Anti-USA demo banned in Netherlands
;+:'|\ | 21.05.2003 11:48
The proposed demonstration, during the annual commemoration of American dead at Margraten military cemetery (near Maastricht), has been banned by the local council. On a legal technicality - there is no formal organiser with a fixed address - they refuse to accept the application. Accordingly, they declared, the demo has no permission. That way they avoid issuing a banning order, which can be challenged in court.
The proposed demonstration was one of the first ever to oppose the American (and allied) landings in Europe in 1944. It compared the US war policy in Europe to the invasion of Iraq. The idea that anyone could protest against the 'noble' American dead enraged the readers of right-wing blogs, who picked up the story from Indymedia Belgium.
See the comments by US visitors at
http://belgium.indymedia.org/news/2003/04/58530_comment.php
which also links back to the original posting.
The proposed demonstration was one of the first ever to oppose the American (and allied) landings in Europe in 1944. It compared the US war policy in Europe to the invasion of Iraq. The idea that anyone could protest against the 'noble' American dead enraged the readers of right-wing blogs, who picked up the story from Indymedia Belgium.
See the comments by US visitors at
http://belgium.indymedia.org/news/2003/04/58530_comment.php which also links back to the original posting.
;+:'|\
Comments
Hide the following 10 comments
fine
21.05.2003 13:44
sceptic
The Septic is right!
21.05.2003 14:29
Who are these gimmers who think that the Allied liberation of Europe from the Nazis (the NAZIS for fucks sake) is the same as the illegal occupation of Iraq? It beggars belief.
Christ! D-Day and all that was the last glorious action the US army ever staged! Against THE NAZIS!!! Yes! Them! Hitler etc.
Apart from a few dodgy CIA-sponsored generals, the Iraqi people never asked US/UK soldiers to invade their country, whereas the occupied people of France, Holland etc were crying out to be freed from the Third Reich, particularly all the Jews, Gypsies, gays etc.
Jesus wept. Ask any sane Hollander about the Nazi Occupation and it still makes their blood boil.
I suspect that the reason that there was no fixed address for ANY of the demonstration's organisers is 'cos they were a pathetic bunch of ultra-crusty, ultimately reactionary pseudo-anarchs with nary a brain cell between them.
The "movement" certainly doesn't need morons like that!
MM
Mad Monk
Liberation
21.05.2003 15:08
Personally I would have been quite happy to have been liberated by Stalin. And in a way I was (and so were you) because over 60 per cent of the German armed forces were fighting on the Eastern Front even after D Day.
Since I think the USA and a large part of Western Europe are now sliding towards an updated form of fascism (wars of aggression, hatred of immigrants and asylum seekers, BNP and Vlaams Blok type parties making headway), liberation from Hitler in 1945 was at best incomplete. But as Brecht wrote, referring to Hitler: "For though the world rose up and stopped the bastard/ the bitch that bore him is in heat again."
The Crimson Repat
More Duuh
21.05.2003 16:17
Yes, actually.
It was nearly 60 years ago, you know.
The Yanks (yes and Canadians etc) who whupped ol' Adolf are certainly not the same ones who are currently planning to Take Over the World through globalisation, Star Wars systems etc.
It's childish and simplistic to smear the American liberators of Europe (no matter how hypocritical their government of the time) by putting them in the same category as Bush and his retinue of scumbags.
Most US WWII veterans were horrified by their country's aggression against Iraq, you know.
MM
PS - "I'd rather live under Stalin". Yeah, right. He was no friend of the left, as anyone who miraculously survived his postwar purges of Eastern Europe's Communist parties would be able to tell you.
READ HISTORY. IT HELPS TO FORM AN INFORMED OPINION.
Mad Monk
Catch 22
21.05.2003 17:18
yossarian
Yes indeed
21.05.2003 17:38
OK, probably few LIKED being invaded and occupied by Germany. But (for some of them) the Germans WERE finally addressing "problems" like getting rid of the Reds and the Jews and the Gypsies and the Queers and other "social degenerates". Thye looked forward to the day when the German occupation would be relaxed and they would regain local control but of a "properly ordered society".
That fascism succeeded in taking over in Germany and Italy (and Spain and Hungary and a few other places) did not mean it was an ideology limited to these countries. Or have you forgotten that you had your own active movement right there in the UK during the years leading up to WW II?
Mike
e-mail:
stepbystepfarm@shaysnet.com
Indeed, Mike
21.05.2003 22:05
I don't quite get the drift of your other remarks either. Yes, there were those who thought the Nazis were doing a good job. Like those who thought Stalin was doing a good job ... and Castro ... getting rid of all those ungrateful degenerates. Does that also mean we should have left the continent to Hitler.
As for the Russians - well, they were quite happy to take half of Poland, shoot a few thousand Polish intelligentsia, and snaffle Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. And after the war they were quite happy to subjugate Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Rumania and so on.
The Americans did keep troops in Europe after the war - for which many people were quite grateful [the West Berliners, for example]. But when France asked the US to remove its tropps, it did so. Because it wasn't an occupying army.
sceptic
Sorry if that was unclear
21.05.2003 23:35
Oh well, let's try again. No "Sceptic", I was NOT indicating any approval of fascism whatsoever. Simply pointing out that there WERE (are for that matter) fascists and that those Europeans would not have considered, do not consider, etc. the American/Anglo invasion of Europe as liberation but conquest.
Mike
e-mail:
stepbystepfarm@shaysent.com
Whose history?
22.05.2003 10:04
I also don't take D Day entirely at face value. It took place at least in part because Roosevelt and Churchill suspected the USSR could defeat Germany without them and they didn't want socialist governments in Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Copenhagen etc. The bombing of Dresden and perhaps also Hiroshima and Nagasaki was really a warning to the USSR, although German and Japanese civilians were the direct target.
The Crimson Repat
Regarding Mike
22.05.2003 15:04
so you approve of what the Nazis were doing then???
followed by
"I was NOT indicating any approval of fascism whatsoever"
well, by the wording of your previous comment, you seem to (a) explained your views very badly, or (b), you are nothing but hypocritical racist scumbag.
If (b), Hitler and Stalin would be proud of you.
Thomas J