Allah made me the way I am.

The campaign sujets of SoHo, the Social Democrat LGBT organization. The text says " "Allah made me the way I am." You belong to us! - equal rights for equal love". The campaign raises the issue of tolerance and inclusion of Muslim migrants in the LGBT community. Damn, I like it.

It's my party and I cry if I want to.

The Austrian Labor Union (ÖGB) is crumbling, the chances for a left government in autumn is shrinking. Union president Hundstorfer should step down - and take all his old boy friends with him.

These days, my party gives me lots of reasons to cry. And cry and cry. Some months ago, the union-owned bank BAWAG stumbled over the crash of the US investment speculator Refco. It was an incredible humiliation when the union - one of the few big bastions of the Social Democrats (SPÖ) - had to beg the conservative banks and the conservative government to step in and save not only the bank but also the union from ruin.

Corruption and Incompetence
I don't shed a tear for Verzetnisch, the back-then president of the union who had to step down after the scandal got public. The union leadership held on to an incompetent and corrupt bank management, and even profited themselves (Verzetnitsch had his downtown-penthouse right next to the manager's). The new president, Rudi Hundstorfer promised reform. Instead, he tried to cover up again and thought it would be enough to blame Verzetnitsch. Turns out that there are much more open debts, and that Hundstorfer himself knew of the finance scandal and even signed relevant papers.

The new crisis management? Denial. He wasn't present at that meeting, or thought he would sign something else.

Cover-up
The idiocy and corruption of the old and new leadership is outrageous. To try and cover up his knowledge of the scandal is the most stupid thing Hundstorfer could have possibly done. Who does he think he's dealing with? That this wouldn't come out? That the conservatives would leave him be?

6 years ago, going into opposition should have been the sign for both the party and the union to reorganize and regain their strength. Now this scandal is destroying our chance to win the elections this autumn.

Against the wall
Some months ago, I wouldn't believed that something as big and mighty as a union could ever shatter. Now I now it can. And it doesn't even need a Margaret Thatcher. The old and the current leadership are just doing fine.

Hundstorfer should step down today, and he should take his whole crew of old boys with him. If he has feeling of responsibility for the union, the party and our values, that is.

From zero to hybris in 10 seconds?

Is the liberal blogosphere really “changing the face of the Democratic party”? Or is it more of the same? How the “netroots” could do it better.

Political blogs have been around for quite some time now, and some of them have developed a considerable readership and influence, even if they still fall short of the established media (huffingtonpost.com or dailykos.com, the biggest liberal blogs, are still trailing the websites of traditional media like nytimes.com or cnn.com).

Big Ambitions
Some of the most prominent figures of the liberal Blogosphere have turned into political celebrities, publishing books, delivering soundbites for newspapers and even advising potential presidential hopefuls like Mark Warner. The first-ever gathering of the Dailykos-blogger community, YearlyKos in Las Vegas, welcomed a number of high-profile Democrats (Mark Warner, Harry Reid, Wes Clark, to name a few), a sign perceived both by the bloggers and the media as finally being taken seriously.

On the commercial for Dailykos-founder Markos Zuniga’s book “Crashing the Gates”, a crowd of people are ropepulling with a donkey, not being able to pull him anywhere. Zuniga walks by them and kicks the donkey in the butt. It is pretty descriptive for the self-declared goal of this section of the liberal blogosphere of making the Democratic party change direction ("Changing the face of the Democratic Party"). But it also shows the growing confidence of the liberal Internet community.

Everbody is a political strategist
These days, DailyKos.com looks more like a online forum for wannabe-politicians than a discussion platform. Every day, latest polls of various races throughout the country are published and donations for supported races are collected.

The level of self-reference is astounding. Almost every day another comment of a politician about the liberal blogosphere is published; and those races deemed important by the blog are described as if Dailykos itself would be on the ballot. One of today’s entries predicts DailyKos to be as relevant as the NYTimes in five years’ time.

The Smell of Sweat and Blood
Some of the races are dealt with in an especially agressive way. DailyKos’ current arch-enemy is Joe Lieberman, Gore’s runningmate in 2000, described as “Bush’s favorite republican” for his pro-war voting record in the Senate. His opponent in the Democratic primaries, Ned Lamont, a businessman virtually unknown only a few months ago, may score up to 40%, according to recent polls. He is strongly supported by DailyKos and other blogs.

In this very martial setting, Ned Lamont’s own politics is less relevant than the fact that he might unseat Joe Lieberman, the current anti-christ of the liberal blogosphere. And even though it’s (unquestionably) important to send a strong anti-war message to Democratic politicians, this point tends to be already overshadowed by the fact that DailyKos sees Conneticut’s Democratic primaries in August as a payback-day for everything they hate about the Democrats in Congress right now. But revenge is, I think, seldom a healthy political strategy.

Will the netroots grow up?
The uniting factor for this part of the blogging community is hate for the government and Anti-war sentiments, but other traditionally left points of concern (like minimum wage, health care, labor rights) receive little attention. The reason is that the self-declared “netroots” are not connected to social movements like labor unions, and both their proponents and their audience is – that’s what has been argued – white middle class, which is traditionally more concerned with the war-issue than with social issues.

But also, the style of Blogs – it’s speed, the little attention span for articles – doesn’t allow much more than a sometimes too simplistic scheme of good-vs.-bad-guys.

Some of the groups that were the new kids on the playground in the presidential election 2004, eg. MoveOn.org and Howard Dean’s Democrats for America (DFA, formerly Dean for America) have grown up: they learned from their initial shortcomings, established real (offline) chapters and poll their members on candidates and policies to support. Last week’s YearlyKos convention aimed in the same direction, even featuring not-so-sexy issues like energy independence.

