Welcome to the blog of Johannes Wilm!

Remember how in New Orleans the feuderal authorities and their partially private armed security teams had to be there - not only to protect private property but also to protect those still in the city against themselves? Especially the reports about rapes in the super dome and mass killing amongst these "underpriviliged groups".

It is only now, when nobody really follows the news, that we get reports like this:

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So these are probably some of the most exciting elections since the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany (that is, West Germany): the chancellor is seeking reelection, but nobody can quite understand why he asked for an election prematurely (that is one year before he had to). Right now it looks as if the Social democrats (SPD), the Greens (Grüne) and the Socialists (Linkspartei) will tie with the Conservatives (CDU) and Liberals (FDP, that is economic liberals). However, if CDU + FDP fail to get a majority, Linkspartei and SPD have already said that they will not cooperate - which would mean that one might get a "big coalition" of CDU + SPD.
To be honest I think that could be just as good - and as I said earlier, it might mean the start of a new outer-parliamentary opposition.

So I'm saying to those who can vote: vote for the Socialists! And that is actually quite easy this time - cause also the DKP (German Communist Party) is participating in the campaign - as well as almost all the smaller left wing groups that historically have kept to themselfs.


Die Linkspartei

OK, so everybody must have heard about Katrina and the lootings in New Orelans, that were connected with it by now.

However, it seems that the news picture is differing quite a bit depending on where on the planet you are. I first encountered this when I send a mail to a bunch of US Americans about my analysis of the situation, in which I was referring to the shoot-at-sight orders, that I had heard had been issued to the National Guard by Democratic governor Kathleen Blanco of Louisiana. The replies I got from some, made me dig further into the difference of the news picture in the US and the rest of the world.

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went great! We were the stars out there, and won most of the stuff we had hoped for. The most important thing was probably a resolution condeming the sitting government and their cuts on student financing. Now we thought we could get the social democrats to agree on condeming the government, but then not to agree with our progressive demands. Fortunately, we got it almost all through - although they cut our demands for a 100% and no loan for students to a demand of 60% stipend and 40% loan. See here, here and here (all Norwegian).