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2012-02-11 Saturday
Life for the homeless in Moscow is hard when the temperature falls below
minus 20 °C, which is has done lately, my daily paper reports. There are
30 000 of them in the city. “If they fall asleep they’re finished within
an hour”, one social worker says.
The journalist follows a charity bus on a nightly tour between railway
stations, where the homeless usually are found. A man from Turkmenistan,
sick from AIDS and with his leg in plaster is waiting for the bus. “I
broke my leg the day before yesterday” he said, “but when they had fixed
the plaster at the hospital, they threw me out again”. He is given a
painkiller and a cup of tea.
In the whole of Russia there are between 1.5 and 4.2 million homeless. As
far as one knows homelessness was not a problem in the Soviet Union. With
the capitalist revolution half the industrial capacity simply disappeared,
depriving masses of people the elementary means of subsistence. On top of
that a deep economic crisis occurred in 2008. The result was premature
deaths on a scale not seen since Stalin’s “agricultural policy” in the
1930s. Hence millions of people died and the life expectancy dropped
shockingly fast.
Media here are discretely surprised that many people in Russia embraces
Stalin and vote for a communist party. This attitude goes hand in hand
with the suppression of any information about the social catastrophe in
the country after the democratic and capitalist revolution. This is a
subject never touched upon. Our beloved freedom of expression doesn’t
allow information on such unwanted facts.
But is it really a necessary price for the transition to democracy and
capitalism that human beings freeze to death in the streets? Or for that
matter starve to death in a number of countries, or die in a scale of 20
thousand a day (that is: children alone)? If not, why don’t we do more to
solve problems like these? It would cost us close to nothing compared with
our total economies. After all, we do hail our way of life with its
freedom, democracy and "free markets", and obviously want to protect it.
Wouldn't it then be of highest priority to discharge the system of
properties that seem to show that it really doesn’t work very well?
2012-02-08 Wednesday
Another IAEA activity barely mentioned in our media are the meetings on
January 29-31 with authorities in Iran about nuclear issues.
IAEA’s concerns and priorities “focus on the clarification of possible
military dimensions to Iran's nuclear program”. Given that the threat of
Iran developing nuclear weapons is of the highest priority to our mass
media, with almost daily reminders, the silence about these talks is
astonishing. That is, astonishing if one didn’t suspect that the media
frenzy in fact is intended to raise fear and hostility towards Iran, not
to really solve the question of proliferation.
What we see is almost a blueprint of the build-up of the war against Iraq,
with the same alarm about weapons of mass destruction. In those days IAEA
was in the center of attention and Hans Blix constantly ridiculed in USA
for claiming that inspectors hadn’t found any WMD:s. This time the grounds
for suspicion against Iran are certainly more firm.
On the other hand Iran has relatively weak armed forces, with military
spending just a fraction of Saudi Arabia’s and, according to General
Petraeus, an air force not stronger that Qatar’s. If Iran had nuclear
weapons it couldn’t use them without itself being pulverized, thus just
restricted to keep them as a deterrent.
Of the Arab population in the region, according to polling agents such as
Brookings institution, only about 10 percent consider Iran a threat, while
90 percent give that role to USA. In Egypt (during Mubarak rule) as many
as 80 percent thought the security in the region would be better off if
Iran had nuclear weapons!
From the meetings January 29-31 IAEA has just a short press release
without any concrete statements. They announce though that a second
meeting will take place already on February 20-21 in Teheran. This may
very well be an attempt by the Iranian leaders to gain some time, but on
the other hand talking to each other is better than not doing so.
If our media had shown some interest in the meetings, it possibly had put
some pressure on the Iranians to produce something. The purity of the
motives for media to neglect the event must reasonably be questioned.
2012-02-06 Monday
There are no reports on the situation in Fukushima in our newspapers
nowadays. And there were certainly none the days after December 16 last
year when IAEA made the following statement:
“The IAEA welcomes the announcement by the Government of Japan that the
reactors at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station have achieved a "cold
shutdown condition" and are in a stable state, and that the release of
radioactive materials is under control.
Overall TEPCO and the Japanese government have made significant progress
and have completed the second step of the TEPCO's roadmap by the end of
the year as they had planned.”
