Ten Great Things About the Japanese

[BeBMan]

and your mealy mouthed answer does nothing to affect the point that was being made by cort about the anti-democratic nature of the EU.

I already said that there's parts which are not democratic. And still others are. So what the "nature" of the whole thing is seems to have a lot to do with individual views on it and on state sovereignty, the whole European integration thing etc in general.

how can forcing people to vote again (and again) on one issue until they give the 'right' answer be anything but anti-democratic?

Well, if you think it was wrong to vote a second time, ok. Afaik, other countries voted on EU/Euro-related issues also several times, and it was not the general pattern to repeat the vote until the pro side got their yes in every case.

But as it stands here the Irish voted yes the second time, should I now assume they didn't know what they were doing and ignore it? IMO, that would not exactly be more democratic. And if those Irish can't be trusted with their vote due to "propaganda" etc., why should someone care about any vote they do, whether it's the first or not?

and plenty of EU politicians and politicians from other states said a lot of dark things about ireland between the two votes. you know they're only a tiny country, how dare they interfere with our glorious EU project. they're not good europeans, maybe they should leave if they don't like it. lots of words to that effect.

It's almost like they had a campaign or something Seriously, are you complaining that in such a situation all sides, whether pro or con, claim to know what's best, and that they use every trick in the book to get their message across? I can hear all kinds of stupid polemics in national politics on a daily basis.

[Cort Haus]

And who appoints the people on that commission?

National Governments appoint members to the commission where those members are not allowed to represent their country's interests - only the interests of the EU bureaucracy.

You can pretend that is sufficiently democratic if you want, but your equivalent would be you having no vote for president, only a vote for your state legislature who then vote for the POTUS on your behalf.

The reality is that national governments are elected on platforms which should supposedly include how our own countries are run. There is no direct vote relating to the EU executive. As many national politicians are on the gravy-train that can include comfortable, unelected Euro appointments themselves at some point in their career, they have incentives to play the game. Politicians such as Paddy Ashdown who never came near to winning an election in his own country got to become Imperial Viceroy of Bosnia, for example.

Yes, there is a problem at national level, but this should not distract from the fact that electoral mechanisms as they stand do not offer sufficient democratic accountability for the EU elite who are contemptuous of ordinary people, and dismissive of democracy.

[Cort Haus]

First of two articles from the same source (pro-European but anti EU) - before and after the second Irish referendum.

I won't put them in quote tags because the italics are horrible and difficult to read. Bolding added by me.

__________________________________________________ ___________-

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/7137/

Thursday 9 July 2009
Vote ‘Yes’ or the economy gets it
Officials are using financial threats to get the right result in the second Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.
Tim Black

‘Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black’, declared car-maker Henry Ford a century ago. With such an attitude to consumer choice, he would surely appreciate the European Union’s shameful parody of democracy: this October, as the Irish prime minister Brian Cowen revealed yesterday, the Irish people will once again be asked to choose whether or not to ratify the de facto EU constitution known as the Lisbon Treaty. Or, as Mr Ford would have it, they will be allowed to vote any way they choose just so long as it is ‘yes’.

The Irish electorate ought to be familiar with this simulacrum of democracy, having rehearsed the charade once before. On 12 June last year, 53.4 per cent of them voted against the treaty. That is, a greater percentage of Ireland’s electorate chose to reject the Lisbon Treaty than proportion of Americans voted for Barack Obama. There is rightly no question of asking Americans to have another go in order to get the correct result. Yet, in the second Irish referendum on 2 October this year, that is exactly what the Irish are expected to do.

Of course, Irish leaders and EU officials have indulged in a little repackaging of the treaty. This, it was decided at an EU summit in June, amounts to ‘legal guarantees… that certain matters of concern [abortion, neutrality] to the Irish people’ would ‘be unaffected by the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon’ (1).

