A Quote by Boris Johnson
When my father began his work in the 1970s it was a very different EU. I pay tribute to what he did. But it has now become a very different proposition: the United States of Europe.
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In Europe, you have very different situation than you do in the United States. In Europe, it's very segregated. And you have the diasporas in Belgium that I saw. And they're being radicalized because they're not assimilated with the culture. I don't think we have that same situation in the United States.
Nations are an historic reality in Europe. They all have different histories, and they joined the EU at very different times and under widely differing circumstances. I was mayor of Warsaw for three years and always in favor of Poland joining the EU. But I also experienced how we had to implement EU regulations that were completely inappropriate to our situation.
The EU is an alliance that the Americans control, in which the EU of course has a great deal of autonomy, but in which it still is very dependent on the United States, especially militarily, but not only in that respect. So to blame the Germans for everything is an easy way out for some of those suffering in Europe today.
If Turkey become a member of the EU, of course Turks would lose a part of this identity, just as Europe would lose a part of its own. It would also be a different Europe then. Accepting Turkey into the EU is an ambitious political endeavor of historical proportions. Europe would become a strong, multi-religious unit.
Norway has a relationship with the EU which is very close. It has to accept most EU rules. It has to pay EU membership fees. It has free movement of people just like other EU countries, but it's not actually in the EU.
If there ever was a time for a cool, rational and unemotional series of responses on the part of people in Europe, it is now. One reason is that Russia's President Vladimir Putin and Trump are very similar: They are macho types, they are bullies - and they want the same thing: to weaken the EU, albeit for different reasons. Trump, for his part, is a protectionist of the first order, and he wants to make his vision work. He shows no interest in competition with others, but aims to go back to the 1930s.
I've been exploring a lot of different avenues with a number of very different and very, very exciting filmmakers and writers. That's been the trip. I like to find something very, very different from the last thing I did, which might be similar to something I've done before, but as long as it's different from the last thing I did, it keeps me entertained.
Brussels has become inefficient and very bureaucratic, which makes it slow to do things. The concept of the United States of Europe will never work.
If you go to former Yugoslav states, the Balkan states, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Slovenia, the situation is dire. Not to mention Bosnia, which is just run like a colony. The way they used to stand up and sing hymns to President Tito, they now salute the EU flag. It's a very strange transition that we're witnessing in most of Europe, and I don't think it's going to work.
On private transactions, I'll just go very quickly now, a major difference between the United States and Euroland is that in Europe banks are much more important in financial transactions than in the United States.
My father was a typical Irish father. He was a nice, hard working, driven guy. His politics were very conservative and I was just a very different kind of kid to that. I was very shy and bookish.
The threat that ISIL presents and poses to the United States is very different in kind, in type and degree than al Qaeda. ISIL is not your parents' al Qaeda. It's a very different model.
When it comes to music, we live in a very different world than everyone did in the 1960s and 1970s.
My parents had an arranged marriage, as did so many other people when I was growing up. My father came and had a life in the United States one way and my mother had a different one, and I was very aware of those things. I continue to wonder about it, and I will continue to write about it.
We are in an extremely dangerous situation. It was ignorant and ahistorical for Donald Trump to say that the EU will dissolve. He is a man of very little historical understanding. For example, when he accused his own intelligence community of using Nazi tactics against him, he was actually confusing the Nazis with East Germany's secret police, the Stasi. Trump also has no idea that for 70 years, it has been U.S. policy to support those who want to unite Europe. It is very dangerous that he is turning his back on Europe now.
The truth is that we have long had a multi-track Europe with very different objectives. The traditional differences between the north and the south in fiscal and economic policy are far less problematic than those that exist between Eastern and Western Europe. In the south and east, China is steadily gaining more influence, such that a few EU member states no longer dare to make decisions that run counter to Chinese interests. You see it everywhere: China is the only country in the world that has a real geopolitical strategy.
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