Well, I see I posted my first Diary here in September 2006, and as I recall I arrived here by googling "Iran Oil Bourse" and coming across Jerome's critique of its likelihood of success.

Something like that, anyway. It might have been via the Oil Drum.

Anyway.

Here I am, but my Diary days are pretty much over. Just the odd LQD these days.

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson

I was referred to ET by my son who thought I should be aware of many of the posts and diaries here about a year and a half ago.  I had expressed my concerns about the direction of the economy and my dissatisfaction with the Orange place.  I lurked as a visitor for a few months and then created my account and began commenting about 14 months ago.  Since then this site has come to occupy more and more of my time.  

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

I was around the left-leaning US blogosphere quite a bit, mostly as a lurker but increasingly a commenter, in 2003-5. On some blog, I don't recall which one, I read a piece about the rise of leftwing blogging thanks to community sites using Scoop software. That interested me because I found, and still do, the list-of-comments style blog conducive to one-off comments and only occasional hard-to-follow discussion.

That piece linked to a post by Chris Bowers on MYDD that cited Booman Tribune as a new Scoop site. I went there and saw European Tribune on the front page, clicked, and found myself here. The idea of a left-leaning European community blog felt spot-on to me, and I signed up immediately. ET had been officially up for two days.

I was first exposed to a Finnish text-only system called Telmo around 1991 when I was asked to do some marketing research on it - and they supplied me with my first modem. That got me interested in the first IRC-type programs and eventually to a US site called Talker in 92-3, where I made my first contact with protoblogging and Yanks with keyboards. I think there were roughly one million websites at the time ;-)

About '93 the Finnish state Telecom asked a group of us to supply content for the first Finnish HTML site as a demo, and I was involved in a lot of conversations with engineers that awakened my interest in the social implications of bottom-up connectivity. I've been tracking developments in this area ever since. Dkos turned up on my radar in 2002/3 and then Booman Tribune where I was a regular poster (and even invented 'Froggy Bottom'). That's where I heard about Jérôme and followed efforts to set up a European version.

I have moved politically leftward ever since ;-)

You can't be me, I'm taken

Between 9/11 and the outbreak of the Iraq War, I simultaneously began to drift off the USENET newsgroups I frequented then (mainly talk.origins and alt.atheism; you could talk about everything in the latter freely until the flame wars started between pro-war libertarian Americans and war-sceptic liberal Americans and non-Americans), and traditional media as a news source. This led me first, for a few hot months in 2003, to the web forums of some newspapers, above all Guardian On-Line. There, articles from the anti-war US Libertarian site AntiWar.com were quoted or linked to frequently, so that became my daily read.

AntiWar.com linked to blog posts frequently, that's how I discovered the Blogosphere. Through the anti-war connection (the anti-war libertarians had no qualms about linking even to commies like Lenin's Tomb), I found blogs closer to my political preferences.

So, one I stuck with was Billmon's The Whiskey Bar. When Billmon pulled the plug on comments, The Moon of Alabama was founded, so I looked in some times.

Meanwhile, I was searching for a blog discussing matters beyond the Anglo world, one for European and EU issues. Via some leftist blogs, I found A Fistful of Euros. That blog has a decent coverage of Europe and a civil tone, but I found most writers too uncritical of the economic consensus, and felt as if most writers are US or British expats with decidedly standard Anglo views. [I must stress I don't know how true my perceptions have been, and may well have been well off; for example one expat whose views of the host country seemed clearly upper-class English to me turned out to be Irish.]

So, it was on these two blogs that I saw links to ET in few months after it was founded. The need for registration and the dominance of economic issues kept me off at first, but eventually I registered -- and the rest is history.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

afew sat me in front of his computer and introduced me to ET.  I've never blogged anywhere else before or since.

I started discovering the leftie blogosphere in 2003-2004, and ended up on DKos just before the pie wars. I followed the various break-out blogs and, well, here I am!