Unfortunately for those in the EU-dependent Irish establishment, hoping to show off the fruits of their hard-bargaining diplomacy, there was little real change to the treaty itself. After all, any substantial alterations would require re-ratification by other EU member states and that is not something the EU could countenance, given how unpopular the institution is in Western Europe. Little wonder that the presidency notes from the summit state that ‘[the legal guarantees] will clarify but not change either the content or the application of the Treaty of Lisbon… the text of the guarantees explicitly states that the Lisbon Treaty is not changed thereby’ (2).

Or as The Economist baldly put it: ‘The Lisbon Treaty has not changed since Irish voters decisively rejected it a year ago.’ (3) One might add that it has barely changed since the French and Dutch electorates rejected its earlier incarnation four years ago.

So, while the EU makes apparent concessions to Ireland, the Lisbon Treaty still gives the EU its own unelectable, unaccountable president, and will continue to intrude yet further into areas of policy once the preserve of national government, from security to the economy and trade. The effect is profoundly undemocratic; people are yet further estranged from decisions that, no matter how removed they seem, will continue to affect their lives. Moreover, once ratified, the EU constitution becomes self-amending, permanent. Effectively, national political elites need never ask those over whom they rule for their consent to EU governance ever again, leaving the EU to forge its policymaking, legislating path perpetually beyond the purview of the people.

Despite the talk last June of ‘respecting’ the Irish people’s decision (see After the Irish ‘No’ vote: pathologising populism, by Frank Furedi), the European political elite seems intent on making the fecking feckless electorate go through the entire rigmarole again, presumably until they make the right decision. It is a democratic Groundhog Day of which President Mugabe would be proud.

In the eyes of the EU and its allies in national political elites, then, the demos features as little more than an obstacle to be overcome. As James Downey wrote in the Irish Independent at the time of last year’s referendum defeat, ‘All of the [‘No’ campaigners] should have been swatted away weeks ago by the forces of the establishment’. For those who work at the heart of EU, as one Brussels official felt irritated enough to reveal, the Irish people simply did not understand the bribe: ‘Ungrateful bastards. After all the money you got.’ (4)

Such coercive sentiments have persisted. Just last month as part of the star-studded but politically threadbare Ireland for Europe campaign, the poet Seamus Heaney nodded his approval: ‘There are many reasons for ratifying the Lisbon Treaty, reasons to do with our political and economic wellbeing.’ (5) While Heaney’s appeal lacked the sweary finesse of the Brussels official, his point was similar: the Lisbon Treaty is the only option if the Irish want to keep receiving money from the EU. Irish PM Brian Cowen echoed Heaney: ratifying the Lisbon Treaty was ‘intrinsically in our national interest’, he said, before alluding to the catastrophic alternative: ‘[Without EU membership] Ireland could not survive the current economic crisis.’ (6)

So there you have it. Either vote to ratify the Lisbon Treaty, or vote for the economic and political equivalent of Hell and Damnation. Which, as turkeys who choose to vote on Christmas know, is no choice at all.

Paradoxically, with yet another referendum in the offing, it can appear like a surfeit rather than a deficit of democracy. But democracy, if it is to have any content, must be more than the means through which the general will is expressed. Giving people lots of opportunities to change their minds - until they do the ‘right thing’ - is not democracy in action. For democracy is not just about reaching a decision but acting upon it; it is not just about registering votes but adhering to the aspirations that those votes express. Just as an individual’s decision is not actually a decision unless it decides a course of action - that is to say, determines an individual reality - so a decision arrived at democratically has to be allowed to determine a political reality. ‘No’ ought to have been allowed to mean ‘no’.

As the scandalous, electoral machinations of the EU, aided and abetted by their desperate supporters in the Irish elite, show, democracy is everywhere and nowhere these days. For EU officials, the demos is little more than an object of elite disdain and Mafioso-style coercion and bribery. The people can choose any future they want, so long as it is bleak.

[giblets]

Well, enjoy your new Soviet overlords

[Cort Haus]

and the second, with a few bits put in bold by me

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/printable/7493/

_________________________________________________

Monday 5 October 2009
A defeat for the democratic instinct
The Second Irish Referendum: the Irish people have spoken, yes, but in the voice of someone put into a headlock by far more powerful forces.
Brendan O’Neill

For those of us who believe in democracy, it is galling to hear officials in Brussels congratulate the Irish people for speaking with a ‘clear voice’ on the Lisbon Treaty.

