Thursday, the British people voted. Yesterday, the Dutch people voted. Today, some other peoples voted. Tomorrow, the rest of the European peoples will vote, among others mine.
I hope that many people will go to vote. I urge those those who do not agree with part of the actual politics of the European Union to go and vote for the party that expresses best their dissatisfaction and strives for a better Europe –
vote the party that will take part in the European Left !
Towards the end of next week, the peoples of the European Union will have to elect their representatives in the European Parliament.
It seems that quite a lot of people say: “Why should I go voting, the European Parliament has not much to decide about European Politics, anyway”.
This is wrong! We must vote!
Right, we will not vote for a government. But since the time it was first elected directly, the Parliament has got more and more competences, and it is using them. Above all, this Parliament is the only possibility for us, the citizens of the European Union, to exert any influence whatsoever on European politics.
The following seems very important to me:
Many European polititions say that for the forthcoming of the European Union the Lisbon treaty must come into force soon.
This treaty is not only neo-liberalist, unsocial, but, which makes me really afraid: terribly militaristic. It clearly obliges the member states to improve their military capacity, and for that purpose, a “European Defence Agency” has already been created. That means for the national budgets: again more money for rearmament, again less money for necessary social and other projects!
The Lisbon treaty was ratified by most national parliaments without participation of the people; where it was put to the direct vote of the people, it was rejected.
In the European Parliament, there was only one group who rejected the Lisbon treaty, that was the European Left.
I am reading in the election platform of the European Left:
“We reaffirm our “No” to the Lisbon treaty…. The EU citizens must discuss and decide on an alternative to the Lisbon Treaty…
No war should ever start from Europe’s soil again. We do not consider war and militarization to be political instruments and want a strategy where security for all is granted. Disarmament and conversion of military industries are pivotal tasks. We campaign against the rearmament provision of the Lisbon Treaty, not only because of the lethal and ecologically destructive weapons, but also because it detracts funds from economic, social and ecological development. The EU Defence Agency should be replaced by a disarmament agency designed to stop the arms race, the proliferation and possession of weapons of mass destruction, and the militarization of outer space and the oceans on the basis of disarmament agreements”.
This is what I want.
The parliamentary group of the European Left has at present 41 of the 783 seats in the European Parliament – that is not enough.
If we want a change in the European politics, if we want a better, a more social, a peaceful European Union, than we must strengthen the group of the European Left in the European Parliament.
This means: we must vote, and we must vote the party in our country, which is or will be part of the parliamentary group of the European Left, or which has the same goals!
At the moment, there is much talking on the political level about Environment; many politicians now seem to understand that our little planet is in danger. But little is really done by the responsible politicians to reduce this danger.
There are many aspects concerning the danger to the environment; I will just talk of two of them:
First, the CO2 output made by cars. In the Rich Countries, almost everybody drives a car, and many people want their car to be big and speedy, which means it uses much fuel and blows much CO2 into the atmosphere.
Is that necessary? Can the industry not build cars that use little fuel and exhaust little CO2? Of course it can, and some car factories already do. Yet, not many people buy them.
Here, the politicians should act: Make laws that force the industry to build only such kind of cars, and force people to drive moderately.
Second, the Methane gas exhaust of animals, especially cattle. How ricidulous! Have animals not always lived and exhausted methan? Yes. But nowadays, in the rich countries people eat meat in exceeding quantities, which means breeding exceding lots of cattle.
Is that necessary? Everybody knows that it would be much healthier to eat less meat. And now I do not even talk about the terrible effect it has on the food supply in the Developing Countries when cattle food for the Rich Countries is grown instead of food crops for the local population.
Here, the politicians should act: cattle breeding for the richt countries should be reduced.
Politicians should stop talking and start acting!
Tags: Environment, CO2, fuel, cattle, Methane gas
I problably never understood what is really going on in Palestine. Fight against Israel was replaced by fight against each other. Was it clearly Hamas against Fatah, or was it fights of groups and clans against each other?
Now they are split, and Israel can lough. Fighting goes on. Common paranoia, it appears to me.
The 18 months programme which Germany, Portugal and Slovenia have established for the time of their subsequent presidencies of the European Council, provides inter alia that the endeavours to promote the European Constitutional Treaty be continued.
I never liked the draft of the European Constitution, and I was very unhappy that my parliament agreed to it. For me, the draft shows the intention of a stronger militarisation of Europe: now that Europe has achieved peace inside its borders, it arms itself to bring war outside.
I think that the Peace Movements which, I am sure, exist in all countries of the European Union, should protest against that, and I am sure that many of them already did. But I do not see whether the Peace Movements of the different countries have already united in order to take common action on this behalf.
Up to now, I did not find out. Does anybody know more about this issue?
Tags: Politics, Europe, European Constitution, Peace, War
“La voix de la conscience” – Voice of conscience, is the title of this post , showing a YouTube film where two veterans of the Israeli Army are talking about their service in the West Bank, reflecting on the repression of Palestinian civilians.
I wish there were much more of those people, and that they would be able to convince the Israeli people that their policy towards the Palestinians must change.
