Monday, December 17, 2007

The Suppression of Dissent in the European Parliament

The video below (courtesy of the Devil’s Kitchen) shows a protest by MEPs at the European Parliament in Strasbourg on December 12th. The occasion was the signing of the “Charter of Fundamental Rights”. The protesters were objecting to the fact that most of their governments have refused to hold a referendum on the Treaty of Lisbon. It appears that some rights are not all that fundamental after all.


Videos of this protest (surprise!) failed to make their way into the European MSM.

As the Devil’s Kitchen says, “Welcome to freedom and democracy — EU style…”

See the DK post for more details.


Hat tip: Gaia.

[post ends here]

17 comments:

kepiblanc said...

The positive side of this is that the protesters came from many groups spanning the entire spectrum from left to right. The happening was organized by a Danish former communist, Jens Peder Bonde, shown in this photo (front left with earphones).He is without any doubt the man who knows most about the EU, and the entire resistance movement here is happy having him around.

Pogo said...

All well and good kepi, as the former Communists are OK. The Charles would have a fit if the protesters included Vlaams Belang or the Swedish Democrats.

Diamed said...

I was a fan of the EU as a good way to cooperate against foreign threats and create peace in Europe. I thought it helped the economy too. However, I'm sad to see it has simply become a totalitarian state which bans freedom of speech, imports tens of millions of anti-western low-skilled foreigners, bans any party that might disagree with them, and continues on the same disastrous 'diversity is strength' Orwellianism even in the face of the French riots, terrorist attacks, and skyrocketing crime.

All I can say is God help us all, we're in for a long night of civilization.

Stephen Gash said...

Video now unavailable

Diamed said...

So I guess this would make it the suppression of the speech showing the suppression of speech in Europe? How ironic.

Anonymous said...

THEY TOOK THE VIDEO DOWN.

DID ANYBODY RIP IT?

Mizé said...

As to the Lisbon Treaty (I gasp at having my lovely city's name connected to it!), there may still be some hope.
José Sócrates, the Portuguese prime-minister, is still trying to decide in what way is his government going to ratify it. During the last couple of years, he has declared repeatedly that he would call for a referendum on the treaty, and he has promised to do just that during the electoral campaign. Parties from far left to far right are calling for a referendum, and people inside his own party are voicing the same request, saying it's hard to see how he can avoid it.
Meanwhile, Alan Lamassoure, Sarkozy's adviser for European matters has said that, were Sócrates to call a referendum, that would be a 'betrayal' (sic) on his part; for, on that scenario, Gordon Brown would hardly be able not to do the same, other countries would follow, and some country or other is bound to say no to the treaty.
So you see, with a bit of luck, its birthplace might turn out to be its cemetery...

Mr. Smarterthanyou said...

Well diamed I hope you feel foolish. You see, there were plenty of people who figured out in advance what the EU would become, and tried to stop it. Now, too late, you realize your foolishness. I hope you use this time to look at yourself and who you were listening to (and believing), and who you refused to listen to.

I hope that those out there like you are smart enough to change how you think about such things in the future.

magnus said...

The disappeared video clip is here.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCBIst10H-k

The clip is quite interresting!

Zenster said...

Between the Eurabia Pact and the European elite's fatal obsession with pseudo-royal socialist totalitarianism, I am increasingly convinced that America will—for yet a third time—have to intervene to save the Continent from itself. Should this prove necessary, it is my fervent hope that the United States will demand for Europe to forever abandon socialism on pain of annexation as an American colony. The EUSSR is living proof of how Europe has yet to learn the hard lesson that government must serve the people and not the reverse. That these un-elected parliamentarians intentionally constructed a prohibitively complex constitution should have set off warning klaxons in every sane mind. It is the equivalent of allowing the rule of law to be established by lawyers. Permitting appointed elitists to determine how they shall then govern is a staggering conflict of interest.

Conservative Swede said...

Since Partido Popular was up for discussion just recently. José Pomés Ruiz in the clip -- he who works hard to stop the filming -- he's from Partido Popular.

Paul said...

Zenster: Are you kidding?:

"It is the equivalent of allowing the rule of law to be established by lawyers. Permitting appointed elitists to determine how they shall then govern is a staggering conflict of interest."

Allow me to let you in on a secret:
Parasite lawyers rule in the US too. Wow, what a shock.
Where else in the entire world can a fool sue a restaurant (and win!) for serving hot coffee that burns when it spills?! I kid you not! (I do not use sarcasm!) ; American dumb axxes.

Don't look to America to help this time around. This time we have lost our way, how can we help you find yours?

Beckett said...