When the Irish first spoke with a clear voice on the treaty in June 2008 – rejecting it by a majority of 53.4 per cent to 46.6 per cent – they were denounced as ungrateful and ignorant plebs who didn’t understand the complexities of EU politics. They were ‘bastards’, said one EU official, who had been swayed by the ‘unholy’ and ‘unspeakable’ alliance of No campaigners, and their rejection of the treaty showed how dangerous it is to give ‘any clown with a pen’ the right to vote on important, cerebral issues (1). Given Ireland’s apparently mad rules on holding referenda on constitutional matters, there was only one thing for it, decided Cowen, Sarkozy, Merkel and the rest: the bastards would have to vote again.

Now that the Irish people have said Yes to the Lisbon Treaty, which was accepted by a majority of 67.1 per cent to 32.9 per cent in the Second Referendum on Friday, they are patted on the back for making a clear democratic statement. ‘The Irish have spoken with a clear voice. It is a good day for Ireland and a good day for Europe’, said Irish PM Brian Cowen, whose job and unpopular government were on the line, alongside the treaty, in Friday’s referendum (2).

Such double standards are nauseating, clear evidence, if any more were needed, that it is not the Irish people’s voice at all that Cowen and EU officials respect, but their ability to give the ‘right answer’, to accept the agenda of their betters, to do as they are told. When they said No they were bastards; when they said Yes they were good democrats. In the view of EU oligarchs, the people are not there to debate and decide, but merely to rubberstamp.

It is true that the Irish people have now accepted the Lisbon Treaty and that they did so of their own free will; they had not been turned into the voting equivalent of Stepford wives between the first and second referenda. But let’s not kid ourselves that the Second Irish Referendum was democratic. In fact the referendum represented a defeat of the democratic instinct expressed by the Irish people in June last year, and by the French and Dutch voters before them who rejected the EU Constitution – the Lisbon Treaty’s first incarnation – in 2005 (3). The Irish have spoken, yes, but they have spoken in the voice of someone who has been put into a headlock, someone who is threatened and cajoled and denied the ability to speak back with clarity or vigour – and, crucially, someone who lacks his own gang to defend him and fight his corner. By a combination of political blackmail from the EU and the incoherence of the No campaign, the Irish people’s positive and instinctive suspicion of the EU bureaucracy that seems so far removed from their lives has been suppressed, and possibly defeated.

For all the celebrations in Brussels of the result of the Second Irish Referendum, the truth is that it should never have taken place. Imagine the uproar there would have been if, following the election of Barack Obama last year with 52.9 per cent of American votes compared with 45.7 per cent for the Republicans, bigwig members of the Republican Party had said the American electorate got it ‘wrong’, were possibly a bit stupid, and thus should vote again? Yet that imaginary scenario is little different to the reaction to the Irish people’s similarly overwhelming support for No (53.4 per cent) over Yes (46.6 per cent) in the first referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Forcing the Irish to vote again – ‘until they come up with the right answer’, as one EU-critical commentator described it (4) – represented an historic sucker-punch to the sovereignty of the people. From the outset, the Second Referendum was based on the deeply undemocratic idea that the Irish people’s minds had been poisoned, that they had been misled by ‘populist demagogues’, and that they should be given a second chance to do the right thing (5).

From this anti-democratic starting point, the elite elements campaigning for a Yes vote in the Second Referendum used fear and ultimatums over debate and enlightenment to put their case. At an EU summit in late June 2008, where EU heads gathered to find a solution to the ‘Irish problem’, the EU elite agreed that it would not launch a campaign of ‘shame’ against Ireland (which was nice of it) but it did say that it should be made clear to the Irish people that the Lisbon Treaty is ‘the only show in town – we are not going to get a better one’ (6). French President Nicolas Sarkozy jumped the gun and angered even Irish officials when he said just days after the Irish rejection of Lisbon in 2008: ‘The Irish will have to vote again.’ Visiting Ireland to carry out a bit of diplomatic ‘arm-twisting’ to ‘force Ireland to reconsider its veto of the Lisbon Treaty’, as one report described it, Sarkozy showed that, for EU leaders, something as unimportant as a people’s vote, a people’s clear rejection of a constitutional treaty, could not be allowed to stand in the way of their own ambitions for remaking Europe as they saw fit (7).

