I am determined not to talk about Europe in terms of crisis or anxiety. I hope that the forces that allow Europe to continue developing constructively can coalesce and collaborate. But it would be foolish to make any predictions about what will happen next. For the first time in my life I don’t understand what is going on in Britain. — Rem Koolhaas
With all the uncertainty surrounding Britain's future, Rem Koolhaas recently shared his thoughts with The Guardian on how he watched the country improve when it first became part of the European Union. In light of the EU elections to encourage people to vote, Koolhaas took part in the Eurolab initiative to show how EU and Europe has made a positive impact on Britain. “As someone who experienced this transformation on a day-to-day basis I can only look at the decision to leave the EU with disbelief,” Koolhaas says.
I'm a big Koolhaas fan, but uncritical support for the EU really isn't credible. It's unfortunate that these institutions are not being challenged by a populist Left (the Left is suppressed/dragged down by centrists), and so now the right wing has seized that ground.
this reads to me the same as the challenge to status quo in the USA. The EU helped wealthy people to accumulate more, and tried to help the less well off to do better, but obviously didnt really do the job.
The EU makes a lot of sense for trade and employment. If they get a chance to keep the current shit show going someone is going to have to live up to the promise and stop with all the puppet show fakery that the current leadership is trying so hard to protect.
A lot of our current problems with equality come from the age of Reagan and Thatcher, and all they set in motion. I was a kid when that was going on. I expect things wont actually turn a corner in one direction or another until my kids are my age today. So who is taking the long view?
Rem seems to be trying to take that view, and it is worth paying attention to, whatever label you want to put on it. How to work from our short-term everyday life to an actual long-term plan is the hard part. Nobody is really going for that yet, except the fascists, who are basically insane. Is the only way forward to trigger hated and fear?
On a personal note I was with my family in paris last month, when the yellow jackets appeared around a corner shouting and being angry. It was intimidating and I dont mind admitting it was scary. But I was absolutely terrified for my family, since I am in a mixed-race family. When I see the terror in my kids eyes I find it pretty fucking hard to feel any kind of compassion for the asshole who give up her/his identity to don a jacket and then terrorize people until they give them what they want. I get the outrage cuz I grew up skirting the poverty line and I know how hard that is, but putting people into categories and declaring them non-human is not the way out. Its just a way down.
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What's going in Britain and elsewhere in Europe is a mixture of populist media success, desintrest in Europe itself and a lack of understanding the benefits of a union. I think Brexit is just a waste of time, even thinking about it. What is much more important is the role of the United States in the world and as an ally to the EU.
The EU is a profit vehicle for the global banking cartel. That's why neocons (like Rem) and libertarians (like Patrik) support it.
Ask the Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, etc. what they think of the EU ...
Gotta love the one-post pro-EU troll, probably getting paid to post this nonsense.
68% of the Europeans are favorable of the EU according to the Spring 2019 Eurobarometer. The PIIGS countries also have a majority of their citizens being in favour of the EU, with the exception of Italy where the favorability is around 36% (similar to Trump approval ratings). After the Brexit chaos, most far-right parties pledge for reform rather than exit from EU, including the French National Rally.
A "survey" published by - wait for it .... The European Parliment!
Well, published by but not conducted by. The Eurobarometer may not be flawless, but Pew Research came to almost the same figures (62% in favour).
And elections across Europe are rewarding nationalists who challenge the EU. That poll Is based on actual election results.
And the most recent result is 71% pro-EU parties according to the latest count, so pretty accurate. Source: https://election-results.eu/
Miles, what the f are you talking about? Spain, Greece and Italy have been pretty much propped up by the EU. With record unemployment and zero economic grown in these countries, the EU is bailing them out every single day.
"neocons (like Rem)"
lolwut?
Yeah, what the???
@sameold The countries you list were fine until the EU. Yes they had problems but the problems were manageable. When they outsourced their currency to the EU they lost control of their sovereign finance and were (and are) subject to predation by the global banking cartel.
"Propped up" means privatization, austerity, and financial speculation. At one point some 85-90% of the bailout (Greece) was going to pay interest on EU "loans" that would not have been taken without joining the EU. This is the Wall Street game of vulture capitalism played on counties instead of companies.
As to Rem, anyone who supports this king of globalization is a neocon / neoliberal (which are one and the same).
"neocon / neoliberal (which are one and the same)." ...no
tduds: Yes; it's where the snake bites its tail.
I'm a big Koolhaas fan, but uncritical support for the EU really isn't credible. It's unfortunate that these institutions are not being challenged by a populist Left (the Left is suppressed/dragged down by centrists), and so now the right wing has seized that ground.
The Yellow Vests are raising hell in France but corporate media won't show it. Other countries have banned the sale of colored vests to forestall similar action. Neocons are using the Yellow Vests to develop and refine media control, crowd control, mass survellience, etc.
they cant restrict the sale of the vests in the EU bc they are required by law to be carried in duplicate in each car on the road... in any case almost everyone already has them...stopping the sale will do nothing
The far left and far right are both nationalists. Socialism and fascism require strong national borders. The EU is failing because it lacks a strong free market economy in some countries. The idea of traveling and working freely between EU countries is good, but they could have had that while keeping their own currencies. The EU was about centralized control over economics.
A libertarian order would look like none of the above.
Centrists became complacent, and have contributed to the right wing's ascendancy, but we know what happens when either end of the spectrum takes control. Moderation is a virtue.
Moderation is a fantasy.
When one side is fascism, the "centrist" position is "only a little fascism" ...and that's not moderate.
I agree, but who says being moderate is "only a little fascism"? That's like blaming all the ills of socialism on self proclaimed socialist states. Ideology is irrelevant if the results suck, and being architects, we should know best of all.