Some blogs have suggested that should this abhorrent constitution become the law of Europe that armed conflict may occur. While I udnerstand the sentiment, I hope armed conflict does not occur. However, a super-state comprised of several distinct ethnic and cultural traditions is a dream that is doomed. One needs to question whose dream it is as well. Have we not learned from the dangers of multiculturalism in the former Greek and Roman Empires, the former Yugoslavia, and the former Soviet Union? Can we never learn from history??? These multicultural superstates (Yugoslavia on a smaller scale) imploded and deconstructed in favor of separate and distinct ethnic and cultural interests. many times the implosion was violent. At this time in history, supressing ethnicity and culture is the aim of world socialism (the New World Order - the EU-SSR??). I assert that socialism is more insidious than communism because it is more subtle in the manner which it grabs and consolidates power from the people.

Multiculturalism is one means by which the socialist superstate consolidates power. In this way socialism keeps the masses involved in the conflicts inevitably created by minorities that refuse to acculturate and assimilate into their host cultures. Socialist agendas devalue the host culture and institutions, attempting to deconstruct them and revise them into a form acceptable to the ruling elites (EU Bureaucrats???). In this way, with religious, ethnic, and cultural facets of society being eroded, the socialist agenda attemts to trample upon the values and identity of western culture - somehow labeling western culture as bad, Judeo-Christian religion and values as bad, and holding the state up as the ultimate power. It asserts that the state is able to fix all the woes in the world that over 2000 years of modern history could not fix. It asserts that government knows what is best for the people, regardless of the people's will. What is so ironic is that the seat of power in this new Socialist Superstate (the EU) is in Brussels, and the roadmap was developed in Maastricht, Nederland. Nederland was the model of representative government and liberal (open) thought in a period of European history when the Hapsburg Empire tinkered with Europe through its own various institutions, one of which was the Romish Church. My, my, how history comes around full circle, but in so many different and distorted ways!!!

The fear that the United States would abandon Europe is rubbish. The tensions between the United States and Europe were exacerbated by the barriers created by the EU, in particlular the EU's socialist benefactors such as Chirac. Here I stand with my European friends who oppose the tyranny that is the EU!!!!

Michiel said...

I am very glad to see this protest. And indeed, it wasn't in MSM. Not in Holland anyway.

On the first of december there also was a tiny demonstration on the Dam in Amsterdam. MSM had not given it any publicity. Not before, not after.

The lies of politicians about the referendum was one of the themes. The growing influence of religion on society and politics, Allah and God, was another.

Zenster said...

paul: Allow me to let you in on a secret: Parasite lawyers rule in the US too.

Nearly so, but to our eternal salvation they did not write our nation's Constitution and it continues to provide a substantial bulwark against rampant legal abuse.

The EU is another matter entirely and their elitist parliamentarians have cobbled up the ultimate bureaucratic nightmare. It is as though their primary concern was not the successful uniting of disparate nations but only personal job security instead. Their naked lust for power makes the ever-rapacious Hillary Clinton look like a complete and total slacker.

Flanders Fields said...

Zenster, I think you have a misimpression of the role official American policy has today in Europe(and other places). American policy expressed there is as leftist or more so than that of the Europeans. It is active through the state department and through private interests and NGO's who cooperate with (or even direct) certain elements within the government. It is very close to the same relationship which "American" media has to the media of the rest of the world.

Policy is no longer recognizeable as American policy based on the vital interests of American and Western allies. It takes a slant that is leftist and for the benefit of private corporate interests. I would love to see some instances where AMERICA's interests were advanced.

America encourages the EU, and American sovereignty will be attacked soon by those same interests who gave rise to the EU.

I share your wishful opinion for American policy based on American interests and heritage, but I think the facts don't match. I must disagree with you on Hillary, too, as there is nothing and no person who can have a more ardent desire for power, nor a deeper committment to autocratic state rule.

Zenster said...

Flanders Fields: American policy expressed there is as leftist or more so than that of the Europeans.

Then why do the Euros howl so loudly about "American Unilateralism"? While I do agree that our State Department has gone native, Europe's political elite hate America's capitalistic success with a sufficiently envious socialistic passion that there is still some noticeable distance between our individual positions.

However, your observation about "private interests" is right on the money, so to speak. Despite having benefited so much from America's free enterprise system, our domestic multinationals have shown less loyalty than rats on the Titanic as they swim for tax-sheltered foreign shores. As for NGOs and, especially, so-called Human Rights Organizations, until these bleeding hearts summon the courage to, one and all, denounce shari'a law as a monstrous violation of human rights, all of them can blow it out their tailpipes.

On reflection, I suppose the only thing that differentiates Hillary from your own political elites is that there are legal prohibitions on the sort of communist-style measures she would like to put in place. Evidently, Europe enjoys no such protections.