EU. The beast that no one is really satisfied with at its current state, but also can’t agree on, where to take.

Generally speaking, there are two possibilities being considered:

• Turning EU into a federal nation
• Making it an intergovernmental institution

Of these, one is realistic, and one is ideal.

Some definitions

To set records straight, I find the need to give a definition of both these two possibilities:

Federal

Being federal means that the nation (in lack of better general term) is divided into smaller states, that decide some matters on their own, but also have a united government, that makes decisions on some matters, concerning the entire nation.

Examples of federal states are Germany, USA and Switzerland.

Intergovernmental

In an intergovernmental collaboration, members retain their sovereignty, and have the last words on all matters. Decisions can only be made with total unity, giving every part veto.

Examples of federal institutions are the UN and many charity organisations.

The current state of EU

EU is currently a very unique institution, as it’s neither supranational nor intergovernmental. There are many decisions made in EU, that the nations are then forced to implement, and as such, EU seems quite supranational. But the nations have veto on a lot of subjects, leaning it toward an intergovernmental collaboration. EU is everything and nothing, and this is what frustrates everyone concerned with it.

EU as a federal nation

When EU was first discussed, after the end of World War II, Winston Churchill described his visions as a “United States of Europe”. (It is worth noting, that he didn’t think the United Kingdom would participate, given their strong relations with USA, and their general conception of themselves as not being part of Europe.) So clearly, this was meant to be a federal nation.

The most important intent was to create a interdependence between the European nations. If their economic stabilities were dependent on the well-being of all the others’, they would be less inclined to go to war with each other, was the — admittedly clever — rationale.

The first step was to create the Coal and Steel Community. The reason these two materials were selected to form a union about, is quite obvious: they were vital for the societies, and they were especially important in the creation of weapons. The Coal and Steel Community was formed by West Germany, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy and the Netherlands.

Later on, many more countries joined what later became the European Communities, and then, the European Union. They never (as of this writing, anyway) became “United States of Europe”.

There are many possible reasons why there never came the great Union that was initially proposed, the main one probably being difference. The motto of EU is In varietate concordia (United in diversity), and boy, is that a fitting description. The main thing that’s blocking the creation of a supranational, is that Europeans can’t seem to agree on anything. Therefore, many nations want to retain their sovereignty, so they are not forced into accepting decisions they don’t agree with. And sovereignty doesn’t really go well with supranational.

EU as an intergovernmental institution

The other proposal is to make EU an intergovernmental organisation, thereby reducing the power EU has on decisions, and making it a more voluntary institution.

This has a low level of commitment, thus making it rather attractive. You’re not obligating yourself to anything, which makes it easier to accept it. Retaining sovereignty is generally considered a good thing amongst most.

Intergovernmentalism is a more pragmatic solution, and anyone’s only committed to what they can accept.

Good and bad

As with most things in the world, there are pros and cons with both of these.

In order to let EU progress, I personally feel the need to make it a federal nation. It was the idea from the start, and I believe that for EU to have any justification, it needs the ability to govern on some crucial topics, like economy and foreign policy.

That being said, I am not personally a fan of this idea; I believe in national sovereignty, and a supranational EU would seriously compromise this. However, I feel that, would the intergovernmental model be chosen, EU would be obsolete — there are plenty of entities for discussing models, and EU would become just another one.

I therefore support the idea of dissolving EU. EU is a pipe dream, and one of another time than now. While it is arguable that EU prevented the European nations of entering another intereuropean war, I doubt anyone really thinks that a German-French war (or similar) is realistic — EURO or not, they are interdependent anyway.

I don’t think Europe needs to speak with a single voice; it wouldn’t be a unified voice anyway, as Europeans don’t agree, and I don’t see the point — USA and China might trump the single European nations, but it doesn’t make sense either, to have a single voice, when those participating don’t agree.

I see the incentive to create a union in a time of instability, but those are times long gone, we need to realise that EU is dead.

