Hello,

I rarely enter this segment of the forum, but in research for my strategy paper, I'd like some of the european members of this forum who understand what's going on in the EU, to comment on the following video.

If I'm not mistaken, this is a slap in the face of the democratic process, is it not? If that is the case, would it be correct to say that the EU is also, like the USA moving towards more of a fascist state?

If this is the case, then we now have two giant blocks moving in this direction. Please inform us.

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i can't even follow the vidio, one of the reasons not interested in politics, makes absolutly no sense to me at all

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Ok, I'm a bit confused about it too.
Mainly because I was under the impression that the treaty was an attempt at consolidating the strentgh of the EU, which I am for in principle.
Anything to counter-balance the impact of the USA in global decisions is ok by me.
I'm a french citizen living in the UK with an interest in politics but no real knowledge and I don't feel i know enough about politics to really comment accurately, but I'd say that if the UK has been unhappy about the treaty then it probably is positive! All they ever do is brown-nose America so if they're not keen on it, there must be something there...

I've just done a bit or looking up on the subject (thank fuck for Wikipedia!) but fell asleep halway through.

can you tell me what about it is a slap in the face of democracy? I'm not really sure I understand. I honestly need to know: nothing seems to add up, this vdeo makes no sense to me and what I read in wikipedia didn['t seem particularly bad, so I honestly don't know!

I remember my family talking about the referendum and being pretty much pro-treaty, but they told me at the time the treaty was getting bad publicity, and it was so complex to read that a lot of citizens rejected it purely on the groung of hear-say and media coverage. I know that some left-wing and liberal celebs campained FOR IT as well, not giving me an impression that the treaty was anti-democracy.

That's all I know.

if you're gonna have one, have a big one!

I don't know, lately I've been seeing a lot of videos springing up pertaining to this whole "new world order conspiracy."

How the elite of the world are working together to create a new global government system consisting of the Americas, Europe and Asia (Mainly between America and Europe). They also follow how steadily America has , especially in recent years under the Bush Administration, used excuses such as war and terrorism to do away with more and more citizen rights. Bush has pretty much destroyed our system of government by just ignoring congress and passing whatever legislation he sees fit. There's absolutely no accountability in the U.S. government. So I can definitely start to see the trend into a fascist dictatorships. Hopefully there'll still be people around to fight it, but who knows according to the history channel they might get sent our government's specially made anthrax . (I don't really buy into conspiracy theories but I definitely laugh at people who believe whatever politicians tell them... they're lobbying for votes and money... come on).

I don't know how much these videos border on sensationalism and how much borders on fact, but it is indeed remarkable how much pressure these men are putting into creating one unified Europe. I don't even think it really borders on unification but just global domination of a select few over the rest of the world. Who knows maybe some good will come of it...

Well, I was going over the Lisbon treaty, mainly because I was curious as to why the French and the Netherlands were against the first constitution back in 2005. And the first thing I saw about the treaty that raised a red flag for me, was how similar it was to NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement in areas of commerce. It seems to dismantle a lot of the social welfare systems that are in place in most of Europe, in a direction for pro market, free market reform, which I am for, but not the way NAFTA was styled. NAFTA, incidentally, is the primary cause for today's "illegal immigration" problem in the USA. If you think about it, Mexico was always our neighbor for the last several hundred years, but NAFTA allowed the USA to dump agricultural products into Mexico, and american agriculture is tremendously tax subsidized. This made the mexican farmers uncompetitive, bankrupted many of them, and started the migration first to slums in the mexican cities, and to the relatively recent immigration across the border to the USA. It also started the migration of manufacturing to the Maquilladora zone, the northern border of Mexico of many american companies. That zone is one of the most heavily polluted areas in the north american continent.

Recently, with the new trade agreements with Asia, those same manufacturers are now migrating to Asia. NAFTA also penalizes states and countries for protecting their people against environmental damage, requiring the state or country to pay the company unknown amounts of money for losses of "Future projected revenue". Now, how anyone can determine "future projected revenue", that never was earned in the first place, I don't know. That treaty's model is the same model being pushed on CAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, and the Free Trade of the Americas Pact. And it's the reason South America reacted against it, and formed the South American Interdevelopment Bank and Mercosur, as a Bulwark against the above agreements. They know what's going on, and they don't want the american corporations pressing their agenda on them. After traveling through Central America, one of the alarming things I noticed about CAFTA and NAFTA, is how both agreements exploit the workers on an unprecedented scale, and when those companies leave, the land is ravaged, there's no hope for the workers, and that's where we get the problem of illegal immigration.

You might say that NAFTA is the treaty that set the stage for the current quasi fascist state of the USA.

Anyway, that's what I'm seeing in the Lisbon Treaty, is that the treaty seems very much styled in the lines of NAFTA, in the economic arena, so when I got wind of the EU president taking on unprecedented powers that were not in the EU rulebook, it sounded very similar to how NAFTA was rammed through the Parliament in Canada, the Congress in the USA, and the Congress in Mexico (Canada is the only country in our hemisphere that does not use the presidential 3 branches of government system). That's why I said it seemed like a slap in the face of democracy. NAFTA also puts corporations above the law, and as such, isn't what I consider a true, egalitarian, capitalist treaty, especially when the corporations that were pushing NAFTA are tax payer subsidized, which means they have 0 startup costs. And basically, when the corp is above the law, it's really a marriage of the corporation with government, which by definition of Musolini, is fascism. That's why I was curious about this.

But, I'm not a European, nor do I understand EU society or politics, so I can only see it as an american. (And I'd rather be an american ) Which is why I'm asking you folks if anyone has any insight into this. So, I think I'm stuck in analyzing what's going on. Wow, your continent's politics seems a lot more complicated than ours!

Vietnamita, I unfortunately did not understand everything said in that video.

But I have to tell that I am convinced that the WHOLE WESTERN HEMISPHERE is moving into a totalitarian/fascist direction.

The current form of "eat or die" capitalism, what did we think would come out of it?
If a system is based and is rewarding greed then there cannot be true democracy.
Democracy is a word threwn in to betray the citizens, but the people we elect aren't really reigning us anymore.
They are bought by the global companies and do what those dictate them.
Democracy became propaganda.
I could give many expamples from the german politics which show that this is going on.

Did you know for example that europe has adopted the patriot act and we now get all our telephone and email-conversations scanned and saved right like the americans?
This is done under the guise to "protect" us from terrorism but it's rather like big brother wants to watch us all closer than we know and like.
WHO will be labeled as terrorist in future, that's the main question.
American and european politics are linked together VERY closely these days.

Terrorists, who are they anyways? Maybe those who dare to protest against the new totalitarism and new world order because they see what is happening?
Something to ponder ...

The european politics are probably a bit more complicated than the american for the reason that we have many nations on our continent, the USA are one nation with several states, europe are several nations, that alone makes it more fuzzy.

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Indeed. Those who have never toured in Europe don't understand that we actually have dozens of languages, legal systems and cultures in Europe. Comparing states of the USA is like comparing cantons of Switzerland. Though Switzerland is not an EU member, it is still JUST ONE COUNTRY, and we have so many of them on our continent. North America is USA & Canada. Europe is Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Germany, France, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, UK, Belgium, the Netherlands etc etc etc. so comparing the politics of the US and the EU really isn't the same thing.

I am more into my own country's politics than the EU politics. That is why I find the EU politics more uninteresting and confusing. I do follow what happens in other European countries as well, but not that much of European Union politics. That is a whole different arena. That is why I am not much of a help in this.

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