After useless computer course, where I was send by district job office (AMS) together with other sad unemployed one month before national elections to improve unemployment rate statistics - I felt elated as if after six weeks of imprisonment.

We were forced to participate in this educational show under threat of losing allowance and had spent days in computer halls with archaic machines. Often what I did in the training group was observing how unemployed males flirted with big bosomed woman-trainer and for hours in the row listened to their small talks.
Yesterday after long walk  – now I don’t take tram or underground, because social center didn’t prolonged my reduced price transport card (Mobilpass),
I was gazing at closed doors of Sieben Stern café and recollected press-conference with communist leader Mirko Messner there, which I visited as one of only two interested photographers.
I made photo of homeless man, who was sitting at the bus stop drinking and inspecting his swollen foot (Look!)
When moving along Westbahnstrasse, I came across well known communist author and producer Kurt Palm. He looked as if he was just awaked.

And he preferred not to see me, as many other members of movement do. Being true to group solidarity they may suspect outsiders in anti-communist dirtiness, what in my case is not true. I find many communists are touching and cute.

I like, for example, Graz communist Ernest Kaltenegger with his round Buddha face, in spite of fact that he never gives me chance to say a word, because we both know how big IT is.

Political sympathies correlate only indirectly with personal moral and ethical values.
It seems, one can easier approach Joerg Haider or Heinz-Christian Strache, than their political opposites. Personal aura of Strache, as I could sense it, does not emanate secret arrogance, which often the case with Austrian benefactors of humankind.

Persons who officially claim to be protectors of poor and downtrodden,
in reality of personal contacts are often unreachable. Communists, according to my personal experience, have altitude to demonstrate their exaggerated humanity aspect and they want to be rewarded for this demonstrations. Like road with one side-movement, such people and organizations, expect to be supported for their virtual virtues, as, for example, many charity organizations do, when they talk about starving children in Africa intending to expand their budget.

Jörg Haider

Streit und gegenseitige Schuldzuweisungen gehören mittlerweile zum politischen Alltag in Kärnten.
Seit einigen Tagen hat der SPÖ Klubobmann von Kärnten, Herwig Seiser, ein neues und ertragreiches Terrain an fruchtbaren Kritikmöglichkeiten entdeckt. Es handelt sich hierbei um das Gesundheitssystem in Kärnten.

Dieses wäre in Österreich vorbildhaft, und würde nun von Haiders Leuten völlig ruiniert werden, so der Sozialdemokrat. Ausserdem bezeichnet er die Regierungspartei als rülpsende Ahnungslose, die durch lautes Gebrüll ihre Inkompetenz verstecken wollten. (more…)

Russian girl in her bedroom with portraits of Pushkin and Werner Faymann

Austria’s xenophobia

Alarm bells are sure to be ringing in Austria’s corridors of power following pressure from the United Nations for the country to improve its stand on the rights of immigrants and asylum seekers.
The committee criticises the “frequently xenophobic” handling of refugees and immigrants by parties. Speeches of some politicians are “hateful”, declared the UN.

The association also stated that the discrimination of minorities in daily life such as discrimination in the job market and with rental accommodation “are worrying”.

Thomas Hochwarter, Austrian Times

Chef of styrian social-democrats is for coalition with ÖVP

Styrian SPÖ Governor Franz Voves has spoken up in support of governing coalition with the ÖVP.

Voves said: “I was and I am a supporter of this coalition. I think that it is the best solution for the next five-ten years.”

Franz Voves - former ice-hockey national team player refused to comment on whether the SPÖ should continue such cooperation in case it fails to receive the most votes in the 28 September election. Voves dismissed talk about possible election outcomes as mere speculation at the moment.

In contrast to some other SPÖ leaders, the 55-year-old Voves stressed the point that he would not exclude any party from talks about a possible coalition.

Voves expects that the SPÖ will be number one on 28 September due to new SPÖ leader Werner Faymann, which has beén “fantastic” in Styria.

Thomas Hochwarter, Austrian Times, 12.08.08.