In Dublin, Irish officials quickly set about stoking up the politics of fear to convince the Irish people to say Yes to Lisbon in the Second Referendum: a widely disseminated government report warned that a second rejection of Lisbon would have a ‘devastating effect on Ireland’s political influence, economic prospects and international standing’ (8). Posters across the country warned that Ireland might return to its ‘past poverty’ if it rejected the treaty again and remained on the outskirts of the EU. Many have argued that the deepening of the recession, which has hit Ireland hard, made the Irish people come to their senses: ‘The real threat of national bankruptcy put the theoretical threat of diminished national autonomy in its place.’ (9) In short, the brute reality of the recession kept in check the Irish people’s alleged desire – misplaced and fanciful as it was – to protect their nation from EU encroachment. The recession did play a role in the Second Referendum, but largely as a means through which the EU and Irish elite’s anti-democratic hectoring of the Irish people to do the ‘right thing’ could be given strength and definition: the recession was used as a tool of political and emotional blackmail by EU officials who knew how they wanted to reshape EU institutions long before the current recession had kicked in.

Irish officials even changed their nation’s electoral rules in order, this time round, to suppress the apparently dangerous ‘mythology’ of the No campaign. Just two months before the Second Referendum, the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland unveiled new guidelines clarifying that ‘there is no requirement to allocate an absolute equality of airtime to opposing sides of the referendum debate during editorial coverage’ (10). In short, the media, the vast majority of which are pro-treaty, could upfront Yes and put down No as much as they liked. No doubt this was designed to protect the voters from ‘unholy, impossible, unspeakable’ alliance that apparently warped Irish voters’ brains last time round (11).

But the problem wasn’t just the cynicism, manipulation and blackmail of the EU and Irish elites – there was also the fact that the opposition to the Lisbon Treaty has tended to be instinctive and diffuse rather than principled and coherent. It is not true, as pro-treaty people continually argued, that the No campaign was made up of lunatics, xenophobes, evil Reds and anti-abortion religious cranks. But it is true that the anti-treaty opposition has been a disjointed effort that has failed to put forward a clear or consistent argument against the undemocratic beast that is the European Union. Consequently, there was no movement that could give meaning to, or sustain, the Irish people’s genuine democratic instinct to say No to this external, elitist oligarchy. Under immense pressure from a fearmongering EU elite, and lacking a serious political movement that might turn their decent instincts into something more powerful, Irish voters seem to have felt increasingly isolated, uncertain of their standpoint, and pressurised into not voting at all or just saying Yes. Reading media interviews with Irish voters, there is a palpable soul-destroyed sense that they had no choice but to say Yes, that they felt it was their duty.

Democracy is never perfect. In all referendum and election campaigns there are elements of force, coercion and manipulation. But these regressive trends can be kept in check, sometimes even rectified, through a process of open and free debate. In the Second Irish Referendum, however, so high was the level of elite political blackmail, and so severe was the demonisation of the No campaign, that the regressive trends could hold sway and an electorate could effectively be blackmailed into falling into line. The result should worry everyone who is in favour of Europe – of cross-border solidarity and of the enlightened European traditions of freedom and equality – and who is thus deeply sceptical about the bureaucratic, illiberal, border-policing EU. To date, the Irish people have been left all alone either to challenge the Lisbon Treaty on behalf of eurosceptics or to pass it on behalf of the EU elite. Eurosceptics tended to look upon the Irish as the last bastion of rebellion against the EU rather than demanding more democratic debate across Europe, while the EU elite treated the Irish as the last barrier to making the treaty a reality and sought to deny similar democratic decision-making powers to the citizens of other EU states.

