tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66383672011-10-27T15:59:16.965+02:00a weblog from ViennaGeorgnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2921100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1159815084920204422006-10-02T20:32:00.000+02:002006-10-02T20:51:24.950+02:00

Some early thoughts on the meaning of yesterday's election result in Austria (socialdemocrats 35,7%, conservatives 34,2%, far-right FPÖ 11,2%, Greens 10,5%, far-right BZÖ 4,2%, big coalition socialdemocrats-conservatives certain due to lack of arithmetically possible and politically thinkable alternatives):There is no internationally interesting angle to this result.The return of the big

Georgnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1150491901732534482006-06-16T21:41:00.000+02:002006-06-16T23:54:13.726+02:00

Something must be horribly wrong, mustn't it, when suddenly both the governing conservatives and even the far-right Haider-BZÖ express sympathies [DE] for the new Green immigration policy that was presented two weeks ago (press agency summary [DE] and 5-page press-materials [DE]). Not so fast: for the right of the political spectrum, embracing pragmatic Green proposals is a well-proven electoral

Georgnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1148067799752339252006-05-19T21:29:00.000+02:002006-05-19T21:43:19.820+02:00

Since I'm posting very little these days, I'm particularly glad to relate these fine local links to any readers who might drop by:Kraehwinkel [DE] is a good leftist political blog, which I found through the much newer, but equally leftist and political schaffnerlos [DE].Much broader contentwise, pretty professional, but simply too good for not linking to it any longer is Andrea Dusl's

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1142283280403713192006-03-13T21:16:00.001+01:002006-03-14T22:54:24.810+01:00

Pollsters suggest this is the case, as the results of last week's popular petition "Austria, remain free" have just been announced (258,277 votes, or 4.3% of the electorate, more or less as expected).According to one poll, the people who signed the petition in one of the magistrate's offices across the country expressed the following voting preferences in a general election: SPÖ (socialdemocrats)

Georgnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1141937270477783172006-03-09T21:31:00.000+01:002006-03-09T21:47:50.530+01:00

Carl Bildt (the conservative Swedish ex-PM): Simplistic Xenophobia in AustriaThere are many strange aspects to the Austrian situation. On the one hand, it's one of the countries where public hostility to European Union enlargement, and in particular to Turkey, is strongest. The two major parties ÖVP and SPÖ are, sorry to say, competing in negativism concerning Turkey. It's only the Greens that

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1141500133998284352006-03-04T20:17:00.000+01:002006-03-04T20:22:13.996+01:00

At some point during the last thirty years, kindergartens seem to have changed.

Georgnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1138351253525759592006-01-27T09:00:00.000+01:002006-01-27T09:40:53.580+01:00

Happy Birthday, you dead genius. Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution requests more posts on Mozart ('Can too much Mozart make you sick?'), does his own bit, and, surprisingly, inspired me to this. Also check out the Viennese Mozart 2006 campaign, which has a lot of money to spend, but thanks to a smart guy in charge (socialdemocrat mayor Michael Häupl appointed the conservative politician Peter

Georgnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1137853250894558642006-01-21T15:06:00.000+01:002006-01-21T15:20:50.966+01:00

Ibrahim Rugova, the long-time political leader of Albanians in Kosova, has died at age 61 of the lung cancer with which he was diagnosed last September. He was a nationalist and a pacifist.I never arrived at an interpretation of his role and merits in which I could believe with confidence. Was he a pacifist leader of his people inspired by moral values? Or was he a representative of an elite that

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1132949411725801192005-11-25T20:53:00.000+01:002005-12-28T17:43:17.503+01:00

Dear readers, due to changes in my daily schedule blog posts may appear more irregurlarly in the future. As most of my readers now seem to come here from RSS-aggregators, I hope this will cause no major inconveniences. Other visitors, please consider adding this blog to an aggregator [for example bloglines] to prevent visits to an unchanged page.Also, since occasionally weird stuff has been

Georgnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1132259298130662672005-11-17T20:43:00.000+01:002005-11-17T22:16:43.103+01:00

..in Vienna was the 15th of November. The newly elected Green members of the Vienna city-council had to vote who of them would fulfill which of the more important speaker-roles during the next five years (result here [DE], for insiders). Stage set for a confrontation between the left-wingers [Fundis], who were in the majority, and the moderates [Realos]. Yes, the two camps exist, don't let

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1131702126991741282005-11-11T10:26:00.000+01:002005-11-11T10:42:07.003+01:00

From the new book by Gene Sperling, who served as National Economic Advisor under Bill Clinton:The Democratic Party should disband if it ever stops being the party that stands by the little guy, leads the fight against racial and economic disadvantage, sticks by working families when times are tough, and takes on those with privilege who don't play by the rules.Yet when the public only hears

Georgnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1131312610818919062005-11-06T21:24:00.000+01:002005-11-06T22:30:10.836+01:00

That was exhausting! Today I participated in the 55. general meeting of the Vienna branch of the Austrian Green party. For seven hours we voted the list of candidates for the next nationwide election in autumn 2006, position after position, with five minute presentation slots plus five minutes for questions for each candidate. The first two places were uncontested, the incumbents got 84% (

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1130832211023603962005-11-01T08:29:00.000+01:002005-11-01T09:03:31.033+01:00

"The SPD slaughters its chairman by mistake" is how the media describe what happened in Germany yesterday. Franz Müntefering, the seemingly unassailable Schröder-buddy, SPD-chairman, and designated vice-chancellor has said good-bye to the party job (his government-job may be the next to go) after suffering a resounding 14:23 defeat for his candidate Kajo Wasserhövel for the job of

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1130689387300631832005-10-30T17:15:00.000+01:002005-10-30T17:23:07.356+01:00

A great post by Bjoern Staerk about how the focus of our activities changes from before democracy arrives to once it's established (and sucks); and from before amateur media evolve to once they are here to stay (and suck too).[This link comes with a special dedication to Christian from eDemokratie.ch.]

Georgnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1130319659923171172005-10-26T10:50:00.000+02:002005-10-26T12:24:20.690+02:00

It had escaped me until now, but the ongoing debate over the labour dispute surrounding the activities of a Latvian company in the Swedish town of Vaxholm is instructive. The Latvian company Laval had won a building contract in Vaxholm. It brought its Latvian workers to the site who were paid according to a collective bargaining agreement with a Latvian trade union. This provoked the furor of the

Georgnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1130104501284496812005-10-23T23:41:00.000+02:002005-10-23T23:55:01.330+02:00

23:40 Final result SPÖ 49 (+2.1), ÖVP 18.8 (+2.4), FPÖ 14.9 (-5.3), Greens 14.7 (+2.2), KPÖ 1.5 (+0.8), BZÖ 1.2The TV-discussion was not pretty either. ÖVP trying to signal understanding for a healthy dose of xenophobia. SPÖ soft like butter. The really frustrating thing is that the situation where the Greens had a chance to be an uncontested third nationwide is now over, FPÖ-Strache announced

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1130083842399901932005-10-23T18:06:00.000+02:002005-10-23T19:54:10.763+02:00

18:10 Those FPÖ-voters lied in the exit-poll, true to their character. Based on a 32% count the projection now looks like this:SPÖ 49%ÖVP 18,6%FPÖ 15,1%Greens 14,7%KPÖ 1,6%BZÖ 1,1% I'm very angry right now. I blame chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel and SPÖ-leader Alfred Gusenbauer - the FPÖ has been revived on the anti-Turkey theme set by the two big parties. Thanks a lot.[technical troubles have

Georgnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1130079862204692462005-10-23T17:01:00.000+02:002005-10-23T17:04:22.210+02:00

SPÖ 52%ÖVP 18%Greens 16%FPÖ 11%KPÖ 2%BZÖ 1%surprisingly much for the KPÖ, everything else pretty much as expected. The Greens good, but not as good as I had hoped.

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1130074259492558222005-10-23T14:53:00.000+02:002005-10-23T15:39:10.646+02:00

15:30 The weather is beautiful. Only bloggers, FPÖ-voters and maybe some SPÖ-voters stay in town on a Sunday like this. Accordingly, first reports [DE] point to a low turnout.At 17:00 CET all polling stations close simultaneously. There will be an exit poll which may be 2-3% off the result, but which might show the trends. The first prediction based on a partial count will come in at 18:00, then

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1129888558300804312005-10-21T11:34:00.000+02:002005-10-21T14:55:30.286+02:00

Two quotes from unrelated articles in the Economist to make your day: Regarding the increasing importance of intellectual property rights in the ICT industry [article]:“Intellectual property has become more central to the industry,” says Greg Papadopoulos, chief technology officer of Sun Microsystems. “I don't know if that is a function of a mature industry, or simply a confused one.”And there is

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1129579720345070682005-10-17T21:24:00.000+02:002005-10-17T22:11:20.553+02:00

As the Viennese election campaign - the first political campaign I'm witnessing from inside rather than as a detached observer - has entered its final week, I'm lost in the general frenzy of trying to make sense of all the contradictory opinion polls, trend reports, gossip, and over-generalised anecdotal experiences. I'm pretty clueless about the outcome, which may be unfortunate for a blogger,

Georgnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1129207111153712202005-10-13T14:14:00.000+02:002005-10-13T14:38:31.256+02:00

It is a common topos of Austrian oppositional rhetorics to demand that Austria should become like Sweden (or Scandinavia in general): have the world-best education system and social welfare, while still managing the fastest growth rates among the EU-15. Although I'm myself an admirer of Scandinavian accomplishments in these areas, I am sometimes sceptical as to the chances of relocating Austria

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1128957087965492882005-10-10T16:20:00.000+02:002005-10-10T17:11:28.070+02:00

Second in the string of three Austrian regional elections this autumn, 240,000 inhabitants of the Burgenland-region yesterday gave an absolute majority to the SPÖ. The figures:SPÖ 52,2% (+5,7)ÖVP 36,3 (+1,0)FPÖ 5,8 (-6,9)Grüne 5,2 (-0,3)Nowadays the FPÖ celebrates results like this, but the Greens had little to smile about. The largest town in Burgenland is the regional capital Eisenstadt, where

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1128593899668067112005-10-06T12:00:00.000+02:002005-10-06T12:18:19.683+02:00

A readable and very interesting article on the effects of labour market regulation, partly based on a comparison of three French companies with three comparable British counterparts. W. S. Siebert, Labour Market Regulation: Some Comparative Lessons [via Mahalanobis, via Steffen H.]:Our conclusion is that labour market regulation designed to improve working conditions and wages, and strengthen

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1128499895639801282005-10-05T10:05:00.000+02:002005-10-05T10:30:20.150+02:00