The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. -Paul Krugman

I am trying to remember how I first started reading blogs, but I can't. I guess I did not consider "blogs" a new cathegory at the time (still don't really), just frequently updated pages. But pulling my history as far back as I can remember, I would say there is some starting point on one hand Salam Pax (which led to Riverbend, Raed and lots of antiwarblogs) and on the other Whiskey Bar which led to Moonofalabama and then here.

There is probably some obscure blog way back that linked to both Salam Pax and Whiskey Bar.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

I found out about this place while hanging out with metatone in London, who I met elsewhere on the nets.

Oh and if we're going to throw our cred around I knew about dkos before all of you :)

you are the media you consume.

I found EuroTrib via Booman, sometime within its first week online.  I think.  I was at work, looking for stuff to read, and really happy that the web filter hadn't bothered to screen out the dKos split-off sites.  I still read dKos every day, but I've not been to Booman in a long time.  I don't post anywhere else, though.

I found ET while googling for stuff about the French nuclear program, and found Jerome's brilliant text at DKos about it.

Then I read through all his previous energy-related diaries at DKos, and I found out so very much about natural gas and pipelines which I had no idea of before that.

And then I found a link from DKos here. :)

   

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

Well I wanted to understand the US elections from an American point of view, see what was happening without a BBC filter (Or CNN of Fox having satelite tv), and wound up in 2004 on the big orange place. at some point there I decided to look at the list of names of other sites down the side and ended up here.

before that I'd been banging around on a variety of networks and sites (dating all the way back toa network of 8k commodore pets that I used to maintain)

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

I think I came here by following a post by Jerome a Paris on DKos. I was there trying to understand the drift I feel between here and there !

I'm not so keen on forums as I don't have the hard science expertise that often goes with economics, nor the time to indulge in writing seriously (in a few years, I'll do it :-) ).
 I like it here... I mean when there's no endless arguing... It reminds me of  a cultural café (without the wine and the smoke, alas! (wink to Jerome)).

I miss posting in In Wales' Photo blog (but do look every saturday). I've had a very long year of personal problems and not yet in the mood to start a serie (as I promised once) on cities and their evolution in the future (Grand Paris ou Paris Métropole ?).

Er... I'm french, have traveled, and manage to speak english when the gear kicks in (not always though)! Oh... And I just like those three periods as ellipses for a never achieved thought (or an alternative one)!

"What can I do, What can I write, Against the fall of Night". A.E. Housman

Never got online much in the 1980's ... I grew up in the countryside east of Columbus, so there was not a free bulletin board in local calling distance, and I didn't have the steady income to pay for one of the commercial ones.

However, when I got to grad school in the early 90's, I got involved in pkt (Post Keynesian Thought), ecol-econ (ecological economics), (& etc), mailing lists at Communications for a Sustainable Future, back before the WWW had pictures.

When my graduate assistanceship ran out and I got a job for a semester at the main local two-year community and technical college in Knoxville, there was a terminal to its minicomputer to be used to write up test papers on WordPerfect (for VAX) and such. It had gopher and ftp and email, so I spent a lot more time on the net.

When I went to Oz, I remained active, but of course the academic listservs tended to go downhill after the hoi polloi started wandering around the place.

In the early primary season before the 2004 elections, I started exploring places for information about America politics, since Gore was no longer in the running, and ended up commenting a bit on a blog dedicated to the candidate I was supporting. So early in 2006, I started blogging at my candidate's community blog. That led to Agent Orange and then here, either directly via some diary posted there, or via Booman Tribune, I don't recall which.


