No to Lisbon

K-9

Amberman wrote: »

They voted NO....didnt they?

Which part do you find confusing?

Where do we start?

One line answers are great fun!

Scofflaw

Amberman wrote: »

They voted NO....didnt they?

Which part do you find confusing?

Hmm. I don't think he finds it confusing, but you might have missed that he's referring to the people of Europe, rather than just the people of Ireland. It's written in the posts - the ones you undoubtedly read before your knee jerked...

regards,
Scofflaw

Amberman

Scofflaw wrote: »

Hmm. I don't think he finds it confusing, but you might have missed that he's referring to the people of Europe, rather than just the people of Ireland. It's written in the posts - the ones you undoubtedly read before your knee jerked...

regards,
Scofflaw

Sorry...my mistake...I thought Irish referendums counted for something.

Man, am I embarrassed.

Scofflaw

Amberman wrote: »

Sorry...my mistake...I thought Irish referendums counted for something.

Man, am I embarrassed.

As you should be. Irish referendums hardly tell us how the rest of the people in Europe would vote - unless of course we can simply look into ourselves as the heart of Europe and just know...which it seems many feel they are indeed capable of.

regards,
Scofflaw

Hitman Actual

Adhamh wrote: »

Hitman- the 'they' that I was refering to was the Socialist Party or whoever put up the sign that declared to vote to be a victory for the opponents of neoliberalism. I was annoyed that they hijacked the result for their own purposes when a very broad spectrum of people voted no for many reasons. Sorry for grammatical ambiguity.

No, my mistake. I need to read better!

Hitman Actual

Amberman wrote: »

from a poker players point of view, I think the popular argument is, essentailly, optimally...an expression of collective will.

You drop a dozen buy-ins or something last night, Amberman? Your posts suggest you're tilting over something at any rate. Just a couple of points, although these have been done to death and I'm not keen to go back to these debates:

Amberman wrote: »

irish people also though once they voted, that would be it.

So you're saying Sinn Fein and Declan Ganley weren't being misleading when they repeatedly said we could get a better deal?

Amberman wrote: »

Since the YES campaign is 0 for 3 (counting Euro referendum) wher a vote has been allowed to take place.

I assume you're talking about the constitution there, but you've conveniently forgotten the Yes results in Spain and Luxembourg.

Purple Gorilla

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

Ok, Internet Privacy is needed to stop all those kiddie porn watchers out there.
ID cards help stop Identity theft.
And National Databases help Police solve crime faster. But to be honest I don't see how this ties in with the EU, all of the above you have mentioned are created by the Nations respective Government.
E.G why Britain has a National Database and we don't.

In a perfect world, yes all these steps would be used to keep everyone safe and happy but this is the real world and it's 100% guarunteed that any legislation like this will be used to treat the innocent like criminals. Look no further than the UK where anti-terrorism law was being used by county councils to catch and fine people for littering...

Why should anyone else have the right to see what I'm googling or texting when I have done nothing wrong?

View

Amberman wrote: »

irish people also though once they voted, that would be it.

They did? Didn't the main leading No campaingers - Mary-Lou McDonald and Declan Ganley - both urge people to vote No so that the Treaty could be "re-negotiated"?

Most people hearing that would take it that, after a re-negotiation - the extent of which, under the terms of the constitution, the Government would decide - that there would have to be another referedum.

You are not suggesting that Mary-Lou and Declan misled No voters, are you?

Amberman

Hitman Actual wrote: »

You drop a dozen buy-ins or something last night, Amberman? Your posts suggest you're tilting over something at any rate. Just a couple of points, although these have been done to death and I'm not keen to go back to these debates:

well read...tilted and pissed after a rotten day yesterday....not a dozen, but a lot...worst day in a long time.

Scofflaw

Amberman wrote: »

well read...tilted and pissed after a rotten day yesterday....not a dozen, but a lot...worst day in a long time.