There is far too much at stake here to leave the Irish people all alone to stand up to the EU oligarchy. The experience of the Second Irish Referendum shows that we urgently need more democratic debate about the future of Europe, and more solidarity across borders with anyone instinctively suspicious of the elite EU project.

[Provost Harrison]

Ah, nothing like a bit of casual racism to kick off a good evening

[Kitschum]

If there's one thing I know about Heraclitus it's that he's predictable.

[Heraclitus]

This is retarded. Look up what "totalitarian" means.

Totalitarianism (or totalitarian rule) is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible.

There seem to be no ultimate limit to the EU's human rights fetishist bureaucratic sprawl.

[giblets]

Since when? Are you saying that in Canada and Europe, all the people who call themselves "white nationalists" are sent to gulags?

[Heraclitus]

Since when? Are you saying that in Canada and Europe, all the people who call themselves "white nationalists" are sent to gulags?

Where did you pick up White nationalists of all people from? Anycase moderate people like Jared Taylor or even unPC scientists like James Watson get denied access to countries and assaulted by lefty state supported (via infiltration) thugs.

Journalists, dissidents and rebel politicians are jailed in Europe for "hate speech". And no hate speech isn't calling for genocide, hate speech is the new accusation of being contra-revolutionary. Geert Wilders (acquitted, as incredible as it seems, since all indications where pointing towards a different outcome) had to stand trial as did Éric Zemmour (convicted for saying Blacks and Arabs commit more crime, which is true).

[C0ckney]

I already said that there's parts which are not democratic. And still others are. So what the "nature" of the whole thing is seems to have a lot to do with individual views on it and on state sovereignty, the whole European integration thing etc in general.

the fact national governments worked together with the EU to deny people a democratic say doesn't mean that it's ok. the fact that much of european political class wants to drive the EU 'forward' and don't respect the people's opinions, even on the rare occasions they deign to ask them, makes the whole situation re democracy a lot worse, not better...

it's no good to say 'well it's national politicians or euro politicians', make an artificial divide between the two and pretend that it's not issue because of this divide you have created. in most european countries there is a cosy political consensus which is pro-EU. however the people are significantly more euro-sceptic.

Well, if you think it was wrong to vote a second time, ok. Afaik, other countries voted on EU/Euro-related issues also several times, and it was not the general pattern to repeat the vote until the pro side got their yes in every case.

yes indeed. the french and dutch also voted on the constitution. they voted no. they didn't have a second vote, presumably because they might have given the 'wrong' answer. the issue is whether respect the of the will people whether they vote 'yes' or 'no'. when people vote yes to an EU proposal, it's all 'the people have spoken with a clear voice, yay democracy!' when they vote no the people are 'idiots' and the response is 'what 'no'! well **** you, you're having it anyway'. that is not democracy.

it comes down to whether you believe in giving people a democratic say in how they are governed.

But as it stands here the Irish voted yes the second time, should I now assume they didn't know what they were doing and ignore it? IMO, that would not exactly be more democratic. And if those Irish can't be trusted with their vote due to "propaganda" etc., why should someone care about any vote they do, whether it's the first or not?

It's almost like they had a campaign or something Seriously, are you complaining that in such a situation all sides, whether pro or con, claim to know what's best, and that they use every trick in the book to get their message across? I can hear all kinds of stupid polemics in national politics on a daily basis.

cort's articles put it far better than i could, but i will say that this sort thinking from people who profess to believe in democracy is disturbing.

[giblets]

Where did you pick up White nationalists of all people from?

That's what the people at stormfront call themselves, and they seem rather racist.

[Heraclitus]

That's what the people at stormfront call themselves, and they seem rather racist.

Stormfronters =/= all racists and especially not all "racists"

[rah]

After reading #10, anyone that thinks this was a serious piece of writing is an idiot. Yes the other numbers are also proof, but 10 made me laugh the loudest.

[Al B. Sure!]

Why aren't the Stormfronters in gulags?