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

Iraq war started...I was fuming ...I was about to brake my TV not being able to follow totally biased Australian news coverage. I even started fight on one of photography sites where I posted some anti-war photos." Patriotic" Americans were ready to crucify me and they wanted me out of the site. Never mind that they posted endless photos of American flag on every bloody place in USA. Some of them told me to find political site to talk about war. I googled in desperation to find ANYBODY who would help me preserve sanity and I was very happy when I found Dkos.It was really oasis in wildness at that time. Later Dkos became too overcrowded for my taste and also Marcos openly became D. party "paper".
I followed Billmon from Dkos to Whiskey Bar. He was a great writer and people commenting on the blog were fantastic. I wasn't very happy when he decided to close comments and later closed the whole blog. I am grateful to Bernard for Moon of Alabama (after ET it's the only site that I open on a daily bases). I am not sure where on those sites I saw Jerome's announcement that he started ET and I followed. Because I admired Jerome's writing all the time and because even if I do not live in Europe I am still European and am interested in grater details what's going on in Europe.
Having spent most of my life in socialist/communist country I did not consider my self as a leftist (bad memories I suppose) but reading ET actually brought me to the sense that I am leftist in the end cause I agree with most of your views...I am just not that much on the left...    
Otherwise I think you all now by now that I am Serbian woman living in Australia for a long time now...

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind...Albert Einstein

I started at Daily Kos back in 2002, posted my first comments in 2003, and found Jerome's writing in either 2004 or 2005 (it all sort of bleeds together these days). I've always had an interest in European politics and particularly in building a cross-Atlantic movement to challenge the neoliberal policies that plague both North America and Europe.

So when Jerome founded this place I quickly came over to visit. For a long time I lurked, and I still do - I read the site daily - but eventually I started adding my own comments.

My favorite diaries are those that are either about European politics, those that challenge the economic consensus, and DoDo's train blogging.

I am pretty busy with my own blogs - Calitics, California High Speed Rail Blog, and my place of employment, Courage Campaign, where we're trying to fix California, a state that is so broken it is beginning to remind me of Weimar.

If I had more insight on European matters I'd write more diaries. My wife and I are taking a trip to Portugal next month and I'll definitely write up my impressions, but 2 weeks will only allow me to get a surface view that may not be all that informed.

Should produce pretty pictures though!

And the world will live as one

I was actually introduced to blogs by my friend over at the WSJ, who pointed me to Andrew Sullivan's daily dish, in the run up to the Iraq war (probably February 2003 or so). Following the blogroll and looking around, I started by reading lots of blogs from both sides of the aisle. I posted my first comments on Calpundit (Kevin Drum, who later blogged at Political Animal and now at Mother Jones), as he wrote quite a bit about energy and I was annoyed by some of the simplistic comments that came up (probably the "we invaded Afghanistan to build the pipeline" story got me to write first!). Then, like quite a few of the regulars here, I joined the comments at billmon's whiskey bar and got involved in the efforts to create a substitute place when the comments were closed down over there - I posted a Moon of Alabama with Bernhard for a while, did a few things with SusanG before she got famous with the Gannon story, and at some point started crossposting things on dKos. In 2005, I started writing very actively for dKos (and, then MoA) and Booman invited me to be a FPer on BT, where we set out to work on the mirror site, ET, which started with SoJ (still posting on BT) and Sirocco. I also got invited to blog in the Oil Drum team at some point in 2006.

Since starting ET, I must admit that I read almost no blog these days outside of dKos and ET (I actually participate very little to the discussions on TOD, unless on my stories) - which may explain why we (I, anyway) do so little crossreferencing with other blogs, something I regret but can't help - there's only so many hour in a day.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

I started well away from the political blogosphere at a bellydance discussion site called bhuz back in 2000/1. Amongst all of the general discussion about dance history, what's good dancing, what's bad (BIG issue in BD) there were occasional threads about politics (it was around 9/11) and I found myself finding out about the diverse opinions available in the US and butting heads with a lot of it. After all, even republicans and libertarians bellydance.

Sometime in early 2004 one of them mentions she reads dKos so I go over to see what's what and I was hooked immediately. It was so positive and energised at a time when politics looked pretty awful with the Bush- Blair-Berlu axis of weevils.

After a while I started punting around for a european version, initially finding a rival to ET started by some guy called "Welshman" and I posted there a few times, but it never generated any traffic. I despaired of the insular pettiness fo the UK blogs and then discovered ET. Started reading in Dec 2005 and joined in March-ish 2006, in time for the first Paris meetup.

