Yesterday the minister for EU affairs of the Spanish state revealed that they were sent last January, a 5 page proposal document by Sarkozy's presidency of France outlining his objectives for new anti-migrant laws to be implemented during the forthcoming French presidency of the EU. The substance of this confidential document has pretty much been explained by me in the last weeks in an article of the quirky humorous "Q&A" series. We may now put the recent anti-migrant laws and Romani purge of Berlusconi in its proper context that which I indicated in the "Q&A". Sarkozy wants biometric Shengen Information System 2, a "integration contract" for migrants and obligatory language lessons.
Let's work back from the most sublimely ridiculous to the patently evil on this one.
(1) Language Enforcement.
I'm a polyglot, a person who can read, write and speak many languages. In the first world I'm supposed to be a sought after human resource because of this. But most people who are polyglots in the first world came here from the third world. They are not currently figuring high on the human resource investment index. Linguistic ability has always been a factor in imigration and migration of workers. The Spanish state which long served as a gateway for Latin American imigrants to Europe's then stronger economies did so because of the language of Cervantes, Che Guevera and Borges. The dispersion of the Romani likewise has much to do with the similarities between their language and that spoken in the state of origin for many doing "the rounds" in Europe - Romania. But the most spoken languages on Earth aside from Spanish and English, (Chinese, Urdu and Russian) do not readily find familial links in European strong economies now. Enforcing linguistic use and setting language attainment for imigrants rather than focussing extra resources on the education of their children is nothing short of cultural imperialism. Let me clarify by using Sarkozy's own France as an example. Her traditional imperialist catchment area for migrants is Francophone Africa. They often are found to speak the language of Rabalais, Zola and Fanon with a charming soft lilt which might almost glove the dropping of names. But within the French state are also found the living languages of Euskera (Basque), Oc (Occitan) and Arabic. So why should a man or woman who is as polyglot as I am, hypothetically speaking 2 dialects of the People's Republic of China Mandarin in addition to any of its 60+ ethnic tongues, or another plausible example who may switch easily from Pashtun, Urdu, Hindi, Farsi to Arabic - and has travelled thousands of kilometres to work on the black market in precarious exploitation have to sit through the horribly dreary study of children's rhymes of "metropolitan and ultra mar France"?
So I hope you agree that enforcing languages in the EU is nothing short of fascistic posturing for cultural hegemony. Irish "gaeilge" which is a close relation to Scots (not the Iriving Welsh kind) is a co-official language of all the states in the geographical totality of the British Isles. As is welsh - (consult your local telephone box) yet more residents and workers in the UK and Republic of Ireland speak Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, Edo, Efik, Ibibio, Annang (the language block of Nigeria and surrounds) at home than either Irish or Scottish gaelic.
Perhaps Sarkozy in addition to flying a now tattered and singed kite in the storm of xenophobia wants to ensure a future European Union of happy workers who speak the local language instead of American English..,
____________________________________________
(2) Integration contracts.
This really is a bundle of crap which may find its roots in the political history of the USA of the early 19th century and the shortlived phenomena of the "know-nothing party" who organised against Roman Catholic immigrants (mostly of Irish or Italian origin) claiming their presence was evidence of a popish plot to overthrow the USA by flooding its cities with "disloyal and non-patriotically committed aliens". Their solutions ranged from the practical "hands on" type you may have seen in the movie "Gangs of New York" to the legalistic formulation of "contracts of loyalty".
Loyal to whom though? To the ideas of the EU? To the ideas of the French Republic? Her Brittanic Majesty's United Crown? the King of the Belgians now cleansed by history of any guilty association with the Congo? the constitutions of Hungary and Slovenia with their mutually territorial antagonisms? The game of Cricket? Eurovision???
Ooops. I forgot to note that the it might be a novel idea for many of our migrant workers to have a contract. In 2004 I found myself with over 1,600 migrants most of whom were of muslim background occupying the cathedral of Barcelona and its church of Pi. The first Zapatero government had offered a "regularisation" to those how could provide proof they worked. I remember a black market opening quicker than a black hole swallows light to provide those with enough money with the contracts they needed to prove they had worked and paid tax. The beautifully serene laundering of monies untraced.
_____________________________________
(3) which brings me to Shengen Information System version 2 - sharing of intelligence, security, border records, biometrics and so on so forth.
