Most Americans celebrate Obama’s victory and the demonstrations of happiness in USA must have been televised in the whole world.

I thought it would be nice if the celebrations of happiness happening in other parts of the world were known also. I invite everyone from every corner of this planet to share what it’s like in their home country.

For my part, I don’t know what it’s like in my home country, but since I live in Europe now, I want to share what is happening here. Here are a few things I found. I didn’t quote the entire things because they are very long.

All-night parties cheer Obama in EU capital

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - EU officials, expats working for the European headquarters of multinational firms, Erasmus students and locals from every quarter of the Belgian capital partied on Tuesday night (4 November) in anticipation of a victory for Barack Obama in the US presidential vote.

Over 2,000 US expats and other international workers crammed into the Brussels Renaissance hotel down the road from the European Parliament for a party organised by the American Chamber of Commerce Belgium and the local chapters of Democrats Abroad and Republicans Abroad. The crowd celebrated as results came in on the huge screens through the night, despite the time zone difference.

The organisers set up a debate between representatives of the Republicans and Democrats. But the audience was clearly in favour of senator Barack Obama, who won 93 percent of the votes cast at a straw poll at the event, with only seven percent favouring his Republican rival, John McCain.

To Matt Graves, a 37-year-old French-speaking Texan who has lived in Belgium for 14 years, the election of senator Obama was a dream come true. Proudly wearing his cowboy hat with the inscription “Texans for Obama,” Mr Graves told EUobserver that his home state is not all “red,” despite the Texas end result coming out in favour of senator McCain.

“These are historical elections, it’s absolutely amazing,” he said, convinced that the new president will “greatly improve” relations with the European Union.

Meanwhile, on the other side of town

Across the city from the European quarter, outside the cafe at the Maison du Peuple [the people’s house] - bedecked in red-white-and-blue bunting and red-white-and-blue Obama posters - a raucous crowd was trying to get into an election party hosted by the Party of European Socialists.

If there was a single McCain supporter amongst the gathered hipsters and immigrants in the student-heavy and working-class neighbourhood of St Gilles, he made himself well-disguised.

The square stretching out from the cafe, built as a house of working class self-education for Belgian trade unionists in the last century, was more packed than could ever be likely for any domestic election.

Zach Ellis, a young backpacker from New York happened across the event having not long got off the train in Brussels, and was dumbstruck that so many Belgians were paying attention to the election.

“It’s awesome - the energy, the sympathy of the people in the street. They want somebody who’s committed to ending our wars overseas - wars I don’t want to fight in.”

His new European friend, Martti Kaartinen, a “stagaire” with the Yehudi Menuhin Foundation, said he found out about the party via the internet, adding that the campuses of the francophone Universite Libre de Bruxelles and the Dutch-speaking Vrije Universiteit Brussel were covered in Obama posters.

“All of Europe is behind Obama. He’s going to bring back some of the good things we think of about America,” he said, while also preparing to be disappointed. “People here see him as a kind of European, but he’s an American really, and a politician. Democrats have started wars as well.”

Julio Diankenda, who moved to Belgium from the Congo when he was three, said he thought of Obama as a great symbol of hope for immigrants both in the US and in Europe.

“He tells people in Africa they can come from immigrant backgrounds and even be president. That’s important for people to recognise here in Europe too.”

European socialists roll out red carpet

Midway through the evening, it was time for the politicians to arrive, slicing their way through the crowds. Elio di Rupo, the president of the Walloon Socialists, was quick to say that Barack Obama was the choice of Belgium and of Europe.

“Obama is the sole candidate that is in accord with Europe. On the financial crisis, climate change - all the essential elements, his is a progressive programme, a humane discourse that is in accord with the grand ensemble of Europe.”

He admitted that there were differences between a European Socialist view of the world and that of a free-market American Democrat, however. “We can’t demand that he agree 100 percent with Europe. The reality is different in the United States.”

His colleague, Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, the president of the European Socialists, agreed that despite ideological differences, Mr Obama was the preferred candidate of the left in the European Parliament.

“The United States is not the same type of welfare state as we have here in Europe, but what is clear is that the overall vision is the same as Socialists, as Europeans,” he said.

“[He believes] that the people come first and shouldn’t pay for the mistakes of the better off whether in Wall Street or Frankfurt, that markets cannot do it all any longer on their own.”

This next one is interesting because it shows that in EU, politicians have to get off their asses and learn something from Obama.

The motivation for millions of Americans
is the hope of change, something the
European Parliament cannot deliver.

European lessons from the web-victory of Obama 08

EUOBSERVER / ANALYSIS - The American presidential election today will go down in history as the first where the internet was used for all it is worth. As many as 20 million Americans have voted even before ballot boxes open on Tuesday (4 November), and voter turnout is expected to end up higher than in decades.

Of course, many African-Americans are extraordinarily motivated to vote by the possibility of having a black man elected president of the world’s most powerful nation.

