tue 14 Dec, 2004 06:40 am
australia wrote:
Yes, but Brazil has the largest debt of any of the south american countries because of the iguazu power plant.


Yet the International Herald Tribute this month wrote about Brazil:

Quote:
Growth reached 6.1 percent in the third quarter from the year earlier. Some analysts have raised their growth estimates for the year to over 4 percent from 3.5 percent earlier. In 2003, the economy shrank by 0.2 percent. Exports this year have also started to boom, and the country's November trade surplus was $2.08 billion. Tax receipts have been rising steadily throughout the year, allowing the government to whittle down the national debt at a slightly quicker pace.

The decline in unemployment has helped fuel household purchases of big-ticket items like appliances and autos, which jumped 20 percent in September from a year earlier. New cellphone subscribers in October shot up 42 percent from October 2003, while retail sales in August rose for the ninth straight month. The economy is expected to grow at a better-than-5.3 percent clip this year, the fastest pace since 1994, according to government projections, and inflation has stabilized at around 7 percent.

In a gauge of investor optimism, Brazil's stock market posted its biggest monthly gain in November.

The rebound in Brazil is being fueled largely by the global economic recovery, which lifted Latin American performance across the board. But the government also used the favorable trade winds from booming commodity prices to pare state costs like pensions and shutter ministries as part of market-friendly reform efforts many of its neighbors eschew today.

The upshot? In November the International Monetary Fund assessed the country's performance as "very good."

Full article here.
0 Replies
 
nimh
 
  1  
Tue 14 Dec, 2004 06:42 am
Lash wrote:
I hope the EU fails. If it succeeds, it will have set off a global shift of clamoring for one upmanship that I think may militarize the world. It will make the Cold War look like a picnic.

In example-- You are the leader the most powerful country on earth...You take note of several countries whose people and leaders hate you...You see them marshalling forces, and growing a military...Do you just watch?


So the alternative is ...? Unlimited US hegemony over the world for an undefinite time?

I wouldn't mind some balance ...
0 Replies
 
Lash
 
  1  
Tue 14 Dec, 2004 06:48 am
I wouldn't mind balance, either. But, when you play out the scenarios in this particular method of balancing--it seems fraught with dangerous possibilities. Just a neverending, incremental escalation.

I don't have an answer--
0 Replies
 
australia
 
  1  
Tue 14 Dec, 2004 06:57 am
It is an interesting article Nimh about Brazils economy. It doesn't back up what I see whenever I am there. Living Standards are very low and most people are in poverty. I love Brazil, and would love to see it improve economically.
0 Replies
 
McTag
 
  1  
Tue 14 Dec, 2004 07:32 am
Lash wrote:
I have officially changed my mind about the EU. I didn't think there would be any real problem, and thought a little economic competition may be good for the world as a whole--and the lessened hegemonic gulf would actually improve global relationships....

I hope the EU fails. If it succeeds, it will have set off a global shift of clamoring for one upmanship that I think may militarize the world. It will make the Cold War look like a picnic.

In example-- You are the leader the most powerful country on earth...You take note of several countries whose people and leaders hate you...You see them marshalling forces, and growing a military...Do you just watch?


Up until quite recently, the answer was yes, and employ diplomacy. Now, apparently, you launch an attack on them.
0 Replies
 
kitchenpete
 
  1  
Tue 14 Dec, 2004 08:10 am
I'm quite amazed at the turn this thread has taken.

Some ideas are just laughable - a union of Japan, China, India and Singapore, for example. Geographic proximity is not really adequate reason for a union and the differences between these nations and the people who populate them is enormous.

We are imagining the future as George Orwell did in 1984 (written, I'm sure you know, in 1948) - three power blocks compete:

Oceania (Americas + UK)
Eurasia (Europe and Central Asia)
Eastasia ("Far East")

The three are in a constant war and propaganda has reached new dimensions - always painting the state as good and any other as bad.

It is a fantasy. I hope it stays that way.

