Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla protests against EU Parliament raising India’s internal issues
Om Birla told the European Parliament Vice President that every nation and Parliament is sovereign and internal issues of other countries should not be discussed by others.
This is one of the most famous #cartoons ever about the #EU 🇪🇺 , we could call it a #meme today. It's silly and outdated, but still fun enough. Recently I found out that my in-laws have a kitchen towel with it 😅
Greek election #exitpoll shows the #neonazi affiliated party "Spartans" made the cut for the new parliament (min prediction 4%, max 6%).
#Greece steadily declining to an extreme authoritarian regime.
The neonazi party #GoldenDawn (of 7 - 10% in various past election results) might be officially over after the leadership was convicted as a criminal gang, but the nazi fans are very much still there, searching for parties to express their politics.
Given these results, I predict that #Greek people are bent on sending the #Orthodox Byzantine witches and the #Neonazi back to the #EUparliament next year, during the EU elections.
Enjoy!
Courtesy of the #ECB, the #IMF, and the European Commission who put #Greece in this fundamental crisis in the first place, in 2010.
This would be done on this account, sadly Träwelling, the train/tram/bus trip recording client I use ( #traewelling@traewelling ) doesn’t yet support anything but Mastodon to auto-post to. Once #MastodonDE is done and ready, my trips will be Auto-posted on my main account there (or I’ll make a separate train account, not sure yet).
2023.06.29 Update
I’ve decided to put travels that happened mostly within an city with city transportation (bus, metro, tram, etc.) as part of the same trip into one post! If such a thing is documented, then my description of what happened on that trip will occur in that post, not the post about the way back as was the case previously.
Going to a parliamentarian breakfast inside of the EU parliament organized by the BUNDjugend! Very excited to meet some parliamentarians within an institution that I could see myself work in some day! My initial train ride was canceled, so this morning was a bit chaotic as I tried to find a new connection. I arrived home today at 00:30 AM and left the house again at ~09:30, so I was only home for 9 hours and am now back on my shenanigans! They canceled my initial train at like 8:30, considering my train was supposed to leave at 10:07 I was quite worried whether I’d make it to Bruxelles today, gladly I’ll make it!
Very excited! Will let the Fedi know about everything that happens.
Edit (2023.06.03):
We did make it, but sadly my train to Köln needed to arrive on the same platform as my departing ICE to Brussels, hence I couldn’t make it.
Luckily, my friends from the BUNDjugend were stranded too and knew what to do. Apparently the next train needed a seat reservation to travel on, so we went to a DB help desk, got a ticket, were called to an employee and got the last THREE reservations for that train. From that point on we got another 1.5h to do something in the city of Köln, so we went and ate vegan food at an Indian restaurant.
Sooner than later the train left, we got on, there were astonishingly many seats empty (like it was 98% capacity, but not 100%) so even our friend who didn’t get a seat reservation ticket could travel with us.
We arrived in Brussels-Nord, went to Brussels-Central, then I got flashback from my trip through Europe last year because it was the same place, and interestingly the path to our hotel was the same as the path to the Meiningen Hostel we stayed in last year for the trip, so I knew the place. I even knew the supermarket (CarreFour) that was in front of our hotel. We arrived, ate the self-made vegan food, I talked to so many people I didn’t know and also few I knew from previous BUND events, then we discussed what would happen the next morning:
We needed to leave the house by 7:00 AM to arrive at the EU parliament at the right time for checks, so that our parliamentarian breakfast with Greens/EFA MEP Anna Cavazzini could begin St 08:00 to 09:00. Afterwards we’d go to the Parliamentarium, an EU Museum/Circlejerk, then we’d meet climate activists from Belgium and so on and so forth. The things we were told we’d do the next day were part of a long list that I, at the moment, couldn’t remember, as I was so so tired from this long day of travel (which, in case you forgot, was preceded by an even longer day of travel) which is why I needed to go to bed instantly.
How everything went I’ll tell you on the thread post for the way back!
You must remember, at this moment in time, from the last 30 hours I had been on a train/train station for 22 hours. I was tired and done, so I went to bed, only to get up at 06:20 the day after.
Travelynx
[1] [2] [3] - Travelynx does not support busses #travelynx
Sooo, back again from the BUNDjugend meeting in Bruxelles (and all the other tohuwabohu that happened afterwards which is why this update is so delayed) I am finally documenting this trip!