It should be noticed that IAEA by no means belongs to any “nuclear
mafia” (if there is one), rather the contrary. It’s a prerequisite for the
very existence of IAEA that radioactive radiation bears a potential risk
for human beings. Accordingly it’s not a threat to IAEA’s authority and
prestige that the risks with such radiation are grossly exaggerated by
media, politicians and subsequently among the public.
In fact IAEA contributes to the overestimation of risks by applying the so
called LNT principle, which is controversial, unrealistic and not
applicable to risk evaluations in any other field. This principle leads
IAEA to enforce harsh limits for radiation in habitable land, which in
turn has led to the evacuation of towns and villages in Japan where the
radiation dose exceeds 20 mSv/y.
The fact that people have lived, for instance, in Ramsar in Iran for centuries, where
natural radiation has given inhabitants up to 260 mSv/y without any
specific injuries, has not convinced IAEA to reconsider its position. High
doses are to be found in many other places around the world. In the county
where I live, called Bohuslan, there are large areas where the dose highly
exceeds 20 mSv/y and single spots giving more than 900 mSv/y.
If the IAEA radiation limits were to take seriously the authorities in
Sweden obviously should have considered to fence off the areas in question
and to evacuate many places permanently. The radiation here derives from
Uranium-238, which produces Radon, a radioactive gas penetrating homes and in turn creating
alpha-emitting daughters ending up in peoples lungs. This is after all a risk worth
mentioning, compared to the solid Cesium-137 in Japan, easily brushed or
washed away.
We can thus conclude that last year’s most horrible catastrophe (not the
30 thousand dead from the tsunami, but) in the Daiichi nuclear plant in
Fukushima, has the remarkable result that not a single person was injured from radiation, let
alone dead. And now the plant is in cold shutdown and the danger for
future damages eliminated. One would have expected this to give rise to
happy and relieving news all around the world, not least considering the
hysteria in reporting earlier. Instead there is no news at all! Sad to
say: very predictable!
2012-02-01 Wednesday
Our Foreign minister, Carl Bildt - built from Teflon that is - has made a
fool of himself again, this time on Twitter. On January 26 he delivered
the following amazing tweet:
“Leaving Stockholm and heading for Davos. Looking forward to World Food
Program dinner tonight. Global hunger is an urgent issue!”
According to Dagens Nyheter this remarkable insensitivity has elicited a
“Twitter storm” also abroad, with good reason one should add. But there
will certainly not be any further media reactions here; such things just
don’t happen when Bildt is involved.
In contrast the former leader of the Social Democrats, Håkan Juholt,
couldn’t put a single punctuation mark on the wrong place without
journalists losing their minds in wild tantrums. Accordingly he finally
had to resign. And we were thoroughly persuaded that there was nothing
political about the media attacks on Juholt, whatsoever!
It’s a wonderful world! And yet it has really progressed for a couple of
centuries. Which just shows how much there is left to do!
2012-01-24 Tuesday
We have an
overwhelming dominance of bourgeoisie newspapers in this country, in
addition to the right-wing government. But neither can get enough power,
so they have to control also the meager political opposition by chasing
every opportunity to attack the Social democrats and try to interfere with
its internal affairs. This time they succeeded to force the chairman of
the party, Håkan Juholt, to resign (it should be mentioned that he belongs
to the left wing of his party).
It started by an economic matter, of a kind that would give Americans
stomach ache from laughter. Parliamentarians here are entitled to
allowances for keeping an extra apartment in Stockholm (they are supposed
to maintain their residents in their home districts). It turned out that
Juholt had his fiancée living in the same apartment, and that he thus
should apply for only half the ordinary allowance. This caused furor in
the media and the hunt was started.
As a prosecutor investigated the case it turned out that there were no
provisions at all regulating the specific case and thus no ground for
prosecution. This didn’t satisfy populist journalists who claimed that
Juholt should have recognized that there should have been regulations…
After this starter every sentence Juholt uttered where scrutinized to the
smallest letter, and there was a lot to find, since the man is of a
talkative and impulsive nature. With each blunder the outrage from the
press become exponentially more insane, and finally there was no way out,
except Juholt's resignation.
