The European No
A lot seems to go around the press these days about the double "no" from french and dutch citizens against the European Constitution. The first shrug was met with a shrug by most of the people I know around here - the second went with a kind of enlightenment not only for the ordinary people but also for the ruling class. It seems that the "no" was not against the constitution - which I guess only 1% of the voters understand or even have read (a 500 page political/legal document) the "no" is a clear sign of rejection of a ruling class detached from the normal people. The media push to make the comeout a "yes" was suspicious - all the rulers of this Europe tried to persuade the ordinary citizen that it is a step forward and that it is a good thing to vote for. That just raised the suspicion even more and since noone really understood why this constitution should make life better in a Europe that got more expensive since the introduction of the Euro and that has seen millions of jobs vanish. The "no" seems now more a warning to the rulers that the citizens are alive and that they are thinking different and that they have a voice that once it gets some decision making power will be used against the "elected" in the parliaments. Its an early sign of the power struggles - not only in Europe - to come between the rich, the powerful and the people who just happen to live here on this earth. Its a sign of problems far greater then "globalization" its a sign of class warfare right now inside the bounds of democracy - if the "democratic" rights of the masses will be eradicated even more - a thing we see with the "war on terror" already - then this will surely be the single biggest threat to our future but maybe also the biggest hope to our future.