The most important way in which the rest of the world currently needs to unite against the US administration (not every US citizen) is in creating pressure for Bush to sign up to the Kyoto agreement on climate change. On this all EU members agree.

This has a far greater importance for future generations than any differences in opinion about the correct relationship between G8 and the Middle East.

I hope Blair gets some credit from Bush for the support he has given on Iraq - otherwise he was severely deluded when he decided that it was in Britain's interest to join the fight.

KP
0 Replies
 
georgeob1
 
  1  
Tue 14 Dec, 2004 08:12 am
It is gett5ng very interesting. The decision by our European allies from WWII and the subsequent Cold War to regard an unchallenged United States as a more serious threat to the stability of the world than (1) the ongoing cultural and political crisis in the Islamic World; (2) the political and economic disintegration of Africa; and (3) the problem of nuclear proliferation to authoritarian regimes in North Korea, Iran and other like places, and requiring that they place challenging us above all of these issues, will likely have a continuing influence on a new alignment of nations.

What will be the consequences? The United States will react by shifting its longstanding support for the integration of Europe to one attempting to influence division and disintegration within the EU. The United States and Europe will become overt rivals for the development of strategic influence in the Persian Gulf Region and other like areas. The United States will seek alliances with the natural rivals of a united Europe, including Russia and Turkey (if it is rejected by the EU), and, of course China. In the latter case the United States will likely turn its focus from the Atlantic to the Pacific as the center of its strategic interests. The NATO alliance will disintegrate (or perhaps continue as a Europe only alliance), At some early point Britain will have to choose between its European partners and its 20th century alliance with the U.S. The likely British choice of Europe will alter the relations of both countries with Canada and Australia. Canada will likely remain focused on Europe and Australia will be drawn into the Pacific community.

Europe will at some point have to decide whether to develop an independent defense capability commensurate with its size. The cost of this effort, added to the pressures on existing social welfare system due to demographic trends will sorely strain the relatively sclerotic economies of the major states. This together with the added political strains attendant to the development of a united EU foreign and defense policy & establishment, may well strain the EU past its ability to cope and maintain harmony among its members (it is important to recognize that the EU is moving into uncharted territory with respect to its constitution and integrated governance.).Discord may grow and the now much expanded Union could either break up or (more likely) retreat to a less central role in the governance of its members. Once the momentum for greater union is broken the inevitable centrifugal forces will take over and Europe will revert to its former state. When that happens I hope that the United States will have the good sense to stay out and decline subsequent invitations to take sides in their disputes.
0 Replies
 
kitchenpete
 
  1  
Tue 14 Dec, 2004 08:24 am
I (or maybe that should be "We Europeans") do not understand the obsession of the USA with the military idustrial complex as a driving force of good in the world.

We associate by understanding and diplomacy, trying to encourage by offering carrots, not shaking sticks.

We prefer to spend money on looking after the world, and its people, rather than destroying it.

We have lived (within two generations) through wars so terrible to our populations that we know, as if in our blood, the destruction that can ensue from the application of military force.

You talk of the centrifugal effect splittng Europe. In so many ways we, the Europeans, are more understanding of each other than the polarised Liberal v Conservative elements of the USA.

Returning to fantasy land for a moment, Calafornia could leave the USA as a result of its frustration with the fundamentalist Christian intolerance preached by the Midwest and South...joining Canada in an alliance of ideals with Europe. We can all play the "unlikely but possible" line.



By the way, I'm enjoying this and thank all those who are participating for their views. See my signature line for my underlying opinion of debate.
0 Replies
 
georgeob1
 
  1  
Tue 14 Dec, 2004 08:40 am
Global warming doesn't even make it to page two of the list of serious problems facing the world, and meriting corrective action. If Pete's conjecture is correct and this is the most prominent matter among Europeans and their governments (and I seriously doubt it) then they would be, as the hackneyed metaphor goes, rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic - in view of the far more serious economic and demographic problems before them.