I assumed so, fortunately. Sorry to hear it.

cordially,
Scofflaw

ShooterSF

Scofflaw wrote: »

As you should be. Irish referendums hardly tell us how the rest of the people in Europe would vote - unless of course we can simply look into ourselves as the heart of Europe and just know...which it seems many feel they are indeed capable of.

regards,
Scofflaw

Well we could always edit the treaty to include the new concessions and give the UK it's referendum It won't be all of Europe of course but it'd be closer

Scofflaw

ShooterSF wrote: »

Well we could always edit the treaty to include the new concessions and give the UK it's referendum It won't be all of Europe of course but it'd be closer

Oh sure - we should definitely see what the most eurosceptical country in Europe does and extrapolate that to the rest.

amused,
Scofflaw

Scofflaw

Purple Gorilla wrote: »

In a perfect world, yes all these steps would be used to keep everyone safe and happy but this is the real world and it's 100% guarunteed that any legislation like this will be used to treat the innocent like criminals. Look no further than the UK where anti-terrorism law was being used by county councils to catch and fine people for littering...

Why should anyone else have the right to see what I'm googling or texting when I have done nothing wrong?

They shouldn't, is the short answer. On the other hand, it isn't really anything to do with the EU or Lisbon.

cordially,
Scofflaw

free-man

All this talk of misrepresentation is amusing at best and dangerous at worst.

Granted there is misrepresentation on both sides but more so I feel on the YES side, including thinly veilled threats that the EU will 'move on' without us, references to a '2 speed' Europe etc.

I believe Libertas etc all didn't misrepresent when they said we could renegotiate a better deal, this means a new treaty, short and easily understood by all members. I dont buy the argument that this is 'impossible'.

In terms of misrepresentation there has been the disgusting smear campaign on Declan Ganley (RTE Television), the ridiculous Irish times polls with leading questions about how people would vote if the treaty was 'modified' - we all know theres no current proposal to modify any aspect of the treaty only declarations - we will be voting on the exact same treaty at Lisbon II, this hasn't rang home with many voters yet.

The latest in this media assault is the use of Є1.8 million in tax payers money to employ PR agencies and digital strategists to swing the vote of "young people, women and the less well-off, through social networking websites internet campaigns and cinema adverts." Obviously this is deeply concerning as I am now helping to pay to reverse my own vote!

All that aside I am a fan of Monetary Union and I actually believe we would be in a worse position now if we were not in EMU however I see no reason to upset the status quo and see every reason not to further advance a federal superstate.

Please tell me some plausible reasons - that apply to every day irish life - why I should vote positively for this exact same treaty in a re-run and not keep the status quo.*








* I don't buy any answers that suggest the economic crisis would not have happened had there been tighter 'integration' among member states.

greendom

free-man wrote: »

Please tell me some plausible reasons - that apply to every day irish life - why I should vote positively for this exact same treaty in a re-run and not keep the status quo.*

Because there is no such thing as the Status Quo as far as the EU is concerned. It has changed and is changing and the systems and processes that ensure its smooth working need to change. The Lisbon treaty will ensure that the EU remains an effective organisation as it grows to over 30 states.

There is no Status Quo - Ireland is either a part of the EU or not. Saying no to Lisbon means it no longer wishes to be part of the EU.

BlitzKrieg

free-man wrote: »

I believe Libertas etc all didn't misrepresent when they said we could renegotiate a better deal, this means a new treaty, short and easily understood by all members. I dont buy the argument that this is 'impossible'.

Yeah cause its very easy to make a short easy to understand treaty that has to account for all previous EU treaties, apply to 27 different member states + their own laws and government processess and update the EU structure. Yeah that can all be simplified.

None of the EU treaties have ever been simple, the only difference between Lisbon and all the prior ones is that there is no hook element that everyone can focus on. No enlargment, no euro, no advancement from community to union that can be simplified down to *do you want enlargment yes or no?*. The result is a lot of none issues became the central topics of discussion, things that were never a part of the treaty to begin with.