Tags: Israel, Palestine, soldiers, conscience, peace
Dear Gentlemen (presuming that there are no ladies among you),
I am learning from the press that these last two days, you had a conference in order to examine, in a scientific way, the Holocaust and question whether Nazi Germany used gas chambers to kill Jews. I do not know the outcome of your conference, but I can give the answer to your question without any scientific research, just from my own life. It is: Yes.
What I unterstood
I was born in 1933 in the then Free City of Danzig, the annexion of which to Germany by the Nazis marked the beginning of World War II. My family lived in a residential area of the town. Our neighbours to the right were a Polish family with three girls about the age of my sisters and me, we played together and were good friends. Our neighbours to the left were an elderly Jewish couple, whom we called Uncle and Auntie, visited them often and liked them very much.
When the war and with it the Nazi time began, I was six years old. I think you know that small children, although they do not really understand things, feel very well what is going on around them, feel danger and threats. I felt that there was something wrong in the family of our Polish friends; their father was not seen any more. Much later I learned that he, a teacher at the Polish high school, was taken to a concentration camp during the first days of the war; he never came back. I felt that Uncle and Auntie seemed to be very afraid, that it became dangerous to visit them. They sold their house and moved to a smaller apartment in town, and we rarely saw them.
To be fetched
Then, one day in late winter 1941/42, my mother came in saying that last night, our Polish neighbours, mother and daughters, were “fetched”, and that Uncle and Auntie were fetched, too. At that time, I was old enough to understand: I knew the word “to fetch”, I had heard it rather often. To be fetched meant to be taken to a concentration camp, and I knew very well that there was such a camp not far from our town, the name was Stutthof. Several persons my parents knew were in this camp. I did not know exactly what was going on therein, but my eldest sister told me much later that one night she overheard my parents talking about the camp Stutthof – and what she learned at that moment spoiled all her youth, she said.
After some time, the empty house of the Polish family was taken over by an SS man coming from another part of Germany with his wife and two children. Much later it was found out that this man, who coveted the house, had arranged to take the Polish family on a transport of Jews to the Warsaw Ghetto. On the transport, they were together with Uncle and Auntie. Through various circumstances, they could get out of the Ghetto and stayed alive, but Uncle and Auntie were transported “elsewhere”, and were never seen again.
My parents first forbade to me to play with the new neighbours’ children, but later on I occasionally did play with the girl who was a bit younger than I. And it happened what my parents had been afraid of: I mentioned to her something I had heard concerning people of our acquaintance who were in danger to be taken to the camp. The girl told their maid (luckily not her parents!), who told my parents, and my father gave me the only terrible slap of my life.
Soap
Children know what parents know. During the last years of the war, although officially it was never mentioned, it was well known among us children that there were concentration camps, were not only everybody who said something against the Nazis got in, but where all the Jews finally got in and most of them killed, and the word “gas chamber” was absolutely common to us. I remember the moment when one class mate told me with horror that “they” were now making soap out of the bones of killed jews. I was eleven then; apparently at that age children can stand horrible news quite easily; I was horrified but it did not “spoil my youth”.
This “soap” thing, I have been hearing later on from many people of my age and of different regions of Germany, that at that time being children they had talked about it. I do not know that its truth has ever been scientifically proved. You may call it a “myth”, but: dont’t you think that such a myth can only be spread when it is rather obvious that somewhere people are killed in masses, so that one could emangine that their bones can be used like this?
Be sure: the Holocaust took place!
After all this, since I am adult, one thing is clear to me: human beings are able to commit the most horrible crimes when the context is appropriate. And when they are a people like mine, who are said to be excellent organizers and do all things throroughly – then they are able to organize a mass killing.
I am part of this people. My feelings towards Germany are like one’s feelings towards one’s family: One is happy when family members do good things, and one is ashamed when they commit crimes. And I am terribly ashamed of what members of my people have done. My striving throughout my life has been: such things must never happen again!
I know, Gentlemen: the moral reputation of Germany is not your concern. Your concern is to deny the right of existence of the State of Israel.
But if you insist on this, Gentlemen, then – find another pretext !
The Holocaust took place.
But I want to make one thing clear: To me, the Holocaust is not a reason to excuse the actions of Israeli politics towards the Palestinians. I do and will continue to criticize how the Palestinians are treated by Israel in many respects.
But the alternative is not the eradication of the State of Israel. The alternative is that all parties concerned must make all efforts that Israelis and Palestinians can live in peace and welfare in the region.
Tags: Holocaust, Jews, Israel, Palestine, Iran, concentration camps, gas chambers
Seventy Jews living in Germany launched a petition called “Schalom 5767 – Berlin Declaration”, calling upon the German government to no longer tolerate the Israeli policy of occupation of the Palestinian territory and to strive earnestly for a peaceful solution of the conflict in order to ensure an existence within internationally recognized borders for both the Israeli and Palestinian nations.
They are calling upon all people living in Germany – Jews or not – to sign this declaration.
I think this is quite an important thing. A friend of mine, who is one of those “seventy”, told me that up to now, not many Jews in Germany have this attitude towards Palestine and the Palestinians. The declaration is now being spread in the weblog, and me, of course, I signed it, too.
Link to the Berlin Declaration: http://www.schalom5767
Link to the English translation: here
Tags: Israel, Palestine, Peace, Schalom 5767, Salaam 5767
Views of an Old Owl 