Rick's b.log - entry 2015/11/14

Paris' suffering is Europe's failing

That much is clear.

Europe needs to learn that it can - and in some cases must - say No.

Life in Europe isn't all rosy. The social medical system of more than one country is in dire straits. Unemployment is one person in ten in France, and don't ask about Greece. The Perpetual Monetary Mess seems neverending. We're struggling by on politics and bullshit kept alive by a dream that never seems to unfold the way it is supposed to. A united Europe is a good idea, but no country is quite ready to make such a commitment, so we're left with dozens of individual states attempting to make a cohesive plan that can (and does) change from one leadership to the next. The miracle ought to be that the European project even works at all.

The current immigration setup worked when there were hundreds of immigrants wanting to enter Europe. It fails miserably when there are hundreds of thousands, and the EU countries are wanting to give each other quotas just so they can find somewhere to put them all. There are people in various European countries who have been handwaved through. Who are they? Where are they from? Where did they go? Multiply that by the number of people who have entered this year alone and I reckon in between the cracks you will find something scary. Angela Merkel's open door policy was a potential mess of history-making proportions.

Europe needs to realise this, and to realise that you'd be hard pushed to find somewhere else that was as open as Europe has been. Think about it - if I got myself into the United States, do you really think I could walk to the Town Hall of Rome, Wisconsin and demand various aids and benefits? I'd likely be whipped away by a black car full of guys with FBI jackets before I even figured out what day it was.
Think about it - more and more the right wing and nationalists are getting their voice heard. Is the way to fix Europe for everybody to slam the door shut? To tear down the Schengen Agreement? We now live in a connected world with global influence. Is isolation the answer? The nationalists seem to think so because they are stuck in a world like it was in the '80s. Before jobs could be outsourced. Before mass importation of goods (and exportation, I should add). When the population was less and everything looked shiny and nice, at least, in their false memories.
A crass expression here is that No Man Is An Island. Likewise, in today's modern world we aren't competing with ourselves, we are competing with much of the rest of the world. Japan, formerly a technical hub of the Far East, has been languishing and is suffering the effects of an ageing population, their relevance in the world being replaced in large part by China and Korea. The United States may even be a has-been in the coming decades. Europe simply wouldn't survive as disparate countries - something the United Kingdom may come to realise should they vote to break away from the EU. Together is more powerful. This is the point behind NATO. The UN. Europe itself.
But, to be honest, Europe needs to heal itself before it can set about healing the rest of the world. Yes, we should provide help and assistance to those who need it, and yes, we should strive to do the morally just thing. But we can only do that which is in our capacity to do. Money and resources are not unlimited. Neither is the patience and tolerance of voters. Europe needs to realise this before the major countries vote in National Front governments and kill the dream stone dead.

One suggestion that I do have, however, is to observe that Europe recently offered nearly two billion euros to Africa to help to improve things to curb the mass immigration problem at source. The response? It's not enough. Not "thank you" or "let's talk about what we can do", but a simple "give us more".
May I therefore make a suggestion. Use this two billion (with a B, a whole load more zeros than a plain old Million) to kick-start a pan-EU security agency. Call it the EBI (European Bureau of Investigation), if you like. Initiate this, and set it up, transparently and in the public eye (so no money consumed by the likes of Quangos); and you might find that it could go a long way to uniting the intelligence agencies of the various European countries. If people can cross borders, why shouldn't the intel. on persons of interest?

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