And please dont use the Constitution as a counter argument on how it should be simple. The constitution is a a legal framewortk between the people and a single state of course its simple because before the constitution there is no legal elements, no minefield of laws and policies to be worked into the document. So of course its simple its for the people and the state.

EU treaties on the other hand have to stand up to legal scrutiny between different states with very different legal systems so the wording has to be very exact and has to be spelled out in detail.

In terms of misrepresentation there has been the disgusting smear campaign on Declan Ganley (RTE Television),

Personnally I dont care about Declan Ganley, but if taking a media swing at someone who has placed themselves into Irish politics is considered a smear campaign then I'm pretty sure most of irish politicions have suffered some manner of a smear campaign. If Libertas is truely standing for something important it should be able to continue without Declan Ganley, if the man is the party then as a EU party it is worthless because you are not voting on a series of principals you are voting for a single man.

But like I said I dont give a wooden nickle about old Ganley.

the ridiculous Irish times polls with leading questions about how people would vote if the treaty was 'modified' - we all know theres no current proposal to modify any aspect of the treaty only declarations - we will be voting on the exact same treaty at Lisbon II, this hasn't rang home with many voters yet.

But thats the crux of the problem, it has been made very clear that the issues people voted no over are issues that are not actually in the treaty, there is actually nothing that can be done to address those issues then to reassure (something the idiotic government failed to do first time) the public that elements such as our Tax and Neutrality and Abortion are not affected by the Lisbon treaty.

The latest in this media assault is the use of Є1.8 million in tax payers money to employ PR agencies and digital strategists to swing the vote of "young people, women and the less well-off, through social networking websites internet campaigns and cinema adverts." Obviously this is deeply concerning as I am now helping to pay to reverse my own vote!

Well if you voted for reasons that had nothing to do with the treaty which a large number of voters did you might be in need of that bit of education.

All that aside I am a fan of Monetary Union and I actually believe we would be in a worse position now if we were not in EMU however I see no reason to upset the status quo and see every reason not to further advance a federal superstate.

The Lisbon treaty takes us further from a federal superstate by putting more power in the Parliment and less in the Commision.

Please tell me some plausible reasons - that apply to every day irish life - why I should vote positively for this exact same treaty in a re-run and not keep the status quo.

Ok, what part of everyday irish life do you fit into? If you are a worker and part of a workers union the new citizens initive allows unions across the EU more opputunities to appeal to the Commission at large as the petition element is not restricted by boarders, so if you can get the support of other unions across europe you can easily get the support needed to defend or bring awareness to an issue of great concern.

With the EU parliment given increased powers the person you would have elected next month would have had much more weight in the EU political system then he or she has at the moment. Urgo you would have better representation.

* I don't buy any answers that suggest the economic crisis would not have happened had there been tighter 'integration' among member states.

oh it would have happened regardless, but the political feet dragging by the EU, general twitchy eyes watching the EU from the international arena and the overall lack of confidence is partially because of the lisbon treaty result (but also the Czech government's collapse and that Sarkozy is a big idiot who cant keep his mouth shut)

sink

free-man wrote: »

The latest in this media assault is the use of Є1.8 million in tax payers money to employ PR agencies and digital strategists to swing the vote of "young people, women and the less well-off, through social networking websites internet campaigns and cinema adverts." Obviously this is deeply concerning as I am now helping to pay to reverse my own vote!

Just want to point out that it is illegal to spend public funds on a political campaign so I don't know where you are getting your information. You might be confusing political campaigning for a yes vote with the information provided by the referendum commission which is impartial and just reports the bare facts. If the refcom contradicts any arguments put forward by either side their arguments must be false, but it is not an attempt to push you towards either a yes or no vote, just an attempt to make sure you are properly informed. The fact that they had to correct more NO side arguments in the last referendum speaks to the fact that the NO side lied more.