Somehow I believe that this was a Pyrrhic victory. The common sentiments
in large parts of Sweden, away from Stockholm, have very little in common
with the thoughts that our government proclaims. And the supremacy of
bourgeoisie papers doesn’t reflect the readers’ preferences, but only the
economic strength of owners and advertisers.
As Noam Chomsky wrote me some time ago in response to a mail I sent him:
“…the game is never over. Have to just keep trying. Things can change.
It’s happened before.” With such inspiring words on the wall one tends to
see only possibilities in every small setback.
2012-01-22 Sunday
Today
163 years has passed since the birth of the greatest Swedish writer
through all times. His name was August Strindberg, and this year 2012, on
May 14th, we will commemorate the 100 years since he died. That
he was the greatest is of course a value judgment, not shared by everyone.
It’s mostly not shared by the wealthy, the conservatives, the neo-Nazis
and some others. A number of our liberals (European definition) will
probably put any of the other big names ahead of Strindberg, such as Selma
Lagerlöf, Hjalmar Söderberg or even Astrid Lindgren. It’s all a matter of
taste; not seldom political taste.
That’s why our right-wing politicians in the government and in the
municipality of Stockholm, Strindberg's home town, have allocated such
miniscule amounts to the celebration of his memory. It amounts to some
percent of what the Norwegian government spent on the commemoration of
their greatest author, Henrik Ibsen, famous for his dramas, like
Strindberg’s still played all over the world.
I’ve written about this earlier, and I will certainly be back on May 14th.
My intention is to focus on the politically motivated devaluation of the
memory of a man that still, a hundred years after his death, is spreading
our country’s best dramas to stages all over the world. It’s so damn
petty! If there was no other reason to despise right-wing politicians,
this would suffice (but there are many other reasons as well, which
readers of these pages easily will recognize).
2012-01-17 Tuesday
No comments!
2012-01-15 Sunday
In 1996 US
voters could see bumper stickers reading: “If God had intended us to vote,
he would have given us candidates”.
There seems to be an upcoming market for that kind of slogans yet again.
The already dominating prospect that Mitt Romney will become the GOP’s
candidate has taken the wind out of the campaign’s sails even in Swedish
mass media. On the other hand a less intense coverage will probably
correspond closer to the real importance of the presidential election,
with regard to the factual differences between Romney and Obama.
Barack Obama certainly created a great hope, not least in Europe, before
he was elected. Enough so that the somewhat naïve Norwegians handed him
the Nobel Peace Prize in blank. Then Obama has left many hearts bleeding
as he quite ruthlessly has abandoned his grand promises of peace. As Noam
Chomsky has said: where Bush number two just tortured his victims, Obama
kills them right off (referring to the targeted killings with drones).
We weep in silence.
2012-01-09 Monday
It has been
known for ages that a country like Afghanistan, consisting of mountains,
war lords and armed peasants, cannot be defeated militarily. All who tried
have failed. With death-wishing Taliban added to the picture the military
task has become even more ludicrous.
One can take for granted that US Intelligence experts had the full view of
the lean prospects for an invasion of Afghanistan, but there was an
important aspect that decided the war: retaliation.
Sweden, formerly a violent plague on Europe, had kept peace for 200 years
(cowardly so during WW2, according to many Europeans). Then, some years
ago, we suddenly found ourselves at war in Afghanistan, and no one seemed
to know how it happened. We had no retaliation to think of, just a wish to
please Big Brother who pinpointed peaceful Sweden as a particularly
valuable ally.
One can be quite certain that Swedes in general doesn’t know the main
difference between this war and peace-keeping operations under UN flag, in
which we have been engaged many times around the world. But this is a real
war, and we haven’t the slightest idea of what it means. If, for instance,
a unit of Taliban is airdropped on a military installation in Sweden,
killing hundreds of uniformed persons, they cannot be treated as
murderers. If captured, they should enjoy the rights of prisoners of war,
according to International Law (what actually would happen is another
question, since International Law is optional for certain powers). An
event like this is certainly incomprehensible for the common Swede, but
it's one of possible consequences of being at war.
