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KIDS REJECT EU
The Telegraph’s Daniel Hannan reviews the European Union’s history of child propaganda:
Who can forget Let’s Draw Europe Together, in which young readers are invited to colour in such phrases as “Europe - my country”? For older children, there is Captain Euro, a square-jawed superhero whose mission “to uphold the EU’s values” brings him into conflict with the villainous - and for some reason Jewish-looking - Dr D. Vider, who plots “to divide Europe and create his own empire”.
My favourite is Troubled Waters, possibly the silliest thing ever published by the EU. Troubled Waters is a Tintin-style cartoon strip - except that, in place of the drippy Belgian reporter, we get a sexy MEP as the heroine. Among the lines of dialogue are: “You can laugh! Wait until you’ve seen my amendments to the commission proposal!” and, “I seem to spend my whole life on the train between Brussels and Strasbourg, but I’d hate to have to choose between mussels and chips and Strasbourg onion tart!”
Incredibly, the EU’s youth-friendly campaign (“Wait until you’ve seen my amendments to the commission proposal!”) hasn’t worked:
You’d have thought that, what with all the propaganda being lobbed their way, young people would be better disposed towards European integration than their elders. You’d be wrong.
Read on for details.
I don’t know if it was shown in Australia but Captain Planet was, in my mind, the absolute worst “eat your spinach” propaganda I ever saw. Granted it was not aimed at my demographic but nieces and nephews, cousins, and neighbors in that age range all assured me it sucked big time.
I’m trying to think of potential plotlines for Captain Euro, how about a French farmer who depends on his livlihood by claiming European subsidies for hundreds of imaginary Chickens and several hypothetical acres of Corn is threatened when Dr D Vider demands evidence that they actually exist. He summons Captain Euro who defeats Dr D Vider by having the auditors go on strike and then helps the farmer claim yet more money for 3000 theoretical cows.
#1
The EU is a disaster. Recommended: Christoper Booker’s ‘Notebook’ in The Telegraph, every weekend.
I totally agree. I have a casual interest in matters over there because originally I came from that neck of the woods. But it is a disaster and a disaster for many other people around the world as the EU exports (imposes) its mad edicts on others.
I recommend Christopher Booker’s and Richard North’s book “The Great Deception - Can the European Union survive?” It’s compelling reading and the deception by so many poliicians and bureaucrats that has gone on for so long almost beggars belief.
I’d also recommend Richard North’s Blog which covers many subjects about the EU so well. He covers a difficult and frustrating subject with much grace and good humour.
Iread the first one….god help me. THAT is meant to inform AND entertain?
Boring, boring, deeply,hugely, mind numbingly, stupidly, analy boring.
Im off to get a ticket to europe just so I can dump a few broken thermometers in some rivers.
Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2006 08 05 at 04:52 AM • permalinkSo what were the amendments to the commision proposal?. I’m guessing they involve craven submission to a certain religion.
Posted by Daniel San on 2006 08 05 at 04:54 AM • permalinkId mock it but anything other than what they have put on their own website makes it all rendundant.
Captain Euro
“To use, wherever possible, intellect, culture and logic - not violence - to take control of difficult criminal situations.” Captain Euro is a diplomatic hero - the symbol of European unity and values.”At which point the bad guy shoots him in the face and urinates on his twitching body.
Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2006 08 05 at 05:20 AM • permalinkYet my Europhile friends genuinely believe that all they need is better information. These “No” voters, they tell me, are suffering from false consciousness. If only they could be brought to see their own interests, they would vote in their millions for closer union. All it takes is a little more money.
I seem to have read this argument somewhere before. Now let me see….
What is it with lefties anyway. When their proposals are resoundingly defeated, it is always because us proles just don’t understand how good it all is. We just need more information. There isn’t enough money in the world for the kind of PR they need.
They are always boring. They rule by boring you to death.
The worst is that these petty bureaucrats actually believe their own drivel. They honestly believe that it is all for our own good, and cannot understand why we don’t just turn our brains over to them, and let them tell us how much curve a banana is allowed to have before we may even think of buying it.
And nothing ever seems to turn them from their appointed rounds: not high unemployment, not riots in the streets, not obvious corruption, starving third-worlders, nor abandoned refridgerators. When you’re right, you’re right, and to hell with little things like wasted lives and dead bodies.