The stars of the netroots like Zuniga or Jerome Armstrong from MyDD.com are right in many aspects of their political focus, and I appreciate the efforts to get their feet on the ground and work on establishing lasting structures, which many deem (rightly, I think) as the key to electoral success (and even more important for social change in the long term).

More influence for the influencial?
The netroots like to see themselves as rebels. In many ways, though, the liberal netroots have a lot in common with the big-boy league of politics. The fixation on the big electoral politics in contrast to group- and issue-building is one.

Another is the following: one of the big standard themes of the blogosphere is how the Democrats disregard the ordinary people and how they should listen much closer to what they (meaning: the netroots) want. But this is problematic. In many respects, the outspoken, educated, liberal, middle-class, white group is the one group most listened to by the Democratic party. For working families, unions, african-americans, latinos and latinas that’s different. In fact, the blogosphere’s white and middle class constituency is demanding more influence although they already are the most influencial group around.

The netroots already feel the seduction of power, but they haven't made their homework yet. This smells a bit like hybris to me. It would be good for the netroots to connect their important anti-war-issue and their organizing capabilities with the also very important social issues of the social movements (union, immigrant rights, etc). This could also be a healthy way of bringing the netroots back to a more reasonable and less over-the-top approach.

Parliament's strong voice against own governments in CIA scandal

The draft resolution of the Council of Europe (CoE) on the CIA scandal has been published last week and will be voted upon by the Parliamentary Assembly in two weeks time. The final report of special rapporteur Dick Marty from Switzerland is courageous and strong.

"Spider's Web of Detentions"
The CoE draft resolution opens a view into one of the darkest stories of EU collaboration with the US illegal policies. The US, the resolution states, supported a "spider's web of detentions" that has "entrapped hundreds of persons (...) in some cases when they were merely suspected of sympathising with a presumed terrorist organisation."

European collaboration proved
The resolution proves beyond doubt the collaboration or tolerance of various EU countries in the illegal activities of the CIA. Did Marty's first report only spoke cautiously of the lack of control mechanisms by the states, the new report lays bare the extent of collaboration of various EU countries.

The Start, not the End of real investigations
The CoE investigation suffers from lack of collaboration by national governments and high EU representatives, as the resolution states. The same is true for the parliamentary commission by the European Parliament (EP). It's head, Spanish MEP Carlos Coelho, has criticized today the head of the Spanish intelligence service CNI, Alberto Saiz, who has not yet appeared before the commission despite invitation. (El Pais, 6/12/06) The Commission also tries to block the investigations.

As the conservative Financial Times wrote: "They amount to a moral capitulation by liberal societies and a surrender of the rule of law in the face of jihadi totalitarianism. If we behave like this, what exactly are we defending?"

The Spanish supreme court (Audiencia Nacional) today allowed a case on CIA torture flights via Palma de Mallorca to be opened. (El Pais, 6/12/06) Various cases on CIA kidnapping are under judicial investigation, eg. in Italy and Germany.

Globalizing the fight
An American court heard today by the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) against the CIA to disclose "documents authorizing it to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects overseas." (NYTimes, 6/12/06) Through this case, the ACLU wants to prove that the CIA does in fact have a principal policy of extraditing suspects illegally to torturing third countries.

What values are we fighting for?
The collaboration with the CIA torture system risks to destroy our most important values. The fight to restore the faith in the righteousness of our system and our values has just started.

In this sense, the role of the conservative (EPP) members of parliament who tried to block a report by the EP is simply outrageous. (EUObserver, 6/12/06) What's their agenda? That we shouldn't care if a foreign country kidnaps our citizens? Lies to our authorities? Tortures people? Risks our security and endangers our values? It's a good sign that despite the resistance of the EPP, the Commission and various EU countries the EP will continue the investigation for at least 6 months.

Can you talk an economy down? (just look at Germany)

Now, now. Germany as the most exciting place to invest in Europe? Huh, I must have missed something here. "Germany comes out top because of its infrastructure, educated workforce, political stability and dedication to research and development." Those fascinating news are revealed by a recent study by Ernst & Young, a consulting company.

For years, Germany has been described as the "sick man of Europe", the Kassandras of doom being legion. The reforms proposed and adopted, though, did not focus on either infrastructure (budget cuts) nor an educated workforce (tuition fees) nor in political stability (cuts in healthcare and unemployment benefits below the poverty line), and I'm not even talking about dedication to research and development. It was about long years without increasing wages, major cuts in public investment and social security.

So now we know that a good infrastructure and an educated workforce is not so bad after all. And somehow this has even been understood by business leaders (The "study" is in fact a survey of 1,019 CEOs). Good.

I blame the conservative hysteria-machine of being partly responsible for what has been going on in the Westeuropean economies. The politics of reform have heavily depended on an "argument of crisis", creating a completely exaggerated feeling of crisis, that in turn could be mended with neoliberal "reforms".

This is, one might argue, politics. If a group can better convince the public of it's world view, then they deserve to push through their policies. But the sad truth is that the so-called reforms are brutally and outrageously failing. The German Hartz-reforms of the labor market are so costly and so ineffective that the German government will have no choice than to reform the reforms.

And as the huge cuts in social services and the outrageously wrong results of the last tide of reforms have created wide-spread insecurity that led to restraint in domestic demand and let to years of slow growth, the fact that they fucked up the political systems and the labor market so much that the chaos and insecurity will be bound to even grow.

The ongoing creation of fear by the neoliberal hysteria-machine has not only led to "reforms" that are ineffective at the least, it had also a negative impact on the economy that, in my opinion, cannot be overestimated. The fear-politics that dominated German economic policies in recent years has failed gloriously, except in one thing: they managed to talk the economy down. Even Ernst&Young's CEO-poll shows this. Now it's about time to bury the imbecile policies of neoliberalism.