Archive for June, 2006

EU Integration: Whose Integration?

Sunday, June 11th, 2006
It
is interesting to see how on its more than one decade year old, the
European Union still finds it hard, or I might say ‘struggling’, with
the concept of “widening vs. deepening”. This is the real dilemma that
the EU still has to face.
Meanwhile
it wants to be somewhat “United States of Europe” by expanding its
membership from 6 to 10 to 15 and now 25, the harder to create one
common position, especially on the highly political issues. Iraqi’s
war, referrendum of Constitution, and the latest Iranian Nuclear issues
prove it all.
The
theory said that we cannot separate Foreign Policy from Security
Policy. Basically foreign policy is created to secure national
interests, and the security policy is created to defend national
interests from “foreign attack”. That’s the main idea behind the
creation of CFSP. The appointment of Dr. Solana as the EU’s ‘Foreign
Minister’ showed us how the EU wants to play its role in the global
fora as the counter-balance to US hegemony by creating the foreign and
security policy decision-making institution. But EU forgot that, behind
its vast structure, lies 25 member countries, 25 different national
interests, 400 millions different people with their own comfort zones.
For example, France is best known as the loyal supporter of the
European integration, but not the Frenchmen. The referrendum proved it.

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Travelling Without Moving

Sunday, June 11th, 2006

The
title of this article, Travelling Without Moving, was taken from the
Jamiroquai’s album released in 1996. Why I choose this phrase as the
title of my new article? Here’s the story.

 

 

 

One
fine day, like usual, I was trapped in the middle of long line of cars
somewhere in Jakarta, and I’ve got nothing to do about it, so I
listened to the radio and there was a phone conversation between the
announcer and a lady. The topic is about memorable places that you’ve
experienced.

 

 

 

I
didn’t notice nor follow all the conversation, but then the announcer
asked the lady, “So, what is your hobby?”. The lady on the other side
answered, “Travelling”. “Really? You mean to the exotic places, like
those backpackers?”, said the announcer.

 

“Hmmm, not really. I like to go to the shopping mall or just hanging out with my colleagues afterwork on Friday night”.

 

 

 

What
the…? Travelling and window shopping are two different things!!
Travelling in this context means that you have to make a journey, a
quite long one, to find new experience. I’m not talking about making an
80 kilometres journey a day to catch your workplace. That’s what I do
everyday, and still I didn’t call myself a “traveller”! How come she
can call herself “traveller” if all she can do is just walking three
hundred metres around the corner of her office to buy a cold cup of
mocca frappucino in Starbucks and spend her salary on Mango sack dress?

 

 

 

It’s
not that I don’t like that kind of lifestyle. I watch movies at cinema
once a week, buy Rockport shoes because they just fit my feet, and wear
Oakley glasses to protect my eyes from that harmful uv light. But I
will not consider myself as a “traveller” if I never been to Poso Lake,
watch people from Nias Island jump over a 2,5 m rock lively, take
pictures next to the skulls of the dead in Torajanese graveyard –or
gravecave, and feed the orang-utans in Bukit Barisan mountain directly
from my own hands.

 

 

 

That’s
the problem of today’s people. The hectic citylife, the consumerism
that all the TV stations offer, and misleading in basic education
teaching system lead us to become a “one place” person, a person who
doesn’t have the curiosity of Indonesia’s cultural differences, a
person who always thinks that pizza is much tastier than blakutak (I
bet not many people know what “blakutak” is), and a person who doesn’t
even know on what island Gorontalo is.

http://an69a.blogspot.com

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