Съёмка Вернера Файмана
(shooting with social-democrats leader Werner Faymann)
Вначале я ринулась на пресс-конференцию „зелёных“, где оказалась единственным фотографом. Все репортёры караулили у дверей штаб-квартиры социалистов, когда появится Файман.
Лидер „зелёных“ – симпатичный пожилой дяденька в красной кофточке. Рядом восседает его соратник и партийный активист, которого я видела на манифестации „голубых“. (more…)

Paar

Wien (OTS) - Zur aktuellen blau-braun-orange-rosa Schlammschlacht
und neuerlich aufgeflammten Debatte darüber, ob Jörg Haider schwul
ist, ruft die Homosexuelle Initiative (HOSI) Wien das Outing Haiders
durch Jochen Herdickerhoff auf ihre Website-Abteilung
http://www.hosiwien.at/haiderouting. Dort
finden sich viele interessante Beiträge von damals zum Nachlesen.
www.ots.at

Is Jörg Haider gay?
In course of recent political blau-braun-orange-rose battle and corresponding debates on whether Jörg Haider is gay the homosexual initiative (HOSI) Vienna reffers to some past gone facts and offers to visit their website
http://www.hosiwien.at/haiderouting, where one can find some materials on this topic
www.ots.at, 05.08.08

Westenthaler will not be top candidate for BZÖ

Westenthaler received a sentence of nine months on probation for perjury during his testimony at the trial of one of his bodyguards charged with assault last March.
The bodyguard attacked a spokesman for former Justice Minister Karin Gastinger in a Vienna nightspot on the evening of the 1 October 2006, but Westenthaler, who witnessed the attack, said during his testimony that he had witnessed nothing.

Austrian Times

News: Joerg Haider removed three more asylum seekers from Carinthia on Tuesday night in an operation that was kept secret from his colleagues in the federal government.

Haider and his party (BZÖ) have been at odds with the federal government Interior Minister Maria Fekter on this issue and are continuing their highly controversial policy to remove criminal asylum seekers from the province.

Three asylum seekers who had committed a crime were refused further accommodation and food by the Carinthian provincial government on Tuesday before being taken over the provincial border with Styria by bus, on route to Traiskirchen refugee camp in Lower Austria.

The asylum seekers are two Armenians aged 14 and 43 and a 44-year-old Chechen. The two Armenians are father and son. The father is accused of having threatened someone with a knife. In the case of the Chechen man, the offense is about drug trafficking. (more…)

Jörg Haider

Migration statistics Austria
International migration balance to and from Austria by citizenship 2000-2007
2000/Total 17 272 (Austrian citizens: -4 315; Foreign citizens:+21587)
2007/Total 32 714 (Austrian citizens: -5 509; Foreign citizens: +38 223);
38 223 foreign citizens migrated from abroad and settled in Austria in 2007,
and 20 464 Austrians left the country (it is minus 5 500 in total)
Statistics Austria. Compiled on 16 May 2008

Press conference with J. Haider and P. Westenthaler, 17.07.08

Jörg Haider

Today I visited press conference with Joerg Haider and Peter Westenthaler in BZOe quarters. For a long time already, I wished I could photograph Joerg Haider. His speech was rather short though. As I was not satisfied with regular shots I made, which looked rather boring, similar to millions of other press snaps, I prefer to transform them including tiny part of my personality in every picture.

Pressekonferenz mit BZÖ-Chef Klubobmann Peter Westenthaler
und Landeshauptmann Jörg Haider. Thema: “Aktuelles zur Nationalratswahl”

Несколько трансформированных снимков, сделаных мной сегодня во время пресс-конференции с Йоргом Хайдером и Петером Вестенталером в штаб-квартире BZOe
в Вене на улице Доротеергассе – на подходе. Йорг Хайдер – очень колоритная фигура, один из немногих австрийских политиков, о ком вы наверно что-нибудь слышали.

Photo was made during one of manifestations in center of Vienna. The man with the dog has inscription at his shirt: “Nothing moves forward without Haider”
According to my private statistics J�rg Haider is the most frequent Google search term after words sex and nudity that direct visitors to my website.

When you live in the western country and bring reminiscences about totalitarian society in broad audience you easily gain understanding and support.

Act of critical evaluation suggests unspoken comparison of what was before and what is now. It can sound like compliment in address of western democracy.

Everybody would easily imagine that Galina�s soviet life was only abuse and suppression, that she was persecuted as minor progressive thinker, failed to find justice in her righteous struggle and moved to the West, where she found eventually her happy land.
However, not all is that simple (more…)