Europe Needs to Get Real

To this American, it's Europeans who are naive, superficial and materialistic

By CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL

Posted Sunday, Jan. 12, 2003; 2.09 p.m. GMT
Any American who spends time in Europe will have lived through the moment — usually around 11 p.m., after Bordeaux or Bushmills has got the better of the guests — when an old friend wheels his gaze slowly around the dinner table, like a piece of mechanized artillery, until you're staring into his angry muzzle. Out comes a salvo of imprecations about American foreign policy and the United States in general. Call it the George W. Bush-cowboy-Palestine-death-penalty-Enron moment. This is a transatlantic tradition, of course, but there's something discomfiting about hearing such things (as I did recently) from someone who'd called you up from Paris on Sept. 11, 2001, sobbing in solidarity with your country.

What happened to that solidarity? The piles of flowers in front of U.S. embassies in every capital, the concerts in Berlin, the Continent-wide three minutes of silence, the invocation of Article V by Europe's NATO members? It all seems very long ago.

It was a long time ago. Time heals everything. No sensible person would dewll on a tragedy for eternity. The time has long passed to put 911 behind us and to start to live and behave differently. Everyone in the world except Americans understands this profoundly.

Today a majority of French and Russians think America opposes Iraq only as a pretext to seize its oil.

Is that a lie?

A German Chancellor with an abysmal economic record won re-election by sneering at U.S. arrogance at every whistle stop.

That isnt how he won the election. A typically childish American oversimplification.

There is no questioning the sincerity of Europe's post-Sept. 11 mourning. But the turnabout since then has been so sudden, so strong and focused that I begin to worry that Europeans oppose America not despite the attacks but because of them.

You have not been listening. You have not understood the causes of both 911 and the near universal distaste for America and Americans. This inability to listen, this singular and spectacular failure of imagination is the cause of all Americas "international problems

Here's what I mean. For decades, Europeans of all ideologies asked whether the prosperous democracies of the West had become too decadent to defend themselves. Once the U.S. moved to dislodge the terrorist-sponsoring Taliban in Afghanistan, Europe was faced with an ally doing something it would not — could not — have done itself.

You should have said "should not". European governments are more careful, thoughtful and considerate of cultural differences than the American government is. The Taleban was a USA creation. Everyone outside America knows this. What is amazing, is that YOU dont know this.

It had the choice, then, of whether to consider the U.S. less decadent or less democratic than Europe. It's not hard to see which version is easier on a continent's self-image.

The new economy of the 1990s did a lot to set the two continents at cross-purposes. Americans have never developed a critique of globalization, because we haven't suffered either France's rolling strikes or Germany's festering joblessness. With impeccable market logic, European antiglobalists complain that in a global economy that fosters specialization, the U.S. has become the specialist — the monopolist — in the military defense of the West. Monopolies behave as monopolies do, in America's case by polluting disproportionately, throwing its weight around and flouting European norms on such matters as multilateral consultation and the death penalty. And monopolies, even if you happen to like their products, must be broken up for the greater good.

What a mish mash of nonsense. The death penalty is an internal US policy problem. Globalization, strikes, unemployment, "terrorism", defense spending...these should really be discussed at length, with care and preferably separately.

The American view is that the Europeans are looking a gift horse in the mouth. They get what defense strategist Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment calls "free security," which subsidizes a Continental life of Riley.

Defese is fine. What everyone except Americans seems to understand is that defense is different to offense. Attacking Iraq is offensive (in both senses). Provoking Korea because it has withdrawn from the anti-proliferation treaty is offensive (especially when America refuses to sign up to the international court of justice and treaties like Kyoto). The double standards brutally enforced by the Americans are crystal clear to children. That you cannot see them means that you are either deliberatly being stupid, or that you are stupid by accident, or that you have in some way been brainwashed into stupidity.

If the Europeans want a larger voice in the defense of the West, let them pay for it, even if it means buying fewer garbage trucks or defibrillators or opera houses.

Only an American would say that paying for war is better than paying for Opera houses. Astounding

So when Europeans make their impassioned points across the dinner table, Americans tend to doubt they have the will to match their words with actions.

Thats because you are blinkered and stupid, insular and backward.

But Americans go further. We increasingly take the anti-American stereotypes of postwar Europeans and reverse them. We see ourselves as inhabiting history — doing the ugly, necessary work of the world — while it is the Euros who inhabit a superficial society.

This is nonsense. It would be far better for everyone on earth if the 50% of congressmen who do not own passports tried to visit other countries rather than the rather nebulous "inhabiting history". Perhaps then, some of the insular traits would be erased from their ranks. Of course, Americans only eat McDonalds when they go abroad, so its unlikely that these congressmen will get any sort of feeling on a trip to enlighten themselvs. It is incredible that Americans think that they have sufficient insight into the world to bomb other countries when fully HALF of their legislators, the very people who vote for such actions have never left the continental USA. If you dont know this, then you should. If you do know this, but say nothing, you are guilty, and a part of the American problem.

