Open source government? yes. Open source campaigning? not yet

Barack Obama’s campaign was being hailed as the beginning of a new era of open politics. He was letting the netroots into his campaigning organisation and many in the progressive blogosphere were ready to proclaim the beginning of a new form of open source and fully transparent government.
But the first signs of disappointment from the [...]

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Google.es

The search engine’s Spanish domain shows its support with its logo today including Fernando Torres, the author of the winning goal in yesterday’s final.

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Fortune cookie politics

What is it with American politicians making the most absurd arguments without even a blink of an eye? I keep reading this nonsense about Iraq over and over again. McCain did it the other day, yesterday it was Joe Lieberman and of course Bush is done it about a zillion times. Gentlemen, Iran is Shia, [...]

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Eurobarometer and the Lisbon Treaty

Some weeks ago I argued in this blog that the rejection in Ireland of the Lisbon Treaty was the result of bad campaigning by pro-Europeans. The latest EC’s Eurobarometer seems to corroborate my argument.
According to their analysis the Irish government didn’t take the campaign too serious. The results are quite shocking:
- 52% of those that [...]

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Thank you

Spain are European champions… I know it might seem silly to make it too dramatic, it’s just football, but… after 44 years since Franco, a vicious dictator, for Spaniards across the world it turns a page of our history. Our first democratic football title. It’s a great success. Our team has shown great determination, brilliance, [...]

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Book review: Crashing the gate

Exam time and job-hunting has certainly slowed down my free reading time, interesting books are piling up on my shelf without me having much time to read them. But today I finally finished a short but very exciting book, Crashing the gate: netroots, grassroots, and the rise of people-powered politics. The book is written by [...]

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Totally Forgesian

Seems like my subscription to Total Politics, the GQ of politics according to publisher Iain Dale, has started to pay off. Forgesian Thinking has made it to the magazine’s political blog directory under left wing blogs (guess that tag defines it better than Labour at the moment).
Today Total Politics, tomorrow Gordon Brown’s RSS feed!

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The perfect day

So as Spain yesterday made it to a Eurocup final for the first time in 24 years, that wasn’t the only good day for Spaniards. Spanish workers also woke up this morning to their summer bonuses and the 200 euro rebate promised by Zapatero to alleviate the economic slow-down. Pretty good day in Spain today [...]

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Nationalism and football

In the UK is well known the friendly rivalry between Scottish and English football fans. In the last World Cup the Trinity and Tobago T-shirt was the most sold in Scotland showing the Scots preference for the Caribbean team over their fellow Britons. In Spain a similar case happens with some nationalists in Catalonia and [...]

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Left v Right: the online battle

Following on last week’s post on Labour weak online operation I found an interesting reflection by Charlie Beckett from the Polis Institute about the same issue. You can read it here.
Charlie poses an interesting question in his post, is it easier to be a blogger when in opposition? I will say probably yes. The ironic [...]

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