Part-Time Pundit

The Death of Democracy in the EU

EU call to re-run treaty referendums

“The countries which have said No will have to ask themselves the question again. And if we don’t manage to find the right answer, the treaty will not enter into force,” he said in an interview with the Belgian Le Soir newspaper.

The EU Treaty is not going to pass the referenda in France on the 29th. (It will also probably fail in the Netherlands and later in the UK). There is a large amount of public apathy and disdain for the EU and the response is hardly enthusiastic in any country when it comes to the UN. Every poll has shown that the public doesn’t feel any connection to the EU and that the EU is not concerned for them, so in France they are going to reject it. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing who wrote the EU Constitution has said there can be no renegotiation of this treaty.

In a democracy, usually the government molds to the will of the people. If the EU were democractic it would mold to the will of the people. Instead the current President says that the poll should be re-run until the people answer correctly. It isn’t the EU that needs to change, it’s the people that need to change. That is no democracy.

The European Union Constitution is over 300 pages long, as opposed to the US Constitution which can fit in your pocket. People have no idea and no desire to read this entire document, they’ll reject it because it takes a lawyer to decipher. The EU could have drafted a small document and passed laws instead, which is what the people wanted, but instead the EU went their own way and blame the people for voting against it. The EU is dying and the project is on life-support. It may come back later, but that depends on whether the bureaucrats listen and recognize that they need to be the Union the people wants them to be, not that the citizens need to be the citizens the bureaucrats want them to be. Time will tell whether they embrace democracy, try to impose the EU despite the objections, or abandon it all together.

May 25th, 2005 Posted by John Bambenek | European Union | one comment

Traffic Generation for Your Blog - Get Traffic NOW!

I’ve been asked by several people how to generate traffic to their blogs. I’m on track to have 100,000 hits this month alone and I’m surprised by that also. There are two ways I did this, one posts and two traffic exchanges.

There is no substitute for high-quality posts and getting linked at high-volume sites (I’ve been linked at Instapundit and Michelle Malkin). You can do this by being the first to a story and doing just a little more digging and being first to a twist. The blogger that called “bullshit” on the Newsweek story got crazy traffic and many people, including myself, had the same amount of skepticism, he was just first. Also, posting and advertising your BEST posts (this is important) is key. Bulletin boards, mailing lists, etc. If the posts are crap, you’ll get tuned out. If it’s good, you’ll get traffic. And good titles are key.

Below are links to traffic exchanges I use. There are three ways to generate traffic using these exchanges. (1) You can pay for it (and I’m assuming you won’t so that’s all I’m going to say about it). (2) You surf member blogs and get credit (usually 2 blogs visited gets you 1 blog visitor plus whatever bonuses they have). (3) Refer people and you get referral credits. I find that if you refer about 10-20 people, you’ll have as much traffic as the maximum you would get if you did all the surfing yourself. These blog specific exchanges help you get an idea what’s out there and gets you decent quality traffic to yours. You can also earn or buy banner ads and on some sites text ads. Because text ads don’t seem to work well and my banner design skills are reputably poor, I get no traffic that way and have stopped trying.

You don’t want to spend all day on just one of these. Most you will only get 50-100 visitors a day from regardless of how many credits you have (the credits do carry over though). You want to sign up for all or at least a handful. You can surf using all of these services at the same time however. For instance, if you did only BlogSoldiers, you could get 1.5 visitors a minute. If you did Blogsoldiers, BlogClicker, and BlogXChange simultaenously, you get 4.5 visitors a minute. You want to sign up for all you can and surf using as many as you can at once. Some of the people visiting will become permanent readers and that is your goal. Not everyone uses all of them, so being on all of them gives you the widest exposure.

Here are the exchanges (please follow links if you sign up so I get referral credit):

BlogExplosion is the gold standard for blog exchanges. You have a 30 second wait on sites and it seems to have the best blogs on it. They also have a blog rocket which allows you to get some traffic that is independent of your surfing.

BlogSoldiers is new but I’ve had very good luck with it. It’s a good place to get noticed. It only has a 20 second wait on the sites. You can get text links and banner ads, I find the text links aren’t as effective.

BlogClicker I like less but still works. I seem to get the most referrals out of this one for whatever reason. Also a 20 second timer.

Blogxchange has a nice new look. You also get 100 credits just for signing up and viewing some minimum of sites. 20 second timer.

BlockCrowd also has a 20 second timer and only works when the blog is maximized and the active window.

BlogAzoo is also popular with many sites out there. Has a 20 second timer.

Blog Mad is new and just released. It has a snazzy interface and is very easy to earn credits with. Highly recommended.

Blogadvance is new and is probably the best collection of good blogs of any of the exchanges. The make an effort to keep a good variety of blogs in circulation so that you don’t get the same 5 blogs 15 times an hour.

May 25th, 2005 Posted by John Bambenek | Uncategorized | 4 comments