At present the Sarkozy strategy seems to be an attempt to push his supposed revival and tweaking of the "Barcelona Declaration" adopted by the EU at the Euro-Mediterranean Conference - 27th-28th November 1995. Without going into too many details that declaration provided for joint development on both sides of the Mediterranean sea which as we know is both sides of the 1st and 3rd world. It also held up some ideas for the Palestinian / Israeli thing. Perhaps I'll go into detail another day. To date the mostly forgotten about declaration has only really seen Italy, France and Spain access cheap hydrocarbons from the Maghreb and outsource migrant detention centres. But we all know about that. We all noticed how we didn't really see how the borders of frontier Europe were pushed further into the North African desert or east to the former Soviet Republics. We didn't really dwell on the trio of Spain, France and Italy sending their naval vessels to patrol migrant routes not only in the Mediterranean Sea but as far down the west coast of Africa as Senegal. Indeed Spain is responsible for the naval security of Mauritania.
But................
You need some good news and then to put it in context coz this aint about good news.
At present Zapatero's Spain is blocking the Sarkozy proposals as it has already done its best to poo poo his suggestions of a new "Barcelona Declaration" from the Atlas mountains to the Golan heights. Sarko will not use those mechanism to return to Beirut.
But why are they doing this?
At first glance you might think they are as horrified as they say at the wave of hatred unleashed by Berlusconi in the pre-op to these proposals on the Romani and then illegal migrants of Italy. Indeed next close linguistic destination and ferry ports are in the Spanish state. But rather than leave the analysis of their motives at such geopolitical "social liberal capitalist Zapatero" against "free market mafiocracy popularist fascistic Sarkozy and Berlusconi" and thus dwell too much on the connections continental journalists are making (the Spanish right wing who lost the general election in March this year had proposed all 3 points of Sarkozy's wishlist in addition to getting his wholehearted support)......
I'd just like to touch for a fleeting moment on the hidden agenda of implementation, to not split hairs or DNA about it, the covert agenda.
The Italian secret services are still reeling from events which took place during the Iraq war (c/f
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/76223 ) these crises of faith have been exacerbated by rendition and yer man the colonel on the southern side of the frontier in Libya - Ghadaffi. Or if you prefer Qhadaffi. Sarkozy of course really needed to being him to Paris as his first head of state visitor before we even paid enough attention to his bit of totty at Disneyland. To talk about this, that, uranium, Darfur and this and that..,
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3224,36-941157@51-917472,0.html
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3212,36-940890@51-915550,0.html
http://www.liberation.fr/actualite/monde/270170.FR.php
But it's not the Italian's secret service which will throw ( or have thrown) a spanner in the works of Shengen Info Sys. Nope. True to characteristics - it is in fact the ancient hostility between two other national agencies. Co-operation between France and Spain is supposedly quite spiffing with regular high profile ETA arrests. But since January 18th, co-operation on counter terrorism, "Al Qaeda" and "hot" suspects from polyglot "stare at goats ville" has been utterly shite.
That was the weekend when of course 14 suspected Islamist terrorists were arrested in my home town of Barcelona in just a neighbourhood across alledgedly just about to blow the shite out of our metro and then the metro systems of Paris, Berlin and to top it off London's underground, Banksy's graffiti gallery under Waterloo and generally do tippy toppy evil shite all over the shop, from curdling milk to being overly religious. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7197562.stm
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/85869
Oh yes.
Of course it all went back to a French secret service agent who the Spanish guardia civil burnt perhaps because they wanted the headlines of "terror threat" just before the last Spanish general election. ( explored both the Islamic arrests and "terror threat" meme at this article http://www.indymedia.ie/article/85869) Whilst in your United Kollectives neck of the woods your local "whip formula one types" on the Thames, at first denied any plot and then quite typically a week later decided to take the credit for the whole thing.
gurgle.
ribbid.
So we may see at the level of "geopolitical government co-operation in the EU of partner states", Sarkozy's Shengen proposals are a load of unworkable crap. We may also see that at the level of their true implementation (keeping you safe from curdled milk) they don't have a good interlingual human resource foundation. But all the same, real people with real little homes, hopes, talents and needs are going to get even more oppressed than they are as a result of the very proposals going into Sarkozy's EU presidency agenda. His pitch is not at end for Spain or even Italy (who have already done their measures) but for the states of the central and eastern continent. We must stop him.
