tiphareth: загнать русское быдло обратно в стойла

(Читать комментарии) - (Добавить комментарий)

	kaledin 2014-03-03 07:25 (ссылка)
	Also: nobody in Europe gives a shit about Iraq, or in fact for anything outside of Europe. They go to demonstrations blah-blah-blah but in truth they don't care. The hope for Ukraine is that it now has a valid claim to be inside. (Ответить) (Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии)

brooklyn
2014-03-04 05:00 (ссылка)

First of all there is no "they", EU is huge and it consists of many different states: consider the difference between Hungary, which is one step away to become a fascist regime, and France, for example. It is not a blessed land of ever-happy hippies marching with rainbow banners. Taking in another Eastern European state with a messed up economy is a big deal. "They" already have a lingering disaster in Greece, Portugal and Spain. There was never a word in the agreement that they wanted Ukraine to sign about any kind of "real" integration. Money is not free, nobody would give Ukraine anything. Europe is not changing that fast, it is the former world hegemon, the colonial center, everything else comes after that.

Economy is the politics, nothing else matters that much. Neo-liberalism is alive and doing well, look at what happened in Greece, EU bureaucracy pretty much told Greek people to shut up, as their democracy doesn't matter anymore, and cut the welfare state. I live in the US and what I see is that it is just getting more and more neoliberal under Obama, not less. They just cut foodstemps, for christsake. Yeah, neoliberalism in Europe is not as ugly as in US, as people fight, over here almost everyone is the part of the same flock, just clinging to whatever they were left with.

(Ответить) (Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии)

kaledin
2014-03-04 05:22 (ссылка)

>as their democracy doesn't matter anymore

Well, it doesn't -- until it stops being a cleptocracy.

I'm not saying EU wants Ukraine in -- it certainly did not before, and even now it's a big "if" in the far future. However, it's difficult to just ignore people who look European and behave as Europeans (much more so than Hungarians by the way).

(Ответить) (Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии)

brooklyn
2014-03-04 07:05 (ссылка)

It seems that the Western democracy, as we know it, was not a norm, but rather a deviation, the result of the Great Depression, WWII, and fear of socialism, that made the powerful to share. We were just mad lucky for the 40 post-war years. At the moment democracy is a way to legitimize the rule of the super-wealthy elites, it has no means to stop them in any way.

As I said before, there is no "they", and if there is no "they", there is no easy way to define who is European or not. There is no such thing as Europe per se. It is just a social construct, the definition had changed many times, it is people who inscribe geography with meanings. If there is some kind universality, it is the Enlightenment, however when the USSR decided to get rid of its socialist project, it also got rid of the ideas of Enlightenment that were at its heart. "Whiteness" doesn't define that much, "Europe" is where university is. FYI, Russia in the last few decades didn't produce any original thinkers, unlike India, or Middle East, for example.

(Ответить) (Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии)

	kaledin 2014-03-04 13:44 (ссылка)
	>There is no such thing as Europe per se There is now, to a large extent. It's a backlash from the rapid expansion 10 years ago: people want consolidation. That's the mentality. (Ответить) (Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии)

brooklyn
2014-03-05 06:18 (ссылка)

People in the former Eastern block wanted to be a part of the Western consumerist Utopia (sorry for essentialism), Western European elites wanted more markets without local industrial competition and cheap labor. So the consolidation had happen, but on Western terms. Now some would prefer to escape the EU paradise: Iceland decided not to join last year, Greeks are unhappy, and look at the current unrest in Bosnia http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/03/ukrainians-bosnian-eu-flag
I don't understand where the idea that EU can help the struggling Eastern European states come from.

(Ответить) (Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии)

kaledin
2014-03-05 06:42 (ссылка)

>People in the former Eastern block wanted to be a part of the Western consumerist Utopia

This was twenty years ago.

Already for Romanians and Bulgarians, an important attraction of the EU was fighting corruption. It's no wonder that Greeks want out -- they are quite happy being corrupt. And it's no wonder Iceland is happy outside -- they don't need help.

Bosnia is an artificial entity, it would be much better to split it. As it is, it cannot work (and it doesn't) -- while each part separately separately seems ok. My guess is, it will be allowed to split eventually, as soon as it is safe to do it. But I'm not an expert at all.

>EU can help the struggling Eastern European states

Obviously it can -- by imposing, how do they call it now, "structural reforms"? "good governance"? something like that.

The question is, does it feel any obligation to do it. My feeling is that yes, to some extent, provided it all happens within some naturally defined Europe. There is no way Turkey gets in. Ukraine might.

(Ответить) (Уровень выше)

	tiphareth 2014-03-05 10:50 (ссылка)
	this is false: I was in Romania the day they joined EU. Everybody realized the economics would turn from bad to worse, but the payoff (anti-corruption measures) overweights the harm (Ответить) (Уровень выше)

	brooklyn 2014-03-04 07:21 (ссылка)
	btw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwDrHqNZ9lo (Ответить) (Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии)

	sceptic-gztru.livejournal.com 2014-03-04 10:30 (ссылка)
	Zizek is funny. (Ответить) (Уровень выше)

(Читать комментарии) -