UW:-The last part of this post is the most interesting- Frank
What percentage of the millions of Muslims in France and Holland voted against that constitution?
Were they the swing vote?
I suspect that.
Does anyone believe the Muslims would vote for a united and cooperative, Judeo-Christian alliance of all Western European countries?
Has MSM ever heard of divide and conquer?
Let's see what we can find out.
According to the Ipsos polling agency, 70 percent of farmers voted no, despite the fact that France is the largest recipient of European Union farm subsidies - $11.7 billion euros in 2004, or one-fifth of the Union's agricultural budget.
Public-sector and blue-collar workers and the unemployed, all low-pay groups vulnerable in a country with more than 10 percent unemployment, voted no by large margins, between 60 and 79 percent.
Although most of the Socialist Party hierarchy lobbied in favor of the constitution, 56 percent of Socialist voters rejected it. On the political extremes, 98 percent of the Communist Party and 93 percent of the extreme right National Front voted no.
Paris and Lyon, France's two biggest cities, and pro-European regions like Alsace, Brittany and the Loire Valley voted yes, while rural France and smaller cities and towns voted no. Most surprisingly, 55 percent of young people from the ages of 18 to 25 rejected the constitution, underscoring the lack of trust in the future of France.
nytimes.com
This map suggests that whatever the muslim vote may have been the referendum was going down to defeat:
patrickruffini.com
Ruffini's accompanying article is interesting:
The French are not immune to a good ribbing in these parts now and then, but the results of the French referendum on sovereignty even have Bill Kristol singing "Vive la France!"
The similarities between last November's election result and the French referendum result are also worth remarking upon, and I have produced a map that illustrates this. Many have already linked to this map posted on Power Line showing the red/blue divide; this map goes one better by highlighting the actual winning "Non" percentage in each area. I found the full data on the UMP party web site.
Of course, you've got the splotches of blue in a sea of red (Paris & Lyon, vice New York and San Francisco), and you've also got the anomalous blue region (Brittany, in the northwest, somewhat similar to New England). I haven't had time to delve into the regional divides too closely, but note that the most emphatic "Non" came from the northeast, which bore the full brunt of the Fuhrer's advance.
Kristol also makes this analogy, which makes a lot of sense at face value:
For Americans to grasp the character of the moment, it helps to think back to the early 1990s. Think of the collapse of New York city under David Dinkins and of liberal urban policies generally. Think of the House banking scandal, and the out-of-touch first Bush administration, and the Democratic party's ritualistic liberalism. Then think of 1992: The Perot phenomenon was akin to the revolt against the E.U. constitution--noisy, confused, but not meaningless.
The good news for America is that the discontent of the early 1990s produced a Rudy Giuliani to govern New York, a Bill Clinton to (temporarily) redefine the Democratic party, and a Newt Gingrich to revitalize the Republicans. In Europe today, there are signs of Clinton-Giuliani-Gingrich-ism in the rise of Nicolas Sarkozy in France, and of some fresh-thinking young (dare I call them) neoconservatives and neoliberals throughout Europe.
But so far the fresh thinkers haven't been able to break through. It is as if it were in 1996, and there had been no Clintonian redefinition of the Democrats, and Bob Michel were still leading the House Republicans, and there had been no Giuliani mayoralty in New York, and no welfare reform from Congress, and no American intervention in Bosnia--and the alternative news media were still in their infancy, and no academic counterculture had emerged. That's Europe today.
It's certainly the case that from 1965 to 1994, America suffered from a democratic deficit with regard to the Great Society; for most of that time, we elected Presidents who ostensibly stood for less intrusive government, but the welfare-on-demand culture became ever more entrenched. Europe suffers from a democratic deficit vis a vis the EU; even when European publics do favor integration, it's not very passionately, and that's a flimsy basis for as weighty a decision as surrendering national sovereignty. Underlying this is the elites' fabulist conceit that nationalism, and not dictatorship, causes war, and that all of Europe will once again be Auschwitz without the EU. But politically, you can't build a paradigm shift upon a claim that rings hollow to most people. Looking to history, is there one example of a supranational institution or agreement that has successfully kept the peace over the long haul? Not the Metternich system, which had its fair share of breakdowns even before World War I. Not the League of Nations. And definitely not the U.N. The only geopolitical sure thing there is that democracies never make war on one another. Seen in this light, President Bush's focus on expanding democracy seems a lot more "reality based" than European elites' insistence upon constructing a protectionist EU bloc.
Sooner or later, European integration will out-run the lukewarm public enthusiasm for it, and the consequences for the political class won't be pretty. A small harbinger was seen in last month's U.K. results , where anti-Europe parties like the UK Independence Party continued to grow their support. One hopes that that moment has arrived with the French and (likely) Dutch one-two punch against the European constitution.
patrickruffini.com
Here is an analysis by a jewish organization which says there was no coherent muslim vote:
eurojewcong.org
The French Reject the European Union Constitution
On May 29th, by a majority of nearly 55%, the French rejected the proposed EU-Constitution. Prime Minister
Jean-Pierre Raffarin was expected to resign the following day and a new reshuffled Cabinet could be named by
President Jacques Chirac on Tuesday. A brief analysis of the vote shows that, despite the strong mobilization of
the Muslim organizations, some in favour of the Treaty, others against, there is no such thing as a Muslim vote.
The fundamentalist Union des Organisations Islamiques de France (close to the Muslim Brotherhood) and the
influential Strasbourg-based leader of the Collectif contre l’Islamophobie, Dr.Thomas Milcent, called their
followers to approve the Treaty. On the opposite side, the Collectif des Musulmans de France (CMF), which
follows the Swiss philosopher Tariq Ramadan, supported the “No” vote. But all failed to deliver votes to their
respective camp. This is best shown by the results in the city of Roubaix, in Northern France, which is a
stronghold of the CMF, and where the “No” vote polled less than the average in the “d.partment du Nord”,
where the city is located. In most cities of the suburbs of Paris where many of the anti-Semitic incidents occurred
over the last few years, the “No” vote had an overwhelming majority, despite the large following of the UOIF.
One could see there a proof of the growing influence of Ramadan’s network, but it is to be reminded that those
cities are also working-class and Communist strongholds, thus explaining the “No” vote for the most part. In the
predominantly Muslim areas of Marseille, where the fundamentalist influence is growing, the “No”vote is well
over 75%, and this despite the fact that Abdallah Ben Mansour, an hardline UOIF leader, called Muslims to vote
“Yes” during the Union’s annual regional convention on May 15th.
Another interesting fact is that the “No” vote won even in those rural areas of France where the extreme-right
Front National of Jean-Marie Le Pen usually polls its worst results. In the two small or medium-sized cities
where the Mayor belongs to FN, that is Chauffailles in Burgundy, and Orange in the Provence, the “No” vote
polls less than the average of the “d.partment” where those cities are located. Le Pen’s Front National stood for
the “No” vote.
Finally, it should be noted that the “No” vote wins even in those cities with a large Jewish population. It polls
62,51% in Sarcelles, a northern suburb of Paris and 54,65% in Cr.teil, south-east of Paris, which are the two
biggest Jewish communities in the Paris area. Once again, it proves true that, in the case of both Muslims and
Jews, national organizations do not have a say in the voters choice, and that the choice is a matter of social and
economic status rather than ethnic or religious affiliation.
Jean-Yves Camus. |
