If only it were a soft day - Twitter, social networks & the Lisbon 2 referendum
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opinion/analysis 
Thursday October 01, 2009 23:32
by o as if - ( o as if = iosaf mac diarmada - it's an anagram thing....... don't worry about it)
All good children are now washed and asleep in their cots and ought have little idea how their parents & elders intend to vote tomorrow in Ireland's 2nd referendum to ratify the Lisbon Treaty. Theirs is not the duty nor the concern to weigh local political and national debate with the long term consequences of a potential post-Lisbon European Union. For the most part they will have noticed the plethora of posters and the volume of bilge wash which the Irish voters have seen and been brought through since immediately after they voted No! in the first Lisbon referendum and which has continued unrelentlessly as a tsunami until this last evening of reflection.
Tomorrow, just as in every modern exercise of liberal democracy in its widest understood sense as in the recent general election in Germany, the presidential election of Iran and the coup d'etat of Honduras - twits will take to twitter and facebook to cast preemptive strikes on that layer of the electorate's psyche where even opinion hucksters and exit polls dare not go. They will either tell you the vote is "yes" or the vote is "no". Regardless of whether you intend to vote No for the first or second time, you ought do it late in the day.
The Peoples' Republic of China celebrated their 60th anniversary as might have noticed with a big parade of astonishing new high-tech military hardward & the kitschy edge which only a one party state can muster. In one of the supposed capitals of the western world, New York City, the Empire State building was lit through the night in the red and yellow to belie the importance of that emerging superstate. On the podium to review the spectacle was one invited & privileged guest of the inner party for every 2 million citizens who live in PRC and account for one fifth of the world's human population. As reported in the western press, the Chinese even demonstrated their high tech prowess by seeding the clouds over Beijing to ensure the day passed without rain and for the first time in decades the locals could enjoy a clear blue sky free even of the habitual smog which as we know is a price we must pay for economic development. If I may dare mix up and paraphrase a quote from Mao Tse Tung with an excerpt from Shakespeare's Hamlet :-
our skies appear to us as nought more than a foul & pestilent congregation of vapours -
becuse we do not strive harmoniously as workers & managers to perfect our state's efficiency.
Whether or not the Irish electorate vote Yes or No, their place in the European Union will not be affected and the resistance against the post-Lisbon vision of the EU, streamlined to compete with both the US and Chinese economies in the 21st century will not be altered. The Czech senate's constitutional challenge approved yesterday by its supreme court will continue & behind all the rhetoric of good or bad Europeans, other economies in similarly shite state will continue to buckle under the yoke of mediocre sociopathic rule.
In technical truth, the Spanish did not vote Yes to Lisbon despite their prime minister's words thereafer assuring them that they had given the right answer & would continue to be at the heart of Europe. The truth and facts are that 79% "Yes votes" counted from a 41.5% turnout means only 32.785% of the Spanish electorate voted "Si!" to their Lisbon referendum in February 2005.
You have many reasons to vote No!
They have been well articulated, expounded upon & in most cases obfuscated & confused for you.
Such diversity of interest, lobby, agenda & waffle should be good enough reason to vote No! because
The few reasons to vote Yes do not count on such moral fibre & so plural a polity!
This is not a referendum on being part of Europe, on continuing to be part of Western civilisation's eastern Atlantic economic and politically legislative quasi-superstate.
If only it were.....
......a chance for every young person to contest the brave new world whose proportionaly representation is mathematically no better than a proletarian of the Chinese eastern provinces.
But the young are now washed & asleep in their cribs and cots barely aware even in their stirring dreams of the future so meticulously planned for them.
Vote No to Lisbon for the first or second time - whichever - just vote No.
vote No to Lisbon - for the first or second time - whatever - just vote No.