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Sorry Keith, I just read this.
Where in the world have you been doing
business? The only purpose is to make
money? That is too funny for words and then "except for the
corrupt French and Italians" you had to be
kidding. Weren't you? That is the root of the
pathology of modern amoral business. It reminds me of my old German
oriented music professors talking about the shallow and corrupt
French. You should hear what they said about the erudite
Hungarians and they were genocidal against Gypsies. (in an earlier
era they would have included the Jews although that was sub rosa when I was
in school.) They obviously never met Pierre Bernac. He
would have destroyed them as he did my pretensions when I made the mistake of
quoting their teachings.
Get out and about a bit. Its not too
late. Take a solfegge course at the Sorbonne or study choral music
in Milan. Take a theatre course at your own Royal Academy where my
old teacher Dame Eva taught until her death. I haven't had the
opportunity for travel but I have studied for many years with great English,
French, German, Italian, Russian and Hungarian teachers. I am
well aware of the common cultural conventions and stories about each other and I
love them all but they were not corrupt and their cultural intricacies are
interesting and often admirable. I would suggest for the
English a read in Clifford Geertz's book "Local Knowledge" where he examines the
Anglophilic pretension to "common sense" not as agreement but as
"nature." The common pedagogical error of
mistaking habit for natural intuition which is implied as genetic.
It is only matched by the refusal of the scientists at the Center for Advanced
Studies, where he is the head of the Anthropology Department, to submit to an
anthropological examination of the myths of science. Artists examine
and work with sacred cows without killing them. Tell the truth but
do it gracefully and with insight rather than destruction. When the
West forgot that they began to lie about Art and themselves.
REH
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, December 15, 2003 12:56
AM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] EU a
civil-service conspiracy? (was Re: The dumb-bell shaped economy)
Christoph,
At 22:28 14/12/2003 +0100, you
wrote:
Keith Hudson wrote:
> I
regard the EU as a plot,
> mainly by senior civil servants but with
fellow-travelling senior
> politicians in the main European countries,
to form a larger and superior
> form of nation-state which will, of
course, give them more career
> opportunities and more power. Being
far more intelligent than politicians,
> the civil service have been
able to manipulate them by giving them plenty
> of junkets and fulsome
opportunities to claim money on expenses.
This ignores the roots and
drivers of the EU project, which are corporate
rather than state:
The European Roundtable of Industrialists (www.ERT.be)
which has planned all major projects of
the EU (e.g. Eurotunnel, euro
currency, east enlargement etc.) and
realized them without even asking
the politicians or people of the EU
member states. The MEPs that Keith
complains about, are merely
"democratic" window dressing as they have
no real decision power anyway,
and the little decision-dressing they have,
is cared for by several
corporate lobbyists per MEP hanging around in
Brussels. Of course
MEPs and civil servants enjoy their economic perks,
but let's not confuse
piggy-backers with driving forces.
I don;t agree -- big
business will go along with the EU with alacrity because they always make a
bee-line for government in order to get privileges, as Harry often observes.
But they're not the main drivers. Their main motivations are to make money,
not to get involved in politics directly. (The only exceptions to this being
some entreprneurs of the old school -- that is, the particularly corrupt ones,
particularly Italians and French.) In England, according to the
Institute of Directors, big business is divided about 50:50, and according to
the Chambers of Commerce, most of their members are against the EU (about
60:40), seeing no particular advantage in the EU and the Euro except a 0.25%
reduction in exchange rate commissions.
The corporate agenda of the EU is
to "open" and plunder the natural and
human resources of the new and
future member states (incl. CH in the
long run). As EU boss Romano
Prodi put it: "Going west was their [U$']
enlargement. They found
the Rocky Mountains; we found Prague and Budapest."
Let's hope the Brits
leave those nasty smallpox blankets at home this time
(in the figurative
sense)...
> The beginning of the end of the nation-state came
when
> the nuclear bomb was invented because this meant that, sooner
or later, a
> rogue nation or even a terrorist group such as Al Qaeda,
will be able to
> bring a nation-state to its knees by exploding the
device at the location
> of its highly centralised government and
civil service
The beginning of the end of the nation-state came
when
the TNC was invented because this meant that, sooner or later,
a
rogue TNC or even an economic terrorist group such as WTO, will be able
to
bring a nation-state to its knees by blackmailing it with jobs
and
economic sanctions.
You have a too conspiracist idea
about the WTO. In the main it is well-meaning, though a lot of dirty politics
go on within it.
Keith
Chris
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Keith
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