Political blogging

Effective this week, blogs are a political force to be reckoned with in Europe, too (not sure whether that's true for Switzerland as well).

What makes me say that? According to this BBC story, blogs have made an important contribution to the success of the No-campaigns in both France & the Netherlands. Etienne Chouard's blog (French, naturellement) is mentioned as an example: Being a highschool teacher (formerly of law), he's done a rather lengthy assessment of the Constitutional Treaty and comes to a negative conclusion. Interestingly, the conclusion is drawn from the viewpoint of statehood, i.e. the Constitutional Treaty doesn't go far enough. So, on a very cursory first read, it doesn't seem to make any scare mongering points about globalisation / liberalisation, which have been quoted as the main reason for the no. There is of course an agenda for that interpretation, but let's not go there now.

We'll see what happens in Switzerland. The Anti-Schengen/Dublin scare mongerers have certainly discovered anonymous spam mailing as a means of propaganda distribution - interestingly with non-Swiss email addresses that do not receive answers either.