One day I aspire to knowing what I'm talking about, but I've yet to really begin charting the immensity of my ignorance.

keep to the Fen Causeway

In 1989, I was building a computer model of molecules in liquid, and I needed a letter from my thesis supervisor to go to the university library and have a librarian input a search for related papers.  This vaguely expressed computer link to other universities thing didn't even have a name, as far as I remember. The search took four and a half hours to run, and produced nothing at all.

I first used the internet, and sent my first email, via a laptop the size of a briefcase, in 1996, when I was living in Australia.  But it was incredibly slow (and expensive, because you still paid by the minute) and almost nobody else I knew had email anyway. Make that nobody. A single family where we kept in touch via the husbands' work email addresses.

But it looked cool, and it looked like the future, and, returning to the UK in 1997, I had a computer (with a fast processor and state-of-the-art 56kbps modem) and second phone line before I had a sofa.  Heavily pregnant, with a toddler, and having left my mums-based social network on the other side of the world, I found the chatrooms on a site called ivillage. It was the international mumsnet of its day, and the fantastic thing about it for me was that, no matter what time you were up, sleepless after dealing with the baby, there was always somebody to talk to.  Alongside that, I discovered icq, which seemed, at that early stage, to be the favoured distraction of postdoc researchers locked in a cellar with an autoclave.

I found Eurotrib via TBG, who I met via an online forum.  He made a couple of references to this site, and I looked in, but it..well...it looked a bit over my head, actually.  But the rest of the net was becoming frustratingly diluted with inanity and trolling and I kept coming back and eventually delurked...and if it's really obvious I'm out of my league, at least people have been kind enough not to say so... ;)

I was in this class on nationalism in college, and the first day, the prof asked everyone to tell the class where they were from.  It turned into a truly fascinating exercise when he refused to clarify the question for anyone...

I first learned of the existence of blogs, and began posting comments on Blog for America, blog of Dean for America.  When Dean lost the nomination, I begrudgingly began reading, posting comments at Daily Kos, because that is where all the action was, and because getting Bush out was more important to me than my opinion Dkos.  So it was always about organizing for me.  Then I found ET, through Jerome on Dkos, I think.  Or Booman.  Or some combination of the two.  Came to put my faith in Europe after watching America drop the moral high ground ball.  Stuck around and ended up writing perverse diaries and being encouraged to continue that madness by the sickos here.  I largely stopped writing those diaries, for a number of reasons.  But I come back for the intellectual debates and the sociological freak show and because to be honest, no one else is interested in my demented obsession with Russia and its male inhabitants.  

It may be a train wreck.  It may be full of Phd level esoterica.  It may be doomed.  I don't know.  It's often very interesting, though.  It's the closest thing I've found to one of those salons back in ye olden days, where egomaniacs and romantics would hang out and argue and debate and discuss VERY IMPORTANT CONCEPTS and indulge in hedonism.  I'm sure those were highly dysfunctional environments as well.  

"Talking nonsense is the sole privilege mankind possesses over the other organisms." -Dostoevsky

Sometime in the mid-70s messed around with a telephonic file exchange system (at a whopping 75 baudot ... ka-chunk, ka-chunk) on an IBM 360 installation whose Chief Computer Operator was a close friend.  Got excited and brought-up a CBBS system sometime 'round 78/79.  Ran that for a while and then migrated over to USENET back when it was still useful for something.  

Wrote a user Help Desk sometime in the early 80s.  Never went totally live as the company collapsed about 2 weeks after Alpha Release.

Went over to the Internet sometime 'round 95, mostly as a news and information source.

Got involved with Kerry campaign in '03 which led me to dKos (and some French dude's diaries) & the Center-Left blog-o-sphere which led me to BooTrib which led me to ET.  

tra-la


She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

I came over from BooMan where I knew Izzy.  I came because Izzy was blogging the winter olympics (ice skating) as I recall.

I stayed because I love to read the conversations that go on in the comments although I seldom participate.  You all educate me in ways that American blogs don't.

