i wonder why certain extreme right wing posters insist on calling the present U.S. administration´s hardcore fascist ideology "western values" - they are definitely not European values. Bush's actions are helping Europe to fashion a new sense of identity Jeremy Rifkin Saturday April 26, 2003 Love him or hate him, but at least acknowledge the fact that President Bush has a knack for bringing the most unlikely people together. Could anyone have imagined that Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims - historic foes for centuries - would unite in a Baghdad mosque to oppose US occupation of their land and vow to work hand in hand to remove the infidels from their ancestral ground? Equally impressive, President Bush's Iraq policy has helped millions of Europeans, who often find themselves at odds with each other on the most banal considerations of life, to find their common identity in opposition to the war. I was thinking about this last week, as EU leaders met in Athens to welcome 10 central and eastern European countries into their ranks. It was supposed to be a joyous occasion. Unfortunately, while officials from the old and new Europe stood side by side at the foot of the Acropolis posing for photos, many continued to express concern over the rift that has been created between European powers in the wake of the earlier failed diplomatic efforts leading up to the war. Some wondered out loud whether the growing division and bitterness among European nations might even derail the future prospects of the EU itself. While European leaders engaged in a collective handwringing, they failed to notice that an extraordinary transformation has occurred among ordinary people all over Europe in the course of the past several months. The Iraq crisis has united Europeans and armed them with a clear sense of shared values and future vision. Millions have taken to the streets in the largest unified public protests in European history. People from every political persuasion, from every demographic category and from the entire rainbow of ethnic persuasions, joined together to condemn the unilateral policy of the Bush White House in Iraq and, by so doing, provided the first dramatic expression of a new European identity. From this American observer's perspective, it is clear that the raw emotions on display in the streets, and the passionate talk in the salons, is of a far different nature from anything I have experienced in my many years in Europe. These people are not speaking as citizens of France, Italy, Germany, Hungary or Ireland. They are speaking as Europeans. As far as I know, there is no precedent for this kind of deeply felt shared sentiment. Even in the UK, Spain and Italy, where the governments joined ranks with the US, a majority of the people, in the opinion polls, registered their opposition in the early stages of the war. Indeed, the largest protests in Europe occurred in these countries. The real message here is that national loyalty is being superseded by a new sense of "Europeanness". Even in the so-called "New Europe" - the 10 central and eastern European nations due to join the EU next year - more than 70% of the people oppose their own regimes' stand with Washington. What we are witnessing is historic. Europeans are finding their identity. That is not to say that the millions of people who are beginning to speak as one suddenly identify with the European Union. I doubt whether a single protester sees himself or herself, first and foremost, as a citizen of the EU. While Brussels is far from most people's minds, what unites Europeans is their repudiation of the geopolitics of the 20th century and their eagerness to embrace a new "biosphere politics" in the 21st century. The telltale signs of the nascent identity are everywhere. Europeans are concerned over global warming and other environmental issues. They support the international criminal court to ensure universal human rights. They favour generous development assistance to the poor in the third world and they back the United Nations as the appropriate forum to settle disputes among nations. A growing of number of Europeans see the US government openly opposing these things they so ardently care about. And even on what they regard as the most basic questions of morality, such as opposition to capital punishment, they feel that a chasm is growing between their views and the views across the Atlantic. The US refusal to sign the Kyoto accords, the biodiversity treaty and the amended biological weapons convention, its withdrawal from the anti-ballistic-missile treaty and now the US decision to bypass the UN security council and act virtually unilaterally in Iraq have convinced many Europeans that the US is hopelessly locked into a Hobbesian view of the world. Europeans, on the other hand, have had their fill of wars and centuries of conflict. They are in search of Immanuel Kant's vision of universal and perpetual peace, and increasingly they see US policies and objectives as an anathema to the forging of a truly global consciousness. It is this kind of fundamental difference in perception that has led so many Europeans to conclude that their interests, hopes and vision for the future are diverging from their old friends in America in ways that may be irreparable by diplomacy alone. - · Jeremy Rifkin is author of The Age of Access (Tarcher Putnam) and president of the Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington DC
There would be no "European values" save Nazism had the West not saved their ingrateful asses. Thanks for visiting the real world. Now run along back to your fantasy land and the Guardian To respond to the author of that quote you provide. The Sunnis and Shiites are hardly united. They are bitter enemies. All the demostrators you see against the US are Shiite. And they wouldn't be doing that had Iran not meddled and had it not been Ashura. The Sunnis are in fact terrified that the Us would leave them because after decades of discrimination and suppression the Shiites would eat them alive. As well Europe is hardly 'united'. Germany is backpeddling furiously (Schroeder met with Blair) and France is wimpering (Chirac called Bush). Further, Kant's utopian vision has been slightly sullied. And right in Europe too. Italy, France, Spain and other European countries have woken up to the fact that they are harboring terrorists right in their midst and have started to hunt them down and arrest them. Everyone wants to live in Kant's never-never land where everything is just peachy and we all hold hands and sing all day in a meadow. But reality is different.