Will EU dissolve? I don’t think so. Too many people want it to succeed to let it die. But I do think that EU will remain a useless bureaucratic beast that doesn’t really matter, due to its internal differences.

There’s no such thing as paranoia;
It’s always twice as bad as it seems.

Some even self-destruct in the name of something they can’t see.

Det kan godt være man ikke snakker pænt i proletarstræde,
men jeg er ikke på denne jord for at gøre din mor og far glad.

Why is it Apple keep releasing updates to iTunes, mostly regarding ringtones as far as I can see. Is it really that difficult? Makes is even worse for me personally, that I have no use of this ringtone function.

I’ll sell your memories, for 15 pounds per year.

How come “short” is longer than “long”?

It has been said, by many people on many occasions, that the most important part of a blog is in fact the comments. That the conversation is far more important than the entry itself.

I believe conversation to be very important; in that aspect I have been taught to be a good democrat. So, it’s not that I am against conversation per se, but the current format of blog comments is useless and demeaning to the commenter.

In all honesty, I must admit, that the reason I quit comments at first was due to laziness. I had made a redesign, and when I got to the comments, I just decided not to — I didn’t receive any comments anyway, and then, when I considered it further, I got to all these points:

I find your comment important, but it is secondary to my very important post

The fact that comments have been hyped as even more important than the starting post is not supported in any way, by the way comments are displayed. They are displayed after the entry; this is in itself not demeaning, given that it makes total sense for the item being commented on, to be displayed, before the comment is. But on a general note — some are better at avoiding this than others — the comments are displayed as having less important than the entry; they often have less space than the main entry, we use a smaller font size to represent key data, and the beat goes on. All in all, they’re displayed less.

I want you to comment, but not too much

In extension to not being displayed with very much space, an often just as a list item, the boxes in which to write entries, are often small as well. James Bennett said it best (unintentionally, of course) in his post, “ORM Wars”:

[U]nfortunately [Adam Gomaa’s] comment form is a bit too small to contain it all, so I’ll ramble about it here where I’ve got essentially unlimited space

Notice that James himself has got comments on his blog, which makes this even more peculiar.

We appreciate and embrace these comments, but we don’t expect them to have a life on their own, and they need to fit nicely in the limited space we offer them. No, we don’t exactly put maxlength attributes on the boxes, but making sense of a small textarea, containing more text than a couple of additional lines to when the scroll-bar appears, is not very easy at all.

I love your comments, but I don’t really trust you

Even if you manage to fit your clever comment in the text-field offered to you, there’s another step that can affect your comment: moderation. Now, there are many kinds of moderation, often applied in multiples:

• Sanitation of content (removing HTML, changing it to its entities, etc.)
• Checking for profanity and other indicators of spam
• Letting the author decide whether or not the comment shows up.

I am not saying that these steps are bad; I am all too aware of the risks of spam destroying everything. I am just saying, that if we don’t trust those entering data enough to let them, why are we? Furthermore, we apply all sorts of rel="nofollow" magic, as not to be gamed — essentially because we don’t trust our commenters.

So, genius, what do you suggest instead?

Ah yes, solutions. Well, methinks the solution is self-explanatory — Bennett even showed us how — comment from your blog. Most people who comment on blogs have blogs of their own. And it might help all those “You’re right”-comments.

There are plenty of ways to keep track of comments that don’t go in a comment form —- (track|ping)back and the likes of techmeme and Technorati. So we don’t even need traditional blog comments to have a conversation. Just write and link; it’s that simple.

I generally prefer English over Danish, in its lingual construction. I find the use of genders in languages unnecessary, and there are other nice things about English.

But it’s not perfect. One of the aspects of it I don’t like (which also appears in Spanish) is the use of divine intervention on sneezing. “[God] bless you” and “Jesús” in Spanish. In Danish, we use the Latin “prosit”, also known in English, as a salute when drinking. This simply means “may it benefit”, a rather neutral, yet meaningful saying, stripped of religion. The way it should be.

E-F-F-E-C-T
I’m a smooth operator, operating correctly.