On 2004-05-03 01:43, Spirit wrote:
I thought the EU bureaucracy was such a bloated gravvy-train they'd have a hard time agreeing on anything important
And if it's not the bureaucracy that slows things down, it's an island in front of our coast. I think it's the only EU country, together with a mediteranean country with a fascist prime minister, that has soldiers in Iraq. The rest of us tend to agree with an organisation founded after WW2, to prevent such things from happening ever again.
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: at0mic on 2004-05-03 04:30 ]</font>
Add even Lithuania. It makes me sick seeing how prompt is our government to start licking another ass, even if it's as "mighty" as the USA. Memory seems very short here, forty years of occupation haven't really taught us anything. I hope that Europe can prove to be a counterweight to the false values being exported fiercely from the other coast. I see NATO's flag waving proudly in front of my town's municipality beside the national one, I guess it's supposed to symbolize the safety that the roaring fighter aircrafts seemingly brought to the young state, but I just don't see it this way, maybe the banners on their wings are different, but they sound the same.
I've been offline for some days. Only today I've seen an interesting film (L'Auberge Espagnole) about many things and especially about people. Different nations, different cultures but one thing similar - the need for acceptance. Perhaps this is why I'm (and many of us) so enthusiastic about being a part of the EU. A part of something bigger, stronger. We also were occupied for a long period of time (1798-1918; Russia, Prussia and Austria) and now we look for a good and stable company. The world today is founded on money. We won't change it - no matter if we like it or not. Not to drown - we have to have a rich partner. I don't judge it I just say facts.
Me personaly I see a chance in being a part of the EU. A chance for my childeren especially. I am not too good in explaining things but I hope you get it.
On 2004-05-03 09:09, hubird wrote:
Thanks to Europe I could transfer the mony by bank without any costs.
I didn't know about the possibility That's good!
Once I bought my Pulsar1 card from a guy from the UK and I had to us WesternUnion. It costed me about 50 Euros but he got the money in 15minutes. I didn't use my bank to transfer the money because:
1. He would get the money in TWO WEEKS!!!
2. The fees were similar to WU.
Besides, I've got a flat credited in Euros (16 years, yet!). Now the currency rates should be more stable.
And if it's not the bureaucracy that slows things down, it's an island in front of our coast. I think it's the only EU country, together with a mediteranean country with a fascist prime minister, that has soldiers in Iraq. The rest of us tend to agree with an organisation founded after WW2, to prevent such things from happening ever again.
Ho, here is another country that has soldiers in Iraq...Holland! Tadaaa!
We seem to display some cultural and psychological sensitiveness, compared to the yankies, so the radical moslames left us alone, tho not really the last week.
(3 missiles in the mans camp).
No body bags sofar, but you can count on that.
In juli 'we' (the f**king right wing gouvernment) have to decide for another half year, I'm expecting a discouraging action by radicalists overthere...
I often go back in my native country Croatia wich is not in EU .When you travel with a car from Paris to Split you pass 4 countries without any frontier (france , germany, austria ,slovenia), NO control , NO police and that's a good feeling Today i can take my car and can go in Poland without any stop , that's great .
Peace is in progress , quasi 60 years without major war in Europe except about 250000 death in balkans wars ...Maybe looking some other areas of the planet that's not so bad.
Let's progress together and make some other join in the wheel .
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: coc999 on 2004-05-04 17:33 ]</font>
Imagine every single country as being a person, then imagine they all are into sort of a thin and very tall tree, were everybody must be not to die. If you go down, it is the end of your country, if you keep balance you save yourself. If several countries stand in only one side of the tree, there is unbalance and the whole thing goes to one of the sides instead of keeping in the safe middle. If a big, fat guy gets in favour of somebody and unites to a group, it makes some extra load and the unbalance gets bigger and bigger. The tree may brake and so everybody falls, some may fall and the tree keeps up till they cut it from the bottom and everybody falls anyway, or everybody gets a different tree and all this extreme tension that the situation creates, disappears.
