Austrian Elections & Politics 5.0 (Burgenland state election - January 26)

[Middle-aged Europe]

I hope that Kurz will finally drain the swamp.

#TakeOutTheTrashDay

[Middle-aged Europe]

and with new elections the question is, what if the results are fairly similar to the last ones?

As Tender said, Greens Neos and Kurz is most likely.

This somehow reminds me of Hamburg, ca. 2004. Von Beust fired Schill (although a video of Schill consuming cocaine in Brazil wouldn't emerge until many years later ), the coalition broke apart, there was a snap election, and the first CDU-Green coalition on the state level was subsequently formed.

[Middle-aged Europe]

What kind of people are they? Do you believe Europe's mainstream parties are beacons of integrity?

#BothSides

[Middle-aged Europe]

Good, it's done.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Didn't a similar situation happened in 2002? FPO colapse followed by a huge win of OVP?

There certainly have been a lot of comparisons to that in Austrian media this evening. (Just watched two hours of ORF live stream.)

[Middle-aged Europe]

Regarding the question who was behind honey-trapping Strache and filming the video, the FPÖ today originated the conspiracy theory that a foreign intelligence agency may have orchestrated it.

But there may be a far more mundane explanation. Currently, the person who is confirmed to have had the earliest knowledge of the video's existence is German satirist Jan Böhmermann, whose awareness of the video apparently preceded that SPIEGEL's and the Süddeutsche Zeitung's (who broke the story yesterday) by at least several weeks.

Of course, the easiest explanation for Böhmermann being aware of the video's existence prior to the news organizations who broke story is that Böhmermann himself was the orchestrator of the whole thing. A not totally outlandish theory considering that he was also the originator of the "Varoufakis fake middle finger video" a couple of years ago, something that he only admitted to sometime after the fact.

Add to that the very recent Böhmermann interview in Austrian television in which he harshly criticized the Austrian government and which caused a minor scandal in itself (the ORF thought it prudent to explicitly distance itself from Böhmermann's remarks). Add to that Böhmermann singlehandedly brought down Germany's law that forbids insulting foreign leaders after deliberating insulting Erdogan in his television show.

Personally, I would characterize Böhmermann as an egocentric jackass with an IQ of at least 140 who never plays by the rules (or laws for that matter), so it's certainly possible that he did it. It would fit his modus operandi, so to speak.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Take Out The Trash Day 2: Electric Kickloo

[Middle-aged Europe]

As it was outlined by Kurz himself on Saturday, this was more of "the straw that broke the camel's back" moment for the FPÖ. Nevertheless, I'm still astonished at the speed this government is self-destructing now. Unless they reform radically and quickly the FPÖ will probably barred from power for quite some time now, and as far as the ÖVP is concerned it's still somewhat unclear whether they will mainly benefit from this or whether they will be consumed by it as well.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Btw. do you have 2 profiles now? I remember seeing the same name just on a newer profile

That's not me.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Apparently Strache was suspicious at one moment during the meeting with the Russian, and wondered out loud whether it could be a trap because the Russian women had dirt under her feet nail, "Russians in this league does not have dirty feet".

A classic Trumpism.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Former BND Director (German CIA) commented on the recent events.

"Offenkundig wird hier versucht, Wahlen zu manipulieren"

"Obviously this is an attempt to manipulate elections"

https://www.n-tv.de/mediathek/videos/politik/Offenkundig-wird-hier-versucht-Wahlen-zu-manipulieren-article21035713.html?fbclid=IwAR15IfgFkKnR1XiTG2WzboPtXv4WD7XlUUZ03Iuvy5EAh0xFm4REucZp6qs

There were also attempts to manipulate the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the Brexit referendum, albeit in favour of the right-wing populists. What happened now is that someone took "both sides do it" quite literally and brought it to its logical conclusion: Information warfare.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Philippa Strache has abandoned her husband and moved back in with her parents and their newborn son Hendrik:

https://www.oe24.at/oesterreich/politik/Philippa-Strache-ist-mit-Kind-ausgezogen/381024623

#Cuck

[Middle-aged Europe]

Van der Bellen apparently wanted to be the one who appoints the first woman Chancellor, while at the some time avoiding accusations of being not impartial by ultimately going for someome who's known for being somewhat  close to the ÖVP/FPÖ.

[Middle-aged Europe]

What's the reasoning for the FPÖ to ban Glyphosat? This is nothing you would especially expect a right-wing populist party to do. Fighting the EU?

Green voters from Germany shouldn't comment on Glyphosate, you are the reason it got approval in 2017.

I haven't the slightest idea what this claim is supposedly based on...

[Middle-aged Europe]

What's the reasoning for the FPÖ to ban Glyphosat? This is nothing you would especially expect a right-wing populist party to do. Fighting the EU?

Green voters from Germany shouldn't comment on Glyphosate, you are the reason it got approval in 2017.

I haven't the slightest idea what this claim is supposedly based on...

Sorry, I accidentally wrote the wrong year.

https://www.euractiv.com/section/agriculture-food/news/greens-save-glyphosate-from-eu-ban-calls-as-epp-deal-triumphs/

The unusual political agreement between the Greens and EPP led to a rejection of an amendment filed by the GUE/NGL group, which explicitly called for “an immediate EU-wide ban on the production, sale and use of glyphosate and all plant protection products containing glyphosate”.

Seeing as the Greens are currently not in parliament, how could they have voted against it?

Yeah, completely forgot about that lol... In any case, they are all the same, as seen in the article above.

The article's headline "Greens save glyphosate" is overstating quite a bit. As I understand it, the GUE-NGL's proposal still would have failed to win a majority even with the Greens' votes behind it. And voting for the GUE-NGL proposal would have killed the compromise with the EPP "calling for a rethink of the EU’s pesticide approval system", meaning had the Greens voted to ban glyphosate it would have in fact reduced the chances of an actual glyphosate ban in the long run. That's essentially how politics work: what's realistically the best option to achieve progress on a specific issue. You can't ban glyphosate just with the GUE-NGL. But you can work with the EPP to reduce glyphosate.

[Middle-aged Europe]

The Greens in a nutshell, proving that they are as left-wing radical as their German brethren:

No. Stop.