So much more happened than I expected. The first night was legendary because we all arrived so late due to everything going wrong in Köln, I was able to guide my newfound BUNDjugend friends to our hotel in Bruxelles without looking at Open Street Maps because it happened to be on the exact same route as the place Samuel (@sberman), Dante, and I slept last year on our trip through Europe. Last time I was in Bruxelles for that trip we stayed inte Meininger hostel, which was just a lot further back than the fancy and expensive hotel we had this time. However, after arriving at the number-code locked hotel at around 20:00 we had a wonderful self cooked dinner and went to bed very early, as we all needed to leave the house by 7 in the morning the next day to be in time for the 08:00 AM breakfast in the EU.
Next day, Wednesday the 31st of May 2023, we got out, went to the EU parliament using a tram, were a bit confused as to where we needed to go, and at some point got our visitor cards, naming the MEP we were visiting (Anna Cavazzini from the Greens/EFA) on them.
We got into the EU parliament and had to go through airport-like security (TSA, etc.). We would only need to go through this security when entering the EU parliament, not when leaving. This is important information for later.
We walked through the finest of dining areas inside of the EU parliament. They even had a shop and information boards about upcoming sessions everywhere. Most people walking past us looked important. We were guided through our breakfast room, where the table was already set and everything seemed normal.
This is where we first met Anna Cavazzini, as well as greeted and thanked her for making this event possible. We began around 08:12 with the whole program. We’d get multiple presentations about the importance of including environmental issues in the EU’s CSDDD (Supply Chain Act), one by someone from the BUNDjugend, the other by someone of FOEE (Friends of the Earth Europe) and the last remote by a person from Ghana talking about a crude oil pipeline project being built through her family’s, friend’s, and community’s territory. If the EU’s Supply Chain Act were to be implemented with our environmental reforms as proposed, oil from this crude oil pipeline couldn’t be imported to the EU due to the environmental damages made during its creation process.
The election regarding the CSDDD was the next day, Thursday the 1st of June 2023, however, a session regarding last-minute reforms on the CSDDD would be happening this very day. Additionally, we had a protest organized for Thursday tomorrow in support of the supply chain act, which if some of the reforms the EPP (Christian Conservatives) proposed were to be passed, we’d have to rethink entirely. We would no longer support the CSDDD if it was watered down through reforms to make it nothing more than a bureaucratic hurdle than a real law regulating the supply chain of imported goods from a social/ethical and environmental lense.
Regardless, all of that went through our minds as the meeting with MEP Cavazzini ended and we were preparing to leave. I fancied the wine glasses they had us drink water out of, as they had a logo of the EU parliament painted on them. I fancied the wine glass so much I just stole it. The EU is rich, and regardless, who is gonna notice a missing glass?
Turns out many people from the kleptomaniac BUNDjugend syndicate had that very same idea, so we ended up looting this place and ridding the EU of two wine glasses and five spoons. Luckily there were no controls or TSA checks when leaving, so it was fine.
Afterwards we went into the Parlamentarium, an EU Museum more or less, but rather an EU circlejerk. There was truly no room for criticism in that place, which is why I won’t discuss it any further. However, something neat happened, I met Mandy Eißing, Main Office Manager of Martin Schirdewan, also an MEP and Co-chairman of the party THE LEFT in the EU parliament. This was interesting because I just received my membership card confirming my entry into the THE LEFT (DIE LINKE, German Version of THE LEFT), which I showed to her and got us instantly talking. We will quite possibly organize an event with people from the Linksjugend [‘solid] / Left Youth Solid in which we’ll visit the EU parliament, at least she seemed very interested in organizing such a thing. I’m still in the process with talking to her, but I got high hopes.
Regardless, it was barely 11 AM so the day was far from over. Next we went to the Friends of the Earth Europe (FOEE) headquarters in Bruxelles to eat and meat with the people leading the campaign in support of the CSDDD.
Alban was the main person we communicated with. We ate in the bureau of the FOEE thanks to the wonderful vegan restaurant at the bottom, got to talk to a lot of Belgian activists, then continued to go downstairs into a conference room and listen to the EU Parliament session live in which they would at some point discuss reforms of the CSDDD. Well, it began with the president of Georgia talking about possibly entering the EU, which was nice, and then continued until 1-2 AM the next day. It’s safe to say most of us didn’t listen to the whole thing, I listened to the section about the CSDDD (1-2 hours) afterwards, as I micro fell asleep on the couch.
Around 14:00 or something (time gets really fishy here) we met a Belgian activist named Sandrine. She was from Youth for Climate Belgium and Code-Rouge, we talked a lot about things currently happening in Germany with our civil disobedience movement (Letzte Generation) as they were illegitimately getting house searches, their accounts banned from all social media (except Fediverse) at that moment in time. They are a completely peaceful movement entirely conforming to Germany’s constitution. There’s no precedent to how they were treated, luckily the police stopped quickly, yet it was obvious that this was a warning sign.
After that very interesting conversation was over me and two other people (Jesse @jesse and Abdu, who is also seen on images with me on a suit) to Climate Drinks, a very chill evening event for just meeting all the different climate activists across Belgium and Europe and communicating. We met sooo many people, but sadly the walk on foot there took so long we needed to leave about an hour after arriving. Alban was also here.
We got to our hotels in time for dinner and had a great evening, I went to bed SO FAST you couldn’t believe it. THIS WAS JUST DAY ONE. Also, it was Derian’s birthday, we also continued calling him Dorian as a joke because that’s how he was introduced before giving a speech in the EU parliament.
I will continue telling the rest of the Brussels story in an edit soon, my phone is dying and my time is limited. Farewell for now!
The next day in the morning we actually needed to eat breakfast at home (no fancy EU parliament food this time) so I was tasked with buying baguettes from the same CarreFour I visited almost a year ago.
At this point we still weren’t aware of whether the reforms were passed and whether the protest was necessary or not, but we rushed to Luxembourg Square in front of the EU parliament anyway.
Oh, and ANOTHER thing I forgot to mention. The police “accidentally” overbooked the Luxembourg Square for this very day, meaning that two separate groups were planning to protest there at the same time. Meaning: we’d have to share the place and now only got half the space to work with as before. Additionally, this information, which may be important if you’re planning a protest upwards of 1000 people, was given to the organizers the night before it happened. Interestingly enough the protest that would occur the same time as ours was a farmer’s protest AGAINST biodiversity laws, so people who would are rather against our green initiatives.
Regardless of that Jesse, Abdu, and me went to the protest in time, arrived ~09:45 and helped prepare everything. It was mostly a picture taking event, as more than vocal support wasn’t possible anyway. The farmer’s protest was huge, ours didn’t compare to it, but that doesn’t matter.
I was told to dress up in a suit as we were going to play an act of businessmen stopping protestors from achieving anything. I was the evil businessman. Fitting.
We heard many speeches that day, some by protestors, some by people who are heavily negatively influenced by environmental damage caused by corporations, some even by MEPs themselves. One MEP from THE LEFT, an EU party heavily in support of the CSDDD, named Manon Aubry also gave a speech, seconds before rushing to the EU Parliament to cast her vote in support of the directive (law), very nice of her.
Sooner than later, when every picture was taken and every play was over, most people left, and us, the organizers, stood in a circle listening closely to the vote happening around 12:00. This was one of the most tense moments I’ve experienced. It was dead silent all of a sudden. The Germans huddled around a German live stream, the Belgians around French. Sooner than later, this happened:
The CSDDD was passed! Everyone was ecstatic, it was great.
This whole thread also gives an idea of how everything went as I describe the political circumstances and HOW IMPOSSIBLY CLOSE the CSDDD was passed in a bit more detail:
Afterwards, all we’ve done is eat ramen noodles in a nice restaurant, then Abdu, Jesse, and I rushed to the FOEE bureau where our stuff was still lying (we actually ran through Bruxelles), then took the metro with some other people to Bruxelles Midi, running through the MOST CONUSING TRAIN STATION OF ALL TIME, arriving at our platform in time to catch the ICE to Köln and all was well.
On the trip I discovered that I could Bluetooth pair with two Bluetooth devices, allowing two people to listen to the same song at the same time, synced.
In Köln our ways departed, I drove further home and nothing noteworthy happened!
From the Pfingstcamp to Brussels with 8 hours of sleep in Norden, I’d repeat this the next day, the second of June, as I’d meet with friends in Bonn to go camping. The long trip was far from over, but more in the next post…