“I never thought I would live to see something like this happening,” one elderly black woman told me when I was walking the streets of Laconia in New Hampshire last week with students who were canvassing for Mr Obama.

In some areas, voters have had to wait up to nine hours to cast their ballot, with many being brought into the political process for the first time. Many people in the US are on a mission today.

How did it happen, how did Mr Obama succeed in activating people to such an extent? What could the European Union, fighting to win the attention of its own citizens in upcoming European elections learn from their American cousins?

One reason for the American electoral success is the very clever use of new media and computer technology to support the election process. The websites of the presidential candidates have become the key hub for the release of all major news in the campaigns.

Information was no longer being announced via press conferences and then broadcasted by the media, but directly released to the public via the websites: www.barackobama.com and www.johnmccain.com

Using the internet

In particular the Obama campaign has succeeded in using the internet to organise supporters and to reach voters who no longer rely primarily on information from traditional newspapers and television.

The tools ranged from online video service YouTube, which did not exist in the last election in 2004, blogs, and even SMS messages reminding people to vote or offering them a lift if needed.

The Obama campaign also benefited from the so-called Long Tail effect of the web, and raised more campaign cash than anyone before with almost half of the money coming from people donating $200 or less.

A central database was built with information on most households in the US, including information about the number of people in each family, age, sex and willingness to support the campaign of Obama.

Most of this info was gathered by volunteers walking from house to house, knocking on peoples doors while armed with a canvass tally sheet.

“Hi, is Mr Sullivan available? My name is Liz Sealock and I’m a volunteer talking to voters about Barack Obama. How are you today?”

Back in the campaign office, results from every single house-hold visited was typed carefully into the central database: The man in Pleasant Street is a solid McCain supporter but his wife leaning towards Obama.

“This is her mobile phone number? Would she like a yard sign for her garden? Would she want to be contacted again? Would she want to make a donation?”

If nobody was found at home, that would be noted down too – and the house visited again some other day. The canvassing teams were carefully instructed to act appropriately and respectfully. Identifying a clear-cut McCain voter would be just as important as meeting an Obama supporter, but the sales pitch would change.

Back in the campaign office, the canvassing students would check the latest news on the elections: visiting websites such as Huffington Post, a news service build entirely on user-generated content, and poll analysis blog Five Thirty Eight.

Five Thirty Eight, named after the number of votes in the electoral college that formally elects the American president, was established by a baseball statistician who has instead of gathering baseball statistics, been systematically collating and analysing polls ahead of the elections.

The site also includes good tips on betting in relation to the elections.

European elections

Struggling to gain the attention of its citizens, the European Parliament is at great risk of seeing another turnout below 40 percent in the upcoming 2009 elections.

What could Europe learn from the 2008 American elections? First of all, the detailed registration of people’s political opinions would not be legal under European data law.

Additionally, the motivation for millions of Americans is the hope of change, something the European Parliament cannot deliver, no matter how many Europeans go and vote.

The European Parliament is not in charge of presenting laws, only capable of influencing them. And Europeans are not asked to deliver an opinion on the election of their president of the European Commission. Real passion about European affairs has only been seen in the three referendums on the Constitution and Lisbon Treaty, but as they resulted in No votes, they have hardly been taken note of as models for participation.

It will take more than an Obama 08 campaign to make European elections into a real act of democratic decision-making - something that European citizens could actually get passionate about.


I really hope that Obama will do at least in part what he hopes to do. I think everybody knows that he inherits the worst shit left by any other American president, everything has been fucked in the ass by Bush, and so it will be some time, like he says himself, that things will be fixed. For the American people, I hope he manages to find the 33 billion dollars to make America’s health system a thing of everyday like here in Europe, instead of being a joke like a third world country and having 45 million people with no health care cover.

If that idiot Bush managed to find nearly 1000 billion dollars to go murder hundreds of thousands of Iraquis, surely, 33 billion dollars to keep the health of the citizens of USA is a lot more important and a lot cheaper.

But this is your problem, Americans, and I wish you all the best. For me, selfishly, I hope Obama cleans the big shit Bush has spread everywhere in the world. One thing for instance, Obama could tell Bush to go plant his anti-missile missiles in his fucking backyard instead of here in EU, because the Russian government is getting more and more fucked off with it - here is another quote:

Russian threat

Moscow has renewed its threat to aim rockets at Europe over US missile shield plans

Moscow has renewed its threat to deploy Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad - the Russian enclave between Lithuania and Poland - in response to US plans to place components of a missile shield in central Europe.

“What we’ve had to deal with in the last few years - the construction of a global missile defence system, the encirclement of Russia by military blocs, unrestrained NATO enlargement …The impression is we are being tested to the limit,” Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said on Russian TV.

I don’t know Putin, but I know what he is capable of because I have seen it with my own eyes.

If I was still living there I wouldn’t care so much, but I’m in Europe now, and I don’t see why we should be threatened to be blown off the planet because 2 warmongers Bush and Putin want to throw bombs at each other with us in the middle.