HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: bhelm@sisters.cs.uoregon.edu (B. Robert Helm)
Subject: Re: <None>
Summary: Parallels between U. S. Constitution and Maastricht
Keywords: Maastricht, constitution, US, parliament
Organization: University of Oregon Computer and Information Sciences Dept.
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 92 22:14:56 GMT

In article <1992Oct8.154056.1@sejnet.sunet.se> eric@sejnet.sunet.se (Eric Thomas) writes:

> Many say that the treaty is not democratic enough. Well, how shold a EU be 
> governed? Any ideas? What is a democratic EU in your opinion?
> A parliament like the one in place today, is that satisfactory? A lot of 
> people will say NO. Too much representation for large, densely populated 
> continental countries with no feeling for what it is like to live in a 
> country with only 19 people/sq.km.

(Apologies to U. S. and other readers to whom the following is familiar)

The authors of the current United States constitution faced a similar
problem -- the 13 original member states of the United States varied
widely in population and size.  The authors of our constitution
compromised.  The created two divisions ("houses") of parliament, and
required that all laws be approved by both houses.  In one house (the
"House of Representatives"), each state received a number of seats
proportional to its population.  In the other house, (the "Senate"),
each state received two seats, regardless of its size.

I dislike many aspects of the U. S. system (such as the
"winner-take-all" rules for parliamentary elections, and the powerful
President), but the division of powers between House and Senate might
be worth considering in European constiution.

> There has to be some kind of agreement (call it constitution) that declares 
> which power lays where. Today many people get the impression that Brussuls 
> want to steer everything.

The history of the _adoption_ of the United States Constitution might
also be of interest here.  It was substantially amended after its
introduction, because people feared it made government too powerful.
The 10 amendments that were added provided valuable guarantees of
basic human rights, and reaffirmed the powers of state and local
governments.  Our history suggests that these amendments strengthened
popular support for our union, and thus strengthened the union itself.
If Maastricht fails due to popular opposition, this might not kill
European integration.  Rather, its failure may lead to a more
democratic treaty, and from that a stronger union.

I would be interested in further discussing what a new treaty might
look like.  This seems more interesting than bashing the old treaty,
or the process by which it is being ratified.
Newsgroups: alt.politics.ec
From: sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog)
Subject: Re: War and democracies
Organization: Enea Data AB
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 23:00:36 GMT

Ulf Berggren (ulfb@ulfb.nada.kth.se) writes in respons to me:
>>The world of democratic tradition, coincides with the Protestant/
>>Catholic world, which is a world which have a long common tradition
>>of culture, despite many wars, which simplifies the understanding
>>between these countries.
>
>Like Japan?

I should have written "coincides largely". Then again, Japan more or
less their democratic system imposed on them by the allied powers.
As far as I know there was no democratic tradition whatsoever in 
Japan before 1945. (But I don't know much about Japan at all.)

>A big problem is that Islam and democracy seem to be unable to work
>together.

Yes, at least what we mean with democracy. I'm reading s.c.bosna-
herzgvna and there are some muslims appearing, and then I'm not
talking about Bosnian Muslims which are mainly secularized. I find
them quite out of line in their ideas, but I feel unqualified to
go into discussion as the cultural difference is too deep and I
have very little knowledge on how they think.

We should remember that when we talk about "Western-style democracy"
we are also talking about our Western values, our Western code, and
even if we believe these to be the right and good values, we are still
into culture-imperialistic business when we try to impose our ideas
beyond our sphere. Maybe it is right; if all peoples shares the
same values and code, the risks for conflicts and war are less,
but why should precisely our ethic code be the best? Because we
are God? Or because we are the leading economic part of the World?

But to go back to Islam, I do see problems with fundamentalistic
Islam and democracy cooperate. But neither do I do think democracy
would have worked with Christianity in its fundamentalistic stage
when it was Islam's age.

And, in fact, while Turkey's history as a democracy is not the
best one, it's not significantly worse than the one of many
Latin-American states.
-- 
Erland Sommarskog - ENEA Data, Stockholm - sommar@enea.se
There are many sorts of Macedonians: Greek, Bulgarian, Roumanian, Macedonian...
From: livesey@solntze.wpd.sgi.com (Jon Livesey)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.ec
Subject: Re: <None>
Date: 9 Oct 1992 15:12:19 GMT
Organization: sgi
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: solntze.wpd.sgi.com

In article <1992Oct9.114553.11434@etek.chalmers.se>, lindq@etek.chalmers.se (Johan Lindqvist) writes:
|> In article <1992Oct8.181515.29511@fwi.uva.nl>, hm@fwi.uva.nl (Hans Mulder) writes:
|> 
|> |> 
|> |> It's two: France and Ireland.  A referendum on the Maastricht treaty only
|> |> counts if the "Yes" side wins, so the Danish referendum last June doesn't
|> |> count.  The Danes will be given another chance sometime next year.
|> |> 
|> 
|> So the Danes will have to keep voting until they vote like they're 'supposed'
|> to ? Democracy ?

