Draw Breath

I know lots of people have this up already but it is hilarious. Consider this post to be for my records...

I'm simply astounded at the amount of bullshit being talked about Lisbon, and at the profoundly inept yes campaign's pussyfooting around the shady character (and here and here) of some elements on the no side. Anyway, courtesy of a friend, here are the facts about what Lisbon does. Not opinions, not distortions: facts. Or, given what Stefan points out in the comments (apologies!), here...

Fair dues to United Irelander, who though I do tend to find him annoying at times (which is not necessarily a bad thing), tends to be a generally honest interlocutor. Anyway, he's massively anti-Lisbon but did post a long email interview with Diana Panke at UCD on Lisbon and other matters. Check it out. My only quibble is that the format doesn't give UI an opportunity to reveal whether what Panke has to say makes him change his mind (or if not, why not), but still, this the discursive element in the Irish blogosphere at its best.

There's an interesting spot of research on Libertas over on Indymedia. I haven't chased down the sources myself yet but if what Checkov Feeney says is even a bit accurate he's revealed some pretty fascinating stuff.

Hat tip to John Carroll who I suspect is even more unlikely than I am to be lurking around the Indymedia site...!

Update: Having read the piece more closely, Feeney could do with distinguishing between someone owning a company and being it's CEO (though he's not the only one to get confused on that matter) (see comments below). I've updated this post because while, on the whole, there does seem to be an interesting allegation here (some of the people behind Libertas have made a mint from the shadier activities of the Bush administration and that their campaign coheres with the neocon perspective on Europe) I'm not sure I want to draw conclusions from it.

If there's one lesson that the government will take from the Nice treaty debacle, it's not that they should argue the case for the Lisbon Treaty. After all, with Nice only 8% of voters surveyed declared that they had a good understanding of the Treaty and it can't be much better this time around.

Besides, if they try to argue the facts they will likely end up in a mess. The Treaty is generally an unexiting, obscure and complicated institutional reform so there's nothing inspiring to argue for. More importantly no campaign is hell bent on a misinformation strategy (viz bullshit about article 48 of the treaty, or about corporate taxes etc etc) because they don't have to win the debate (and patently can't on the facts): they simply have to depress turnout. And turnout is the key to understanding why Nice 1 failed: the no vote barely increased from previous referenda but the yes vote collapsed, falling by half from the Amsterdam Treaty.

So what will the Government do, beyond bellowing threats at the electorate? They will run the referendum on the rights of the child on the same day. This element in the strategy was mentioned here, reporting Bertie Ahern's reply to a question by Enda Kenny: "If possible I would like to honour the commitment we made on the children's rights referendum." It's not particularly edifying politics (regarding either Lisbon or the rights of the child) and the politics of ideas it certainly is not, but if the gambit of running multiple referendums achieves its end of producing a high turnout it would be very difficult for the Government to lose.

There has been quite a bit of comment (also here) on Monday's accession of Bulgaria and Romania into the European Union. Of course, this is by no means the end of Europe's expansion process.

And then there's Turkey.

Good to see Bulgaria and Romania joining the EU. Some of the typical foodstuffs which should be more widely available are listed here.

I'm engaged in two simultaneous projects for the day: trying to make sense of an article I'm writing on 'hyperactive regulation' (more on that when I'm finished it) and writing a brief blog post on Turkey and EU expansion.

Anyway, I've just come across a very informative site: the European Country of Origin Information Network. It collates country reports from the UK, the EU and the US as well as reports from NGOs in one handy spot. Very useful!