Europeans are materialistic; the E.U. has a low profile on strategic issues because it was designed by bureaucrats obsessed with trade and money.

Trade is better than war. All enlightened people understand this. All civilized countries practice this philosophy.

Europeans care more than we do about physical pleasure; they traffic in titillation (to judge from the nightly offerings on television or such bestsellers as The Sexual Life of Catherine M.)

Europeans are not puritanical. They are not prudish like the Americans, who will gladly suck on their mothers breasts for nourishment, but cannot show this act on television. Your puritanical society is violent, repressed and backwards. In the CIA world handbook, the USA is the only country listed as having a danger of rape for visitors. Your free speech and first amendment, which you wave to everyone in the world as an example of how man should live should apply to the program that you watched should it not? Use some logic!

and are obsessed with their food (which is, by the way, no longer superior to ours).

Now you are dreaming. Pray tell when this eclipse happened? When you looked up from your Big Mac sitting in Paris watching Porn perhaps?

And if "heritage," Europe's age-old bragging point, is measured by family traditions and religious values, then Europeans no longer have a lock on it. To American eyes, it's tough to have family traditions in a region where so many choose to be childless (the fertility rate in E.U. countries is 1.47 births per woman),

Everyone understands that the birthrate in the world needs to come down if we are going to create a sustainable world economy. Everyone except maybe Americans, who belive that unfettered growth is not only possible but desireable

tough to have religious values when less than 20% of Europeans regularly attend church.

The obsession with institutions demonsrated by this ignorant and pathetic comment is clear. For your information, just because someone doesnt worship in precisely the same way you do doesnt mean that they are not religious. Relying on statistics like this is a typically American way of experiencing the real world. They use them as a substitute for travel, first hand knowledge and real experience. It would not matter if Americans didnt operate a foreign policy, but sadly, they do, and the consequences are disasterous and deadly.

But the heart of the American complaint — again, reversing an old European saw — is that Europeans are naive and provincial.

Your president has barely traveled outside of your country. Tony Blair for all his faults, is well travelled, speaks French, and actually worked in France as a young man. The president of Russia speaks fluent German. The president of Germany speaks fluent english, as do most European leaders. Europeans, are absolutely NOT "provincial" and in fact are working practically to permanently erase the borders, both real and imaginary, between all european states. This is hardly the behaviour of insluar "provincial" people. Another loud, childish and idiotic tit for tat statement. Utterly useless.

It is easy enough to browbeat Americans about the flimsy coverage the E.U. gets in U.S. dailies. But where does European interest in the world rise above the dilettantish? When has the E.U. come up with a workable plan for Iraq?

There is no need for a "workable plan for Iraq". After having armed Iraq to the teeth, America wants everyone to join in smashing this already shattered country, a "monster" that America created for its own ends (Raytheon & co selling arms).

For the Middle East? For North Korea?

North Korea? You dear sir, do NOT set the agenda by simply naming countries that you know absolutely nothing about, and that your President cannot even find on a map. Europeans will not be drawn into your ignorant and inflamatory nonsense.

After the carnage of two world wars, the European distrust of power politics is something for which we have reason to be grateful. The problem is that postwar Europeans think their strategic differences with America are the product not of a specific historic experience but of a new, higher morality.

Actually, Europeans have tasted devastating war, twice, ON THE GROUND. America has never tasted war in this way. They have always brought war to other countries, and then bombed them into oblivion from the air. Perhaps if you had some real world experience of total war, you would not be so eager to wage it or deride others for being cautious before in engaging in it.

And that is what George Bernard Shaw was talking about when he defined a barbarian as one who mistakes the customs of his tribe for the laws of nature.

Q.E.D. Your customs of religious practice are not the laws of nature. Your constitution is not a law of nature. Your puritanical society is not a law of nature. War as the only solutoin to international problems is not a law of nature.

You are a perfect examlple of the problems we in the civilized world face today.

Christopher Caldwell reports from Europe for the Weekly Standard, a U.S. opinion magazine, where he is a senior editor.

