(单词翻译:单击)
5.Economic Stagnation
5.经济停滞
Hey kids of Europe, remember how for the last 15 years you've been out of work? Guess what! You're still screwed.
嗨,欧洲的年轻人,记得吗,你们至少已经失业了15年。猜猜怎么样?这种情况还将持续下去。
If you have a degree, your chances of finding work have gotten worse in the last 15 years. We were shoveled into degrees we didn't care about to learn skills that weren't needed and to massage unemployment figures that didn't represent reality. No wonder the Greeks are revolting.
如果你有文凭,最近的15年里你的境遇变得更差了。我们不需要成堆的文凭他,它们对降低失业率一点帮助都没有,而且这些数字并不代表了事实。难怪希腊会发生动乱。
Not like that, you racist. We mean that 67 percent of young people are willing to overthrow the government in Greece. That kind of revolting.
你不这么做你就是种族主义者。我们了解到在希腊67%的年轻人愿意通过动乱的方式推翻政府。
4.Islamic Terrorism And The Far Right
4.伊斯兰恐怖主义和极右派
It's not nice to confront this issue. The refusal of Liberals to engage with The Religion of Peace's European Tour contributed to this whole Marine Le Pen problem. France is a pretty good example. In the French Presidential Elections, we have a centrist Tony Blair clone in Macron who doesn't seem to stand for anything in particular and would like to simply move migrants off his land. He's going up against a Le Pen. Marine's father, Jean-Marie, was quite the nutter by all accounts, and while Marine has remodeled and reconditioned her party she remains a nationalist—not traditionally a popular position in France.
这是一个不好面对的问题。对于民主自由的拒绝和欧洲宗教和平直接导致了玛丽娜勒庞问题,法国是一个极佳的例子。在法国总统选举期间,我们有一个中立派犹如托尼布莱尔克隆的候选人—马克龙。他没有任何极端主张并且想要解决移民问题。他的对立竞争对手玛丽娜勒庞的父亲让玛丽,从各个层面上来说都是极端主义者,而玛丽娜正在重新塑造和重新调整她的政,她仍然是一个民主主义者,在法国的政界并非是一个受欢迎的党派。
Under normal circumstances, we would expect to see a decent showing in the French elections by the socialists. These are not normal circumstances. Hamon and Melenchon were drubbed because their base, traditionally the working classes, has swung away to the right after more than 200 deaths at the hands of Islamic terrorists in two years. In these times, failure to address the problem of Islamic terrorism in Europe hands the initiative to the politicians who understand the public mood: The Far Right. There now is a decent chance that Le Pen will take the presidency, and the left only has themselves to blame. As more terrorism occurs, the political winds will blow all the stronger in favor of Populist Nationalism.
在通常情况下,我们希望在选举中社会党的支持率下降。现在是非常时期,哈蒙和梅朗雄由于支持率低已经被淘汰出局。由于近两年伊斯兰恐怖分子已经造成了200人以上的伤亡,传统的法国工人阶层正在向右派靠拢。在这种时候,不能解决欧洲的伊斯兰恐怖主义问题使得一些了解民众情绪的政治家掌握了主动,他们就是极右派政党。勒庞极有可能当选总统,其他人只能怪自己了。越多的恐怖事件,更多的政治风向就会吹向支持民主主义。
3.The Currency Is A Dead Weight And The Union Is The Sick Man Of The Global Economy
3.欧元是一种重负,欧盟经济于全球经济而言已病入膏肓
A few years back, when Greece flipped the tables and went into complete meltdown, the new government was elected on a mandate of sticking it to the European Central Bank. They failed utterly, were brought to heel, and lumbered with such an insurmountable debt it looks like even now, seven years later, that the only way Greece will be in the black is if the entire Union collapses.
