98 - We Care for Birds

But do we care for people? I just read an article in the print version of the Austrian newspaper “Die Presse”, titled “Mein Freund, der Asylant” (My Friend, the Asylum Seeker), about one of the central topics of all election campaigns of the last maybe 25 years here in Austria and now all over Europe, the question of how to cope with asylum seekers and immigrants.

The conservative (to say the least) former government in Austria praised itself for having installed very restrictive laws that have reduced the number of immigrants to less than 50%. An impressive figure, right? 50%!! That smells of high performers, of success, of capable management that keeps the numbers in check.

This article is not about numbers, it is about the other side. It is about people who live in fear and about people who care. It’s a good read for anybody who understands German. For those of you who don’t, well, I’ve tried Google’s automatically translated version and it is almost as frightening as the article’s contents, but probably it is understandable nevertheless. And if you know of a better translation service, I’d be very thankful if you could let me know.

This is the Image of the Day for yesterday, and it has not even been shot yesterday. I shot it Monday noon in Vienna’s Rathauspark, again using the Nikon 50/1.8 at 1.8, camera set to shutter priority, continuous autofocus. This is the first image in a 5 fps burst. Hmm … the birds don’t seem to like the D200’s high speed mode 🙂