Future of the EU

[Renegade 13]

The curve civilization follows is not a smooth one either. There's a long, slow slope to the peak of any given society, then a sharp, rapid fall to the bottom. Then that culture/society inevitably dies out or becomes far less influential on a world wide scale than it was formerly (very fortunate if it survives in any form). After, a new society or nation will rise from the ashes of the old, or it will be engulfed by another nation. It is the age-old pattern of thigns. However, this won't work the next time, since everything is so integrated on a world wide basis. The entire world will fall to the depths, and then rise again...or not. We'll see. Actually, I hope I don't live to see it.

[Renegade 13]

Hey Atrocities, can I be a regular contributor to The Atrocities Doom and Gloom Newsletter? I think I could help you bring it to new depths.

[dogscoff]

(Subscribe now to Atrocities Doom and Gloom News Letter. Garrenteed to depress even the most optomistic person. Subscription rates are 50% off news stand prices.)

If you can be bothered. I mean there's not much point, is there? With illiteracy rates climbing steadily in the western world it's a wonder anyone can still read it, we'll have to start producing a pictures-only version so that the faceless hordes that fuel the capitalist machine can consume without actually having to learn or understand anything. Eventually we'll all just be mindless slaves to some greater power, living in a state of deluded ignorance like in the Matrix, all the while fuelling some huge, bloated and corrupt elite, although to be honest even that doesn't matter an awful lot since the Earth is due to be swallowed up in a nuclear inferno when the sun goes nova in a few billion years anyway, so I don't really see the point in doing that, I mean we're all just meaningless carbon-oxygen motes anyway, cells in a vast, unthinking, uncaring global organism, bouncing randomly off one another while we wait to be recycled into alternative arrangements of matter. Matter. Hah! There's an ironic word- everything's made of matter, but what does it matter? Sigh. Honestly, I'd shoot myself if it not for A) the fact that I'd have to buy a bullet, and in so doing help support the guns companies which are a key part of the sinister global entertainment-industrial-military complex that overshadows human destiny B) an act of such futile despair that it would only add to the world's misery and so help usher in the bleak future of oppression, poverty, misery and drudgery that now is the ultimately-inconsequential fate of all humankind.

Ah well, at least we still have milkshake.

**This post was brought to you by the "Atrocities-is-Marvin-from-the-hitchhiker's-guide" awareness campaign. If you would like to help, please send photos of lovely babies and happy events; tasty confections lovingly home-baked by your wife and/or sweet old grandmother; personal testimonies demonstrating humanity's capacity for generosity and selflessness; cute puppies; upbeat articles from local newspapers that illustrate instances of indiviuals or small groups attaining justice in disputes against multinational corporations or soulless beurocratic regimes; bluebells; mittens; kittens etc to:

Atrocities
The Big Swamp Under the Bridge
Squornshellous Zeta

--
Dogscoff: Seething with apathy.

[El_Phil]

Atrocities said:

Well said. Sooner or later all of us, those not associated with the power of Government, will be subservient to those who are. I fear that one day Government will give way to the corporate mentality that human beings are little more than a renewable resource cropped for exploitation. They say slavery has pretty much ended, I say that it has only just begun. As the margin between the worlds wealthy and poor continues to widen more and more "elite" people are adopting the "all about me" mentality turning their noses up at folks who have to work for a meager living.

But what can we do? As the population curve continues to accelerate toward the big 7 billion mark, the freedoms that many of us have enjoyed for most of our lives will begin to disappear in the wake of unchecked population growth.

There is no hope for a happy future, just one of more of the same or less than what we have now. Sure this is a gloomily view of the future, but the evidence is not lying to us. Its there for all too see. The future is gloomy and the only way people are going to be able to live is by surviving upon the hand me down hand outs of their elitist governments who's members have grown fat and decadent on the backs of the starvation and destitution that they have caused with their "Me Only" life styles.

The bleakness of a Soilent Green type of future is a distinct and real possibility whether we like to admit it or not. Sooner or later our ability to survive in an economic capitalistic environment will grow unattainable and people will begin to slip into poverty and ultimately utter complete destitution. It is already happening even though many of our governments deny it. If you deny something that is happening all around you, perhaps you can make it not happen at all. Those who subscribe to the ideal that nothing is wrong with our societies and our way of living are just kidding themselves. One day, and I fear it won't be that far off, say forty or fifty years, there will be another war, sparked not by the politics of nations, or even by the desire to control all that can be controlled, but by a far more simple source, the fundamental need to survive and to take what others have in order to do so.

Some will want what you have, and you will want to keep it. They will cloak their intentions behind a vial of lies, but when it boils right down to it, it will not be a war about ideology, religion, or even rights; it will simply be a war over greed. And when this war has been fought many times over, what will remain will not be worth having as our race begins to slip into extinction. And when the day comes that the last human on Earth draws breath, his or her death will not be an act of God, but an act of mercy. We will have brought this upon ourselves for allowing our faith in those we elect to lead us, blind us to the old saying that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

(Subscribe now to Atrocities Doom and Gloom News Letter. Garrenteed to depress even the most optomistic person. Subscription rates are 50% off news stand prices.)

But kittens are still great right?

[Atrocities]

Kittens shall rule the Earth.

Dogscoff, I love you man. That was simply brillant. You are now the official editor of my Doom & Gloom News Letter.

Seriously, that was just poetic. Well done!

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Shouldn't this be an OT?

The EU is already a Military Alliance, perhaps even a Partnership. Even though each nation has its own military, cooperation runs deep and occurs more often than not - in fact, I think cooperation occurs always.

[dogscoff]

Kittens shall rule the Earth.

And I would like to be the first to welcome our new feline overlords.

*me goes out and buys up tons of catnip toys, balls of string, cartons of fresh cream etc...

[El_Phil]

Strat that is clearly rubbish. You have the French who quit NATOs millitary side and kicked them out of their country during the cold war. Ignore most of Eastern Europe as rotting ex-soviet kit with no spare parts ain't much good. If/when Turkey is a member you'll have all the fun of Turkey/Greece/Cyprus. The German airforce which can't fit any decent missiles to it's planes as then it would stop being 'defensive', France's history of co-operation on any joint defence project (only if they get all the work and none of the bills), EuroJeep which has been going for over 50 years! 50 years!

And that list glosses over such issues as the French trying to sell Exocet to Argentina during the Falklands and the recent 'disagreement' over Iraq.

Frankly I'm struggling to see much succesfull European co-operation apart from Tornado and MBDA.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Why can't Germans fit any decent missiles on their fighters? For as far as I know, the limitations on their military date from before the Second World War. Versailles and all that.

OK, so I'm wrong about the cooperation occuring always, but still it occurs quite often - even if it isn't the whole of Europe that's cooperating. I still consider it to be a MA/Partnership.

[boran_blok]

well, the thing with no big military in the EU is the fact that the people overhere see no big use in having a big and modern army, I think the Us spends like 10 times as much as the whole EU does on it's army.

and the EU is mainly an economic union, with focus on economy, which is also the only real valid reason the constitution was shot, as it gave too much power to multinationals and such.