"Conservatives Win European Elections" - Say What?

[Seismic Anamoly]

"Right-Wingers"??







Will Wonders Never Cease!!



www.dw-world.de/english/0...07,00.html



www.dw-world.de/english/0..._A,00.html



www.dw-world.de/english/0...92,00.html

[Rev9Volts]

my wife and her parents always vote for jean marie la pin.



always fun going to the french embassy on bastille day in washington and after they play the french national anthem say



"viva la republique viva la pen" (spelling?) fortunantly i am bigger than the frogs there...

[MIKE BURN]

Back to class.



Conservatives in Germany are communists compared to REPUBLICANS in the USA.



Nobody voted the "Republikaner" into the European parliament over here.

[Seismic Anamoly]

Well - Isn't That Special.

Edited by: Seismic Anamoly  at: 6/14/04 21:02

[Seismic Anamoly]

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world...805349.stm







Class Dismissed.

Edited by: Seismic Anamoly  at: 6/14/04 21:12

[RonOnGuitar]

You be correct, Seismo; whatever they call 'em, the voice of the anti-EU folks was the overwhelming one. This isn't too surprising to me - it would be like having Canadians vote on wether they wanted to be ruled by Wash, DC or by themselves! Nations just don't usually willingly hand over their sovereignty.

==============

Leaders rue Euro poll 'disaster'



Senior politicians across Europe have voiced dismay at EU parliamentary election results, after low turnouts and big gains for opposition parties.



Governing parties in Germany, France and Poland suffered big losses, while many eurosceptic parties had their best result at the polls.



Dutch Foreign Minister Ben Bot said the outcome was a "disaster for the existing coalition in many countries".



Turnout reached a record low, with just 45.3% of EU voters casting ballots.



European Parliament spokesman David Harley said turnout was "pathetically low" for many of the 10 new member states, which averaged a mere 26.4%.



The lowest turnout was in Slovakia, where fewer than 17% cast their votes.



The figure was slightly higher in neighbouring Poland, where President Aleksander Kwasniewski described his country's apathy as "a disease we will have to look at". He said there was a need to analyse "why we are so far from civic values".



Outgoing European Parliament President Pat Cox described the results as a "wake-up call" and warned European leaders that they had to demonstrate the EU's relevance to voters.



"Regrettably, Europe is too absent from European elections in east and west," he said. "States need to engage, particularly in central and eastern Europe, in voter education of EU institutions."



Mr Cox said eastern and central European countries had successfully mobilised large majorities to vote in favour of EU membership in referendums last year.



"Nothing like an equivalent effort of mobilisation was made on this occasion," he said. "I think a lot of public opinion felt, 'But we voted for that last year, why are you asking us again?'"



The BBC's European affairs correspondent William Horsley says the protest vote across the EU may push the heads of

government to water down some of their integrationist ambitions.



EU foreign ministers are now meeting in Luxembourg to consider revisions to the draft EU constitution, designed to make it more acceptable to eurosceptics who made a big impact in Britain and Poland.



Election landmarks



Germany's governing Social Democrats recorded their worst result since World War II. Official results showed the party took just 21.5% of the vote, with the Christian Democrats set to be clear winners with 44.5%.



French President Jacques Chirac's Union for the Popular Movement, with 16.6% of the vote, finished a far second behind the Socialist Party, on 28.9%, according to the final results.



In Britain, Labour and the Conservatives both saw their vote slump. With most results in, the two main parties looked set to secure less than half of the vote between them, for the first time ever. The Tories had 27.4% and Labour 22.3%, while the eurosceptic UK Independence Party was running third with nearly 17%.



In Poland, largest of the new EU members, partial results indicated the anti-EU League of Polish Families came second with 16.4%, while the governing left party won just 9%.



Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi suffered a setback, with his Forza Italia party dropping to 21%, compared with 29.4% in the 2001 general elections. But partners in his centre-right coalition made modest gains.



In Spain, the ruling Socialists appear to have bucked the trend, winning some 43.7%, while the conservatives took about 40.8 %, according to provisional results.



With all the ballots counted in the Czech Republic, eurosceptic Civic Democrats won 30% of the vote to trounce the ruling Social Democrats, who only managed to poll 8.8%.

[Seismic Anamoly]

Ron...



You Know What They Say....

[RonOnGuitar]

However, Seismo, Mike is quite correct that in some places Conservatives=Marxists. e.g. Gorbachev was a Conservative before he was thrown out of power by the people of the former USSR. Then he reversed his course (not many "Want Ads" in the papers for Marxist dictators these days, y'knpw.) and became what we'd call a "conservative". Remember his TV ads for the American Express Card? lol.



And that highlights the second reason why namecalling buzzwords (e.g. "right/left winger")are silly - first off, they're a tacit confession that the user cannot articulate his/her thoughts very well. Secondly, they very usually convey a different meaning than the user intends. One maxim that A. Robbins employs comes to mind "the quality of a person's communication helps to shape the quality of his life". (I'd add "or mis-shapes")



Socialism, such as found in Europe or elsewhere - is semi-conservative, i.e. semi-Marxist totalarianism. In the US, the flowchart is Democrat ->liberal->socialism->marxism. There are few of the "common sense", old-school Democrats to be found. Take JFK for example: he was very strongly anti-Marxist, lowered income taxes and dared face down the USSR. October of 1962 was the closest the world came to a nuclear exchange between the super-powers.