Now our government has declared withdrawal from Afghanistan, beginning
this year and finishing in 2014 (exactly 200 years after our last actions
in a war). The withdrawal is unconditional, which is the same as to
acknowledge military defeat. That’s it. We are accomplices in the
destruction of a poor country, who’s only “crime” was that a foreign
terrorist had chosen its territory to reside on. To top it all, the hated
and anachronistic Taliban will obviously be back as a political force. The
same Taliban that came into being under the auspices of western powers,
and for a period was directly supported by USA during the Soviet war of
aggression.
How brain-dead isn’t all this?
2012-01-04 Wednesday
On page 20 in
my paper last Thursday there was a quite insignificant article about the
growing economic divide in Sweden, things we mostly read about when it
regards other countries, preferably USA. In the “perfect” Sweden
(according to some), or “socialist” Sweden (according to others), such
things are not expected to happen. But it turns out that it has done so.
Like in all other countries affected by neoliberal policies, inequality
has increased during the last 30 years, albeit less serious than in the
US, for instance. Return on capital is the main explanation for the
growing divide, as expected since neoliberalism is more or less defined by
the transfer of production outcome from labor to capital.
Ever since we got our right-wing government with its neoliberal finance
minister in 2006, this deplorable development has accelerated. Total
wealth has naturally increased (due mainly to technological progress), but
the poorest 10 percent of households lost none the less 5,5 percent of
their income, while the richest 10 percent could enjoy a 23 percent
increase of their earnings.
The finance minister, Anders Borg, was interviewed by the reporter and
shed crocodile tears over the growing divide. Its “troublesome” he says,
“we shall have a country that holds together”. His pretended amazement is
ludicrous after his five years of deliberate attacks on the unemployed,
the sick, the retired and other vulnerable groups.
In opinion polls a majority of Swedes rejects this policy, but at the same
time Anders Borg has high ratings when it comes to personal confidence. It
looks like a paradox, but may perhaps be explained by the fact that he is
well protected by the media. On the whole we’ve had an un-Swedish
government the last five years, but if that instead means that Sweden has
transformed is something we will find out eventually.
2012-01-03 Tuesday
Time to
remember to write "2012". This promises to be a “great” year for media,
with presidential elections in USA, China and Russia, and the Olympic
Games in London to top it all.
China and Russia can be put aside; those are not real elections, but the
US campaign is already intensely covered by our media. And in many ways
our journalists seem to copy their colleagues in the US. Just to pick one
tiny peculiarity, the handling of Ron Paul's case. In his home country
some prominent media mostly pretend he doesn’t run at all. Likewise he is
rarely mentioned in our media.
This must be explained shortly to Swedish readers, since they hardly see
the name Ron Paul in their papers. The man is a consistent Tea Partyist in
that he doesn’t want heavy government spending even in military
adventures. He goes so far as to say the obvious but forbidden, namely
that the US wars only create hostility and more terrorists around the
world. For this he is condemned by the “true” Republicans who reflexively
are ignorant patriots at any cost, and consequently the “true” media tries
to neglect him.
The legitimacy of elections is a current topic since the last Russian
election with its alleged rigging. Today we can read here that some
republican states in the US are rewriting the electoral rules, obviously
in order to make it more difficult for non-whites, students and poor
people to vote. Fraud or not, in a country where voters participation in
elections already is critically low, the prank is embarrassing. The low
participation of just above half the total number of voters, means that no president has
more than roughly one third of the voters behind him. Is that really a
functioning democracy even in just the formal sense?
Well, this election is like an interesting sports event, reminding of the
Olympics. Before and during the competition it may be exciting, but
afterwards it makes no real difference who won.
2011-12-29 Thursday
The traditional
Swedish Christmas ham is eaten and done with, so now we are looking
towards the coming New Year 2012. Two of the most notable and at the same
time least important events will be the presidential elections in Russia
and USA. In Russia the lack of importance is due to the lack of
alternatives. In USA it’s in a way the same thing.
The alternative to Putin in Russia is chaos, obviously; the same chaos
that followed from the capitalist and democratic revolution, when half the
industry was destroyed and millions of people died from pure misery. While
this happened a few energetic apparatchiks stole the country’s most
valuable assets, many of them bringing the fortunes abroad. Putin’s
KGB-toughness put an end to the most outlandish excesses and brought at
least some consistency to the poor country. For this he achieved a
considerable popularity, which now is eroding. But the alternatives to
Putin are zero, for the time being.