Is President Bush a dispenser of credit to PM Blair? In what form would this "credit" come? I believe Blair has stated his support in Iraq was an act in consonance with his perceptions of Britain's self-interest. This more or less as President Wilson argued in 1917 that U.S. entry in WWI was in our self-interest. History has shown that Wilson at least was wrong.
0 Replies
 
georgeob1
 
  1  
Tue 14 Dec, 2004 09:43 am
kitchenpete wrote:
I (or maybe that should be "We Europeans") do not understand the obsession of the USA with the military idustrial complex as a driving force of good in the world.

We associate by understanding and diplomacy, trying to encourage by offering carrots, not shaking sticks.

We prefer to spend money on looking after the world, and its people, rather than destroying it.

We have lived (within two generations) through wars so terrible to our populations that we know, as if in our blood, the destruction that can ensue from the application of military force.
Quote:
You talk of the centrifugal effect splittng Europe. In so many ways we, the Europeans, are more understanding of each other than the polarised Liberal v Conservative elements of the USA.

Returning to fantasy land for a moment, Calafornia could leave the USA as a result of its frustration with the fundamentalist Christian intolerance preached by the Midwest and South...joining Canada in an alliance of ideals with Europe. We can all play the "unlikely but possible" line.


The real challenges to Euroipe's unity are all ahead. We shall see.

The fact is that the USA is less divided now than four years ago. The Republicans have largely consolidaded their gains politically. A closer examination of the Red/Blue states bit will reveal relatively close issues within many of them, notably California. I believe you wildly exaggerate the attitudes most Americans have towards our Canadian neighbor.
0 Replies
 
cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Tue 14 Dec, 2004 11:41 am
A strong military for the US used to mean it was developed and maintained to ensure our security. Under Bush, that has changed to mean we will bring democracy to the whole world - by force.
0 Replies
 
McGentrix
 
  1  
Tue 14 Dec, 2004 01:37 pm
cicerone imposter wrote:
A strong military for the US used to mean it was developed and maintained to ensure our security. Under Bush, that has changed to mean we will bring democracy to the whole world - by force.


That's rubbish.

Ridding Iraq od Saddam was a move to insure the safety of the US. It was believed that Saddams dealings with terrorists and posession of WMD's made him a credible threat.

Nowhere else in the world has the US attempted to do as you suggest above. Besides, you suggest that it would be a bad thing to bring democracy to the the world. Are you really a commie C.I.? :wink:
0 Replies
 
cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Tue 14 Dec, 2004 01:49 pm
Quote, "Ridding Iraq od Saddam was a move to insure the safety of the US." This is 'REAL' rubbish. Saddam did not have the weapons or the means to threaten the US or Americans. Fear was in the mind of this administration. Think about it; why would anybody like Saddam attack the US? The US has the means to wipe off Iraq from the world map.
0 Replies
 
georgeob1
 
  1  
Tue 14 Dec, 2004 03:25 pm
I don't think anyone suggested that Iraq under Saddam posed a significant military threat to the United States. You are beating a dead horse with that.

Instead the concern was what Sadam might do if the sanctions were lifted (as was being sought by France, Germany, and Russia), and the petroleum money valve opened fully. The question was what could Saddam do or influence or enable others to do with a few billions a year of oil revenues and the covert cooperation of his suppliers in France and Russia.

One could argue that the sanctions regime would have kept Saddam contained. However the embargo was rapidly approaching an end - our Security Council "Allies" renewed their "fondness" for it only after we threatened intervention - without that the sanctions would have been quickly lifted. As we have seen from the corrupt Oil for Food program Saddam had ample inclination and ability to use the money to corrupt the process and senior officials in the governments of Security Council members.
0 Replies
 
nimh
 
  1  
Tue 14 Dec, 2004 03:38 pm
A month or so ago (or is it two already?), the European Parliament refused to accept Barroso's proposed new European Commission, in what positively was a historic milestone in terms of the empowerment of the thus far notoriously wing-clipped European Parliament. I had wanted to write about it here - after all, it was definitely the most significant event in EU affairs in months, if not years. I even had an article that neatly captured the mood at the time, which I didn't come round to translating. Eventually Barroso was forced to reshuffle his proposed team, put some folks on positions they better fitted, and two (or three?) proposed Commisioners were taken out altogether.

