Coastal Post, CA
July 8 2005
THE SKEPTIC’S JOURNAL
Where IS Slovakia? Near Bolinas?
By Jeanette Pontacq
Much hand-wringing in Europe over the negative popular votes by both
France and the Netherlands in rejecting the proposed EU Constitution!
How French workers, artisans and small business people have fared so
far under globalization can act as a warning to us in West Marin, if
we pay attention.
Regulations are handed down from the EU office in Brussels that can
damage or outright destroy traditions, cuisine, and culture that have
been in place for a thousand years in France. A certain unity within
main Europe can be beneficial to all. But when homogenization and the
ease of moving capital over borders (for the greater good of
multi-national corporations and investors) becomes more important
that the traditions, identities and cultures of the very people of
the country in question, the people themselves should have THE main
voice in deciding how much “unity” (and with whom) they are willing
to accept.
Few countries within the original EU members have dared to ask their
people for their opinion on this issue… instead assigning their
bureaucrats the job. It is almost as though the governments were
unsure of those unruly “people” and didn’t want to take a chance on
rejection. (Note: the same thing is happening here, where the
government has given open approval to outsourcing of jobs, corporate
interests over public interests, and tacit approval to open borders
to depress wages of workers and support a corrupt foreign power).
The original EU was composed of six countries, then fifteen.(Britain,
France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Luxembourg, Germany, Netherlands,
Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Austria, Ireland, Belgium, and Greece.) In
2004, ten more were taken in… (Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia,
Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Czech Republic, Cyprus, and Malta-the
second tier). With no real voice of the people such additions would
affect! After all, the “suits” know best. Workers, the “suits” say,
don’t understand or have faith in globalization, cheap labor crossing
open borders to depress wages, outsourcing and loss of cultural
identity. Gosh, what a surprise when one is trying to support one’s
family and one’s social identity!
The addition of Muslim Turkey, in a further list of potential
enlargements (Bulgaria and Romania), was the final straw for a lot of
workers/voters in western Europe. Beyond Turkey’s refusal to even
look at their culpability in the genocide of the Armenians at the
beginning of the 20th Century, or their historic human rights abuses,
they have little in common with central Europe. Different religion,
history, view of the world, financial structure, etc. Further,
countries such as Germany, France, the Netherlands, and others of the
original six, have already been inundated by millions of cheap
workers from Turkey and other eastern countries over the last
decades. The large influx of foreign workers (with high birth rates),
and the low native birth rates, have played havoc with assaults on
culture, liberal integration, wages and language. “Frenchness” was/is
at stake. In other words, the stakes were very, very high.
France has historically been welcoming to political dissidents and
immigrants, simply because there were small numbers and the “newbies”
always willingly entered French culture and spoke French.
This changed after ill-advised adventures in Algeria and West Africa
in the 1800s/1900s, during which the deluded French of the time both
governed those areas very badly and gave their colonial subjects full
French citizenship, to create “Greater France.” France has always
been chauvinistic. The land of 246 types of cheese (per Charles De
Gaulle) thinks well of itself, with good reason: its history,
culture, cuisine, literature and political re-inventions over the
centuries are legend and a basis for our own. But the addition of
peoples quite a bit different than the French Everyman, matched by a
failure of historic submersion into the French culture, has placed
whole peoples as “others” in a dwindling sea of Frenchness.
Therein is one of the largest, underlying fears that drove the Non
vote against the European Union: the fear of completely open borders,
of being overwhelmed by immigrants from countries for which the
French history, culture and language mean relatively nothing. The
average Frenchman may admit that a good part of the immigration is
coming to fill empty, low-paying jobs. But the French sense of self
is under assault in the eyes of many, even if few will speak of it.
People will vote against their own practical interests to uphold
their self-image and their perceived culture. There is no right or
wrong in this, just reality. Thousands of years old. Everyone needs
to have a voice, a vote, in how they see their future, and with whom.
Globalization and Diversity are each two-edged swords there and here.
How do YOU feel about it? For West Marin. It is a subject rarely
spoken of openly here-the subject is always talked about as happening
elsewhere. But West Marin is NOT an island off the coast of
California, as many have said over the years. West Marin is part of a
California in crisis and a country in peril. We might want to look at
working out a way to have West Marin communities actually be able to
voice their opinions finally. How about voting? It seemed to work for
the French.
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