The situation we are in, is similar to the above described, and if more and more countries keep joining, it is because there is an eminent danger somewhere, I don’t see powerful countries bothering themselves joining just like this… There is something behind it all, honestly, I don’t like it! My intuition tells me something smells quite rotten behind all these treatises and countries unions… I strongly prefer the simplicity of old times, when people would be working in their own countryside instead.
hehe
Nestor, why do you take the current status quo for granted?
A few years ago, let's say 500, 1000 or 2000 years ago there were alot more 'countries', why would the todays state of conglomeration be the norm for 'the best we have'?
I don't see the state of Washington falls in war with Georgia, or Holland with Germany.
Different but totaly wired international economies are the best garantee against war, every peace organisation will support this idea I guess.
Translated to psychological terms: if people are depended of other people, they have to deal with eachother.
Nothing new
_________________
Let There Be Music!
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: hubird on 2004-05-04 21:31 ]</font>
On 2004-05-05 00:37, Spirit wrote:
... which is exactly what makes the isolationist regime in North Korea so potentially dangerous.
I can only imagine what was said about the eastern block in your countries. The same was at our side. Closed borders, lies. It leaded to non tolerance and especialy - hate.
Hate is the worst thing.
It was only a further comment from Hubird's post - that things are safest when every nation is "wired" together. If a country is not plugged into the web of trade then it has nothing to lose if it withdraws from the web...
I suppose though in the case of WWII it was the US withdrawal of oil from Japan, and its exclusion from this "web" that promopted war.
@wsippel:
I do NOT agree that humanism and Marx have very much in common.
Marx's analysis sets the work as equal. (ceterus paribus, a common method to analyse)
This "trick" allowes to have a better look at the behaviour of monetary growth.
So he develops his theory about the growing profit rate.
And so, historically, the center of the ideology became a monetary one!
Only the receivers of the profits were changed, -in theory- in practice it turned out
that it ended in the pockets of the bosses. (like in the good old "western world")
Humanism is, sorry to point that out, a totally different thing.
The center is the idea, probably best described by Kant, to act in your daily
behaviour as if every move you do is in a way that nobody else can be offended.
Ok, this includes, of course, the idea to take only that amount of money necessary for your
own needs - and not more. And, of course, no collecting.
And that is where the ideas of Marx meet humanism.
But:
It IS a difference if you have to learn 6 years to fulfill the needs of a job or 6 weeks.
It IS a difference if you understand higher order functions or not.
And this has to be set into account, of course.
So the center of humanism points, instead of power in production media, to defined human rights.
The fact, that about every ideology claims to defend them cannot be taken as an argument
to substitute humanism.
So IMHO the value of Marx is that he made a good instrument to analyse monetary profits.
We need that to understand the limits of the monetary circle.
And to find the laws to protect us from side effects of this "cash flow".
And this includes, of course, also the power in production media.
@Micha
You are (of course) right. But I didn't mean "Das Kapital"...
I was thinking about social behaviour (respecting and helping others, taking care for the weak, stuff like that).
Marx just wrote the ideas developped by Engels and used it to defend its own theories. not the contrary. Marx was a good marketing strategist. Communism (or communitarism) exists since before the french revolution and developped a bit but the experiments were a failure. edited : i'm sure thatnowadays, Marx would be a communication cousellor, graduated and with a MBA
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: spacef on 2004-05-05 07:45 ]</font>
lol, Mehdi.
For humanism I'd prefer the line of Erasmus/renaissance Plato and Kant, Pareto. To avoid mix with ideologies with theoretical foundations taken from humanistic research. I know that it's difficult to decide who's in and who better not. And sometimes also a matter of taste, maybe. I can imagine that our new neighbors could add a lot to this because we here didn't now it all and some people there were heavily involved in humanistic discussions. Like poet Stanislaw Jerzy Lec.
Maybe for us as musicans the poets are more convenient partners?
You see, looking myself...
That's good!
Sir 