The most prominent of them was Buttiglione, a conservative Italian catholic and protege of the Berlusconi government, who was rejected as the candidate for a post that included governing the EC anti-discrimination policies because he himself was on record as saying he believed homosexuality was a sin and a woman's place is at home, obedient to her husband. Not the right man for the job, a coalition of leftists and right-wing liberals thought, and wrote history by rejecting the entire Commission (since the Parliament does not have the right to reject individual Commisioners).

OK, thats the background. Turns out (unsurprisingly perhaps) that Buttiglione is now the latest martyr of the American conservatives - and Robert Novak (of course) devoted an entire, flaming piece to it. Which Andrew Sullivan (the same as quoted extensively by Lash just now, but writing for The New Republic) dissects in a most entertaining piece, which I'm sure you'll all enjoy:

Quote:
ROBERT NOVAK COMES UNHINGED.
Zeal of Approval


by Andrew Sullivan

Only at TNR Online
Post date: 12.14.04

Perhaps the least-known aspect of Robert Novak's public persona is that he is a convert not just to Catholicism but to its most hardline sect, Opus Dei. It helps explain Novak's occasional, weird digressions into defenses of the most far-right social causes, and also why those columns appear, without this context, to be, well, slightly unhinged. The latest of these oddities appeared yesterday. Here it is, with my interpolations:

Quote:
Rocco Buttiglione, the internationally esteemed Italian philosopher and statesman, visited Washington last week. Doors were opened to this Italian cabinet member and devout Catholic as a courageous exemplar of conservative Western ideals against the European Union's leftist ruling establishment. But one door was closed to Buttiglione. It was George W. Bush's door.


Some background: Buttiglione was nominated to the EU Commission by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. In his nomination testimony, Buttiglione made remarks about the need for women to obey their husbands and about the "sin" of homosexuality. In what appears to have been a grossly unfair process, he decided to withdraw after controversy swirled about his remarks. Hence his emergence as a theoconservative martyr.

But Novak takes this modest point to silly extremes. Start with the slightly breathless description of Buttiglione: an "internationally esteemed Italian philosopher and statesman." This is de trop. Before his nomination to be the European Union's Commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security, Buttiglione himself told Corriere della Sera, "I may be a nobody in Italy, but in Europe I will be someone." Yes, Buttiglione is multilingual, a good scholar by all accounts, and is best known for a hagiographic account of the views of the current pontiff, with whom he is apparently very close. Here's a recent essay of his that is certainly cogent, but hardly original. It's a mish-mash of neoconservative Catholic polemic. Anyone familiar with the arguments of Richard John Neuhaus or George Weigel will learn nothing new from Buttiglione.

Quote:
Displaying arrogance, ignorance or both, the Bush White House refused to grant one of America's best friends in hostile Western Europe an appointment with President Bush or a senior aide. There was no pretense of an overly tight schedule. It was just plain "no!" Tim Goeglein, Bush's staff liaison with Catholics, told Buttiglione's entourage there was nothing he could do. Father Robert A. Sirico, president of the Acton Institute, based in Grand Rapids, Mich. (sponsoring the visit), informed the White House the snub was "politically imprudent" and "morally revolting."


It is "morally revolting" for the president of the United States not to meet with a previously obscure Italian Catholic, whose sole claim on public attention is that he failed to win an appointment to the EU Commission? Please.