Thanks for the recommendations and links.
the EU certainly is a disaster, but like all marxist style top down mega bureacracys it will collapse due to its own inner contradictions and the dual hammer blows of the free market and islam, these will pull it apart as sure as night follows day, and when we survey the wreckage the day after the implosion, like communism we will wonder how the hell this ridiculous folly ever came to be, and it will be just one more chapter in the continents seemingly endless decline into global irrelevance. For the dead head political class of europe these multinational institutions are the only ticket to the top table, they know that without the EU/UN seal of approval they would find it impossible to make there voices heard in any forum on any topic, the EU is just a vehicle for the conceit of declining european states that they are still a voice in world affairs, when the truth is nobody who matters gives a s**t what they say, think or do.
You’d have thought that, what with all the propaganda being lobbed their way, young people would be better disposed towards European integration than their elders. You’d be wrong.
Back to the re-education camps for these youngsters then…
Posted by Art Vandelay on 2006 08 05 at 08:06 AM • permalinkI noticed this veiled reference to Kofi and his oil-for-food son Kojo in Dr. D. Vider’s profile:
He manages a holding company, DIVIDEX, controlling hundreds of different businesses across Europe and beyond. His son and only family, Junior, helps him in his quest for power. His ambition for his son sometimes clouds his judgment.
I think they should have gone with their real names. Kofi and Kojo are cooler sounding names for evil villains that use a GLOBAL TOURING CIRCUS (a better description of the UN I haven’t heard) for cover than D. Vider and Junior.
Again. Beyond parody.
Captain Euro’s uniform looks like one of the EU peacekeepers sent into Bosnia when Jacques Delors declared “this shall be the hour of Europe”. The Bosnians called them ice-cream men.
Posted by Oafish and Infantile on 2006 08 05 at 09:09 AM • permalinkThis must be a Rovian plot! Why else would the “good guys” wear boring uniforms and spout mind-numbing gibberish while a typical bad guy, “is always crisply dressed in immaculate Saville Row of London suits and he drives the sportiest European cars.”
If I were a teenager I’d know which side I’d identify with.
Posted by Bruce Rheinstein on 2006 08 05 at 09:38 AM • permalinkAll you had to do to realize the EU was ultimately doomed was look at the kind of people elected MEP’s…
If the UK is any indication, it’s everyone who couldn’t get elected dog-catcher in their native country…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 08 05 at 09:54 AM • permalink“Wait until you’ve seen my amendments to the commission proposal!”
But I thought Europe got a unified constitution about 9 months after they were liberated? Oh, sorry, that was Iraq. BTW, isn’t DIVIDEX a division of Halliburton?
Posted by andycanuck on 2006 08 05 at 10:06 AM • permalink“isn’t DIVIDEX a division of Halliburton?”
According to Find it in Canada, they’re in the “Adult Entertainment Products Services” business.
Evil Canadians strike again!
Posted by Bruce Rheinstein on 2006 08 05 at 10:17 AM • permalinkThe dialogue must have been written by a French-speaking bureaucrat in Strasbourg:
Foxy blonde professor: The poor old man’s flesh is being eaten away. What ever has he uncovered?
Redhead woman: “Look what he was uncovering!”
Gotta hand it to those leftist indoctrination squads; I wouldn’t have thought it possible to have two “uncovering"s in such a short exchange!
Could someone who watched through the whole thing—hopefully no one—let me know what the spiders were about? We’re not looking at a Spider Man rip-off are we?
The “Captain Euro” site is almost exclusively in English. The only exception I saw was on the title page, where a rotating banner brings up “Europe’s Superhero” in various languages. I couldn’t find similar web sites in other languages.
Since the EU has twenty odd official languages (yeah, Wikipedia, grab a salt shaker) including English, I detect very focused audience targeting here, i.e., English speaking countries.
Either that, or English is the common language of European children.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 08 05 at 11:07 AM • permalinkI’m waiting for Zippy to go to the EU. Bill Griffith, make it happen.
Wow, young people hate propaganda being pushed on them by authority figures. Die of shock.
What’s really funny about all this is that when they were kids the creators of this flavorless oatmeal obviously resented the ideals pushed on them by their own parents and other authority figures—ideals such as patriotism, nationalism, religion, the class system, respect for the king/queen/whoever, conformity to tradition, and so on, that were characteristic of old Europe. Their disgust was always expressed as a dislike for propaganda, but as it turns out, it really was after all simply a dislike for the ideas, not the methods. It seems that the same insulting, talk-down-to-the-kiddies games are okay when the “good guys” (you and your peers, Mr. Euroman) are doing it.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 08 05 at 11:36 AM • permalinkIt was the hottest day of the year. I looked out of my office window and saw a dog chasing a squirrel and they were both walking. I took a dixie cup from the dispenser and turned to pour myself a short cold one from the water cooler, when I heard a light, almost timid rapping on the opaque glass of my office door. I issued my usual gracious invitation.