The Irish had a referendum a few years back on abortion.   Now they
are going to have another.

Does this mean it's not Democracy?   Does Democracy mean that you
have one and only one referendum on any given issue?

jon.
Newsgroups: alt.politics.ec
From: kurt@dna.lth.se (Kurt Swanson)
Subject: Re: <None>
Organization: Lund Institute of Technology, Sweden
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 19:08:38 GMT

hm@fwi.uva.nl (Hans Mulder) writes:
>In <mikael.69.718474872@udac.uu.se> mikael@udac.uu.se (Mikael Lundgren) wrote:
>>In article <1992Oct7.154027.1@sejnet.sunet.se> eric@sejnet.sunet.se (Eric Thomas) writes:
>>>In article <qopdhao@zola.esd.sgi.com>, livesey@solntze.esd.sgi.com (Jon Livesey) writes:
>>>> Several European countries have had referendums on the subjects.
>>>
>>>Wow, a grand TWO out of 12! Now THAT is what I call wide scale democracy.
>>Actually it's three, i guess you forgot about Ireland (they voted yes by the
>>way, it was not a such a close vote so it did not attract much attention).
>It's two: France and Ireland.  A referendum on the Maastricht treaty only
>counts if the "Yes" side wins, so the Danish referendum last June doesn't
>count.  The Danes will be given another chance sometime next year.
>:-]

Ahhh, I see... Democracy only matters when one personally agrees with
the people's decision.
-- 
Kurt Swanson, Dept. of Computer Science,
Lunds universitet.  Kurt.Swanson@dna.lth.se
From: livesey@solntze.wpd.sgi.com (Jon Livesey)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.ec
Subject: Re: European Democracy (was: Why did Denmark
Date: 17 Oct 1992 03:24:24 GMT
Organization: sgi
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: solntze.wpd.sgi.com

In article <1992Oct16.234310.1@sejnet.sunet.se>, eric@sejnet.sunet.se (Eric Thomas) writes:
|> In article <1bkm0oINN1m8@fido.asd.sgi.com>, livesey@solntze.wpd.sgi.com (Jon Livesey) writes:
|> > Well, that's one way of looking at it, but another is to say
|> > that at the moment, with each country running its own defence 
|> > policy, the French, Germans and British don't have to ask for
|> > advice from anyone before deciding what to do.
|> 
|> Correction: they won't need to listen for advice. They will need to get
|> agreement from the other EC nations. This may take the form of listening to
|> advice, or then it may not.

In what way is this a "correction"?


|> 
|> > In the US, people are asking why the Europeans are so slow to intervene.
|> 
|> It is because they don't want to re-enact Viet-Nam on european soil.

Fine, but I wasn't asking for the reason, which I already know:
just reporting what Americans say.


|> Now why is the US so slow to intervene in Yugoslavia? :-)

I'll leave an American to answer that.

jon.
From: livesey@solntze.wpd.sgi.com (Jon Livesey)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.ec
Subject: Re: <None>
Date: 11 Oct 92 01:25:30 GMT
Organization: sgi
NNTP-Posting-Host: solntze.wpd.sgi.com

In article <1992Oct10.130831.1983@etek.chalmers.se>, lindq@etek.chalmers.se (Johan Lindqvist) writes:
|> In article <1b47gjINNp04@fido.asd.sgi.com>, livesey@solntze.wpd.sgi.com (Jon Livesey) writes:
|> |> 
|> |> Does this mean it's not Democracy?   Does Democracy mean that you
|> |> have one and only one referendum on any given issue?
|> |> 
|> 
|> No, but saying that a referendum, or any election or a single vote
|> only counts when it says what you want it to say, that isn't really
|> democratic, is it?

But they are not saying it "doesn't count".   They are saying
that the situation has changed,, which it has.

I still don't see how voting twice is any less democratic than
voting once.   The Danes can turn it down again if they want.
This is a *vote*, not a coin toss.

|> 
|> Of course Denmark can have a new referendum, but the idea of a new
|> one, on the same Maastrich treaty within six month doesn't sound
|> like the Danish goverment respected the peoples will. 

