A reply to
Jerome
As a European I feel obligated to reply to Jerome's recent 2 posts. I'm Swiss and my country is not part of the EU, so I guess I can be considered to have a 'neutral stance'. Yeah pun intendend.
I'm pro EU and hope my country once will join 'the club', but this does not prevent me from having a critical view on both the current 'European' and
American leadership. Being surrounded by 3 big European countries, and as a bilingual speaker, I consider myself to have at least some insight into France, Germany and Italy. This is not about America vs. Europe. This is about the hypocrisy of the west in general.
Mediocre European leaders? - it would be wonderful if they were just
mediocre. Your country's head of state, monsieur Chirac is in my oppinion one of the most disgusting political bastards of the last decades. He shook hands with the devils of this world more than any political figure, he was the main driving force behind OSIRAK, he was directly involved in several political corruption scandals including several french OIL companies, such as Total and Elf-Aquitaine etc
- Europe likes to blame America for Big Oil? Well, we're no better.
Now to Italy, Berlusconi. A mafioso, a wise guy, chief of media, currently taking down the foundations of democratic Italy. A guy abusing the law in order to get a white vest for his criminal past. He's as corrupt as Chirac, he's having a coalition with the neo-fascists. Btw, Berlusconi's government is the first Italian administration since the end of WW2 that has survived more than 4 years. Hail to European stability. And let's not forget the big scandal in the 90's that revealed that the WHOLE ITALIAN APPARATUS basically was bought by big money and the mafia. That's when Berlusconi's time came.
Now to Germany, along with several European nations, they want to remove the weapon embargo against China - Hell, this is a nation ruled by social democrats, but do you think Schroeder would critisize Russia's/China's/etc. human rights records? No, because there's big money to be made. Schroeder's government proposed refugee detention camps in Africa. This is fortress Europe. We don't want refugees, Germany doesn't want refugees, Spain doesn't want refugees. We'd rather let them starve or get murdered.
I'm not even going into Africa, Blood Diamonds and European interest in Africa. I'm not going into the rise of anti-semitism in Europe. I'm not going into the NPD getting elected in Sachsen, Germany. I'm not going into nationalism - Blocher, Haider, Le Pen. I'm not going into Franco. I'm not going into Portugal's former war in Angola. I'm not going into Germany selling chem labs to a dictator. Switzerland, Britain's St.Kitts & Navies etc. harboring this world's dictators' money. It just ashames me. This is not a question of mediocracy. Europe is taking over American values? Where? If you consider lying, corruption and indecency to be American values, you're right. And no, 'Europe is not going to work out' if it continues like this.
My only hope are the smaller nations, such as Finland, Sweden, The Netherlands, Austria, Portugal and the newly joined eastern nations such as Poland or Latvia. I don't expect anything from the current BIG leadership of Europe.
Why do we keep blaming America where we should blame the West as a whole? We have a responsability too, and obviously we all forgot about it. We blank out our own wrongdoing, and America serves as a scapegoat. Europe in its current form is morally not better than America. We just hide our interests beneath a curtain of lies and self-righteousness.
Americans, don't bet on Europe. We need to base our views on more than just Realpolitik, on more than just a basic frameset that promotes stupid blindness and hatred. This is about decency, freedom and fairness. This is about our left values.
Edit: I did not intend to sound apologetic regarding the Bush administration. I just think that anti-americanism leads us Europeans to overlook important issues such as ie. France's role in global water privatization, on which I'll hopefully post a diary as soon as I find the time. Yes post war iraq is horrible, but there are issues at hand with similar (or even higher?) significance. And, oh joy, we Europeans could do something about them.