“Yeah?”
The door opened and she stepped in. She was a brunette with eyes like expertly cut amethyst and skin the color of caramel and her second story was loosely wrapped in an ultra-sheer black blouse that made her breasts look like two golden brown loaves of french bread glimpsed through the smoked glass of an oven door. I was speechless. And not just because I had swallowed my dixie cup. It was the EU gal. But not the badly-drawn, two-dimensional figure from the comic book; this was the genuine three-dimensional thing, very much in the flesh - about 125 lucious pounds of it.
“Ah! You are Monsieur Paqeau, the famous American detecteeve, no?”
I choked down the dixie cup and managed a reply. “Yes, ma’am”.
Oh, Monsieur Paqeau! We are having the major crisis in Europe because the yutes, they are not taking the European Union seriously! What can we do?”
“Lady, in this age of IPods, DVD’s and special effects, the average kid is going to find a comic book about as interesting as the U.S. tax code. Make a movie, throw in some mutants, some aliens and a killer sound track - American music, mind you, none of that lame French ballad crap - and you’ll get their attention. Case solved. That’ll be a hundred euros”.
She beamed. “Oh, merci, Monsieur Paqeau! By the way, the cabs, they are so hard to . . . how do you say, “flag down”? Would you be so kind as to take me back to my hotel?”
Sure thing, ma’am. Wait downstairs by the entrance and I’ll get my car from the garage and swing around front. You can’t miss it: it’s a canary-yellow, 1938 Packard roadster. And say, have you had lunch yet? I know this great little continental place around the corner, and for some reason I’ve got this real craving for french bread.”
...her second story was loosely wrapped in an ultra-sheer black blouse that made her breasts look like two golden brown loaves of french bread…
LMAO, Paco! But I need to know….does that french bread come with or without garlic?
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 08 05 at 12:34 PM • permalinkIf I were a teenager I’d know which side I’d identify with.
Yes, and that’s why you must be
brainwashedconditionededucated to understand that since only the few are able to own Saville suits and sporty cars, equity requires that no one have them. Except for the bureaucrats. Expensive suits and cars are accoutrement necessary to the proper performance of their duties.Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2006 08 05 at 03:45 PM • permalinkKyda, you obviously just don’t understand and need things explained further to you. The governing elite carry such a burden. They have the responsibility to think for everybody. How could we begrudge them their little comforts, eh? You know, like Goring and his art. When the onus to feed all the dear little children is on your back, you must have a decent environment and nourishment, and not have to worry about whether your old car will work or not when you turn the key.
And there is nothing wrong making sure our family members also have jobs. That way those who have the greatest responsibilities don’t have to fret about their families. Plus, the next generation of governors must be trained and we like to start at an early age so they may serve society with the greatest knowledge and experience.
Everything they do is in order to serve us all and if we can’t appreciate that then we’ll raise your taxes.
So since we haven’t heard anything about the hole in the ozone layer for a considerable time, is Captain Euro going to claim responsibility for its closure?
Posted by Tarquin Wombat-Carruthers on 2006 08 05 at 08:14 PM • permalinkLook at Mala, one of the Captain Euro ‘Baddies’. Forget Dr Divider - the Eurosceptics should put her on a t-shirt.
I remember first seeing Captain Euro back in 1998 - and it seems almost totally unchanged since then, which must be some kind of record.
Posted by David Morgan on 2006 08 06 at 04:04 AM • permalinkAnd here I thought Captain Euro was a satire, invented by a RWDB, of Euro wimpishness and appeasement. It just goes to show how the world is becoming impossible to satirize. Swift would be in despair.
Posted by Michael Lonie on 2006 08 06 at 08:50 PM • permalink
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The EU is a disaster. Recommended: Christoper Booker’s ‘Notebook’ in The Telegraph, every weekend. The crazy rules and regulations he exposes every week are horrifying. Why Britain got involved in this French/German farce is beyond belief.
A simple example: The EU banned the sale of second-hand refrigerators to Africa, where they were once gratefully received. Can’t export CFCs to the third world! Have to pay a whacking fee to have them environmentally disposed of. Inevitable result: Mountains of abandoned fridges across the UK, quietly dumped in the dead of night.