But it's not just "The same Maastricht Treaty".   The Danish 
Government recently published a list of twelve possibilities
for a new relationship with the EC.    Inside the EC, there is
not just new Danish propopsals, but there is also going to be a 
new German proposal.     There is plenty for Danish voters to
discuss and vote on.

jon.
From: skok@itwds1.energietechnik.uni-stuttgart.de (Holger Skok)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.ec
Subject: RE: German Constitution (was: Referendum on Maastricht)
Date: 8 Oct 92 09:59:41 GMT
Organization: Inst. f. Thermodynamik u. Waermetechnik (ITW), U. of Stuttgart, FRG

In article <mikael.69.718474872@udac.uu.se> mikael@udac.uu.se (Mikael Lundgren) writes:
>In article <1992Oct7.154027.1@sejnet.sunet.se> eric@sejnet.sunet.se (Eric Thomas) writes:
[...stuff deleted]
>
>>Germans want a referendum, Kohl said no. The Danes have been asked to make a
>
>I seem to remember something about the german constitution blocking the 
>possibility of a referendum in Germany. Maybe someone could shed some light 
>on this ??

Yeah, it's true. There are NO provisions for a referendum in the German
Grundgesetz, which takes the place of a constitution for us. When it was
drawn up, the fear was that such a provision could lead us straight back
into dictatorship. The so called "Fathers of the Grundgesetz" (sexist, I
know) simply did not have a very high opinion of their own people. And
considering the recent ugly riots and the German politicians' reaction
to them, they just might have been right.
>
>
>Maybe there should be a discussion about what the Maastricht treaty should 
>have been like in order to be more satisfactory. A constructive discussion 
>on that issue should be very interesting.
>
>Ciao   /Mikael

Good idea. I wish, the German government had done the same thing as the
Danish one and distributed the text of the treaty. 
But even without having looked through the original text the impression
I got from reading articles on it is that there is a serious lack of
formalized democratic structures in the EC. We are going to give up some
of the sovereignty of our governments to EC-bureaucrats who are not
really controlled by the European Parliament. 
Without the introduction of truely democratic structures in the EC, I
would not really want to transfer any power to EC institutions.
That seems to be the main flaw of the Maastricht treaty.
HSK
-- 
Sie singen das alte Entsagungslied, das Eiapopeia vom Himmel,
womit man beruhigt, wenn es greint, das Volk, den grossen Luemmel.
Ein neues Lied, ein besseres Lied, oh Freunde, will ich Euch dichten,
Wir wollen hier auf Erden schon das Himmelreich errichten.    ... H. Heine
From: etxjpll@eua.ericsson.se (Peter Lund)
Subject: Re: War and democracies
Reply-To: etxjpll@eua.ericsson.se
Organization: Ellemtel Telecom Systems Labs, Stockholm, Sweden
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 16:15:11 GMT

In article 7633@enea.se, sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) writes:
>Peter Lund (etxjpll@eua.ericsson.se) writes:
>>(Try to find a "democratic" war!)
>
>Simple. The governments and presidents of Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina
>and Serbia are democratically elected. True, none of them can be
>regarded full-grown democracies, but there are little too many demo-
>cratic features in these countries to write them off as dictator-
>ships. And, particularly: with democracy came the war.

I would never use the word "democratic" and the name of the Serbian
leader "Milosovic" in the same sentence. That would be a too big 
contradiction to be found serious.

>One should also remember that there are several cases where the
>acts of war with a democracy on side where the democratic state
>has been the agressor. The Suez crisis 1956, the American invasion
>on Grenada 1983 are two examples.

The point is not who the aggressor is. The point is, what the reasons
for wars usually are. Well functioning democracies always resolve their
arguments peacefully in negotiations, where they both respect the other
party's point of view. Trustful negotiations are usually very hard 
to get with a less democratically functioning party.

Peter Lund, 	mail: Peter.Lund@eua.ericsson.se
Ellemtel Telecom Systems Labs, Stockholm, Sweden

Newsgroups: alt.politics.ec
From: eric@sejnet.sunet.se (Eric Thomas)
Subject: Re: European Democracy (was: Why did Denmark
Reply-To: ERIC@SEARN.SUNET.SE
Organization: SUNET, Stockholm, Sweden
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 19:22:15 GMT

In article <1992Oct15.171102.2676@eua.ericsson.se>, etxjpll@eua.ericsson.se (Peter Lund) writes:
> The foreign and military decision should for other reasons be mainly taken at 
> the European level. The single market unite Europe economically. Europe is al-
> ready very much politically united. Most people in the EC have about the same 
> political values.