In the United States of America there will nominally be two alternatives
in the end. But in real terms the alternatives are practically identical.
Neither candidate will even try to fulfill the will of the American
people, as expressed in carefully performed opinion polls. Policy is
determined by the business community, which is paying the two parties and
candidates to execute it. The best marketing campaign will determine who's
to be given the determined task, and thereby
be awarded the
president's title.
Three years ago Barack Obama held the winners speech on the night of the
presidential election. It was a rhetorical masterpiece. What he promised
was a formidable reformation of the society, for the benefit of ordinary
people and for those in need. It was a touching and an uplifting speech,
intellectually miles above what his immediate predecessor could dream of
performing. Then came the ordinary workday…
We should not torment ourselves with details from the catalogue of
disappointments; just conclude that the government’s measures kept on
complying with the same business policy as always. A new president from
the competing party may promise a lot of things, in some ways even
deviating from Obama’s pledges, but the really existing policy will most
probably be fundamentally unaltered.
During 2012 the US election campaign will evoke enormous mass media
attention in most of the world, coverage out of every sane proportion,
leading to a result of minimal importance in real terms. It’s not much
more than a sports event, which should have been the most important
political election in the world.
2011-12-24 Saturday
Christmas Eve is the top ranked holiday in
Sweden (together with Midsummer's Eve). We don't hesitate to talk about
Christmas, although some 85 percent of Swedes see no religious connotation
in the day's name. It's just an old traditional term which doesn't bother
anybody, regardless of faith (we also hope). It's a day for uninhibited
eating, some drinking, and for the children the great day of Christmas
presents. And when we are heading home late at night we can thank our
Muslim taxi drivers who eagerly work this day. (In my childhood, before
there was any immigration, it was almost impossible to get a cab on
Christmas Eve.)
After this day of stuffing (food) we just digest and refill for a couple of days, like
the old Vikings. At best we also contemplate the situation for starving
and suffering people around the world and give some money for charity.
Now this computer will by shut off for a couple of days, and the author
will be contemplating without writing for a while. He will return when the
challenges are too tempting not to pick up.
I wish regular and occasional readers a nice and peaceful holiday,
regardless of faith or non-faith.
2011-12-21 Wednesday
SAAB has finally filed bankruptcy, which immediately
was granted by the court. An era in Swedish car manufacturing seems
definitely to be put to an end. Now Chinese companies and others probably
can pick up the valuable pieces for a cheap prize.
At the same time editors in numerous newspapers around the country can
uncork the champagne, aged and cooled during their tree years of brave
struggle to defeat and exterminate SAAB, an effort which has been as
surrealistic and sickening as anything possibly can be. They may invite
the government to the party, as accomplice to the murder by refusing to
give SAAB any substantial help (unlike their colleagues in USA and Germany
who wisely supported their car industries in hard times).
Neoliberalism and ignorance has celebrated triumph: a so called
non-profitable company has been crushed by a journalist lynch mob and a
right-wing government, neither with the slightest knowledge about advanced
car technology or (as it sadly seems) of the important role this kind of
industry plays for Swedish economy.
In the final phase of the struggle against SAAB one crucial contribution
was provided by General Motors, who denied the selling of SAAB to Chinese
companies on the grounds of license rights. According to my morning paper
someone has written on GM’s Facebook page the following:
You have
killed the most amazing car manufactor in the world. SHAME ON YOU! I will
never buy one of your cars, NEVER!
2011-12-15 Thursday
We’ve have
witnessed some very peculiar political scandals since we got the present
government with its ideologically motivated privatization, very poorly
prepared. I’ve touched upon the new private nursing homes that severely
mistreated their old patients, in at least one case leading to death. In
their effort to maximize profits, and in cold blood, they cut both
personnel and quality with disastrous consequences. On top of that they
tampered with their internal financial transactions so that their large
profits landed in tax havens, thus avoiding any tax payments in Sweden
whatsoever.
Carema is the company responsible for the most blatant misdeeds, and they
obviously ended up with huge PR problems. What happens then is most
incredible for people in this country. It turns out that politicians have
used tax payer’s money to cover cost for a PR firm helping Carema with its
problems. On top of that the PR firm which they engaged is Kreab, a
company closely intertwined with the Moderates, the leading party in the
government.
