Background
Cohn-Bendit was born on April 4, 1945 in Montauban, France, to German Jewish parents who had fled Nazism in 1933. He spent his childhood in Montauban.
( In the sweep of human history, the European Union stand...)
In the sweep of human history, the European Union stands out as one of humankind's most ambitious endeavors. It encompasses half a billion people, twenty-seven member states, twenty-three languages, and an economy valued at over $15 trillion. Modern Europe's stunning achievements aside, its sovereign debt crisis has shaken the world's largest political and economic union to its core. Can the federal institutions and shared values of Europeans meet the challenges of debt crisis that are as much political as economic? Or, are Europe's current woes indicative of a series of deep structural faults that will doom the European Union to breakup and failure? In this edition of the Munk Debates Canada's premier international debate series former EU commissioner Lord Peter Mandelson, French-German EU parliament leader of the Greens, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, German Euro skeptic and bestselling author Josef Joffe, and Scottish historian, Niall Ferguson debate one of the most pressing issues of our day: has the great European experiment failed? This electrifying debate featuring some of Europe's most outspoken parliamentary figures and academics is guaranteed to be an unforgettable and riveting verbal sparring match on the question that will determine the future of world's economy.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1770892281/?tag=2022091-20
(Europe is in crisis. How did we get here? What didnt wor...)
Europe is in crisis. How did we get here? What didnt work? Faced with such an emergency, are the euro zone states not creating an undemocratic monster? Is euroscepticism not reactionary? Could a federation of 27 actually work? This book is a call. A wake up call directed to every citizen. It is an exercise in lucidity that encourages reflection. And it is also an alarm bell. The tone is frank, passionate. The arguments hard hitting : Europe must once and for all get rid of the navel gazing of its nation-states. A radical revolution is needed. A large European revolution. And a European federal Union must emerge. A Union that enables Europe to participate in the postnational world of tomorrow. By laziness, cowardice and lack of vision, too many of our Heads of State and Government prefer not to see what is at stake. Lets wake them up. Lets confront them with their impotence. And give them no respite until they have taken the European way, the way to a Europe of the future, towards a Europe for Europeans. The era of empty summits and statements is over. Now is the time for action.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1479261882/?tag=2022091-20
( In May 68 a student protest spread to other universitie...)
In May 68 a student protest spread to other universities, to Paris factories and in a few weeks to most of France. A million Parisians marched; ten million workers went out on strike. At the center of the fray was Daniel Cohn-Bendit. Obsolete Communism was written in 5 weeks immediately after the state regained control, and no account of May 68 can match its immediacy or urgency.
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Cohn-Bendit was born on April 4, 1945 in Montauban, France, to German Jewish parents who had fled Nazism in 1933. He spent his childhood in Montauban.
He attended the Odenwaldschule in Heppenheim near Frankfurt, a secondary school for children of the upper middle class. He returned to France in 1966 to study sociology at the University of Paris's Faculty in Nanterre under the supervision of the network society's theorist Manuel Castells.
From 3 May 1968 onwards, massive student and workers riots erupted in Paris against Charles de Gaulle's government. Cohn-Bendit quickly emerged as a public face of the student protests, along with Jacques Sauvageot, Alain Geismar and Alain Krivine. His "foreign" origins were highlighted by opponents of the student movement, leading to students taking up the chant, "Nous sommes tous des Juifs allemands" ("We are all German Jews").
The French Communist Party leader Georges Marchais described Cohn-Bendit as the "German anarchist Cohn-Bendit" and denounced some student protesters as "sons of the upper bourgeoisie . .. who will quickly forget their revolutionary flame in order to manage daddy's firm and exploit workers there". Continued police violence, however, prompted trade unions (and eventually the Communist Party) to support the students, and from 13 May onwards, France was struck by a general strike.
However Cohn-Bendit had already retreated on 10 May with a few friends to the Atlantic coast city of Saint-Nazaire, seeing that his Nanterre group had become a minority without political influence in the larger Paris students' movement. Cohn-Bendit's political opponents took advantage of his German passport and had him expelled from Saint-Nazaire to Germany on 22 May as a "seditious alien". On 27 May the Communist-led workers signed the Grenelle agreements with the government; on 30 May supporters of the president organised a successful demonstration; new elections were called and at the end of June 1968 the Gaullists were back in power, now occupying three-quarters of the French National Assembly.
On the whole, Cohn-Bendit had participated little in the May 1968 Paris events, which continued without him, but he had become a legend, which was to be used later in the 1990s upon his return to France.
In the 19706 he founded RK, a German group which encouraged common action between students and workers, and took part in various housing-related protests and reforms. For employment, he taught at an "anti-authoritarian kindergarten, " and worked as a salesperson in the Karl-Marx Bookstore near the city's main university. In the 19806, Cohn-Bendit founded a radical city magazine, Pflasterstand, whose name referred to a slogan of the 1968 revolts: "Underneath the surface structures of cement [das Pflaster] and steel lies the beach [der Strand]. " He also worked as publicist for a number of books and publications, and wrote extensively on radical issues. In 1984, Cohn-Bendit became a member of the Green Party, which changed its name to the Alliance Green Party in 1989. The Greens made common cause with the German Socialist Party (SPD) in the so-called "Red-Green Coalition, " which elected Cohn-Bendit to the honorary position of Commissioner for Multicultural Affairs in July 1989. In 1994, Cohn-Bendit reemerged onto the world, or at least the Continental, stage with his election to the European Parliament as a member of the Alliance Green Party. Sitting on the Committees for External Affairs, Security, and Defense, he opposed nationalism and promoted a globalist agenda. He also served on the Committee for Basic Freedoms and Internal Affairs, and on the "Delegation Maghreb, " which is concerned with issues relating to the nations of the Maghreb region of north Africa: Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. He has also been an active figure behind the European Forum for Active Conflict Avoidance (FEPAC. ) When he was only 22, Daniel Cohn-Bendit left an indelible mark on the history of the 1960s. The movement he helped spawn led to many improvements in the lives of students and workers in the short run; even more importantly, the events set the agenda for French politics for many years, culminating in the 1981 election of President Francois Mitterrand's socialist government. But Cohn-Bendit himself remained modest about his achievements. In his brief autobiography on the World Wide Web in the 1990s, he made scant reference to his role in the 1968 events, and concentrated more on his current activities in the European Parliament.
( In May 68 a student protest spread to other universitie...)
( In the sweep of human history, the European Union stand...)
(Various biographies on revolutionaries of the left.)
(Europe is in crisis. How did we get here? What didnt wor...)
Summing up his interests, he said, "In any event I remain: a wanderer through the worlds, cultures, languages, occupations, generations, and classes, and last but not least: still an active soccer-nut, as player and fan. "