'Heute' is a free newspaper that is distributed on the Vienna underground system. Sadly, on 26 September its editorship was taken over by Eva Dichand, the 32-year old daughter-in-law of Hans Dichand, who is the powerful editor of the unspeakable 'Krone' newspaper, read daily by 3 million Austrians. As you can see from the headline in the screenshot, which is also on the frontpage of today's print

Georgnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1128453704390617202005-10-04T20:38:00.000+02:002005-10-04T21:24:38.953+02:00

Emma Brockes makes her own contribution to the tradition, in an attack piece titled "The question: what is Austria's problem?". Meanwhile, at the Guardian newsblog, Simon Jeffery kindly discusses my entry from last Friday in a post that is more lyrically titled "The truth is in the stuffing". Sadly for me, in the end Jeffery takes me to have said that Schüssel wanted negotiations with the goal of

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1128333798664759652005-10-03T11:51:00.000+02:002005-10-03T12:04:05.930+02:00

12:00 CET: While Austria has made it to the CNN front-page with this article (a feat usually accomplished only when cable-cars full of tourists crash, or burn in tunnels), last-minute negotiations are still continuing five hours before the deadline in order to overturn the country's opposition to starting EU accession negotiations with Turkey without mentioning an alternative to full membership.

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1128277742886220112005-10-02T20:16:00.000+02:002005-10-02T20:32:41.816+02:00

and the ÖVP has got the reward for a disasterous last period in power and an equally disasterous election campaign - the post of provincial governor goes to the SPÖ for the first time in 60 years. The Communist Party of Austria becomes the third largest party in the province, surging from 1% to over 6%. The Greens fare badly, the FPÖ and BZÖ split their remaining votes so that both of them fail

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1128078684876141742005-09-30T12:26:00.000+02:002005-09-30T15:02:36.766+02:00

Despite appearances, I am pretty sure that Austrian chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel, who personally defines the foreign policy of the country, is actually in favour of full Turkish EU membership. This may sound surprising amid this weekend's turmoil over Austria's stubborn opposition against the 24 other EU-members over the start of accession negotiations. But if anything, Schüssel is someone who

Georgnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1128067660230075892005-09-30T09:42:00.000+02:002005-09-30T10:07:40.290+02:00

From an interview with EU-employment commissioner Vladimír Spidla in Der Standard [DE]:Standard: On Thursday there will be an EU-debate of social policy stakeholders. Is there a European social model at all?Spidla: There is a common bundle of values. One can see common traits in all EU-member states. Belgium spends 27.5% of GDP for social security and the health system, the UK 27.2%. The

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1127896149827754052005-09-28T10:14:00.000+02:002005-09-28T10:29:10.380+02:00

So what's going on in Kosova? I keep getting these regular news items from RFE/RL, and nothing ever seems to change much. At the beginning of the year, the story was that talks about the final status of Kosova - independence or something that's very complicated, has a different name, but is basically the same thing - would begin in the second half of 2005, after the completion of the report of

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1127764890056625012005-09-26T20:52:00.000+02:002005-09-26T22:01:30.120+02:00

I have spent a frustrating time on the net trying to better understand basic income/minimum income models. There are many different models of a basic income guarantee (a summary in six illustrative graphs including the one shown to the right is here [.pdf]). Most of them stipulate a cash handout to people below a certain income threshold, and usually the cash-handout is not means-tested. In other

Georgnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1127477733840917112005-09-23T14:00:00.000+02:002005-09-23T17:14:10.963+02:00

This is a bit sentimental, but what must be done must be done. Joschka Fischer, hero of everything Green and German-speaking, has given what is allegedly his "last big interview for a long time" to the taz [DE]. Consider this bit of wisdom and real-time verbal creativity:taz: Gerhard Schröder said recently that the Red-Green coalition did not fit the situation of society. In his words: "A

Georgnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1127473613427731512005-09-23T12:56:00.000+02:002005-09-23T17:17:35.946+02:00

It took only one session of "exploratory talks" to convince both parties to abandon any further meetings, as the FAZ reports [DE]. The CDU will now pursue talks with the SPD as the only remaining option.One reason for the early failure of the process remain the huge policy differences between the two camps. A second reason for why particularly the Greens signalled already yesterday that the talks

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1127393874458202172005-09-22T14:43:00.000+02:002005-09-22T14:57:54.463+02:00

After the speculative exuberance of my last posts - no, I no longer believe that a Jamaica-coalition in Germany is realistic - here's an invitation to a refreshingly prosaic topic. A couple of other people and I are toying around with a grass-roots initiative to promote pedestrianism in the urban environment. So if you know some German, like to take it slow and easy, and want to know for example

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1127205947673807542005-09-20T10:45:00.000+02:002005-09-20T11:06:45.596+02:00

Political scientist Joachim Raschke has an interesting analysis [DE] of the German Jamaica-Scenario from the perspective of the Greens at Wahltagebuch.de. Some translated excerpts:Red-Green has failed in the economic field, Black-Yellow cannot govern against a society based on red-green values. Whatever a sceptical society still affords in attributing economic competence, is almost exclusively

Georgnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1127124837059439642005-09-19T11:38:00.000+02:002005-09-19T12:18:08.756+02:00

Ol' Green Soldier, Dreadlock JoschkaThere was a little Green SoldierIn the heart of GermaniaStolen from Kreuzbergia, brought to BavariaFighting on arrival, fighting for survivalWill this be the new song from Germany? After the German elections last night, the battered winners CDU/CSU have publicly set their eyes on the German Green party, until yesterday coalition partners of the SPD and a narrow

Georgnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1127067580593511172005-09-18T20:15:00.000+02:002005-09-18T21:59:27.356+02:00

An old tradition in German election TV programming is the "Elefant Round", a discussion which has started just now (20:15) on German TV, which brings together the leaders of all parties: Merkel/CDU, Schröder/SPD, Stoiber/CSU, Fischer/Greens, Westerwelle/FDP, Bisky/Left Party. I'm blogging this live:20:15 Merkel denies having lost the elections - "Schröder has lost more". Declares no preference

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1127061192297600252005-09-18T18:22:00.000+02:002005-09-18T18:33:12.303+02:00

SPD c. 34%, CDU/CSU c. 36%, Greens c. 8%, FDP c. 10%, Left Party c. 8%The Red-Green coalition has been voted out, but the right coalition CDU/CSU/FDP has not won a majority. The big surprise ist the weak showing of the CDU/CSU, which the last polls saw at 41%-42%.First analysis at 18:30: As Joachim Raschke wrote [DE]in the taz in June (I commented here): "We live in a society that has a red-green

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1126611790281263262005-09-13T12:47:00.000+02:002005-09-13T15:07:24.980+02:00

It's one of those stories that makes me think that the title of this weblog is spot on. At the height of the regional election campaign in Austria's Styria region, the governing conservative ÖVP is in trouble as more and more details of murky financial transactions in the direction of ÖVP-renegade Hirschmann, who is contesting the elections with his own party, come to the surface. Frankly, the

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1126261713103788212005-09-09T11:26:00.000+02:002005-09-09T15:16:14.453+02:00

Norm Geras discusses interesting questions in a post titled "Following the absurd". He starts from remarks about Hitler, who can seem 'absurd' or 'inspire laughter' at a personal level - how did it happen that so many people willingly followed such a figure into the abyss of Nazi rule? But Geras's main concern is to apply this problem to our time:It's possible there are political leaders of such

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1126094158689432252005-09-07T13:17:00.000+02:002005-09-08T15:35:34.263+02:00

Reading economic news from Norway is like reading fairy-tales. Good therapy in moments of depression. In a post titled "Last Rich Soviet State?", Swedish ex-PM and blogger Carl Bildt relates a recent first-page headline in the Stavanger Aftenblad: "Norway risks drowning in money". Even the cautious Norwegian central bank has a hard time trying to describe "challenges ahead":High oil prices have a

Georgnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1126079429722097572005-09-07T09:43:00.000+02:002005-09-07T12:45:16.876+02:00

Histologion has assembled some telling quotations from various sources (I mean the ones after the initial section on Cuba and before the ideological spin from Znet), all of them from before hurricane Katrina, which demonstrate the apparent lack of willingness of officials to prepare organised evacuation of the poor and weak from New Orleans in case of a catastrophe.Update: Wrong link corrected.

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1125926842453181292005-09-05T14:59:00.000+02:002005-09-05T15:27:22.533+02:00

For those of you who haven't seen this quoted at Crooked Timber yet: in a post titled "Katrina Really IS Like September 11", Jim Henley summarized the way the New Orleans disaster has "chiefly served to confirm people in their previously held views." :Liberals proclaim it proof of the need for a robust federal government … conservatives find themselves confirmed in their belief in the overriding

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1125665368745637202005-09-02T13:58:00.000+02:002005-09-02T17:07:13.296+02:00

To start with, I consider it inappropriate to link this event to global warming. As historical records show, hurricanes in general but also the strongest hurricanes are not on the rise - see the charts by EU Rota, which are based on this table from the National Hurricane Center (via Chrenkoff).There are however three issues that are important:It is imaginable how difficult the decisionmaking by

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1125650934874867922005-09-02T10:00:00.000+02:002005-09-02T11:46:34.863+02:00

Two months after election day, yesterday the Albanian Central Electoral Commission has at last published the final result of the 2005 general election in that country. The process was so slow because in the face of defeat the outgoing left-wing government contested many individual results, and a rerun had to be held in three seats in the second half of August. Complaints continued even after that

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1125527327745658342005-08-31T23:47:00.000+02:002005-09-01T00:28:47.793+02:00

The Swiss daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung, which operates under a different media law than Austrian media, discloses the name [DE] of the famous US-lawyer implicated in the scandal over a call girl ring that sold young women from Eastern Europe below the age of 18 to prominent clients in Vienna (as this blog reported earlier).According to the NZZ, the US-lawyer whose phone was tapped when he ordered

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1125234324452358342005-08-28T14:24:00.000+02:002005-08-31T13:37:36.313+02:00

[CORRECTION 31/08/05: I liked the comparison I make in this post so much that I posted the link to it in the reader forum of the Standard-article [DE] reporting on the ongoing negotiations. Another reader then responded by saying that the facts about more Austrians working in Slovenia are a myth, and that the opposite is true. Apparently the myth was created in the early nineties by proponents of

Georgnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1124964795844974442005-08-25T12:03:00.000+02:002005-08-25T15:48:14.676+02:00

This 'quick news medium' today follows the outputs of the mass media to two current outrages. Judge for yourself whether there is any lesson in them. Be warned before reading on that the material that follows is unpleasant to deal with.In a Hamburg court, hearings have started in the trial of the parents of seven-year old Jessica who died earlier this year. The FAZ reports [DE]:The seven-year old

Georgnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1124883069653471232005-08-24T13:25:00.000+02:002005-08-24T18:22:51.470+02:00

If you can read German, have a look at the new weblog of Christoph Chorherr, arguably one of the more creative minds in Austrian politics. He is currently campaigning for implementing Richard Florida's proposals on how to attract the Creative Class to urban regions, in this case to Vienna. The undercurrent is the Viennese election campaign, where Chorherr's task is to win over bourgeois-liberal

Georgnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1124457289847830962005-08-19T14:41:00.000+02:002005-08-22T16:39:09.766+02:00

Nobody in Germany believes any longer that SPD and Greens together will have an absolute majority in the next Bundestag that will allow them to reestablish their current coalition. Such an absolute majority seems impossible not least due to the sizeable presence that the Left Party will have in the next German parliament. Since a threeway coalition of SPD/Greens plus either the FDP or the Left

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1124442318655492472005-08-19T10:16:00.000+02:002005-08-19T13:55:09.246+02:00

And here is the proof, see for yourself. This at least was the result when I filled in the election questionnaire at Wahlkabine.at (via Verflixt and Zugenewst!)for the upcoming regional election in Styria. Yes, it is election season in Austria too: this autumn there will be regional elections in Styria (2.10.), Burgenland (9.10.), and Vienna (23.10.) - Wahlkabine.at has compiled questionnaires

Georgnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1124357786158298772005-08-18T10:57:00.000+02:002005-08-18T11:43:21.933+02:00

I have become old, very old. I emphatically enjoy the cultural pessimism of conservative German daily Die Welt, as in this essay by Matthias Kamann [DE] on the occasion of the Catholic Youth Festival in Cologne these days, which features the Pope as its star-performer. Kamann celebrates the few remaining church-oriented teenagers as the last heirs to the moralist rigor of the '68er'-weirdos (no

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1124282929455677242005-08-17T10:36:00.000+02:002005-08-17T14:48:49.620+02:00

Angela Merkel has nominated Paul Kirchhof as the member of her 'competence team' responsible for finances (Stern [de], FAZ [de], TAZ [de]). He is thus her reply to SPD-finance minister Hans Eichel, although there are doubts whether the Heidelberg-academic and ex-constitutional judge Kirchhof has enough of a power base within the CDU to have a chance to become finance minister in the likely event

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1124200406837482662005-08-16T15:36:00.000+02:002005-11-02T19:53:04.853+01:00

Too late for an easy break-in in my living quarters, dear English-language Viennese blog-monitoring burglars, I'm back.

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1121714699339398022005-07-18T20:34:00.000+02:002005-07-18T21:28:16.386+02:00

It's not a bad thing that these days it is basically too hot in these quarters to bother about Central European politics. The resulting lack of daily political activism spawns a distance that can be revealing. When our leading politicians take a step back from their habits, it seems, they become afraid, and rightly so.What you get then is the conservative Austrian Chancellor proposing the Tobin

Georgnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1121332789482970092005-07-14T10:36:00.000+02:002005-07-14T11:24:20.030+02:00

In an interview [DE] with state-controlled daily Wiener Zeitung, Alexander Van der Bellen, chairman of the oppositional Austrian Green Party and economics professor, was asked about the main weakness of the current government. His reply:It is becoming clear that there exists no concept in the area of the increasing unemployment and the slowing economic growth. I have the impression that the

Georgnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1120898336806811852005-07-09T09:51:00.000+02:002005-07-10T09:37:52.860+02:00

Well, among the mixup of old and new pledges it seems rather hard to really know. There is the G8 Gleneagles Communique [pdf] of course, the second part of which is on aid for Africa. The most substantive parts are Annex II and this paragraph on page 26:27. The commitments of the G8 and other donors will lead to an increase in official development assistance to Africa of $25 billion a year by

Georgnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1120827141795194432005-07-08T13:52:00.000+02:002005-07-08T14:52:21.836+02:00

I believe that for democratic politics it is important to engage many voices. I also believe that it is important for people to strive very hard to determine what is the good in politics, and in more profane matters, to understand what is the best policy for a particular issue. As a matter of subjective empirical observation, too often do we follow our prejudice with too little self-scepticism

Georgnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1120766228120989622005-07-07T21:50:00.000+02:002005-07-07T21:59:26.130+02:00

I had the pleasure of living in the UK for one year as a student. [flag copied from Andrew Sullivan]

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1120576331604762702005-07-05T16:56:00.000+02:002005-07-05T17:20:05.006+02:00

17:00- Ugliness rears its head as four PS-candidates have contested [AL] the results in their constituencies and the road to an official final result is therefore getting longer and longer. Meanwhile, I've head a look at the proportional vote based on the incomplete count figures given by the Central Electoral Commission. Both big parties use the proportional vote to nurture a range of small

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1120559477879424212005-07-05T12:17:00.000+02:002005-07-05T12:41:35.383+02:00

12:00- I have scraped some data off the website of the Central Electoral Commission. There are inofficial data for 89 direct seats:PD 52 seatsPS 34 seatsLSI 1, PBDNJ 1, Indep. 14 seats for PD and PS each are very close. Most of the 11 seats for which there were no data are in the South, so if the PS wins them by 2:1 margin, this would yield approx. PD 55 - PS 42.I also counted the number of seats

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1120554453863436632005-07-05T11:02:00.000+02:002005-07-05T11:10:11.926+02:00

10:00- Finally some hard facts from the Central Electoral Commission: The governing PS has indeed won only 2 out of the 12 direct seats in Tirana, which lies just at the border between the traditionally PD-dominated North and the PS-dominated South. The PS had a majority in Tirana last time around. This seems to indicate that mass media reports of a PD victory may be right.