Chit Chat Chit Chat goes the clock. It's getting old. This Euro/US war on who's the best. Who cares? If the US/UK want to punish France, then why don't they go ahead, in the long run this will not be helping globalization and if other countries start supporting France, they will retaliate economically/politically against the UK/US. What is the point of all this BS? World division? That's what creates terrorism. It seems, however, that they are having a hard time figuring out a way to punish France without having to punish themselves in the long run. At least they're thinking, maybe that's a step towards better things. And quit the WWII references, they're getting old, yeah we lost troops, but every country did. Should the French start arguing about their help during the civil war? Is that too outdated now?
It shouldn't read civil war by the way, but the war for independence. Anyways, here's a good article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2975103.stm
Jeremy Rifkin's analysis is marred by shallow readings of history and what looks to me like an overdose of wishful thinking, but I think there's an element of truth to his observations. In a way, they reflect an alternative, positive view of the same phenomena that James Bennett observed in the op-ed piece with which I began this thread. Put simply, Rifkin's "biosphere politics" amounts to the Green-Red triumvirate of ecologism, pacifism, and socialism, to be pursued through transnational institutions, especially the UN - leading to "Immanuel Kant's vision of universal and perpetual peace." From the perspective of Bennett's "Anglosphere," the ideals represented by this program are entirely worthy, but the overall approach remains dangerously utopian. In this reading of history, ecologism tends to become, as implemented in the real world, the rejection of technological progress. Pacifism turns first into passivity, then to appeasement, and finally into effective alliance with the world's worst regimes - particularly those that least embody and most threaten the pacifists' highest aspirations. Socialism turns into economic stagnation and the snuffing out of individual initiative. The familiarly tragic irony is that the end results of implacable utopianism - most recently in the cases of Nazism and Communism - tend to approach Hell on Earth. Though some of the terminology and emphases in Rifkin's "biosphere politics" are inevitably novel, there's nothing very new at all about the "salons" and "streets" of Europe being visibly in the grip of some utopian ideal. The Hegelian response to these Kantian excesses would have pointed to the "fallacy of immediate confrontation with the absolute": The real equivalents of this abstract-sounding category have included World War II and the Cold War, concentration camps and Gulags. Partly because Europe has not yet recovered from its most recent excessive involvement with totalizing utopianisms, and partly because it has stood under the protection of those pitifully pragmatic Americans, it has lately been able to displace their cost to its own socioeconomic hinterlands or to the regions and peoples of the world whose interests it so earnestly takes to heart - as in Iraq, to cite just one of many examples. Rifkin's own career offers one such example: An American whose apocalyptic theories regarding genetically modified crops have caught on in Europe, where they just happen to serve the protectionist interests of European farmers, he can count among his accomplishments a signal contribution to the continued starvation of Africans whose Euro-dependent governments have refused to allow the distribution of American food. Europe's recent social turmoil and dismal economic performance suggest that a fuller and fairer accounting is already under way. If history proves Rifkin more right as a sociologist than it has thusfar proven him to be as a biologist, Europe may still have a much higher price to pay.
Bullshit naivety and stupidity ! http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=245079#post245079
Kymar, I thought we would give it a rest many threads ago? Yet you continue in dwelling in semi truthes and assumptions that paint a biased and certainly unrealistic picture of the world today. Genetic engineering is banned in Europe, just like non pasteurized goods are banned in the US. People are entitled to their own opinions on what is or is not suitable for their people. I do not think this can enter the debate on who's at the forefront of "goodness", and actually it is that particular thinking that gets the world divided. Give it a rest, for the sake of all. Your articles are very much discrediting your objective standpoint. Maybe Fox has some interest in your freelance writing skills but ET's chit chat can really use some "facts" and not some list of pro american articles that resemble hard fed propaganda. I know it's hard to let go, but I don't think your crowd is half as witted as you are. I would hate for you to be leading a bunch of morons into wrongful or detrimental beliefs that do not serve the advancement of US's foreign policies. You gotta cut your losses sometimes, even if you think you are right. Treating events on a case by case basis is also very important, because generalization is too easy, and stereotypes are common. Best.
Guess you thought wrong - and I don't know where you got your idea in the first place. As for the rest of your post: Among your variously condescending, presumptuous, insulting, and unsupported statements, the closest thing that I can find to a coherent argument that directly engages anything I've written is your statement on Pasteurization and GM regulations. I consider it a fallacious comparison, and I suppose, if you like, we could try to find evidence to back up our positions, but it seems to me to be at most a secondary issue as far as either the larger topic of this thread or Rifkin's article in particular is concerned. If you don't like the content here, and are incapable of or uninterested in discussing it, here's a suggestion for you: Unsubscribe and stay away. It's your choice, as I can't stop you from expressing your personal disapproval, even if I do find it obnoxious where not simply uninteresting.
swoop[TR], it´s good vs. evil - you´re either with Freddie N.´s shallow "original thoughts" or with the enemy