Well let's have a look at the situation. France doesn't want more immigrants.
Germany doesn't want more immigrants. France convinced Spain and Italy to start
requiring a visa for northern african countries, because there were too many
Arabs smuggling in from these countries and the French don't like them. Spain
in fact complains that they keep flowing in from Gibraltar.

So we should handle this issue at the european level, where most people would
agree that Arabs are not welcome and we should make it difficult for them to
get in, and Sweden should make it difficult for Arabs to visit because they are
not liked by the big boys. Well I'm sure NyD would love that, but I'm not quite
sure the average Svensson would.

> It's silly trying to imagin 
> one national army in the EC fighting another.

That was of course not the idea. The idea was that if the French and Germans
and Brits decide to go and play soldier in country X which they have decided to
be in need of "protection", there is no reason for the armies of other
countries to be forced to send people as well. Oh, I realize there are other
governments involved, but these are governments, not parliaments. Helmut would
tell the Portuguese representative that he will get a cookie if he signs the
decision, and the guy won't think twice before signing! He isn't the one who
will be sent to the field, and he will get money or some economical favour in
exchange: an excellent deal.

> I agree that there probably is too much bureaucracy in the EC, 
> something you and 
> I have to stop when we two become European citizens. What do you say? ;-)

I say it is sad to see you saying "european" for "EC" like all the politicians.
Anyway I am already a citizen of the EC, and I can't think of anything I can do
to stop this sort of nonsense. The only political parties which are clearly
against the EC are the communists and Le Pen, and I don't want to vote for
either. The other parties are 50/50 or 60/40 or at most 70/30, and among the
representatives at the parliament the figures are more in favour of the EC.

  Eric
Newsgroups: alt.politics.ec
From: eric@sejnet.sunet.se (Eric Thomas)
Subject: Re: European Democracy (was: Why did Denmark
Reply-To: ERIC@SEARN.SUNET.SE
Organization: SUNET, Stockholm, Sweden
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 17:00:16 GMT

In article <1bi5uhINNfd9@fido.asd.sgi.com>, livesey@solntze.wpd.sgi.com (Jon Livesey) writes:
> The EC comes
> in when the UK is manufacturing something for export to the rest
> of Europe, but the EC does not try to regulate the ingredients in
> a UK product consumed mainly within the UK.

Well, the EC wants to regulate surstr|mming (putrefied herring - also a source
for national jokes), which you can't precisely call an exporting success, and
other national traditional recipes which are not sold abroad (or at least are
mostly sold in the domestic market - I'm sure there are at least a couple
thousand bottles of gl|gg exported every year). They wanted to regulate the
size of condoms EC-wide, only one size would be allowed and it was a whole 4cm
less than most condoms sold in Sweden (they gave up after strong protests). The
list is endless, some day they'll want to regulate shoe sizes and impose a
unique size for all feet. Sorry Jon, things are simply not happening the way
you describe them.

  Eric
From: magnus@sejnet.sunet.se
Newsgroups: alt.politics.ec
Subject: Re: France
Date: 11 Oct 92 15:34:26 GMT
Organization: Unaffiliated

In article <1992Oct11.103749.21624@enea.se>, sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) writes:
> Jon Livesey (livesey@solntze.wpd.sgi.com) writes in comment to
> Eric Thomas (eric@sejnet.sunet.se):
>>What is so special about France?
> 
> Well, Eric is Swedish, and I have sadly found it not uncommon
> in Sweden with a negative attitude towards France and the
> Frenchmen. Why I don't know, but I suspect it has something
> to do that the Swedish school system only teach a minority to
> speak French well.

All this would be well if 1) Eric was swedish and not french 2) people really
were biased toward the French in Sweden. 
As I am sure you know, there are tons of people, especially in the upper
echelons of swedish society who embrace french culture to the point of sending
their kids to summer school in La Rochelle each summer. I think this is a good
idea, learnign languages and spending time in other countries is something
inherently positive, even if I often see examples of people with houses
in Provence whose main reason for acquiring them was prestige and not
admiration of French culture. Many can't even speak french above tourist
level!
In my experience, people in general have a fairly positive view of
_french culture_, literature, film, art e.t.c. What I fail to see is why
they are expected to like things (as I believe was the _real discussion_!)
related to French policy in arms-sales, or the Le-Pen factor, or certain
scandals concerning Greenpeace ships? Even the _grand parents_ of the La
Rochelle kids (which in many cases means at least one emigrated french citizen)
would agree that the french policies have often been severly misguided.
  Then of course we have the left-wing people , mainly of the '40-talist'
generation, who admired the French students in '68 and in fact were
inspired by them. Would you say that these people, many of them today
being prominent intellectuals, also have a negative view of France? 

