Upcoming Events

International | EU

no events match your query!

New Events

International

no events posted in last week

Blog Feeds

Anti-Empire

Anti-Empire

offsite link North Korea Increases Aid to Russia, Mos... Tue Nov 19, 2024 12:29 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link Trump Assembles a War Cabinet Sat Nov 16, 2024 10:29 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link Slavgrinder Ramps Up Into Overdrive Tue Nov 12, 2024 10:29 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link ?Existential? Culling to Continue on Com... Mon Nov 11, 2024 10:28 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link US to Deploy Military Contractors to Ukr... Sun Nov 10, 2024 02:37 | Field Empty

Anti-Empire >>

The Saker
A bird's eye view of the vineyard

offsite link Alternative Copy of thesaker.is site is available Thu May 25, 2023 14:38 | Ice-Saker-V6bKu3nz
Alternative site: https://thesaker.si/saker-a... Site was created using the downloads provided Regards Herb

offsite link The Saker blog is now frozen Tue Feb 28, 2023 23:55 | The Saker
Dear friends As I have previously announced, we are now “freezing” the blog.? We are also making archives of the blog available for free download in various formats (see below).?

offsite link What do you make of the Russia and China Partnership? Tue Feb 28, 2023 16:26 | The Saker
by Mr. Allen for the Saker blog Over the last few years, we hear leaders from both Russia and China pronouncing that they have formed a relationship where there are

offsite link Moveable Feast Cafe 2023/02/27 ? Open Thread Mon Feb 27, 2023 19:00 | cafe-uploader
2023/02/27 19:00:02Welcome to the ‘Moveable Feast Cafe’. The ‘Moveable Feast’ is an open thread where readers can post wide ranging observations, articles, rants, off topic and have animate discussions of

offsite link The stage is set for Hybrid World War III Mon Feb 27, 2023 15:50 | The Saker
Pepe Escobar for the Saker blog A powerful feeling rhythms your skin and drums up your soul as you?re immersed in a long walk under persistent snow flurries, pinpointed by

The Saker >>

Lockdown Skeptics

The Daily Sceptic

offsite link News Round-Up Wed Jul 02, 2025 01:09 | Richard Eldred
A summary of the most interesting stories in the past 24 hours that challenge the prevailing orthodoxy about the ?climate emergency?, public health ?crises? and the supposed moral defects of Western civilisation.
The post News Round-Up appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link The Sheer Bad Craziness of UK Immigration Law Tue Jul 01, 2025 19:30 | Dr David McGrogan
A sensible country does not seek to 'manage' foreign sex offenders and drug traffickers 'in the community', says Dr David McGrogan. It ejects them. It's well past time UK law were changed to make this absolutely clear.
The post The Sheer Bad Craziness of UK Immigration Law appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link 40% of Babies in England Had Foreign-Born Parent in 2024 Tue Jul 01, 2025 18:09 | Will Jones
More than 40% of babies in England ? and over two thirds in London ? had a parent who was born outside the country in 2024, new figures reveal, as statistics underline the extreme pace of change in Britain.
The post 40% of Babies in England Had Foreign-Born Parent in 2024 appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link How Feminist Ideology Captured Psychology Tue Jul 01, 2025 15:31 | Bettina Arndt
Legendary sex therapist Bettina Arndt writes for the Daily Sceptic to lament the feminist takeover of psychology, grieving for a generation of boys drowning in anti-male propaganda that neuters their masculine instincts.
The post How Feminist Ideology Captured Psychology appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Miliband to Cover Britain?s Lakes in Floating Solar Panels Tue Jul 01, 2025 13:00 | Will Jones
Lakes and reservoirs will be covered with solar panels under Ed Miliband?s plans to quadruple the use of the technology in Britain.
The post Miliband to Cover Britain’s Lakes in Floating Solar Panels appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

Lockdown Skeptics >>

Voltaire Network
Voltaire, international edition

offsite link Will intergovernmental institutions withstand the end of the "American Empire"?,... Sat Apr 05, 2025 07:15 | en

offsite link Voltaire, International Newsletter N?127 Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:38 | en

offsite link Disintegration of Western democracy begins in France Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:00 | en

offsite link Voltaire, International Newsletter N?126 Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:39 | en

offsite link The International Conference on Combating Anti-Semitism by Amichai Chikli and Na... Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:31 | en

Voltaire Network >>

warning

Internal Error

The site may be undergoing difficulties due to heavy load please try again later!


warning

Internal Error

The site may be undergoing difficulties due to heavy load please try again later!


