As for our Irish friends, I hope they are all out, sending Brussels a very loud:
NO!
Regards, Ivan
Posted on 10/19/2002 1:19:25 AM PDT by MadIvan
The Celtic economic miracle has a wilted look in Irishtown by the River Liffey, where the Irish Glass Bottle Company has laid off hundreds of workers this year.
Building projects stand idle as the 1990s boom unwinds and government cuts start to bite. The posters in the windows bark "No 2 Nice: No To A Bosses' Europe".
It is Sinn Fein territory. Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Labour, all in favour of the treaty, are too posh these days for the working class.
Street after street of poky terrace houses gave Gerry Adams a rock star welcome as he charged through in his trademark donkey jacket, exhorting the Irish to save their democracy by voting No in today's referendum.
Aides gave out leaflets warning that Nice will lead to a "federal United States of Europe" with a quarter million-strong European army, threatening a 60-year tradition of neutrality tied up with Ireland's sense of nationhood.
But Irishtown had other worries, chiefly fears of mass immigration if the EU enlargement goes ahead.
Muriel Hayes, 48, a cleaner said: "I'm voting No for the sake of my daughter. If 10 countries join, they'll all be coming here looking for jobs. We've already got five Romanians where I work. I'm not against them working but they have it all on their own terms," she said.
Mr Adams felt the revolt simmering in the neighbourhoods. "People are really cheesed off at having a second referendum. Can you imagine the French, Germans or British being made to vote again?"
It is the first time any country has had to vote twice on the same EU treaty text. While Danes held a second referendum on Maastricht after an upset No in 1992, they were given crucial opt-outs on the euro and other key provisions before the new poll.
Ireland has secured merely an EU declaration that it would not be compelled to join in military operations. If the Irish react badly to this indignity today, they will throw an enormous spanner into the EU's engine-room.
A No would give Europe's anti-enlargement camp the excuse they need to slam the door on Eastern Europe, though the key accession documents are not in the Nice Treaty. They are attached as "declarations" and can be enacted legally in other ways.
When the Irish rejected the treaty last year - in the only country to hold a referendum - the shock result was brushed aside on the grounds that voters did not understand the document.
The outcome was deemed an aberration because the government had not even bothered to counter the "whoppers" being told by an energetic little army of Greens, neutralists, pro-lifers and Sinn Fein.
This time there will be no excuses. The Irish are now the only Europeans who actually know what is in the treaty.
Every taxi driver, it seems, can expound on "enhanced co-operation", the two-speed Europe mechanism or argue in staggering detail as to whether or not Article 133 opens the way for the forced privatisation of public transport and health care.
All the big guns of Irish public life have been deployed in a saturation campaign by the Yes side.
Altogether, Ireland has received £30 billion in aid from Brussels, raising the nation from rural poverty to income parity with the mighty Germans, at least on paper.
The government is counting on Ireland's 120,000 farmers to save the day and even took the precaution of speeding up £300 million in EU livestock and cereal payments so that fat cheques would arrive in the post before the vote.
But even the farmers are edgy. Phillip Kinane, who has 100 dairy cows in Tipperary, was worried that the bonanza of the Common Agricultural Policy would come to a brutal end with EU enlargement.
"I'm voting Yes but there's a siege fear out there. Prices have collapsed in all sectors and people can see their incomes massively eroded."
Roger Cole, head of the anti-Nice Peace and Neutrality Alliance, said the vote will break down on lines of class and caste. "The richer you are, more likely you are to vote Yes.
"Historically, it was always the rich who supported the British Empire and now they've switched allegiance to the new European empire. The ordinary punters never wanted to die for Britain and they don't want to die for a European superstate."
Pat Cox, a Cork MEP and now the president of the European Parliament, said it was bizarre that Ireland should have put its foot down over a minor treaty that amounts to no more than "low-key, low-level shuffling of the deck".
It risks becoming obsolete almost instantly, since the Convention on the Future of Europe in Brussels is designing a whole new architecture for the EU, including a written constitution, to be ready next summer.
But Mr Cox said fervent debate in Ireland was really a delayed reaction to Maastricht and Amsterdam, helped by Britain's eurosceptic press which picked up Ireland in its "cultural slipstream".
We're delighted to have Ireland on board. We on the British right, and the Irish people both hate the anti-democratic and fascist impulses of the EU - Ivan
For Ireland, though, Nice threatens the cosy arrangement that has long favoured small states, giving them an inflated number of votes in the EU's law-making system.
It opens the way for Britain, France, Germany and Italy to form a hegemonic "directoire" of big powers at the apex of the EU system, operating in a twilight zone outside full democratic control.
Accordingly, the most ardent federalists in Brussels, who believe in a Europe of equal states, are praying that the Irish drive a stake through its heart.
Whatever happens today, Brussels cannot really win. A Yes will be seen as a coerced and grudging acceptance of a European diktat.
A second No by a nation of EU stalwarts would be an unanswerable vote of popular censure for a European political class that doggedly insists that its citizens want yet more leaps and bounds in integration.
As for our Irish friends, I hope they are all out, sending Brussels a very loud:
NO!
Regards, Ivan
This happens all the time here in the peoples Republik of Massachusetts. Everytime a tax, rule, control or whatever scam the leftist want, gets voted down, they just keep bringing it up again and again until it is passed. However, once it is passed it never brought up to be recinded. The Irish vote yes and they'll be dancing to Europe's tune. The best part is you get to keep your own tax supported bosses AND get two or more layers more. They won't be able to crap without the proper permits.
Banking needs to be open and auditable. Or the Brits get reemed.
I know I'm harping on this, but everyone on the Continent envies, fears and therefore hates their sociable neighbors across the Channel. They always have, they always will. Brits don't give a rip that they don't grow grapes and make wine ... wine is for sissies on the Continent, the lads are loving English ALE with an affable smirk. Brits have fun wherever they go, the worst craphole tavern in Bermuda or the trendiest nightclub in Sydney becomes funville. They take their party with them. That joy is unaccessable for denizens of most EU states.
The Brits beat down the Third Reich. They were ditched by the French, then rescued dramatically to fight and win again. You want some more of this Reichfuerer? Bring it on Pustschboy ... I didn't think so. Hitler looked East.
Don't mess with 40 million invested and loyal Island dwellers whose male folk happen to be built like NFL fullbacks. Word to the wise.
Regards, Ivan
Which is precisely what the EU amounts to. All they have to do is look at all the "wonderful" things federalize is bringing to the US,assuming you think taking away our constitutional rights is "wonderful",that is.
They should also study American history from around 1861 on to see what happens to states (Ireland would be a "state") that try to withdraw from that federalism.
And nobody is power in Europe or Africa want them to do this,because Switzerland is where the elite families keep their "get outta town" money.
Yes,there is. It's called "federalism". The whole point behind federalism is centralized power in the hands of the government,not the people. I wouldn't go so far as to call it "good",though.
I'll bet there's a few of our political scions who'd be on a Swiss bank's depositor list. Bootlegging Joe Kennedy didn't make THAT much cash, did he? There's some money tree supporting well over 150 deadbeat Kennedy cousins, nieces, nephews etc. in comfortable style. Vince Foster made several there and back day trips to Zurich before his demise. He didn't share that with his wife. He was having a watch repaired no doubt.
As "federalism" is being applied the european union, you are probably correct. But federalism can be used as a mechanism to preserve freedom as well as destroy it. Switzerland is a federal system.
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