Well, this may be violating some laws, and is certainly challenging
elementary moral. But the media reaction is still fairly modest, and it
all seemed to die out after just one day. It’s almost as if people think
that right-wing politicians after all have quite low moral standards and
that we cannot demand something from them that they are not capable of.
If on the other hand the Social Democrats had been responsible for a
complex of outrageous scandals of this magnitude, the indignation in our
bourgeoisie newspapers had shown no limitations. So today they have their
hands full with important work, such as controlling Håkan Juholts taxi
receipts and other major possibilities of Social Democrat’s fallacies.
Never have the ground been better prepared for a new Jonathan Swift
ransacking Sweden, but such a person is nowhere in sight.
2011-12-12 Monday
A Swedish poet, Tomas Tranströmer, is this year’s Nobel
laureate in literature. According to experts in poetry worldwide he has
enough merits for the Prize. In other cases the Swedish Academy obviously
has awarded some countrymen and –women somewhat too easily through the
years. But the greatest Swedish author in all times never got the Prize,
never even came close.
I’m referring to August Strindberg, who’s dramas (such as “Miss Julie”,
“A Dream Play” and many others) are still played on stages all over
the world. His novels never reached international readers, but are very
important nationally. Strindberg single-handedly created the modern
Swedish written language. There is a sharp divide between the
heavy-footed, long and formalistic sentences (with some German influences)
before Strindberg, and the ones we can read with more easiness today.
Strindberg lived from 1849 till 1912, a lively period with some democratic
break-throws. He fought on the barricades alongside other revolutionary
youngsters to overthrow the old and depleted in politics as well as in art
and literature. Our hero was consequently a rabid radical and anarchist,
who’s first great novel (“The Red Room”) was a scandalous success.
As a master of satire he then wrote a collection of short stories (“The
New Country”) where he portrayed some contemporary celebrities under
thin disguise and with acid ink. The book aroused as much applause and
laughs on the one side, as it created extreme rage and hostility on the
other, and in the end it forced Strindberg to emigrate with his family.
(Today The New Country is considered a masterpiece in the satiric
genre.)
Strindberg not just repeatedly moved his residence (from France to
Switzerland, Denmark, Germany and Austria), he also changed his
philosophical and political positions, trying the most diverse world
views. On returning to Sweden after roughly 15 years abroad he was a
full-fledged Swedenborgian religious mystic, with inclination for alchemy
and occultism. In that shape he was denounced by most of his friends from
the Sturm und Drang-period in earlier years.
But with a few years left to live he returned to his radical base and
wrote almost daily articles in a Workers' newspaper, arguing against
warmongers, false patriotism, and other misdeeds by the upper-class. He
also took the opportunity to slap his literary enemies in the face with
some unforgettable formulations. By that he started a debate which soon
spread through newspapers all over the country and engaged all kinds of
people writing articles (most of the texts were later reprinted in two
volumes embracing 1 000 pages).
Thus Strindberg ultimately defined himself as a leftist,
anti-authoritarian writer, which in a way had been his real sentiment deep
down all his life. This explains why he never even had been considered as
a candidate for the Nobel Prize. He was also denounced forever as an enemy
by establishment in general and by right-wing people in particular. This
still determines the actions of reactionary politicians.
The literary work of Strindberg is by scope, importance and excellence
without comparison in Sweden. His letters alone, in a 22 volume edition,
is a literary gold mine in itself. In passing: Strindberg also was a
forerunner in expressionist painting; his works now being sold for
millions of dollars at international auctions.
Next year we will commemorate the 100 years since this grandmaster died.
But the class-conscious, insensitive and ignorant right-wing politicians
now ruling in Stockholm has allotted only an embarrassingly small amount
of money for the commemoration, so small that it must be construed as a
political demonstration. It’s an infamy towards Sweden’s greatest writer
and likewise towards those who admires him in that capacity, regardless of
political prejudices.