So my point is, what on earth does the fact that not so many learn
french well (which probably is because of it being a complex language,
taking German means less work for higher grades) has to do with what
people think about French policies?? Or perhaps we should have
launched a major campaign making people learn Russian during the cold
war, so we would have taken a more positive view of their strivings
for World Peace? (TM) :-)

> -- 
> Erland Sommarskog - ENEA Data, Stockholm - sommar@enea.se
> There are many sorts of Macedonians: Greek, Bulgarian, Roumanian, Macedonian...
> 
-Magnus
Newsgroups: alt.politics.ec
From: joleary@ESTER9 (John O'Leary)
Subject: Re: East Germany
Reply-To: JOLEARY@ESTWM0.DNET.ESTEC.ESA.NL
Organization: European Space Agency (ESTEC)
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1992 16:21:23 GMT

In article <1992Oct15.161625.16818@kestrel.edu>, king@reasoning.com (Dick King) writes:
>
>There's no such thing as East Germany and West Germany any more.
>There's only Germany, a country that was once called "West Germany".

This is true in theory.  But there are still huge differences between West and
East Germany, so it is useful to use the terms East and West Germany. 
(Though Germans usually refer to East Germany as the "Former DDR", possibly
because that is what their government told them to call it.)

Thanks to those who answered my question about East Germany joining the EC.
John.
--
John O'Leary,  ESA / ESTEC / WMS  (ERS-1 Project)
Internet:  JOLEARY@ESTWM0.DNET.ESTEC.ESA.NL
Bitnet:  JOLEARY@ESTEC   DECnet:  ESTWM0::JOLEARY
Newsgroups: alt.politics.ec
From: eric@sejnet.sunet.se (Eric Thomas)
Subject: Re: <None>
Reply-To: ERIC@SEARN.SUNET.SE
Organization: SUNET, Stockholm, Sweden
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 17:59:47 GMT

In article <mikael.69.718474872@udac.uu.se>, mikael@udac.uu.se (Mikael Lundgren) writes:
> I seem to remember something about the german constitution blocking the 
> possibility of a referendum in Germany. Maybe someone could shed some light 
> on this ??

Well, the constitution did not seem to be an obstacle to Maastricht itself, so
it shouldn't be an obstacle to a referendum on Maastricht ;-)

> We live in an everchanging world, if not renegotiated maybe it can be 
> amended....

My understand is that all they are willing to do is to give the Danes more time
to implement the treaty (in much the same way the UK was given time to join the
common currency plans).

> Maybe there should be a discussion about what the Maastricht treaty should 
> have been like in order to be more satisfactory. A constructive discussion 
> on that issue should be very interesting.

The Danes don't want a common army or a common foreign affairs policy, for
instance. They don't want it today, and they won't want it even if they are
given 2 more years than the others to implement it. The bottom line is that the
treaty was simply not designed to reflect the requirements of neutral
countries. I realize that the neutrality of Sweden is a bit ridiculous in some
aspects, but it does correspond to a reality in the sense that your average
Swede doesn't want to send the army to the former colony of the month to fight
this or that group of rebels trying to take over the nice dummy president who
nicely does everything he is told. They want to send doctors to help building
hospitals and the like. A common army led by either France or Germany is not
quite what your average Scandinavian is after.

  Eric
Newsgroups: alt.politics.ec
From: livesey@solntze.wpd.sgi.com (Jon Livesey)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.ec
Subject: Re: War and democracies
Date: 14 Oct 1992 02:08:11 GMT
Organization: sgi
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: solntze.wpd.sgi.com

In article <1992Oct13.223811.17691@enea.se>, sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) writes:
>
> >Repetition again: The Suez crisis is not a good example since it
> >probably wouldn't have happened if Egypt had been a democracy.
>
> Permit the cynical to disbelieve.

Mr Sommarskog is most likely correct to disagree.   Nasser
may have broken international law by nationalizing the
Canal, but he was fantastically popular in Egypt.   My bet
is that he could have won any election.

jon. 
Newsgroups: alt.politics.ec