Susan George on the Lisbon Treaty

The left wing voice has been hard to hear in the Lisbon debate, so I am posting these videos of Susan George speaking in Dublin at a CAUEC meeting before the Referendum.
Part One


I would be interested to know if CAUEC is going to say anything about the post Referendum developments.

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Remind me who these CAUEC people are Cactus. never heard of them until a few days ago.

I'll watch that later, Youtube is blocked in here.

Campaign Against the EU Constitution - a group of 13 Left Wing groups.

Watch it EVM - she's talking about the WTO and Europe and how it will function in terms of one bloc after the Treaty, instead of individual states before ... plenty of food for thought there.

http://www.caeuc.org/

Link to the CAEUC website

Nice quote from George:

Quote :

As for the thoroughly undemocratic process that brought forth the Lisbon Treaty, Gunther Verheugen, vice-president of the European Commission, put it best after the French-Dutch votes: ‘We must not give in to blackmail’. They didn’t. One thinks of Bertolt Brecht, who in 1951 said of the East German regime:

After the uprising of the 17th June
The Secretary of the Writer’s Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?

She has written a book too -

We the Peoples of Europe
Susan George
11 April 2008

Abstract
Is the EU Constitution dead in the water? Although it may have disappeared from the headlines, right-wing European leaders have not given up on pushing through a binding EU text providing total freedom for goods, services and capital but few advantages for Europeans. A more neo-liberal, anti-democratic document than the one rejected by the French and the Dutch may be hard to imagine, but the new reform treaty tries hard. What do they have in store for us? What should European people be fighting for?

Leading writer and alter-globalisation activist Susan George explains what is at stake for all peoples of Europe. What must we reject and how will such a document affect our lives? Who will it really empower – corporations or ordinary Europeans? What kind of future do we want to build together as Europeans? Written with clarity and authority and authority, this book will help you make up your mind.

Contents
Introduction
Timeline

The war on society
Accumulating wealth
Hatred of democracy
Birth of a monster
Break the power of the state
The true pro-Europeans vs. the elites

They voted yes, or surviving on a diet of humble pie
Complexity and disinformation
The "Yes" camp on the right
The "Yes" camp on the "left"
A few leading Socialist lights
The Socialist Europ-MPs
The European Trade Union Confederation
The French Socialist Party brass
Another prominent - and snubbed - Socialist

The common good: towards and alternative Europe
Plan B and the new Treaty
What must we do?
New directions, major reorientations
The main principles
Some specifics
A successful alternative Europe project: teh major challenges

Europe as a geopolitical power
The proposals of the Economic Defense Council
Power and weakness: Robert Kagan's analysis
Our real needs
The other fields of power

The environmental challenge
The facts
The excellence of apes
Civilisations are mortal

Social insecurity
The seven pillars of security
The security index

Conclusion

Susan George has written widely on politics and development issues for three decades. She is a Fellow and Chair of the Board of the Transnational Institute, and author of several classis books, the latest being We the peoples of Europe and La Pensée enchaînée: Comment les droites laïque et religieuse se sont emparées de l'Amérique [Fayard, 2007], to be published in English as: Hijacking America: How the Religious and Secular Right Changed What Americans Think [Forthcoming, Polity Press 2008].

To order go to Pluto Press
Bibliographic information
Pluto Press/TNI
ISBN 978 0 7453 2633 7

Another one for the book club? After Klein and Stiglitz of course.

There is also this book, with several chapters on the Lisbon Treaty.

http://www.tni.org/detail_pub.phtml?know_id=226&menu=

I'll order them from Amazon and post a review.

Susan George belongs to Attac France, a movement which has been great at explaining how present European policies are in fact not made for Europe, but to implement in Europe the principles of globalization (GATTS...)

Below Susan George's level, in local grassroots meetings, the political scope of Attac France is however less bright. It is (in my view) a corporatist lobby of public sector workers, who wouldn't raise a finger for pauperized workers in the private sector.

Try to organize a lecture in a grassroots Attac local group about anything else than public services: nobody will come. Try to invite a lecturer who is not an executive or professor in the public sector: nobody will come. Try to talk about the public sector of another European country: they are just not interested.

They would in fact vote Yes provided the French public sector was left untouched by privatizations. And they would call workers of the exposed sectors racists, xenophobes, stupid, uneducated, illiterate....

Still, maybe CAEUC in Ireland will be able to do better...

arnaudherve wrote:

Susan George belongs to Attac France, a movement which has been great at explaining how present European policies are in fact not made for Europe, but to implement in Europe the principles of globalization (GATTS...)

Below Susan George's level, in local grassroots meetings, the political scope of Attac France is however less bright. It is (in my view) a corporatist lobby of public sector workers, who wouldn't raise a finger for pauperized workers in the private sector.

Try to organize a lecture in a grassroots Attac local group about anything else than public services: nobody will come. Try to invite a lecturer who is not an executive or professor in the public sector: nobody will come. Try to talk about the public sector of another European country: they are just not interested.

They would in fact vote Yes provided the French public sector was left untouched by privatizations. And they would call workers of the exposed sectors racists, xenophobes, stupid, uneducated, illiterate....

Still, maybe CAEUC in Ireland will be able to do better...

We have our well paid public sector executives too arnaudherve, but so far they feel perfectly secure.