2011-12-07 Wednesday
Today is Noam Chomsky's 83rd birthday. He
represents the utmost excellence in different intellectual fields,
practical moral philosophy not the least of them. But he has also drawn
conclusions from his philosophy and acted courageously to influence the
development of the world and to improve conditions for the victims of not
so moral power centers. Like many great men and women who have chosen that
hard task he has been neglected by the carefully combed "intellectuals",
the flatterers of the court. Consequently he his nullified by the
mainstream society, while at the same time he is the most cited living
author in the world, and immensely appreciated among large groups of the
most conscious academics and among political activists.
Noam Chomsky, like many of the very eminent persons in world history who
were treated likewise in their lifetime, will some day be recognized as
the important character he actually is. Until then the world will have to
endure the demagogic stupidities delivered by the intellectual spear
carriers to those who have the real power and are challenged by Chomsky.
I've spend some time undressing one of these so called intellectuals and
the result will probably appear in my Swedish section. But I can imagine
what Noam's reaction would have been, had I asked him: "Don't waste your
energy on such nonsensical tasks".
Happy birthday Noam, and may you live till at least a hundred.
2011-12-05 Monday
Let’s today cite a few sentences from a speech held by
a prominent member of a party represented in the United States’ Congress:
“Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the
people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall
Street, by Wall Street and for Wall Street… Our laws are the output of a
system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags…
… We want the abolition of the National Banks, and we want the power
to make loans direct from the government. We want the accursed foreclosure
system wiped out…. We will stand by our homes and stay by our firesides by
force if necessary, and we will not pay our debts to the loan-shark
companies until the Government pays its debt to us.
The people are at bay, let the bloodhounds of money who have dogged
us so far beware.”
But is there today a party in the Congress with such a straightforward
view on central issues? No, the speaker was Mary Ellen Lease from the
People’s party. And the year was 1890.
Although a lot have changed for the better since 1890, it’s remarkable how
identical some key problems of capitalism are, and how much more optimism
and militancy there could be in the popular movements 120 years ago. “You
can learn from history” is something you often learn in school, it just
remains to be learned in life too.
A way to start is to read A People’s History of the United States
by Howard Zinn. That’s where I found the citations above (p. 288 in the
2003 HarperCollins’ hardcover edition).
2011-11-22 Tuesday
In the last
notation Sunday I left out the most prominent of our previous affaires,
the scandalous treatment of elderly in privately managed care centers.
More horror stories are popping up daily when people report to media about
their personal experiences as to their own relatives. This is accompanied
by a compact critique from experts in different fields about almost every
phase of the processes when these companies were engaged by the official
bodies, from amateurish
procurement
via inadequate contracts to non-existent follow-ups.
What should puzzle us is the lack of popular uproars against the
utterances of brain-dead neoliberalism, of which the privatizations are
only one aspect. One can’t recognize the good old Swede with his social
democratic mind. Our Occupy-movements tries to engage the young, but with
only moderate success. Groups of conscious and progressive leftists have
been active and appear to have grown in number, but they constitute a
small minority, and the media isn’t too keen to engage in their case.
Our media is busy with the definitive killing of the Social democrats, by
first beheading Hakan Juholt, the chairman. And they are indeed
successful. Juholt has made some not so good performances, but the main
battle that underlies the visible fight is between left and right, also
within Juholts own party. The defeated fraction leaning to the right has
started to attack Juholt quite openly, thus speeding up the breakdown.
It’s a depressing situation, but that’s when it can’t be worse that
possibilities usually turn up. In the meantime we just have to strive on.
2011-11-20 Sunday
I’ll just
drop by on this page to note that not much has changed here lately. Julian
Assange has appealed to an even higher court, probably the last one, to
avoid extradition to Sweden. Op-eds in the mainstream press usually deride
him for not coming here, and nobody seems the least concerned about the
risk for an extradition claim from the United States.
The SAAB-affaire is still in a never ending negotiation process, now some
years long. The debacle with GM blocking the two Chinese companies from
buying SAAB hasn’t stopped the discussions about the deal. In the meantime
SAAB is under bankruptcy protection and salaries are paid, but no cars are
produced.
Our Social democrat leader, Hakan Juholt, has become completely free game
for our mass media. Since all our large papers are supporting the
bourgeoisie side in politics and our public service TV and of course our
commercial channels just follow along, there is a unanimous attack on
Juholt for all his errors and flip-flaps. When the melt-down has begun
there is nothing that can stop journalists and reporters, other than the
final crushing of the victim. It’s a sickening performance to watch.