I say it is. Because the current thread among all ascendant right-wing groups right now *is* fascism. In the face of fascism, "moderation" is not a virtue but a capitulation.
"Moderate" is not an ideology in of itself but an attempt to find a middle ground between any number of competing ideologies for the sake of preserving stability. In the case where one dominant ideology is abhorrent, a stance that doesn't unequivocally denounce that abhorrence merely abets it.
Look at how well "Moderation" worked for Neville Chamberlain
Moderation doesn't imply you can't see a snake for who he (or she) is, it means the more people feel enfranchised the better. Chamberlin was a dupe, but you can also see why he and France wanted to avoid a war at all costs, because of the trauma of the first world war. It decimated a whole generation. BTW, it's fine to feel passionately about one's point of view, but it's a short ride to righteous indignation and being power hungry. Think of the French Revolution vs. the American.
Okay, I understand that point & it's a good one. What I bristle against (and misinterpreted in this case, since the same term has taken a few meanings) is that "Centrism" is somehow a morally superior position to either extreme. Hence my point about the "Center" between Fascist and Progressive being still fascist.
You’re right about centrism not being morally superior. Just think about climate change or the opioid crisis. I just wouldn’t call progressives the opposite of fascist as there are no good fascists, at least the way i define the term.
That "right-wing ascendancy"? I think is *obviously* just citizenry wanting to preserve some sense of cultural identity, not succumb to cultural deterioration as EU elites are erasing borders and burning cathedrals (directly or indirectly); don't be obtuse.
"Cultural Identity" is a racist dog-whistle (whether you intend to use it that way or not, that's how it's heard)
It’s not about the moral superiority of centrism, it’s about the diversity of the jungle keeping one predator from establishing complete domination.
Centrism is stable, homeostatic. extremism, right or left, always turns predatory, corrupt, and oppressive.
Quoting my own thoughts from elsewhere:
The post-WW2 global order was (for better or worse) almost entirely based on the premise that the US / UK will give a shit. In return, the US / UK benefited immensely from the status quo.
The people currently in charge are the first generation to have no memory of the world before this order was imposed, and they massively underestimated the natural instability of it's existence. We began to see the maintenance cost of this system not as an investment from which we massively benefited, but as a tax imposed, for which we are not thanked enough.
It only took a small disinformation campaign by powers who stand to benefit from the disintegration of the system to convince the US and UK to shrug off their duties and turn inward.
What we're witnessing now, from Uyghur concentration camps, to Saudi Arabia's human rights violations, to the dismal climate outlook, are the first pieces of a crumbling infrastructure that we wrongly assumed was the default state. It's what the world becomes when the people charged with giving a shit forgot they needed to.
Correct. But its more than this. The "powers that be" have now been replaced by China and (maybe) Russia. So what one will see now is the emergence of a new world order that is based on the lack of benevolence or long term thought. Is going to be a scary time when kids now get older.
Yes, Russia (and somewhat China) being the implied "powers who stand to benefit from the disintegration of the system"
Banking empires go back a long way. The Rothschild fortune dates to before 1800. They have their fingers in everything, they make Goldman Sachs look like a payday check cashing service.
List of BANKS Owned/Controlled by the Rothschild Family
The Rothschilds : the left :: George Soros : the right
this reads to me the same as the challenge to status quo in the USA. The EU helped wealthy people to accumulate more, and tried to help the less well off to do better, but obviously didnt really do the job.
The EU makes a lot of sense for trade and employment. If they get a chance to keep the current shit show going someone is going to have to live up to the promise and stop with all the puppet show fakery that the current leadership is trying so hard to protect.
A lot of our current problems with equality come from the age of Reagan and Thatcher, and all they set in motion. I was a kid when that was going on. I expect things wont actually turn a corner in one direction or another until my kids are my age today. So who is taking the long view?
Rem seems to be trying to take that view, and it is worth paying attention to, whatever label you want to put on it. How to work from our short-term everyday life to an actual long-term plan is the hard part. Nobody is really going for that yet, except the fascists, who are basically insane. Is the only way forward to trigger hated and fear?
On a personal note I was with my family in paris last month, when the yellow jackets appeared around a corner shouting and being angry. It was intimidating and I dont mind admitting it was scary. But I was absolutely terrified for my family, since I am in a mixed-race family. When I see the terror in my kids eyes I find it pretty fucking hard to feel any kind of compassion for the asshole who give up her/his identity to don a jacket and then terrorize people until they give them what they want. I get the outrage cuz I grew up skirting the poverty line and I know how hard that is, but putting people into categories and declaring them non-human is not the way out. Its just a way down.
Rem: please queue up latest visionary Utopian project ie. Rem Koolhaus in a floating white jet pack chair tapping the ashes from an elegant cigarette upon the teeming masses below, stuck in their 19th/20th century architecture and 19th/20th century ethno-static ethos... feh.
The future belongs to globalist commerce megablocs not simpletons interested in cultural preservation within their nations borders!
It’s going to be both. We need to cooperate on a global level, because we all share one environment. On the other hand, we can’t afford to run a global economy on carbon based feules, because we all share one environment. The whole think globaly shop locally thing. If there is a god,m, he or she did an amazing job, but it’s up to us to figure it out through our own competative/cooperative nature.
The UK has been a trading nation for centuries. If the EU wants to cut off trading with the UK out of spite it will send a signal to other nations on the edge to get out as well when they see how the UK is being treated. Switzerland and Norway are not EU members and seem to be doing fine.
The Brexit chaos has had the opposite effect on popular opinion, with more support for membership. I don’t think the EU is to blame for the failure of Theresa May to get support for the Draft Agreement, and most likely there will eventually
be a very similar trade agreement after both a hard and soft Brexit.
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