The Treaty of Lisbon, finally entering into force in late 2009, heralds a new, more advanced phase of the continuing European integration process. The treaty creates the post of High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, to which a much-expanded European diplomatic corps, the European External Action Service, will report.
The signs are everywhere, all over Ireland, but particularly here in Dublin. Some just say "Yes" or "No," but everyone knows what they mean. The newspapers are full of the debate. Both sides battle on the radio and television. For Ireland, it is déjà vu all over again. In June 2008, Irish voters rejected the Lisbon Treaty — which strengthens the foreign policy and military institutions of the European Union — by a clear margin of 53% to 46%. Next month, on October 2, Ireland will go to the polls a second time to vote on largely the same treaty.
There is an idea abroad in North America that the European Union (EU) represents a progressive alternative to U.S.-sponsored neoliberalism. You can find this argument in books such as Jeremy Rifkin’s The European Dream and in numerous articles in left-leaning journals. Yet nothing could be further from the truth.
Most Europeans today can travel from Athens to Helsinki without a visa or changing currency, thanks to membership in the European Union (EU). In the current throes of the global economic crisis, the Euro zone is an enviable shelter to weather the storm. But 50 years after its creation, the EU can appear as hapless as Agamemnon waiting for a wind to blow his fleet to Troy. With campaigning now in full swing for the European Parliament elections in June — the largest supranational democratic endeavor ever — the EU is stalled, desperately in need of a few breaks to bring it back on course.
The big news of President George W. Bush’s trip to Europe last week was not the multiple agendas that he juggled or the feathers he ruffled. It was the news he left behind. President Bush tried to set the domestic agenda for the week, with a pre-dawn press conference on his way to the airport last Monday. The sleepy First Couple stood side-by-side, as Bush told Congress they had “a lot of work” while he was gone. He even left a to-do list: pass Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, act on his Federal Housing Administration reform proposals, and agree to the Colombia free trade agreements.
Andrej Nosov. Photo by John Feffer.
European business leaders have traditionally taken home far less compensation than their American counterparts. But European executive compensation has been rising, and these pay increases have citizens in European nations deeply concerned. In fact, public outrage on both sides of the Atlantic has contributed to an unprecedented political debate over what to do about excessive executive pay.
The current brouhaha over a U.S. plan to deploy anti-ballistic missiles (ABM) in Poland has nothing to do with a fear that Iran will attack Europe or the U.S. with nuclear tipped Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM). It has a great deal to do with the Bush Administration’s efforts to neutralize Russia’s and China’s nuclear deterrents and edge both countries out of Central Asia.
The plan calls for deploying 10 ABMs in Poland and a radar system in the Czech Republic, supposedly to interdict missiles from "rogue states"—read North Korean and Iran.
On June 4, 1989, the world watched in horror as the Chinese government’s crackdown on student protestors took a deadly turn. As Chinese soldiers fired their weapons indiscriminately and Chinese tanks rolled through Tiananmen Square, an unknown number of students and soldiers were killed. The Chinese military continued its campaign of terror throughout the summer of 1989, drawing strong international condemnation.