Quote:
While this conduct contradicts Bush's campaign posture, there is no mystery about what is going on. The re-elected president is offering a hand in friendship to "Old Europe," at the cost of alienating the traditional Catholic constituency so avidly courted the past four years. Never having to worry about running again, Bush can give the back of his hand to Buttiglione, just as the leftist-dominated, anti-American EU refused to seat him as a commissioner.

For an old reporter, this incident brings back memories of nearly 30 years ago, when President Gerald R. Ford snubbed Russian novelist and dissenter Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the symbol of resistance to Soviet tyranny. Then, as now, the White House did not deign to explain itself, but everyone knew Ford stayed away from Solzhenitsyn because Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev warned that detente was at risk. In cases separated by three decades, a Republican president was downgrading values and upgrading realpolitik.


Solzhenitsyn? Is Novak really comparing a democratic nomination process in a free union of liberal nation-states to the Soviet gulag? Yes, it seems; he is. And how on earth is staying out of a now-over controversy within the European Union somehow incompatible with Bush's "campaign posture"? I don't remember Ohio references to the need to reach out to Italian Catholic government officials who don't have EU jobs.

Quote:
The usually helpful Goeglein told me brusquely he could say nothing. Press secretary Scott McClellan said the Italian's treatment "should not be viewed as a sign of disrespect. The president had a heavy schedule, and it is rare when he meets with a minister separate from a prime minister." Sen. Rick Santorum, chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, is seen as a rock by fellow Catholics. An Acton Institute award to Buttiglione was presented in Santorum's Capitol Hill office last week with the senator present. But when I sought Santorum's comment about the White House snub, he apparently disappeared, because a staffer said he could not be reached.


This is now reaching the outer limits of paranoia. Isn't McClellan right? How many other failed nominees to EU Commission posts has Bush met with lately? Is the president now obliged to give the privilege of an Oval Office meeting to every Catholic reactionary who is suddenly the favorite intellectual of the Santorum brigade?

Quote:
The guess among well-placed administration sources is that Bush has no idea who Rocco Buttiglione is.


Well, duh. How many congressmen do? Or senators? Or American journalists? Or American Catholics, for that matter? How out of touch has Novak become?

Quote:
The decision to shut him out appears likely to have come not from the White House political office, but from the National Security Council staff and the State Department, where the warmth toward the EU approaches John Kerry's. Although Bush likely could plead ignorance of Buttiglione (a defense denied Ford in explaining his treatment of Solzhenitsyn), that would not be an appealing posture for the president. Catholics all over the world know Buttiglione and recognize him as a figure of towering rectitude, whose treatment by the dominant European left is a global outrage. The EU parliament refused to accept him as justice minister on the 25-member European Commission, and his name was withdrawn. The only constitutional reasons for rejecting Buttiglione would have been incompetence or immorality, and neither charge applied. He told me last week that he failed the EU test on four grounds: He serves in the cabinet of conservative Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi; he is a traditional Catholic; he follows the course of conservative Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger; he is a friend of the United States (called a "crypto-American" inside the EU). "Any one of these would be enough to reject me," he said.


Of course, this is not the whole story. There were some ethical issues Buttiglione had not cleared up. Monaco had subjected him to a series of criminal inquiries into allegations of money laundering; and his senior aide is facing trial in Italy over the alleged disappearance of $6 million of Italian and EU money, according to the conservative Daily Telegraph.

There was also the political context of the nomination. Since Berlusconi's disastrous address to the European parliament in which he called the leader of the Socialist faction a successor to the Nazis, the EU parliament was itching to get back at the Italian prime minister. Buttiglione was collateral damage. Then there was the fact that the European parliament was trying to exercise new-found clout against the EU Commission, and the rejection of Buttiglione was a signal moment in the arrival of actual parliamentary oversight in a sclerotic and often dictatorial institution.

But the main issue was Buttiglione's commentary during his nomination hearings. He has a record, noted in Christopher Caldwell's largely positive assessment in a recent Weekly Standard essay, of saying that AIDS was "divine punishment." In the hearings, he declared that he believed that homosexuality was "a sin" and that women should obey their husbands. The European parliament was essentially saying that no Justice commissioner, required to uphold equal treatment for gays and women, should hold such views.