______________________________________________________________
I propose that "No Borders" is in fact the most important issue in EU political strategy at grassroots, collective and social movement level for the next 10 months.
______________________________________________________________
( last article on this subject which was in a very different tone... well it would be wouldn't it? vary your tone.
"Italy's Romani Purge & Shengen 2's biometric database : a Q&A" 17/5/08 https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/05/399063.html )
(1) Language Enforcement.
I'm a polyglot, a person who can read, write and speak many languages. In the first world I'm supposed to be a sought after human resource because of this. But most people who are polyglots in the first world came here from the third world. They are not currently figuring high on the human resource investment index. Linguistic ability has always been a factor in imigration and migration of workers. The Spanish state which long served as a gateway for Latin American imigrants to Europe's then stronger economies did so because of the language of Cervantes, Che Guevera and Borges. The dispersion of the Romani likewise has much to do with the similarities between their language and that spoken in the state of origin for many doing "the rounds" in Europe - Romania. But the most spoken languages on Earth aside from Spanish and English, (Chinese, Urdu and Russian) do not readily find familial links in European strong economies now. Enforcing linguistic use and setting language attainment for imigrants rather than focussing extra resources on the education of their children is nothing short of cultural imperialism. Let me clarify by using Sarkozy's own France as an example. Her traditional imperialist catchment area for migrants is Francophone Africa. They often are found to speak the language of Rabalais, Zola and Fanon with a charming soft lilt which might almost glove the dropping of names. But within the French state are also found the living languages of Euskera (Basque), Oc (Occitan) and Arabic. So why should a man or woman who is as polyglot as I am, hypothetically speaking 2 dialects of the People's Republic of China Mandarin in addition to any of its 60+ ethnic tongues, or another plausible example who may switch easily from Pashtun, Urdu, Hindi, Farsi to Arabic - and has travelled thousands of kilometres to work on the black market in precarious exploitation have to sit through the horribly dreary study of children's rhymes of "metropolitan and ultra mar France"?
So I hope you agree that enforcing languages in the EU is nothing short of fascistic posturing for cultural hegemony. Irish "gaeilge" which is a close relation to Scots (not the Iriving Welsh kind) is a co-official language of all the states in the geographical totality of the British Isles. As is welsh - (consult your local telephone box) yet more residents and workers in the UK and Republic of Ireland speak Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, Edo, Efik, Ibibio, Annang (the language block of Nigeria and surrounds) at home than either Irish or Scottish gaelic.
Perhaps Sarkozy in addition to flying a now tattered and singed kite in the storm of xenophobia wants to ensure a future European Union of happy workers who speak the local language instead of American English..,
____________________________________________
(2) Integration contracts.
This really is a bundle of crap which may find its roots in the political history of the USA of the early 19th century and the shortlived phenomena of the "know-nothing party" who organised against Roman Catholic immigrants (mostly of Irish or Italian origin) claiming their presence was evidence of a popish plot to overthrow the USA by flooding its cities with "disloyal and non-patriotically committed aliens". Their solutions ranged from the practical "hands on" type you may have seen in the movie "Gangs of New York" to the legalistic formulation of "contracts of loyalty".
Loyal to whom though? To the ideas of the EU? To the ideas of the French Republic? Her Brittanic Majesty's United Crown? the King of the Belgians now cleansed by history of any guilty association with the Congo? the constitutions of Hungary and Slovenia with their mutually territorial antagonisms? The game of Cricket? Eurovision???
Ooops. I forgot to note that the it might be a novel idea for many of our migrant workers to have a contract. In 2004 I found myself with over 1,600 migrants most of whom were of muslim background occupying the cathedral of Barcelona and its church of Pi. The first Zapatero government had offered a "regularisation" to those how could provide proof they worked. I remember a black market opening quicker than a black hole swallows light to provide those with enough money with the contracts they needed to prove they had worked and paid tax. The beautifully serene laundering of monies untraced.
_____________________________________
(3) which brings me to Shengen Information System version 2 - sharing of intelligence, security, border records, biometrics and so on so forth.