The "New Europe", those nations formerly run by Marxist dictators, are in no rush to become pawns of the EU. Hence their common people punished the leaders who signed on to the EU mess in this vote. They are partcularly distrustful of France and Germany who would yield power over them in the current setup. Also, the fiscal mess that has occured in those two nations do not inspire much confidence in the EU at all.



I think the Czech President was spot on in his criticism of the EU:

"Czech President Vaclav Klaus said Europeans are living in a "dream world" of welfare and long vacations and have yet to realize "they are not moving toward some sort of nirvana."

"The enemies of free societies today are those who want to burden us down again with layer upon layer of regulations," Mr. Klaus said.

"We had that in communist times. But now if you look at all the new rules and regulations of EU membership, layered bureaucracy is staging a comeback."



The EU brand of socialism suffers from the same problem that ends up driving all socialist/marxist systems into the ground. It's basically a Ponzi/Pyramid scam. The bureaucrats and/or dictators get all the goodies because they're at the top of the pyramid. In France and Germany for example, the leaders promised that everybody could get everything for free. Now, faced with the reality, they are making all sorts of cutbacks and their people are mighty peeved. The people are at the bottom of the "It's All Free" Pyramid scam, the leaders and the bureaucrats are not. They skim their cut off the top and when the bill comes they pass it on to the working people.



The idea that you can get everything for nothing doesn't work - in reality - in any economic system. But it sounds good to the masses. In the US we dismiss such promises from politicians - we know the only way you can "have it all" is by either by working toward it or by having the winning Lotto ticket.



The work ethic is strong in the US, but we gotta admit it's even stronger in the Orient. The Japanese rendered a good economic whuppin' unto us in the 1980s-early 90s, lol! Then US bizzes got trendy for awhile trying to use the "Japanese Model". Problem was, we don't have the same culture as Japan, so that trend died a merciful death.



In the Orient "face" is an important concept and people tend more toward a stronger loyalty to their employers. To the average American John & Jane Schmoe, it's usually just a job, a gig - hopefully they get a gig they like. At any rate, it puts food on the table, provides a roof over their heads and sends the kids to school.



So I'd venture a guess that the country song "Take This Job And Shove It" didn't quite make the Top 40 in Tokyo!



And I can't imagine the majority of Brits are too excited at the EU setup, either. Unless they want to revert to being just another outpost of an E-mainland government as Britian once was some 2000 years ago under the Roman Empire.



Ahhh, but I digress.......

[Seismic Anamoly]

I hear ya, buddy.

[RonOnGuitar]

And there's this:





Bennett Denounces Media Spin on EU Elections



The entirely predictable but still breathtakingly brazen spin of the US liberal media on the British European elections continues to demonstrate the need for alternative channels of information, particularly the blogosphere.



I just heard NPR describe the election results as "British voters punishing Blair over Iraq", echoing the Washington Post and NY Times. This has become the official line. Any sane editor would choose to lead with a headline grounded in actual factual analysis, such as:

"Three Pro-War British parties take 67% of vote, push anti-war party to fourth place"; or



"New anti-EU party displaces Liberal Democrats as Britain's Third Party"; or



"British Voters Back War but Punish Blair over Europe"; or



"BBC Host Fired for Political Incorrectness Leads Europe Rebels to Victory"; or



"Liberal Democrats Play Anti-War Card with Meager Results; or



"Britain: Only European Country with Pro-War Government *and* opposition party, now sees rise of third pro-war party, eclipsing antiwar party." or



"Euroskeptic Parties Take Majority of Vote for First Time."



All of these are factually true and would seem interesting angles purely from a journalistic point of view. Did we see any of them? Ha!



The really interesting thing about this election was that the multiplicity of parties permitted a very precise interpretation of voting intentions. Pro-Blair, pro-war, pro-EU? Easy -- vote Labour. Anti-Blair, anti-EU, pro-war? Vote Tory. Really, really anti-EU and anti-Blair, and pro-war? Vote UKIP. Anti-Blair, anti-EU, anti-war? Vote Green. Anti-Blair, anti-war, pro-EU? Vote LibDem. Anti-foreigner, anti-immigrant? Vote BNP. There's really no excuse for misreporting voter intentions in this election.



The majority British voter distrusts Blair, dislikes the EU, but supports the war despite not-unjustifiable suspicions that Blair's case for the war involved plenty of spin. But don't expect this to be reported in the US mainstream media. Much less taken into account in formation of US policy.



From the:"Chicago Boyz" Blog



More writing by James Bennett

("An Anglosphere Primer", presented to the Foreign Policy Research Institute)

Edited by: RonOnGuitar at: 6/16/04 4:47

[DreamTone7]

Actually, there are many people who prefer their "infotainment" with a spin...the trouble starts when they form their opinions based on it.

[Galmin]

Infotainment like Rush Limbaugh?

[DreamTone7]

He's more "tainment" than "info"...too far for most to take seriously. The rest of the media is more subtle...they've got a lot of people believing everything they say as if it's gospel.