Daniel Cohn-Bendit MEP - an archetypical man of the EU

The Irish Times this morning, linked here, devotes an article to the dual nationality, former revolutionary "Dany le Rouge", who very recently was considered by many to have been overly offensive, read here, to the Czech President, Vaclav Klaus in Prague, a quote from the paper's article:

Cohn-Bendit accuses Barroso of scheming to get himself reappointed in July, because he knows he will face stronger opposition if the appointment is left until the new commission is formed in the autumn. Britain, Spain and Portugal support his reappointment.

The longer it is delayed, the better the chances of a strong candidate emerging, says Cohn-Bendit. “The green candidate is me.” He holds dual German and French nationality, and has served as a German or French MEP for the past 15 years.

I will not repeat here the detail provided by Mary Ellen Synon in her blog of 1st April this year on the Daily Mail web page linked here, titled "Dany le zip" which describes this man's apparently proud admission of sexually molesting children back in 1975 revealed in a recent debate with Declan Ganley, but I do wonder why a newspaper as respected as The Irish Times would provide this publicity to such man so soon after such publicity?

Looking at my previously linked report on the events in Prague Castle last December, one must also wonder why Hans-Gert Pöttering, European Parliament President and other EU notables would choose to be associated with such a man and associate themselves with either his past or his personalised attacks?

400 million EU Citizens should note this June the nature of those so dedicated to attacking Declan Ganley and Libertas!

Time Magazine features Declan Ganley of Libertas

Amid growing signs that EU political leaders are trying to bury the fact of a pan EU election from the 400 odd million electorate, this coup by the leader of Libertas is unlikely to go down well with the "projects" anti-democratic plotters.

Read the article online from here.

Here in France I will be voting for Libertas, a massive pan-EU vote for the party would be the best shock that the EU could have delivered. A quote:

A self-made millionaire, Ganley plans to field Libertas candidates from all 27 E.U. member states in this June's European parliamentary elections. His party, he says, will bring change to Brussels. "We can really shake things up," he says. "We can send a message to Brussels for democracy, accountability and transparency in European governance."

Ganley maintains that the E.U.'s handling of the current economic crisis has been "dysfunctional" and that Europe's leaders haven't produced a roadmap for recovery. "I want Europe to work. I want it to face challenge of the day. But I don't want to leave it to this to cartel of politicians who aren't accountable to us at the ballot box."

Interview with Declan Ganley of Libertas

After watching Prime Minister's Questions in Parliament where the Lib/Dem leader Nick Clegg made one of the few questions with any impact, and Farage for UKIP made an ineffectual appearance on the BBC Question Time 'The Politics Show', the next big electoral test the EU Parliament elections in June look ever more likely to prove fertile ground for Libertas.

Those curious about what the Libertas Party really stands for may find this interview from ESharp with its leader Declan Ganley of interest. My selected quote is here:

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So, as I understand it, you’re in favour of the European project as long as it is more accountable. So how would you make it more accountable?

It’s called democracy, you know? And it’s a pretty simple thing. If it takes more than a minute to explain what democracy is then it’s not democracy anymore. I was very amused, I was on some blog site a few days ago and somebody, some proponent of the Lisbon Treaty, had put together a useful diagram of how democracy worked through the Lisbon Treaty and there were so many moving parts to this diagram and input points and different processing areas and everything else. This person had convinced themselves that this had something remotely to do with the democratic process – which it doesn’t.

Democracy – okay well, I can’t do this graphically but let me take this pen as an example of my power as an individual citizen. Power devolves from the citizen. This is my power as an individual. And what I do in a democratic process to my lawmakers, for example, in Ireland, is I take my power – my little piece of it, my little opinion – and I lend it at the ballot box to a lawmaker, to an elected politician. I vote for them. And I lend it to them, I don’t give it to them. I lend it to them on condition that they use it wisely. And the most important thing about democracy is that if you don’t use properly my little bit of power that I lend you, I can take it off you and I can give it to this person over here.

Now what the Lisbon Treaty has done in countries that haven’t had a referendum is taken the power of the citizen – but that citizen has lent that power to elected politicians. And those parliaments have taken that citizen’s power and sovereignty and they’ve handed it to institutions in Brussels that the citizen can never hold accountable. It wasn’t theirs to give away in the first place, that wasn’t the deal. Now people may not be aware of this, and they’re not, but hopefully by June they will be.

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Read it all if you have time, these are big issues not suited to glib labels!