Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/02/18/sopa2-0-acta2-0.html
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This is a great explanation of why the EU is a fundamentally undemocratic institution: Leave the EU Already
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“Mob” means the majority disagree with me, but they are not rich.
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It’s not an explanation, it’s a screed and only semi-coherent. There are many, many logical fallacies in it and generalities. And I am in fact nat that sure it applies to the copyright directive as the main idiot in charge of writing this was Axel Voss. Who was elected to the Parliament, so he’s a democratically selected asshole.
Now, normally the really stupid shit comes from the Commission, or from some MEP who managed to slip some lobby pork in under the radar, and gets shot down when it reaches the open. And the EU isn’t all bad, either, as their regulations helped end the time where all phones had their own incompatible charger port, and are fighting for the right to use third party ink and toner in printers, and are also fighting for the right to repair.
And the one way you can tell that the EU really is a democratic institution is how the upcoming election really is making them panic, and try to belittle protests. They wouldn’t put so much effort into it if they weren’t afraid of being drubbed at the ballot box.
Now, full disclosure, I am a USA citizen, as getting German citizenship means renouncing my US citizenship, so I haven’t taken the step. But I would if there was a EU citizenship. So there you go.
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Nope.
The pros outweigh the cons by a wide margin.
Like not having to do what my grandfathers and my great-grandfathers had to do - cowering in trenches, dodging bullets. I gladly pax taxes for that.
Not to mention the practical sides of the EU with a family scattered over several countries.
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Sure, the wars we’ve had with Norway and Switzerland have been really brutal. And don’t forget that one of the arguments for the creation of Yugoslavia was the prevention of conflict. It didn’t work as planned. I hope that’s not the case elsewhere.
But I digress.
“We”, as in “the country I was born in”, did go to war with Norway.
(Where I also have family.) Which bought into the EU as far as you can without actually becoming a member.
As to Yugoslavia: fused together without any regards towards history, ethnic structures, languages, and whatnot by force, not by choice, as part of Stalin’s idea of playing Risk (bloc free, my ass), ruled dictatorial for decades without addressing the issues of its creation.
Yeah, totally the same as the EU and its predecessors.
(Edited to add this and that.)
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Mob is recently popular with US Republicans. i.e. “We are a populist movement, you are a mob.”
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Sigh. If only. I’d give up my soon-to-be-blue UK passport in a heartbeat.
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And to top it all off, the successors are looking to enter the EU (Slovenia was the first, Croatia joined in 2013).
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Stalin had little say in how Yugoslavia was formed, as the Red Army was not there, which helps explain why getting expelled from COMINFORM wasn’t detrimental to the country. Stalin NEVER dominated Yugoslavia the way he did the eastern bloc countries. Tito said no to Stalin’s attempt to make the country a colonial holding and got kicked out of COMINFORM as a result (and eventually became a leader in the Non-aligned movement).
There was also precedence for a multi-ethnic/confessional society in the region, since much of what became Yugoslavia was under Ottoman, then Austro-Hungarian rule. While there was certainly some inequalities under the Ottomans, when the various nationalists movement attempted to create breakaways, there was still pretty broadbased support for Ottoman rule in the region among some others, primarily, because the Ottoman empire had meant nearly 500 years of stability (mostly).
The first Yugoslavia saw a good deal of Serb nationalist domination, but the second Yugoslavia was built by the partisan alliance built in part by Tito (although he did negotiate with the Serb nationalist faction after the short power struggle after the war). By the 1960s, a majority of Yugoslavs viewed themselves as just that, Yugoslavs, not Serbs or Croats or Bosniaks, but as part of a greater whole. I’d argue that the Socialist Yugoslavia, despite it’s very real problems, did a much better job of attending to history of the region than the nationalists EVER did…
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Okay, gross oversimplification on my behalf, to make the point that the formation of the EU and the formation of post WW2 Yugoslavia have very little in common.
However, the Red Army did provide (limited) assistance with the liberation of Belgrade (and withdrew after the war was over), the 1945 declared Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia was turned into the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, very much modelled after the Soviet Union, in 1946 and Tito didn’t break with Stalin until 1948.
And very little went on behind the Iron Curtain at that time that wasn’t at least tolerated by Stalin.
Among other reasons, the split was due to Stalin vetoing Tito’s expansionist plans - taking over Albania and parts of Greece, instigating a civil war in Greece using Albania and Bulgaria as bases. This simply did not fit into Stalin’s designs for the Eastern bloc.
