COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY OWEN JONES IN THE GUARDIAN
The concept of the EU was excellent.
The practice is appalling.
The single most terrible practice now is the way the EU is
just used as a convenience to push Europe around for America's imperial
interests.
It stands against none of America's brutal policies
anywhere.
The leadership is terrible, but I strongly suspect they are
all people who early in their careers were spotted and put on secret CIA
pensions, a very common practice.
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Economic principles, without question, all argue for the EU.
But all complicated organizations affect many dimensions of
the lives of members - social, political, etc.
And these other impacts can in the eyes of many outweigh
economic benefits.
It is not just a matter of, say, French preferences versus
English preferences.
It is a matter of quite fundamental issues in many of the
member societies.
The matter of a massive refugee crisis is just one excellent
example. It matters a great deal more in some member states than in others.
And we see appalling deals with one of the world's genuine
madmen, Turkey’s Erdogan, paying him blood money to keep people away. Again,
Erdogan is under American protection as a bulwark against Russia, but sensible
people know well that there is no need to be against Russia. And going back to
economics, everyone in Europe is considerably poorer for America’s policies
towards Russia.
Of course, the refugee crisis would not have happened had
the EU's leadership stood up against the United States, say, five years ago
when its proxy armies - with the close assistance of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and
Israel - began tearing Syria apart. The results were inevitable.
And the same for Libya.
And even Iraq, a pointless and tremendously destructive war.
The EU is very timid, too, about Israel's many atrocities,
again under pressure from the United States.
All of the ensuing "international terror" is just
so much "blowback" from American policies, so there is yet another
way America has hurt Europe for its own purposes.
You cannot have a better world if you never stand up to true
bullies, and the world's greatest bully, without question, is the United
States, having killed maybe six million people in its imperial wars and
interventions since the 1960s.