I came here from dkos where I really appreciated Jerome's posts.  I really came  back, though, for all the other stuff-especially the photography essays and the train stuff.  The hard part is seeing the many good examples that Europe has to share, and comparing them with our lamentable lack of progress.

"I said, 'Wait a minute, Chester, You know I'm a peaceful man...'" Robbie Robertson

Well, I suppose I should feel honored that a comment of mine prompted you to start this discussion, but I'm mostly reassured: I'm not alone asking myself these kind of questions :)

As for me, like afew, I started to follow the left US blogosphere since my return from California (TPM, Atrios, Steve Gilliard, ...) and I'm not sure how I did eventually stumbled upon here; most likely, from a link at DKOS, probably from Jerome: after all, what's more natural than a French guy reading a fellow French on a USian blog? Happens all the time... After some lurking, I did eventually roll up my sleeves and started commenting...

In all the comments and dewyclarations and baudy remembrances, there's not one cite, not one graph, not one photo.

Unless you can back it up, I disagree with all of you.

(insert big grinning smiley here.)

As you all know in your brain of hearts, you were all led here by a symphonic cascading synchronicity of coincidences, powered by gravitational waves spinning out of a double star conjunct with Mercury in the seventh house of Gog and Magogg, across the standard gauge tracks from a run-down Abbey overlooking Rennes-Le-Chateau, where string theory was first being used to develop corrosive derivative obligations.

And now that we have you...

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

I'm an American and a monoglot, but not for lack of desire. I've studied 3 years of German in high school, 3 years of Danish at university, and 1 year of French after graduating many years ago. I talked myself out of going to Denmark to continue my Danish studies. I've often dreamed about moving to Europe, but cowardice, family ties, and lack of a job have kept me in the States.

I've have only been able to enjoy Europe first hand twice in my life, but liked both of my trips. I was in England for the month of March 1998 and in Germany for the month of November 2002. Now with the strong euro and weak dollar combo, I've not been able to afford any more European visits. Maybe one day. :)

I joined ET when kos made a special rule. I came in solidarity with Jerome. I was attracted to his writing because I feel, he was one of the few people writing there at the time that kept moving the discussion to the left.

I post comments when I can and cross-post essays from Docudharma and Daily Kos that I think may be of interest to the ET readership. I do try to write Euro-content™, but not as often as I'd like.

In jest (I think), Migeru created the  Magnifico Alert  for things I post, but I've not used it much lately.

I've spent a big part of my youth online, first on BBS systems, then from about 1992 on Usenet and then after Usenet became pretty much the cesspool it is now, on blogs and discussion boards. Usenet still holds a place in my heart: I'm one of the three coordinators of the Finnish main Usenet hierarchy (sfnet), in my previous career I also administered Usenet news servers, I met my husband and many of my friends via Usenet, and I still like the decentralized system much more than blogs or discussion boards. I just don't spend much time there anymore since it's become so hard to find the actual discussions in the middle of all the craziness.

Here I think I found my way through either dKos or Booman Tribune, don't remember which. I still read those both sites from time to time but especially dKos is nowadays pretty uninteresting to me. I don't think I've logged in or commented in years, or at least months.

You have a normal feeling for a moment, then it passes. --More--

Hmm, hmm...where did I start in the blog world, anyway, Certainly it was post-9/11 and around the time of Bush's war - looking for some information, conversation and community. Darn, can't recall now...now I have to try and remember. But I did get very into Daily Kos quite early on, at least 2003, maybe late 2002...and there I started reading Jerome's articles, which led me to Booman, and then here when ET started. And since I also had just moved to Europe, ET was great for helping me feel a connection here with people, to start to "integrate" here...(am I integrated yet??)...and the first meetup in Paris really solidified that experience. And each ensuing meetup I have attended. Actually, I know more people in "Europe" because of ET than I do living in Switzerland. Strange that...so its not "just" an online community to me - its real people who have become friends! Very cool!!

"Once in awhile we get shown the light, in the strangest of places, if we look at it right" - Hunter/Garcia