Scofflaw

sink wrote: »

Just want to point out that it is illegal to spend public funds on a political campaign so I don't know where you are getting your information. You might be confusing political campaigning for a yes vote with the information provided by the referendum commission which is impartial and just reports the bare facts. If the refcom contradicts any arguments put forward by either side their arguments must be false, but it is not an attempt to push you towards either a yes or no vote, just an attempt to make sure you are properly informed. The fact that they had to correct more NO side arguments in the last referendum speaks to the fact that the NO side lied more.

free-man is presumably referring to the EU Commission's information campaign, rather than the Referendum Commission. However, it is exactly the same presumption involved - that information provided by anyone other than bona fide No campaigners is a priori Yes side propaganda. In this case there is an additional red herring, since Ireland is still a net beneficiary, so it's rather unlikely to be Irish tax money funding anything.

Also, I'm really not going to shed any tears for Declan Ganley, who since he came out into public life during Niall O'Brolchain's campaign in Galway, has never done anything but attack campaigns. At this stage his complaints of smear campaigns are like the playground bully who always claims to be the victim.

cordially,
Scofflaw

the-island-man

greendom wrote: »

There is no Status Quo - Ireland is either a part of the EU or not. Saying no to Lisbon means it no longer wishes to be part of the EU.

And the Yes side say No campaigners are scaremongering.......

I'm not goin to try compare the E.U constitution to the Lisbon treaty because they are different however small of a difference that may be(5% i believe;))! its still an E.U paper attempting to change the running of the E.U! The French and Dutch voted against these, does that mean they don't want to be in the E.U!

Furthermore i would like to see no campaigners quoting articles in the treaty that they think are bad for Ireland/Europe instead of making generalisation about the E.U!
I've been involved in a previous thread like this where there's been nothin but useless arguments from both sides(my replies included) and it was a waste of time!

K-9

free-man wrote: »

Granted there is misrepresentation on both sides but more so I feel on the YES side, including thinly veilled threats that the EU will 'move on' without us, references to a '2 speed' Europe etc.

What do you suggest they do?

Move on like the Euro with the UK and Denmark?

hatrickpatrick

Saying no to Lisbon means it no longer wishes to be part of the EU.

No. No it doesn't.

It means that we do not wish to be part of what the Lisbon treaty attempts to turn the EU into.

The EU is supposed to be an economic union. It must not be given any more power to over ride national democratic parliaments on internal issues. I do not want Ireland to become a state in a federal United States of Europe, where our voice has to compete with everyone else in this continent. Leave Irish policy to the Irish people.

BlitzKrieg

The EU is supposed to be an economic union.

man oh man are you late to the voting if you wanted to keep things purely as an economic union, like waaaay back at the Maastricht treaty late.

oscarBravo

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Leave Irish policy to the Irish people.

Because we're doing such a super-duper job?

BlitzKrieg wrote: »

man oh man are you late to the voting if you wanted to keep things purely as an economic union, like waaaay back at the Maastricht treaty late.

I would have said Treaty of Rome late, but that's just me.

BlitzKrieg

well Maastricht would have been the official are we going to take this a step further or not treaty

sink

The manifestation of the EU's political character really began with European Political Cooperation, an informal agreement in 1970. Long before Ireland became a member. Therefore if we didn't want to be in a political union we should never have joined and it's farcical to suggest that the political ambitions of the existing EC members were not clear.

greendom

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

No. No it doesn't.

It means that we do not wish to be part of what the Lisbon treaty attempts to turn the EU into.

The EU is supposed to be an economic union. It must not be given any more power to over ride national democratic parliaments on internal issues. I do not want Ireland to become a state in a federal United States of Europe, where our voice has to compete with everyone else in this continent. Leave Irish policy to the Irish people.