One of my neighbours got out in the early 1990ies when the shit hit the fan - mixed Serbian-Croatian-Slovenian family, sitting between too many chairs to be comfortable, to put it mildly - and we had many talks about Yugoslavia’s history. They lived in interesting times, all the time.
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I’d still argue that Tito, not Stalin was more important that shaping Yugoslavia, especially after the break in 1948. Like many other young communists, he likely was enthusiastic about building an alternative to the capitalist system, and like many, he was not fully aware (or willing to overlook what he DID know about) Stalin’s brutality. If he was initially onboard, that went south pretty quickly when he saw what Stalin intended (and there was the business in Greece, where Tito wanted to expand the revolution and Stalin did not or was that the other way around? I can’t remember now…).
Yugoslavia was not behind the Iron Curtain, though, not in any meaningful way even prior to 48 and most certainly not after. It may have started that way, but the fact that the Red Army was gone well before the postwar struggle and that it was the Partisans who most certainly secured the vast majority of what became Yugoslavia post war. I think it’s entirely instructive to look at the difference between Yugoslavia and Albania, which was and remained Stalinist through out it’s entire communist period. Yugoslavs had far more freedom of movement, a higher quality of life, and periods of liberalization that the Albanian people never had.
I’m not trying to say that Stalin or the Soviets had no influence, I’m saying that local events were far more decisive because the Partisans really did all the heavy lifting during the war and there was not enough Red Army presence to make that much of a difference by the time 48 came around.
And it’s hard not to have a very different reading of that history when reading it through the lens of a wrenching war that tore the country apart. I don’t want to make communist Yugoslavia into some sort of paradise, because it wasn’t. Especially in the 1970s, when the economic downturn started. But it was hardly ever a puppet of the Soviets and was much more free than many of it’s neighbors. The fact that your friend had a mixed ethnic family attests to that fact, I’d argue.
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Just dropping in to point out that disparaging those from whom your power and authority are derived is a primary indicator of corruption.
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After 1948? No argument there.
Tito wanted to expand to Albania and Greece, but that wasn’t Stalin’s game plan, so he vetoed that and brought Bulgaria back in line.
Stalin did make a “Greece = 90 % West, 10 % East” deal with Churchill in 1944. Odd that he stuck to that, but that’s Joseph Vissarionovich for you.
(Quite something else, but this does remind me of the time when Zhivkov wanted to make Bulgaria part of the Soviet Union (talk about fanbois) but they wouldn’t let him because it would have meant losing one vote in the UN.)
Tito knew damn well what Stalin was capable of; the purges of the 1930ies spoke for themselves. But he knew his base and probably gambled on Stalin being too busy with Poland and Hungary and Czechoslovakia and East Germany and and and. Not having the Red Army around would have been a big factor in his scheming. I’d say from 1945 to 1948 his strategy was to be careful to be nothing more than a nuisance, but never anything that Stalin would perceive as a problem that needed to be eradicated.
After the split he sort of flirted with the West; after all Yugoslavia did briefly receive American money.
But but then he started the Non-Aligned Movement, that was very clever, I think. The official affiliation of the country was neither Eastern Bloc nor Western bloc, which gave him considerable room to maneuver, especially compared to the Estern bloc countries.
However, from my perspective Yugoslavia was behind the Iron Curtain, Non-Aligned Country or not. They had gaps in the curtain that others had not, but still. It wasn’t like you could just pack your bags and leave.
At the end of the day the Soviet Union allowed Yugoslavia to exist because it wasn’t too troublesome, had its uses and was after all a Socialist Federal Republic, ran by a Communist party.
I’ll admit I’m probably biased on that one, what with most of the German part of my family ending up in the GDR. Just too many similarities.
I’d say we’ll discuss Albania another time, okay?
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Everything on the Internet should be free because the Internet is socialist.
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Copyrights are selfish and capitalist – you didn’t build that.
You seem to be working from an outdated script.
Please contact your supervisor to obtain the current revision and discuss further deployment.
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Under the current arrangement the likes of Google, Facebook and Twitter get to monetize the content others produce. The same group of drones who mobbed the FCC over net neutrality in support of big-social media, are now mobbing the EU in support of yes, big-social media.
I wonder, who is mobilizing the drone-mob? Could it be big-social media.