Voting NO to Lisbon 2

warning

Internal Error

The site may be undergoing difficulties due to heavy load please try again later!


warning

Internal Error

The site may be undergoing difficulties due to heavy load please try again later!


category international | eu | feature author Friday September 04, 2009 11:55author by Harry Browne Report this post to the editors

An Article Written Especially for Indymedia.ie by Harry Browne

featured image
Harry Browne
"Voting No is a way of showing them that they’re not out of trouble yet"

There are plenty of good reasons to vote No, again, on Lisbon – far more than there are reasons to vote Yes. We shouldn’t be ashamed of saying that the best of them are only partly to do with the specificities of the treaty itself.

On the other hand, we should be careful about some of the debating points we adopt.

Anti-imperialists, peace campaigners and workers’ rights advocates on the No side have the best set of arguments, to be sure. The writings of Kieran Allen and Andy Storey, among others, are the gold standard and I wouldn’t presume to add to them. But a few folks on ‘our side’ – and with that phrase I don’t include the right-wingers who happen to support the same vote but are otherwise alien politically – are wandering down some political dark alleys.

We should not, for example, get hung up on a ‘No Means No’ kick, as though in putting the Lisbon question to another referendum the Government were behaving like a rapist. Given that many of us on the left would consider ourselves advocates of more direct democracy – and are heirs to a democratic tradition that has often advocated annual parliaments and frequent referenda – it does seem rather churlish for us to suggest that the people aren’t allowed to change their minds, as they eventually did on divorce. Admittedly a simple cry of “we told you already” has some popular, populist traction – we never, after all, get a re-run when we vote the way the elite wants us to first-time. But it’s unsustainable as a real argument.

Then there’s ‘national sovereignty’. Even among some on the left who don’t call themselves nationalists, there is a temptation to adopt this line, perhaps conflating it with the principle of ‘decentralisation’ – i.e. it’s better to have power concentrated here where we can reach it more handily. But ‘national sovereignty’ in practice, in the Ireland of this era, means ‘government by property developers and multinationals’. It is possible to conceive of a more democratic, federalised Europe that we’d be happy to see establish some of the broad legal principles under which we’d like to live. The point for the purposes of this referendum is: Lisbon definitely ain’t it – in fact it moves that Europe further away. But the idea that ‘national sovereignty’ will help Ireland turn into a more benign and just environment before Europe does is just pie in the sky. Meanwhile ‘national sovereignty’ means restricting Irish women’s access to abortions.

I was asked recently to speak in a debate titled ‘What has Europe ever done for us?’ I liked the title, both for the People’s Front of Judea allusion and because it naturally breaks down into two more fundamental questions: What is Europe? Who is (are?) ‘us’?

Europe surely is not just the EU 27, and it’s certainly not the European Union and its institutions. Europe includes the majorities of the French and Dutch electorate who voted against the EU Constitution, of which the Lisbon Treaty is a clone with a few unimportant genes snipped out. It also of course includes the majorities in Spain and Luxembourg who voted for the Constitution, for their own diverse reasons. In global and historic terms Europe is all sorts of things, including a vicious global conqueror for more than half-a-millennium and the home of nations who blithely firebombed each other’s cities within living memory. Since that bloody period that commenced 70 years ago this month, Europe’s imperialist role has been subordinate to that of the United States, but there is no reason to assume that is a permanent condition.

As for ‘us’, most of us are the beleaguered people of Great Recession-era Ireland, being pummeled for the neoliberal sins of our political and financial masters, regardless of Lisbon. We are also citizens of the world, surely capable of assessing a political project in terms other than our own personal or even national self-interest. There is no evidence, in any case, that our self-interest would be served by ratifying Lisbon – but in the voting booth perhaps we can also reach out in solidarity to the people outside the EU whose lives are blighted by the bloc’s destructive trade and aid policies.

A No vote won’t change those policies straight away, not even close. And in the short term another No could be messy locally (especially for Irish politicians). But No will be a start, a message to elites that we’ve had enough, a shout that will echo across Europe and beyond. Across the globe those elites have been in a crisis; at the moment they seem to be breathing quiet sighs of relief, as there are signs that they can crawl out of trouble, at the expense of taxpayers, public services and any residual notion of genuine democracy. Voting No is a way of showing them that they’re not out of trouble yet.

warning

Internal Error

The site may be undergoing difficulties due to heavy load please try again later!


© 2001-2025 Independent Media Centre Ireland. Unless otherwise stated by the author, all content is free for non-commercial reuse, reprint, and rebroadcast, on the net and elsewhere. Opinions are those of the contributors and are not necessarily endorsed by Independent Media Centre Ireland. Disclaimer | Privacy