by Debs is dead
excerpted from
a comment

The Treaty of Lisbon seems to be a naked grab for power by the already
meglomaniacal european pols and technocrats who figure pushing this
through in europe will be easy after a win in Ireland which is claimed
to be the EU’s greatest success story.

A rags to riches tale of
neo-liberal alliances with corrupt pols exploiting a too trusting
public who imagined that ‘the boys’ (their elected representatives)
were still looking out for them while they had a couple of ‘small
drinks’ on the side.

Those Irish pols must be desperate to remove a chunk of political power
from the electorate before the shit hits the fan. That is before much
of Ireland’s new found wealth disappears down the gurgler, leaving the
Irish people searching for culprits. The disadvantages of
trans-national financial entanglements become revealed when the reality
of being in hock to a plethora of foreign financiers takes shape.

If much of Ireland’s power has been handballed to ‘europe’ then the
local pols can blame them and say they would love to help but ‘you
people’ went and voted our ability to do much across to Brussels.

In the meantime as Harry Browne explains
the threat of economic doom and gloom arising from the ‘no’ vote
getting up, is being used by these same pols to bludgeon the electorate
into voting ‘yes’.

As a fatalistic Celt myself, I can’t but feel that the worst of both
worlds will come to pass. That is the yes vote will win by a narrow
margin and then Ireland’s miracle will fade away completely to
become another story to be passed on to future generations like all the
other ‘when we were once great’ tales which sustain the ethos of being
Irish no matter how many generations ago it was anyone from yer family
set foot in the place.

Leaving the Irish as powerless to deal with the
underlying issues which oppress their population as they were before
they kicked out the english. Imperialism has a different face is all.

As a globalist at heart, but before anyone reels back in horror I
should say I prefer the Internationalist label. Like the Wobblies of
old, I have always believed the breaking down of national borders is a
vital step towards global peace.

Of course at the same time as that happens major decison-making
powers have to be brought down to community level so that individual
communities can make the laws fit their needs.
The globalism practised by neo-libs is the reverse of that, borders are
maintained while real political power is moved further and further away
from the people and consolidated in the hands of distant elites. The
absentee landlords return.

It is going to take a lot of blood split to get back those powers
which were given away with a tick on a ballot paper. I used to think
that would take a couple of generations to develop, but the
beneficiaries of this consolidation of power have been too greedy, too
fast.

The uprising around our planet as ordinary people express their anger
at the 300% increase in basic food prices in 12 months may provide an
opportunity to reverse this power shift before the elites have time to
consolidate their new armies, or rather the militarised police forces
who unlike traditional police are recruited because
they have no ties to the communities they are to police.

Who needs
criminal informants when you have CCTV on every lamp post and unlimited
powers to intercept private communications? This is particularly true in Europe where the GWOT has provided the
leadership with the perfect excuse to militarise what was meant to be a
peaceful trading co-operative.