As has been said the EU is so much more than an economic union. Sounds like you would rather Ireland was part of the EFTA just like Iceland

Scofflaw

As far as I can make out, people look at the preamble to the Treaty:

RESOLVED to continue the process of creating an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe, in which decisions are taken as closely as possible to the citizen in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity,
IN VIEW of further steps to be taken in order to advance European integration,
HAVE DECIDED to establish a European Union

...and assume that it means that the EU is being established for the first time at Lisbon. Of course, the preamble above is from Maastricht.

cordially,
Scofflaw

K-9

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

It must not be given any more power to over ride national democratic parliaments on internal issues.

Stop bullying us. I'll decide that.

whatisayis

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

No. No it doesn't.

It means that we do not wish to be part of what the Lisbon treaty attempts to turn the EU into.

The EU is supposed to be an economic union. It must not be given any more power to over ride national democratic parliaments on internal issues. I do not want Ireland to become a state in a federal United States of Europe, where our voice has to compete with everyone else in this continent. Leave Irish policy to the Irish people.

Interesting quote from former Italian Prime Minister Giuliano Amato (in 2000):

“One must act ‘as if’ in Europe: as if one wanted only very few things, in order to obtain a great deal. As if nations were to remain sovereign, in order to convince them to surrender their sovereignty. The Commission in Brussels, for example, must act as if it were a technical organism, in order to operate like a government … and so on, camouflaging and toning down. The sovereignty lost at national level does not pass to any new subject. It is entrusted to a faceless entity: NATO, the UN and eventually the EU. the Union is the vanguard of this changing world: it indicates a future of Princes without sovereignty. The new entity is faceless and those who are in command can neither be pinned down nor elected …That is the way Europe was made too: by creating communitarian organisms without giving the organisms presided over by national governments the impression that they were being subjected to a higher power. That is how the Court of Justice as a supra-national organ was born. It was a sort of unseen atom bomb, which Schuman and Monnet slipped into the negotiations on the Coal and Steel Community. That was what the ‘CSC’ itself was: a random, mixture of national egotisms which became communitarian. I don’t think it is a good idea to replace this slow and effective method - which keeps national States free from anxiety while they are being stripped of power - with great institutional leaps…Therefore I prefer to go slowly, to crumble pieces of sovereignty up little by little, avoiding brusque transitions from national to federal power. That is the way I think we will have to build Europe’s common policies…”

O'Morris

hatrickpatrick wrote:

The EU is supposed to be an economic union. It must not be given any more power to over ride national democratic parliaments on internal issues. I do not want Ireland to become a state in a federal United States of Europe, where our voice has to compete with everyone else in this continent. Leave Irish policy to the Irish people.

Seconded.

“One must act ‘as if’ in Europe: as if one wanted only very few things, in order to obtain a great deal. As if nations were to remain sovereign, in order to convince them to surrender their sovereignty. The Commission in Brussels, for example, must act as if it were a technical organism, in order to operate like a government … and so on, camouflaging and toning down. The sovereignty lost at national level does not pass to any new subject. It is entrusted to a faceless entity: NATO, the UN and eventually the EU. the Union is the vanguard of this changing world: it indicates a future of Princes without sovereignty. The new entity is faceless and those who are in command can neither be pinned down nor elected …That is the way Europe was made too: by creating communitarian organisms without giving the organisms presided over by national governments the impression that they were being subjected to a higher power. That is how the Court of Justice as a supra-national organ was born. It was a sort of unseen atom bomb, which Schuman and Monnet slipped into the negotiations on the Coal and Steel Community. That was what the ‘CSC’ itself was: a random, mixture of national egotisms which became communitarian. I don’t think it is a good idea to replace this slow and effective method - which keeps national States free from anxiety while they are being stripped of power - with great institutional leaps…Therefore I prefer to go slowly, to crumble pieces of sovereignty up little by little, avoiding brusque transitions from national to federal power. That is the way I think we will have to build Europe’s common policies…”

Very interesting quote. Even more interesting is the source of that quote. Guilamo Amato played a role in drafting the EU constitution on which the Lisbon Treaty is based.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuliano_Amato