historic events in Athens (was: The battle for American science)

> From: "Joel Rodrigues" <jdrodrigues@...>
> To: <metatuning@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Thursday, April 17, 2003 2:14 AM
> Subject: [metatuning] Re: The battle for American science
>

>
> Thankfully the USA is not the end all and be all of our existence.
>
> The historic events in Athens yesterday are part of what will
> come to be the driving force of progress of our civilisation for
> some considerable time. Thankfully it appears it will be an
> all-inclusive one, not dominated as we are now by a bullying
> arrogant behemoth that can't even play nice with it's 2
> neighbours.

i heard about this on National Public Radio, but had to
search to find details about it on the internet.
in typical American media fashion, none of the usual news
pages i see (MSNBC, etc.) had it in their headlines ...
so my American compadres might appreciate seeing it.

-monz

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/04/17/wsum17.xml&s
Sheet=/news/2003/04/17/ixnewstop.html

Passing-out parade for EU's class of 2004
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
(Filed: 17/04/2003)

The leaders of old and new Europe yesterday signed into treaty law
a vast expansion of the European Union.

Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia,
Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Malta and a divided Cyprus -
73 million people in all - are now assured of their places
in Europe's elite club from May 1 2004, subject to referendums
at home.

Speaking at the Stoa of Attalos, near the colonnades where
Socrates and Plato held forth at the apogee of Athenian democracy,
Tony Blair played his favourite role as champion of East Europe's
democracies, exalting their newly won freedom from "dictatorship
and repression".

The thinly veiled allusion to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein
was not lost on any of Europe's divided leaders sitting in
the ancient agora.

By contrast, President Jacques Chirac of France used his allotted
three minutes - half the time allowed to Athenian orators in
the fifth century BC - to relaunch plans for an EU "advanced
guard", saying an enlarged Europe would lose its vitality unless
a core of highly-integrated states was able to press ahead without
the laggards.

New Europe has already changed the chemistry of the EU this
year by backing the Bush administration over Iraq. They gave
the pro-war camp a majority of 14 out of the EU's 25 future
states, and shattered efforts by Paris to portray Mr Blair
as little more than America's fifth column in Europe.

The act of l�se-majest� enraged M Chirac sufficiently for him
to rebuke the aspiring members on their manners at a summit
in February. "They missed a very good opportunity to shut up,"
he said.

M Chirac has since dropped his threat to hold a spoiler referendum
on their future in France, where the public is hostile to
enlargement. The East Europeans say the incident is now "closed",
but diplomats predict that the spat is a foretaste of what the
Franco-German axis can expect once the Poles, Czechs and others
grow in confidence as full members.

Even before they join, the newcomers will take their part this year
as full EU members in drawing up the European constitution,
offering Britain potential allies in resisting the push from
Brussels for a federalist superstate.

Casting a shadow over the celebrations, the Turks stayed away
in protest over the admission of Cyprus. The EU does not recognise
the breakaway Turkish republic in the North, insisting that the
island be swallowed whole even though the enclave is occupied by
30,000 Turkish troops. The result is that EU and Turkish forces
will face each other across the heavily-fortified Attila line.

Brussels was counting on a last-minute deal to end the 29-year-old
conflict, but the Turkish-Cypriot leader, Rauf Denktash, refused
to give ground. The Turkish press was full of bitter recriminations,
lamenting that Ankara's hopes of joining the EU were now in tatters.

Despite the glowing rhetoric yesterday, the reunion of East and
West Europe is less a love match than a marriage of convenience,
carried out on the cheap for an extra �5.5 billion a year.

The magnet of EU membership has been a powerful force for stability
in the former communist bloc. But after a decade of arduous toil
that has turned their economies and legal systems upside down,
most of the newcomers are still ill-prepared for the rigours of
EU daily life. The per capita income of some is barely a third
of the EU average.

The European Commission report cards, now quietly shelved,
decry corruption, dodgy courts, the inability to meet environmental
and food safety laws and the lack of a civil service capable of
implementing the 90,000-page compendium of rules.

Nor is the EU ready for the shock of their arrival, having failed
to reform the Common Agricultural Policy, which consumes half
the budget.

Europe's leaders knew the risks of a "big bang" enlargement as
they signed the treaties yesterday, but also knew that it was
morally and strategically indefensible to continue excluding
an integral part of the European family.

None of the newcomers is likely to vote no in any of the
referendums. The Poles are angry that farm aid will be rationed
for a decade, leaving their two million producers to compete
with the French, Germans and Spanish on unequal terms, but
realise staying out is not a viable option.

Slovenia and Hungary have already secured a crushing popular
assent, with 90 and 84 per cent respectively voting yes.