It seems to me that the parliament was unfair in its treatment of Buttiglione. What's remarkable about Buttiglione is how liberal he appears in an American context. In the letter announcing his withdrawal, Buttiglione wrote:

Quote:
I did not intend in any way to offend the feelings of anybody and in particular of women and homosexuals. Words so emotionally charged as 'sin' should perhaps not be introduced in the political debate. In politics the only relevant issue is 'are you in favour or against discrimination?' To this question my answer is clear: 'I am against any kind of discrimination and I fully subscribe to the (EU's) Charter of Fundamental Rights and to the Constitution of the Union.' Non-discrimination defends those who hold views different from yours. It would be too easy not to discriminate against those who hold your same views and with whom one stands in full agreement. I do not discriminate against anybody and I would like not be discriminated against by anybody because of my religious or philosophical beliefs.


What Buttiglione is saying is that private religious belief about, say, the conjugal subjugation of women to men, must remain private and voluntary; and that the state must maintain strict neutrality with regard to minorities.

He was even blunter elsewhere:

Quote:
The state has no right to stick its nose into these things and nobody can be discriminated against on the basis of sexual orientation ... this stands in the Charter of Human Rights, this stands in the Constitution and I have pledged to defend this constitution.


In this sense, Buttiglione is almost a left-wing secularist in American terms, which makes Novak's hysterical defense of him all the more mystifying. Does Novak agree that public officials should never discriminate against homosexual citizens? Silly question. The whole point of the columnist's favored social policies is to discriminate against homosexuals.

Back to Novak:

Quote:
It is hard to tell whether anti-Americanism or anti-Catholicism runs deeper in Europe's corridors of power. In The Weekly Standard, Christopher Caldwell wrote that what was done to Buttiglione looked "like a bunch of progressives gathering round the dead horse that is European Christianity and giving it a few joyous kicks." At the Vatican, Cardinal Renato Martino called the EU parliament's interrogation of Buttiglione a "secular inquisition." The White House last week gave its tacit approval.


Again, the overkill here is absurd. Even if you believe that what was done to Buttiglione was unfair and unjust, it still doesn't follow that the president should somehow herald this man as a key international figure. And it says something about the current hubris and parochialism among the theoconservative right that a leading columnist like Novak should think he should.

Andrew Sullivan is a senior editor at TNR.

0 Replies
 
nimh
 
  1  
Tue 14 Dec, 2004 03:49 pm
georgeob1 wrote:
One could argue that the sanctions regime would have kept Saddam contained. However the embargo was rapidly approaching an end - our Security Council "Allies" renewed their "fondness" for it only after we threatened intervention - without that the sanctions would have been quickly lifted. As we have seen from the corrupt Oil for Food program Saddam had ample inclination and ability to use the money to corrupt the process and senior officials in the governments of Security Council members.


So if the sanctions regime would have kept Saddam contained, and the mere threat of intervention by the US had proven enough to revive the UN Security Council's commitment to the sanctions, that's mission accomplished, no? Why nevertheless already go to war anyway?

At the very least that resort could have been kept, well, a last resort in case the Security Council would actually suspend the sanctions after all. (A moment that, despite much retroactive speculating about how it was "rapidly approaching" by conservatives on a quest to rephrase the war's justification, was neither preordained nor imminent.)
0 Replies
 
cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Tue 14 Dec, 2004 03:49 pm
Now, the conservatives are using "the uplifting of sanctions" as the new justification for our preemptive war with Iraq. What ever happened to the "humanitarian" cause? We all know WMDs and Saddam's connection to terrorist have long been lost in the shuffle. I wonder what the next justificaiton will turn out to be?
0 Replies
 
cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Tue 14 Dec, 2004 03:50 pm
One of these days, they're gonna hit the nail on the head.
0 Replies
 
 

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