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Posted: 01-06-2005 11:34 Post subject:

"is this thread a slagging off of the EU as a potential superpower? "

No, I think it's just meant for slagging off 'Europe,' a nebulous US idea standing for everyone on this side of the Atlantic that doesn't support that nice George Bush.

Valid point though: despicable as all the member states may be, the lack of a coherent EU means that it is not an effective bully. And the big issues remains legislation on seatbelts in trams and sardine quotas, not who gets bombed next.

Posted: 01-06-2005 14:05 Post subject:

Have you so quickly forgotten your own century-long trail of atrocity and empire? We are only trying to follow your own example, in a country you invented in 1920 or so.

Just because Europe squandered its capital on the fields of Flanders doesn't mean it didn't have global designs.

Posted: 01-06-2005 14:14 Post subject:

True most of the European countries once had an Empire of sorts, Then after 1945 or so the USA helped convince us to let the poor people in our empires try and rule themselves, IIRC from history lessons the USA was seriously anti empire

Posted: 01-06-2005 14:50 Post subject:

Posted: 02-06-2005 00:49 Post subject:

Posted: 02-06-2005 07:37 Post subject:

"Have you so quickly forgotten your own century-long trail of atrocity and empire? "

Not at all, and we certainly remember the Opium Wars and the other appalling fallout of Empire. But everything bad seems to have been airbrushed from US history.

We remember Suez in 1956, an act of callous and cynical warmongering, the last gasp of Empire. We know that Britain (not to mention Europe) has often been the bad guy and is capable of being so again unless kept in check. This is not an awareness you see much in the rest of the world, especially the US where people seem convinced that every war of the last 200 years (including the extermination of the native americans) has been entirely justified.

Posted: 02-06-2005 13:04 Post subject:

Wembley,

51% of Americans were against the Iraqi war. Now 57% say it wasn't worth fighting. Why are we being called out and not Britain? We couldn't get Bush out; neither could you remove Blair.

Oh, and I would offer that the true last gasp of Empire was the Falklands conflict.

Posted: 02-06-2005 13:45 Post subject:

Posted: 02-06-2005 15:54 Post subject:

Looking back on the Falklands...

Not sure why we on the left opposed that one. A fascist dictator invaded a democratically governed british dependency and tried to rob its citizens of the right to self determination. Britain drove out the invading army and its soldiers were welcomed as liberators by the grateful islanders.

Clearly a disgraceful case of British imperiallism trampling over the rights of the natives. Perfidious Albion up to her old tricks again.

Posted: 02-06-2005 16:19 Post subject:

Posted: 02-06-2005 16:51 Post subject:

Look long and hard enough and you'll find abhorrent atrocities in every nations history. This is starting to sound like "Why doesn't anybody like us? You Europeans have been nasty too!"

Adds petulant emoticon.

Golly. Der Euro macht uns kaputt, says Stern magazine. If you have not guessed already, that roughly translates as "the euro could knacker us" and it is the headline on a piece suggesting the Bundesbank has been quietly wondering if the euro could actually break up.

Don't get over-excited, but the market is starting to think this is actually a possibility. Until now, the big players, like American investment banks, have made the mistake of thinking that the euro is a dollar with a thick accent, and wrongly seen the Treaty of Rome and the EU constitution as a re-run of the Philadelphia Convention 200 years ago.

But the only self-evident truth about the euro project is it lacks democratic institutions behind it. That means it is nobody's promise to pay. And there is no central government with a mandate for the structural adjustments and transfer payments required to make the eurozone work like any other currency zone.

Top of the worry list is Italy, where the government deficit could be as high as 5pc of GDP next year. Italy's manufacturers are losing market share to China outside the eurozone and to Germany within it. Tax revenues are slipping and every time Silvio Berlusconi tries to cut public spending, his plans are derailed by strikes or defections.

Italy urgently needs to restructure its economy, and while it does so it needs to borrow more, and to devalue. But a devaluation is the last thing faster-growing euro members, like Spain and Ireland, need now.

Until recently, the markets have put a zero probability on the euro failing. But, almost imperceptibly, that probability is starting to creep up, creating a "divergence play" for savvy traders. You can see evidence of this in the bond market, where the spread between German government bonds and Italian bonds is widening.

Two months ago, the yield gap was just nine basis points (each basis point is a hundredth of a per cent), and now it is 23, as our chart (left) shows. In plain English, the market is beginning to charge higher interest to the Italian government than it does the Germans because it thinks Italy is a riskier bet. A tiny crack has appeared in the eurozone.

This is more like it. We need more old fashioned, honest-to-goodness, EU financial clowns around the place. I told you berlusconi would be there somewhere Wink

Taken from the Business Section of the Daily Telegraph

Posted: 02-06-2005 18:32 Post subject:

Just a thought but wouldnt this be a good time to pay the frenchies back for their poor show in WW11 and invade them once and for all Wink

We could do with the extra housing for the Chavies Very Happy

Posted: 02-06-2005 18:53 Post subject:

"51% of Americans were against the Iraqi war. Now 57% say it wasn't worth fighting. Why are we being called out and not Britain? "

It's complex, but basically Britain is just the poodle. I don't think there's much suggestion that Britain would have attacked Iraq anyway, or that oil is a big issue.

"We couldn't get Bush out; neither could you remove Blair. "

If the Tories had managed to be anti-war, we might have done. But who would we have voted for to get Blair out? And Repspect to George Galloway Very Happy

"Oh, and I would offer that the true last gasp of Empire was the Falklands conflict"

Some people think so, but given that there was a genuine invasion by another nation (and a fascist dictatorship to boot) I find it harder to condemn that war. Its conduct, of course, was another matter, and I would not seek to justify sinking the Belgrano.

Posted: 02-06-2005 23:55 Post subject: