Once more – if you’re in Germany, get out there and vote. You know the CDU and FDP and NPD and Republikaner mainly stand for Evil, but also remember what the SPD and the Greens stand for. My friend Julian posted a partial list:
- War against Yugoslavia
- War in Afghanistan
- Privatizing the public sector, including the Post and Energy
- Tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy
- HARTZ 4
- labour-leasing and temporary work
- allowing hedge funds
- cutting civil rights in the “fight against terrorism”
- Praxisgebühr
- Riester-Rente
- contributing to EU-market radicalism
- no resistance against tuition fees, even though they promised to forbid them
- raising indirect taxes with Ökosteuer and Tabaksteuer
These are not parties of social or economic progress. They are not even parties of environmental progress. Everything they supposedly stand against was actually initiated by them and will continue to be supported by them. Just like the CDU/FDP/etc., they will use the economic crisis their policies created as an excuse to eliminate the rights of normal people and tranfer what little money the population has left into the hands of the people they actually answer to: the financial aristocracy.
Your vote may only make a small difference, but right now the world can use every small bit of progress it can get. Go out there, and vote left.