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1120514514732286632005-07-04T23:42:00.000+02:002005-07-05T00:03:23.310+02:00

Or so the contenders want to make us believe. On June 4, 23:00 [AL], Gramoz Ruci of the PS reconfirmed his earlier declaration that the PS has won 55 of the 100 direct seats.At 21:25 [AL], Zhozefina Topalli of the PD asserted that the PD would form the next government with 56 of the direct seats, with another 8 within reach.Ilir Meta's single direct seat for the LSI was reported earlier in the

Georgnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1120485324716401312005-07-04T15:48:00.000+02:002005-07-04T16:00:35.346+02:00

15:45- PS-General Secretary Gramoz Ruci has come forward with the claim [AL] that at c. 30% of the votes counted, the PS is ahead in 55 of the 100 direct seats, the PD in 44, and the LSI in 1. If true, this means that the PS will surpass the threshold required for an absolute majority in parliament even when the results from the proportional count are considered. Ruci conceded that the PS is

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1120482074277191032005-07-04T14:45:00.000+02:002005-07-04T15:01:14.526+02:00

14:45: The flow of new information concerning the election results has slowed down considerably over the last hours. As the Albanian press agency ATA reports, the vote counting process has been interrupted in seven of the 100 districts, according to the Central Electoral Commission.According to BalkanWeb [AL], the reason is that in these zones the electoral commission members of the governing PS

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1120470366381086932005-07-04T11:20:00.000+02:002005-07-04T11:46:07.766+02:00

As expected, there are no firm results yet from the elections in Albania. Counting started around midnight.The oppositional PD of Sali Berisha claims to possess information that it won 10 of the 11 seats in Tirana that are assigned by the first-past-the-post system - this would signal that the PD is doing better than in the last two elections, when Tirana was split almost equally between the PD

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1120213220339167922005-07-01T11:16:00.000+02:002005-07-02T10:01:09.846+02:00

The last Gallup poll before the general election this Sunday had Sali Berisha's right-wing coalition, led by his Democratic Party (PD), at 35%, prime minister Fatos Nano's left-wing coalition, led by the Socialist Party (PS) at 34%, and Ilir Meta's Socialist Movement for Integration (LSI) at 10%.The closeness of the polls is a problem, since it means that the losing side is likely to contest the

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1120205096336874912005-07-01T09:58:00.000+02:002005-07-01T10:04:56.343+02:00

Mahalanobis points to this FT article about new research by the IMF on the effects of development aid. I reprint a longer section of the article because I learned a lot there.Days before the Live-8 concerts around the world, and next week's Group of Eight countries summit in Scotland, the IMF has released two extensive research papers that suggest aid flows to poor countries have not led to

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1120156524987140812005-06-30T19:23:00.000+02:002005-06-30T20:36:13.950+02:00

So Brigitte Ederer will be the next chairwoman of the board (similar to a CEO in US business practice) of the Austrian branch of Siemens, an organisation with a staff of 18,000 (DerStandard, [DE]). Ederer, 49, has been on the Siemens board since 2001. For Austrian standards, it is remarkable that a woman gets such a top job in industry, and it seems that no other woman has held quite such an

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1119517204856220962005-06-23T10:37:00.000+02:002005-06-23T14:17:45.650+02:00

Blair's speech from today on his plans for the British EU-presidency is here. He stipulates one implication that I find convincing and important:I tell you in all frankness: it is a contradiction to be in favour of liberalising Europe's membership but against opening up its economy.A weakness of Blair's speech is however that it does not acknowledge the problem for his allegedly pro-EU position

Georgnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1119281002102356742005-06-20T16:11:00.000+02:002005-06-21T17:43:10.286+02:00

[post removed]

Georgnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1119014371438814712005-06-17T14:58:00.000+02:002005-06-17T15:19:31.453+02:00

Let's say there are politicians you like and politicians you don't like. Why is that judgement intensified so much when you come to know them in person?Why do the bad guys appear to be mere mechanics of power, whereas the good guys impress as passionate fighters for the common good?If my preferences and policy agreements were reversed, would I also make these attributions in reverse?Rather than

Georgnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1118836410180525662005-06-15T13:14:00.000+02:002005-06-15T13:55:04.266+02:00

Faced with stubbornly high unemployment, currently at 17.5% in spite of a rapidly growing economy, the economically liberal Slovak government is experimenting with a new idea to reduce its burden. Unemployed residents of several border regions are to receive a subsidy of up to 50 euros per month for a period of three months to cover travel expenses if they commute to a job in the border regions

Georgnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1118655367248768552005-06-13T10:50:00.000+02:002005-06-13T11:38:14.840+02:00

One of the reasons why this blog is written in awkward English rather than in unintelligible German is that in early 2004, when I started, it seemed to me that there was no critical mass of German-language bloggers with a sufficiently narrow-minded focus on politics, the few honorable exceptions notwithstanding. Since then I've seen gradual progress.But I've now found out that over the last few

Georgnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1118514565600732372005-06-11T19:47:00.000+02:002005-06-12T09:33:14.386+02:00

I have been reading around a bit in the current debate on what next for the EU. The topic has a tendency to provoke lofty political speculation. For people like myself who have an unhealthy inclination for such non-concreteness, it is therefore rather dangerous territory. Health advisory: Don't think about the future of the EU for more than fifteen minutes a day.At two opposite poles of the range

Georgnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1118224636387927712005-06-08T11:04:00.000+02:002005-06-08T12:35:29.626+02:00

Albania's longterm rivals for power, prime minister Fatos Nano of the socialist party (PS) and former president Sali Berisha of the democratic party (PD) are preparing a televised debate at the height of the electoral campaign for the general elections on 4th July. While they are both keen on having such a one-on-one debate to suppress the challenge of socialist anti-Nano maverick and former

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1118147563202625262005-06-07T14:20:00.000+02:002005-06-07T14:32:43.206+02:00

Anglo-Saxon bullshit-bingo (this quoted from The Times):The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said yesterday that there was no point in spending the time arguing over areas of disagreement and Mr Blair would instead focus on the G8 agenda in general terms. “We know the American position on the IFF [Brown's International Finance Facility for aid to Africa, ed.], and the 0.7 per cent (aid target)

Georgnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1118135345010722922005-06-07T11:06:00.000+02:002005-06-07T11:09:05.016+02:00

From an interview with the FT:Mr Blair indicated he had given up trying to persuade the Bush administration to back Mr Brown's scheme to double aid to Africa by tapping the capital markets.Mr Brown's idea for an international finance facility, allowing government to spend future aid money now, was one of “certain things we know they are not going to do, that we are not asking them to do”.

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1117704230554133262005-06-02T11:20:00.000+02:002005-06-02T11:23:50.560+02:00

(originally posted as a comment at Margot Wallström's blog)It is a sad political moment. Two types of reactions should be distinguished: 1) What would we like to happen next? It seems pointless to proceed with ratification. Neither will France and the Netherlands overturn such big No-majorities in a second referendum, nor is there now any chance for a Yes-vote in the UK. DK, CZ and Poland also

Georgnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1117631739076005662005-06-01T15:10:00.000+02:002005-06-02T10:29:32.693+02:00

[UPDATE 06-02: Several corrections required due to unuseful facts. Ah, the standards of quality journalism.] As the tabloid weekly News will report [DE] reports [DE] in its edition of tomorrow, Frank Stronach has fired[laid off] the curly former football-star Toni Polster from a short-lived job as general manager of the Viennese tradition football club Austria Wien. Polster is not allowed to talk

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1117485545418624652005-05-30T21:43:00.000+02:002005-05-31T10:33:22.306+02:00

One comment like this (re:new German left/Austria) by the Prudent Investor (PI) is enough to keep my blogger-heart beating for at least another month. Since he mentioned his interest in debate, I'll address some of his main points below:PI: Liberalism and efficient state-regulation are ideal in theory, but contradict themselves in practice as this will end only in corruption on a massive scale.

Georgnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1117441076159994042005-05-30T09:56:00.000+02:002005-05-30T12:42:16.560+02:00

Since I'm receiving a number of google hits for 'Kampl', I don't want to be seen as sweeping the latest sequel of this annoying saga under the rug. Yes, it's true, yesterday Siegfried Kampl, member of the Austrian Bundesrat, revoked [DE] his previous offer to withdraw from that second chamber of Austrian parliament. He had been under massive pressure to step down over his outrageous remarks from

Georgnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1117398499281690202005-05-29T22:14:00.000+02:002005-05-29T22:29:35.710+02:00

Just as Chirac is threatening to appear on my TV screen in a couple of seconds, I feel it's a sad moment for political Europe. The fact that European proposals elaborated with as much collective effort as the constitutional treaty are successfully and easily destroyed by people like the ones who are celebrating now on the TV stations across Europe (Mme Le Pen, Mr Emmanueli, Mr Haider) shows that

Georgnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1117190009219060462005-05-27T11:04:00.000+02:002005-05-27T12:33:29.256+02:00

What does the emergence of a new left in Germany signify, which may lead to a common bid of WASG and PDS at the Bundestagswahl in autumn? Does it hold a lesson for the Austrian political spectrum?The WASG, a left-wing split-off of the SPD, so far seems to be a moderately successful rallying ground for voters who have been frustrated by the red-green coalition in Germany and its resolve to address

Georgnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1116845788977517062005-05-23T11:41:00.000+02:002005-05-23T12:58:21.440+02:00

I enjoyed reading Tyler Cowen's paper from 2000 over the weekend, "Does the welfare state help the poor?". I would guess that what it presents in concise and understandable form is a reasonable summary of the economically liberal case against the welfare state as we know it and its ambition to help the poor by means of redistribution. For contrast, on Sunday I had the pleasure of watching Alfred

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1116585454446173072005-05-20T12:22:00.000+02:002005-05-20T12:41:35.923+02:00

Patrick Moore at RFE/RL, "More Talks, More Models for Kosova", concluding section:An international commission recently suggested that the EU extend explicit prospects of EU membership for an independent Kosova that would, however, be an EU protectorate for at least several years. Many Kosovars have come away from this and other discussions with the impression that the EU is concerned as much with

Georgnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1116333381397078192005-05-17T14:01:00.000+02:002005-05-17T14:36:21.426+02:00

