Happy Thanksgiving Keith,
REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: Wednesday, November 23, 2011 11:12 PM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, , EDUCATION Subject: [Futurework] Why a United Europe can never be It's ominous indeed for the Eurozone (and the European Union behind it) that German-originated bonds failed to be fully taken up yesterday. Slightly more than a third of a modest auction ($8 billion) of the economically strongest nation in the Eurozone failed to find buyers. On Tuesday, this would have been so unimaginable that a bookie could have offered 100:1 against this happening and, probably, no-one would have taken the bet. This surely is the most significant event yet in the history of this grand Napoleonic reprise (because, initiated by the French, this is what the European Union and the Eurozone was meant to be). It is nothing to do with lack of confidence in Germany per se; it is a realistic assessment by objective investors that even Germany can't keep on sustaining the Eurozone as it has been doing. The attempt at a United Europe was, in truth, a French-led attempt at a new nation-state which, with a consumer base of 400 million, could serve as a powerful economic counterweight to America. This, however, can never be because it would contradict one of the plainest facts of human history. This is that any successful nation-state needs to have a predominant, and widely similar, culture within it. At the very least, it has to impose a common language as soon as possible. It's a sine qua non. As to language, examples abound. Two obvious ones are the United Kingdom where Scottish, Welsh and Irish Gaelic were ruthlessly persecuted, and the United States of America, where many Native Indian languages and French and Spanish were expunged. The apparent anomaly of China, in which 20 or 30 different languages are still spoken, has, nevertheless, been held together for 2,200 years with one written language imposed by Emperor Qin. Hilariously (if it weren't so tragic), the very bureaucratic centre of a putative United Europe, Brussels, lies in a country which has two cultures so different (each with its own language), that it hasn't had a government in over a year, and there's precious little chance of one anytime soon from what one reads. (Curiously, Belgium shares this distinction with Iraq. Now that the Kurds have removed themselves from the country, the Sunni and Shia Muslims are even more at each other's throats than they were before America invaded.) Well, I've written all that I intended to say this morning. However, there's another curiosity which might be added as a postscript. Business-wise, scientifically, artistically -- culturally, if you like -- the world is becoming a vast spider's web of many different specializations where territorial boundaries are gradually becoming increasingly exiguous. And all these lateral networks are increasingly speaking one common language -- the accidental cause being the birthplace of the industrial revolution. Keith Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2011/11/
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