April 10, 2007
How the French are falling out of love with the eurozone
The French created the European Union, so it would be appropriate if they destroyed it. Listen to the arguments made by the leading candidates in the French presidential election – Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal – and it sounds as if they are intent on taking a sledgehammer to the “Common European home”, built by their compatriots Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman and Jacques Delors.
Of course, Mr Sarkozy and Ms Royal would reject any suggestion that they are eurosceptics. Both argue that they want a “better Europe” or a “different Europe”. But the visions of Europe that they are dangling before French voters are likely to be unacceptable to the rest of the EU. So the French presidential election is setting the stage for confrontation between France and its European partners in Brussels, followed by rampant euroscepticism at home.
This is a familiar formula in Britain. But the rest of the EU has learnt to live with a bolshy Britain. An enraged France would be a much more threatening prospect. Unlike Britain, France has always been central to the “construction of Europe”. The French are also members of the inner core of the EU – the 12 countries that have adopted the single European currency that is the Union’s most ambitious act of economic and political integration.
The remainder of Gideon Rachman’s column can be read here (FT.com subscribers only).
I have just read the article about the EUs plans to criminalise with up to three years in prison, any person who publicly expresses an opinion which doubts certain aspects of the alleged Jewish holocaust. This is outrageous !
Posted by: joseph | April 20th, 2007 at 12:46 pm | Report this commentThe first European holocaust revisionist was Professor Paul Rassinier. Rassinier was arrested by the gestapo in 1943 and interned at the Buchenwald-Dora concentration camp complex where he spent the last two years of the war. After being liberated, Rassinier was decorated as a French Resistance leader and also elected to the
the French parliment from the Socialist party. Professor Rassinier confronted the authors of postwar books who had made claims which he knew
or suspected were unfounded (i.e. the killing of prisoners by means of a lethal gas chamber at Buchenwald-Dora). Rassinier kept up the pressure on the authors, who were inmates just as he had been, regarding their unfounded claims and in 1960, the Center for Contemporary History in Munich and Yad Vashem in Israel made an announcement; no gassings at Dachau or any other concentration camp which was located in the Third Reich proper: that meant not only Dachau but also Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald-Dora, Sachehhausen, Gross-Rosen, etc… The gassings supposedly took place at the camps located in postwar Poland i.e Auschwitz, Majdanek, Treblinka, etc… The US Army filmed at Dachau what was supposedly a gas chamber and there were eyewitnesses who made made these claims as well. How come it took 15 years after the end of the war to establish that there were no gas chambers or at least no gassing took place at the camps in Germany ? The same goes for the lampshade made of human skins story and also the Jewish soap story . Just war propaganda from various quarters. When Pope John Paul II visited Auschwitz in 1979, the memorial plaques stated that there were between 4 and 4.5 million victims at Auschwitz and 2 years ago at the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz the memorial plaques stated that the number of victims was between 900,000 and 1.5 million. Surely any thinking person might want to ask the question: how come such a large downward revision ? What was the evidence prior and what is the evidence present for the numbers given ? Honest people may want to know or at least ask ! How evil that the EU should even attempt modern day “heresy” laws to frighten its honest citizens
from excercising their basic right of free speech and freedom of inquiry. How can the Financial Times not be outraged at such proposals ?
Joseph, are you suggesting that 6million is lies, but 1.5million is true?
Posted by: eliXelx | April 20th, 2007 at 4:00 pm | Report this commentDoes that mean 6million is not good, but that 1.5million is OK?
Do tell!