几年之前,当希腊经济危机开始的时候,当时的政府人为锁定欧洲中央银行的利率。他们彻底失败了,这个行为导致了希腊债务危机,即使7年之后的今天来看,希腊要恢复财政结余的唯一方法就是欧盟解体。
Fortunately for fans of apocalyptic doomsday scenarios, that might just happen. The Euro itself, spread over so many different economies and yet intrinsically linked has led to a bizarre shackling of both strong and weak nations. Tied together by an artificial monetary standard, Germany is in the same leaky boat as Greece, Portugal, and Ireland. Meanwhile, the Tiger Economies of the Far East leave Europe choking on red tape, far behind and off the pace.
欧盟将太多的经济体联系在一起,本质上就是把经济强国和弱国捆绑在一起,使用统一的货币标准,这样德国和希腊就在一条破船上,葡萄牙和爱尔兰也同样如此。同时,东方快速的经济发展远远将欧洲甩在身后。
2.The Mission Of The EU Has Been Completed
2.欧盟的任务已经完结
The entire point of the European Union (and the various trading agreements that preceded it) was to see if there was some manner in which the French and the Germans could be persuaded to stop killing each other for a while. It was a roaring success. In the grand scheme of things, the Nobel Prize for Peace might be a small reward. The Gauls and the Germans have been successfully murdering and pillaging since before the time of Jesus, if Julius Caesar is to be believed.
整个欧盟的使命是能让法国和德国站在同一条战线上。(大量的交易合约都建立在这个基础上)在这个目的上已经大获成功,发给欧盟诺贝尔和平奖也只能算是小小的奖励。如果尤利乌斯凯撒同意的话,我们可以说高卢人和日耳曼民族的互相掠夺和谋杀从耶稣时代就开始了。
We also mustn't forget that for the latter half of the 20th century, the French and Germans had to get along or else the Commies in Moscow would just ruin everything and no one would have any iPads today. So that's good.
我们也不会忘记在20世纪后半叶,法国和德国联合起来共同对抗俄国,否则莫斯科的共产主义可能会毁灭一切。所以欧盟还是完成了使命。
Nowadays there are no enemy at the gates in the form of an enemy state, and the lack of competition between these two European powerhouses has been to the detriment of both. Surely we can avoid another Franco-Prussian armed conflict without the EU.
现在欧盟内部没有任何正式的敌对,两个欧盟的权力大国之间缺乏竞争对彼此也是有伤害的。当然没有欧盟的话我们能避免另一场普法战争的冲突。
1.The EU Is Anti-Democratic
1.欧盟的反民主
Many European countries are relative newcomers to this whole democracy thing. As the empires of Europe ebbed and flowed through the 19th century, jolly old Britain was off making a bloody mess of half the planet. What this means for Europe though is that it is only since the fall of the Third Reich and other Fascist regimes at the end of World War II that much of Western Europe got into modern democratic systems. Of course, the Eastern Bloc has even less experience with barely one-quarter of a century passing since the demise of the USSR.
民主对于许多欧洲国家来说是件新鲜的事情,因为欧洲帝国主义的落潮要持续到19世纪,那时候英国几乎在半个地球上引发了血腥的混乱。这就导致了整个欧洲从二战后—也就是希特勒第三帝国及其他法西斯政权落幕后,才正式进入现代民主体系。当然,东方的一些国家是在近1/4个世纪,也就是俄国的解体后才开始民主政权。
Germany, and to a lesser extent France, make up the de facto leadership of the EU. Owing to the history of the last century, it is an uncomfortable position to be in. The Teutonic efficiency yearns to be let loose to tidy up those slacker, sunshine-drenched neighbors to the south, but leadership for the German is forever tainted. Instead, the EU is the arch-conservative. Regulate everything, and hope no one asks you what to do next.
德国,法国是整个欧盟政权的实际领导力量。从上个世纪的历史来看,这并不是什么令人舒适的格局。北欧民族对于处理他们南方的那些慵懒的近邻缺乏效率,这使得德国的领导力也渐渐落寞。不仅如此,欧盟趋向于保守主义,习惯于规定一切事情又没有人会问你接下来需要做什么。