politics in vienna

so, on my first day in vienna, i went to one protest in solidarity with striking teachers in mexico, and one public meeting about iran. there were about 100 people at the demo, and we marched to the Mexican Consulate. As you can see from the pictures, there was an autonomist flavour to the rally, but it was cross-partisan mostly. From what I have heard, autonomist politics have declined in popularity since their renaissance following the anti-capitalist demonstrations in 2000. here are some pics:







i don't know who organised the iran meeting, but the speaker (there was only one) was Bahman Nirumand, and Iranian academic from Germany. From what i could understand he was making good arguments about the political situation surrounding iran, and the US strategy in the middle east in general, but it was a fairly 'mainstream-left' public meeting - i know that it was not organised by the far left. And there was a big fight in the discussion time because the Zionist lobby was there en masse. i was there with two comrades from Linkswende, the IST group here in Austria. from what they were saying, it has been good to see the Zionists suffer a few defeats (they definitely lost at this meeting), because for a while there they were winning people over. the comrades say that the Lebanon-Hizbollah debacle has really boosted this shift. yay.



other first impressions of vienna:
it is so strange how different it is to be in a country that was never communist, having just been to china, russia, estonia, poland and hungary. it feels familiar, it is expensive, and coming from my experience of growing up in the west, not half as interesting. the entire city of vienna is a bit of a mozart museum, very much on the cheesy side. but there are definitely some hip and happening things here. i think i'd need to stay a bit longer to become really interested though. perhaps i will pass back through later on in my travels...


more on budapest

here are some links to footage of the Fidesz rally i took with my little snappy-snap camera (meaning the footage isn't top quality, but it's there if anyone is interested in watching middle-class conservatives stroll down the street with candles...)... i'm putting this here mainly so i can delete these files off my memory card!!



til next time,
kd.

(and i promise i will write and upload photos about the other topics (st petersburg, poland etc) when i can access the photos i took there)