Let me do my modest bit for increasing attention to the events in Uzbekistan, since both that country's establishment and the very same US government that invaded Iraq seem to be trying to put a blanket of coolness over what happened:Several hundred people were killed by government forces, among them allegedly many unarmed civilians, although the violence apparently was started by armed

Georgnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1116237610215143932005-05-16T10:58:00.000+02:002005-05-30T15:23:18.246+02:00

Yesterday was the day of the surreal jubilee celebration. 50 years after the signing ceremony for the Austrian State Treaty [Staatsvertrag], honoraries of the four allied powers who co-signed the treaty (Russia, USA, UK, France) together with all current high representatives of the Austrian political system held a celebratory ceremony in Belvedere castle. Some 10,000 people considered it worth

Georgnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1115984432465244292005-05-13T13:19:00.000+02:002005-05-13T14:09:03.806+02:00

I came across a shorter version of this Machiavelli-quote (The Prince, chapter VI) in Larry Lessig's article "The architecture of innovation". Yes, I was also thinking about Open Source Software and related political issues, but the quote is intriguing more generally:And it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1115740912722349932005-05-10T17:59:00.000+02:002005-05-10T18:03:36.620+02:00

RFE/RL Newsline reports:FIRST-EVER ALBANIAN INDEPENDENT POLL GIVES DEMOCRATS A LEAD IN JULY ELECTIONS. A poll of 1,251 adults conducted recently by the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) suggested that the opposition Democrats have a six-point lead over the governing Socialists in the 3 July parliamentary elections, Reuters reported. The survey gives the Democrats 29

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1115652038752410002005-05-09T17:15:00.000+02:002005-05-09T20:56:27.340+02:00

The Austrian parliament will ratify the EU constitutional treaty this Wednesday. Now suddenly, at the eleventh hour, a number of eminent Austrian constitutional experts have come to the fore who argue [DE] that the change of the political system by ratification of the EU constitutional treaty is so severe that a popular referendum would have been required by the Austrian constitution. A popular

Georgnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1115318838291467772005-05-05T20:31:00.000+02:002005-05-05T20:48:51.083+02:00

Here is a harrowing picture showing a dead or dying child in Iraq (via Harry's Place). Its caption readsPicture released by the U.S. Army Tuesday, May 3, 2005 shows a U.S. Army soldier comforting a child fatally wounded in a car bomb blast in Mosul, 360 km (225 miles) northwest of Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, May 2, 2005. 15 Iraqis were wounded in the combined suicide bomb attack. (AP Photo/U.S. Army)I

Georgnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1115211895716408602005-05-04T14:23:00.000+02:002005-05-04T15:46:22.393+02:00

I want a comprehensive political programme that addresses the issues of national poverty relief in a high-income country with measures and frameworks that are consistent with an interconnecting strategy of poverty relief on an absolute, global scale.Typical counter-examples:To ask for globally or regionally homogeneous taxation and labour regulation reduces an opportunity that less developed

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1115126900917992812005-05-03T14:08:00.000+02:002005-05-03T15:28:20.920+02:00

I am often impressed by the articles of Dominic Johnson, the Africa correspondent of the German taz-newspaper and also a frequent contributor to the Austrian Südwind-magazine. For a special Südwind-issue on the Millenium Goals [DE], Johnson has contributed an analysis on 'Africa as a Millenium-Project' [DE].Johnson summarizes the state of the discussion about the 450-pages report 'Our Common

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1115024225904737912005-05-02T10:12:00.000+02:002005-05-02T16:54:26.446+02:00

I know that for several weeks before my latest travel-related break I have deafened you, my respected readers, with nauseating reports from the world of political colours in this country. I hope to take a leave from any further mention of colour-terms for a while and return to real issues, but before I can do that, here is one about that most famous of Austrian political colour-combinations,

Georgnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1114421434145470362005-04-25T10:50:00.000+02:002005-04-25T11:30:34.146+02:00

Alex, the Yorkshire Ranter, saves me from my "now that I'm getting serious about politics, what should I blog"-phase with one of those glitzy meme things for us that are proud of knowing so many books that we can choose five for a lonely island. So here I go:You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?My memory is bad, so a short one: Samuel Beckett, Worstward

Georgnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1113909901801009442005-04-19T12:31:00.000+02:002005-04-19T16:09:04.733+02:00

The last days have brought events in the second chamber of the Austrian parliament [Bundesrat] that prove the abominable political quality of some deputies there in a way that is breathtaking.First, last week two deputies of the ÖVP repeatedly tried to hold down the arm of an FPÖ-deputy who voted against the government, and who thereby delivered the first defeat of the government in the chamber

Georgnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1113564702945414922005-04-15T13:17:00.000+02:002005-04-15T13:31:42.946+02:00

Like every serious weblogger, I spend my days with exciting investigative journalism, aka typing important headlines of the day into the Google search field and then diving right into the middle of the action.Today, the search for my thoughtful query 'ostracised Green' brought up the column "Adventures of the Green Man" by Vijay Verghese at Smart Travel Asia. Read the whole hilarious thing, which

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6638367.post-1113382568140919302005-04-13T10:52:00.000+02:002005-04-13T10:56:08.140+02:00

"Kanzler Kuckuck, Dr. Nörgl" [DE] - a detailed and informative article on the relationship between Wolfgang Schüssel and Jörg Haider in weekly Der Falter.

Georgnoreply@blogger.com0