Time

Citzenship Renouncer to Burn Flag in Protest if US Attacks Iraq

http://educate-yourself.org/cn/kennicholsflagburn3oct02.shtml
October 3, 2002

For Immediate Release

As a result of the continuing revolutionary actions that directly confront the United States and its policies of war, Mr. Kenneth Nichols O’Keefe is receiving increasing interest and invitations to express his alternative approach. He has publicly announced his intent to burn a US Flag before the US Consulate in Amsterdam if/when the US begins the invasion of Iraq. Former US Marine O’Keefe has already burned his US passport and has proven himself to be a victim of human experiments at the hands of the US Military during the Gulf War. He has called the CIA the "greatest terrorist organization of the 20th & 21st Centuries" and called for the CIA’s immediate abolishment. Additionally, he has publicly declared in his July 1, 2002 International Notice, his intention to bring formal charges against the US for ‘Crimes against Humanity’ for its use of Depleted Uranium in Iraq, but it is the burning of a US Flag that is sure to bring even more notoriety, both of praise and anger.

O’Keefe is now confronting the Dutch Government through his latest International Notice of September 30, 2002, which has been legally served to the Dutch Minister of Justice and Foreign Affairs. In this notice O’Keefe challenges the Dutch Government to defend its "injurious position which regards me as a US citizen." Specifically O’Keefe has been issued a Dutch ID (which he is required to carry as a Political Asylum seeker) that lists him as a US citizen. He says that if nation/states such as the US or Holland define him than the right of "Self Determination" does not exist.

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – Article 1

‘All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.’

O’Keefe believes that exposing the hypocrisy of nation/states and their governments their routine denial of human rights is an essential step towards a just and peaceful world. "Nations have obligated themselves to honor human rights by lawfully entering into human rights treaties such as the pre-eminent Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the time has long since come to confront the hostile actions of these governments and demand a stop to it right now. In order to reject war we must also attack those who deny human rights, that is exactly what I intend to do by my actions."

Universal Declaration of Human Rights – Preamble

‘Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,

‘Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,

Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,…’

O’Keefe is currently demanding that the Dutch Government honor his human right to "Self Determination" and legally acknowledge his status as a Stateless "World Citizen" by issuing a new Dutch ID. Furthermore, at the invitation of the Stop The War Brigade, the German Peace Council, and the Rosa-Luxemburg-Foundation O’Keefe will be traveling to Berlin to speak at an event entitled "AMERICAN WAR--WITNESS ACCOUNTS ABOUT RESISTANCE IN THE US ARMY FROM THE VIETNAM WAR UNTIL TODAY." He expects to enter Germany without need to present his newly acquired World Citizen passport which has been issued to over 350,000 people world wide and accepted by over 150 nations (information at www.worldgovernment.org), but he intends to force the Dutch Government to honor his right to travel by intentionally demanding official reentry into Holland as a lawfully registered asylum seeker.

Geneva Convention on Refugees - Article 27 & 28 (Identity Papers, Travel Documents)

‘Article 27 - The Contracting States shall issue identity papers to any refugee in their territory who does not possess a valid travel document.’

‘Article 28 - The Contracting States shall issue to refugees lawfully staying in their territory travel documents for the purpose of travel outside their territory, unless compelling reasons of national security or public order otherwise require,’

O’Keefe is openly inviting media agents to accompany him upon reentering Holland from Germany. It is highly possible, he says, that the Dutch authorities will deny him the right to reenter and thereby reject his Political Asylum application based on his leaving Holland to attend the peace demonstration in Berlin. "I have been told directly by Dutch Agents that I do not have the right to travel. If they reject my rights we will have a legitimate international incident with serious consequences. If however they honor my new passport and my human right to travel we will also have a major event in support of human rights with broad implications. For those who choose world citizenship/allegiance instead of nation/state citizenship/allegiance travel rights will be affirmed and the flood gates to world citizenship registry may open. What I am doing is a direct challenge to the authority of all nation/states who currently deny human rights by arbitrarily demanding nation/! state allegiance via passports and citizenship. What I will be exposing, one way or the other, is that nation/states cannot have it both ways, either you honor essential human rights, or you do not."

Contact Note October 5th Amsterdam: At the invitation of event organizers O’Keefe will be a participant in an event sponsored by Vrij Nederland called "happy Chaos!" (www.happychaos.nl – in Dutch). The October 5th event in Amsterdam will include politicians, journalists, NGO representatives, activists and more. O’Keefe has been asked to deliver a short speech to begin a debate with the title of "War of the Worlds: Europe vs America." Among those in the debate will be a Dutch General (Adriaan van Vuren), notable journalist (Willem Oltmans) and several others. Those of you who know O’Keefe will know that he will not be holding back and it is sure to be a very "lively" debate indeed.

Blowfish Dinner

Hmmm...

The United States of America has gone mad

Man 'beheaded by guillotine'

Supreme Court Opinions are here:

Europe Needs to Get Real

Citzenship Renouncer to Burn Flag in Protest if US Attacks Iraq

Will someone please DivX this prog?

Be a millionaire with no talents!

Madness is the answer™