At present the Sarkozy strategy seems to be an attempt to push his supposed revival and tweaking of the "Barcelona Declaration" adopted by the EU at the Euro-Mediterranean Conference - 27th-28th November 1995. Without going into too many details that declaration provided for joint development on both sides of the Mediterranean sea which as we know is both sides of the 1st and 3rd world. It also held up some ideas for the Palestinian / Israeli thing. Perhaps I'll go into detail another day. To date the mostly forgotten about declaration has only really seen Italy, France and Spain access cheap hydrocarbons from the Maghreb and outsource migrant detention centres. But we all know about that. We all noticed how we didn't really see how the borders of frontier Europe were pushed further into the North African desert or east to the former Soviet Republics. We didn't really dwell on the trio of Spain, France and Italy sending their naval vessels to patrol migrant routes not only in the Mediterranean Sea but as far down the west coast of Africa as Senegal. Indeed Spain is responsible for the naval security of Mauritania.
But................
You need some good news and then to put it in context coz this aint about good news.
At present Zapatero's Spain is blocking the Sarkozy proposals as it has already done its best to poo poo his suggestions of a new "Barcelona Declaration" from the Atlas mountains to the Golan heights. Sarko will not use those mechanism to return to Beirut.
But why are they doing this?
At first glance you might think they are as horrified as they say at the wave of hatred unleashed by Berlusconi in the pre-op to these proposals on the Romani and then illegal migrants of Italy. Indeed next close linguistic destination and ferry ports are in the Spanish state. But rather than leave the analysis of their motives at such geopolitical "social liberal capitalist Zapatero" against "free market mafiocracy popularist fascistic Sarkozy and Berlusconi" and thus dwell too much on the connections continental journalists are making (the Spanish right wing who lost the general election in March this year had proposed all 3 points of Sarkozy's wishlist in addition to getting his wholehearted support)......
I'd just like to touch for a fleeting moment on the hidden agenda of implementation, to not split hairs or DNA about it, the covert agenda.
The Italian secret services are still reeling from events which took place during the Iraq war (c/f
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/76223 ) these crises of faith have been exacerbated by rendition and yer man the colonel on the southern side of the frontier in Libya - Ghadaffi. Or if you prefer Qhadaffi. Sarkozy of course really needed to being him to Paris as his first head of state visitor before we even paid enough attention to his bit of totty at Disneyland. To talk about this, that, uranium, Darfur and this and that.., http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3224,36-941157@51-917472,0.html http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3212,36-940890@51-915550,0.html http://www.liberation.fr/actualite/monde/270170.FR.php But it's not the Italian's secret service which will throw ( or have thrown) a spanner in the works of Shengen Info Sys. Nope. True to characteristics - it is in fact the ancient hostility between two other national agencies. Co-operation between France and Spain is supposedly quite spiffing with regular high profile ETA arrests. But since January 18th, co-operation on counter terrorism, "Al Qaeda" and "hot" suspects from polyglot "stare at goats ville" has been utterly shite.
That was the weekend when of course 14 suspected Islamist terrorists were arrested in my home town of Barcelona in just a neighbourhood across alledgedly just about to blow the shite out of our metro and then the metro systems of Paris, Berlin and to top it off London's underground, Banksy's graffiti gallery under Waterloo and generally do tippy toppy evil shite all over the shop, from curdling milk to being overly religious.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7197562.stm http://www.indymedia.ie/article/85869 Oh yes.
Of course it all went back to a French secret service agent who the Spanish guardia civil burnt perhaps because they wanted the headlines of "terror threat" just before the last Spanish general election. ( explored both the Islamic arrests and "terror threat" meme at this article
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/85869) Whilst in your United Kollectives neck of the woods your local "whip formula one types" on the Thames, at first denied any plot and then quite typically a week later decided to take the credit for the whole thing. gurgle.
ribbid.
So we may see at the level of "geopolitical government co-operation in the EU of partner states", Sarkozy's Shengen proposals are a load of unworkable crap. We may also see that at the level of their true implementation (keeping you safe from curdled milk) they don't have a good interlingual human resource foundation. But all the same, real people with real little homes, hopes, talents and needs are going to get even more oppressed than they are as a result of the very proposals going into Sarkozy's EU presidency agenda. His pitch is not at end for Spain or even Italy (who have already done their measures) but for the states of the central and eastern continent. We must stop him.
______________________________________________________________
I propose that "No Borders" is in fact the most important issue in EU political strategy at grassroots, collective and social movement level for the next 10 months.
______________________________________________________________
( last article on this subject which was in a very different tone... well it would be wouldn't it? vary your tone.
"Italy's Romani Purge & Shengen 2's biometric database : a Q&A" 17/5/08
https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/05/399063.html )