Our center-right parties in the government are now pleased with the fact
that they lost the referendum some years ago whether Sweden should enter
the euro-zone. They can also rely on our manufacturing industry and raw
materials making up the core of our economy and the vital basis for
successful export, although the Stockholm-centered punditry a long time
ago declared the end of the industrial economy and the beginning of the
service and informational society.
Lacking elementary science education the pundits of course haven’t the
slightest idea of what an advanced industrial society is about (it is
certainly shown in the SAAB-debacle). An interesting lesson is that they
obviously have no influence on the development of the economy, thank God.
The men and women in the material reality in the outskirts of Sweden are
forming the future with skills and knowledge, while the high-brow
intelligentsia, the finance manipulators and the rest, in their Armani
suits enjoy the Stockholm night-life. As long as they remain there they
are the least harmful for the development of the country and it may be
worth their high salaries to keep them from interfering in the reality.
2011-11-09 Wednesday
The SAAB
affaire now more and more takes the shape of an ordinarily formatted
American thriller movie. When the first problems are solved and everybody
relaxes, it’s still some time left. That’s when the real disaster emerges,
and nothing is settled until the last minute of the film.
When the two Chinese companies finally had decided to buy SAAB, and many
of us relaxed, it turned out that General Motors had the power to obstruct
the affair, and so they did. In the deal with Muller’s company, GM
claimed, and obtained, right of veto concerning three of SAAB’s car
models, which had some critical GM content.
I’m a little vague here from lack of knowledge since our media obviously
have missed this clause completely, in spite of their enormous coverage of
the story. They have been too busy trying to kill the poor car
manufacturer. So when the Chinese appeared on the stage, and apparently
solved the problem, journalists quailed for a while. With the new joyful
news from GM they subsequently regained their spirit.
This is for sure a bizarre story where everything is upside down. Now the
Chinese companies are expected to withdraw their bids, and the evil media
working for the Destroyer has the upper hand. Will some miracle in the
last minute save SAAB, the hero? Well, this is unfortunately not a movie,
and the real world doesn’t always provide happy endings. But the hope will
not evade us until the curtain has reached the floor!
2011-11-07 Monday
Any possible US reader to this page can comfort him- or herself with the
news that there now is another country trying to reach the same merits
when it comes to dysfunctional health care systems. And the reason is the
same: privatization.
We have gone through a number of scandals in private nursing homes here
the last few weeks. One old man maltreated till he died, patients sleeping
on the floor, the facilities short-staffed and nurses desperately
overworked; no diapers for the elderly, not even toilet paper. All for the
sacred purpose of maximizing profits for private companies, which usually
have their head-quarters in tax havens at that.
Complaint are also piling up regarding private preschools with ever
growing groups of children taken care of by the same or declining number
of personnel. Private schools are reported having too few qualified
teachers, also lacking proper equipment and school books. All these cases
have one thing in common: they produce record profits for the companies
and their owners each year.
There is one basis for the scandals, which anyone should have realized
from the beginning, namely that these businesses are fully financed by tax
payers’ money. Such a model opens a high-way to windfall profits for more
or less unscrupulous entrepreneurs. On this we share another property with
the US political system: to criticize privatizations as the main cause of
the problem is completely unthinkable. For the moment, that is. But there
will come other moments in the future!
2011-11-04 Friday
A High Court in England has finally ruled that Julian
Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, shall be extradited to Sweden to be
interrogated about possible sex-crimes, a charade you probably remember.
No one here expects the prosecutor to find enough substantial facts to
even bring Assange to a court, but a game once started must go on till
it’s finished.
After the legal procedure is put aside, the question of extradition to the
US can be expected. Journalists here usually pretend that there will be no
demands from the US of that kind, naively presuming that he, in such a
case, would have been sent over the Atlantic Ocean by England already.
Considering the grave effects, would he be tried in a US court, with a
long prison sentence to be expected, the attitude among media people here
is shockingly easygoing. After all, they share with Assange the dependence
of that sacred part of human rights that we call freedom of expression.
Swedes are indeed known to be naïve and unsuspecting, but in this case one
is tempted to believe a more cold-hearted intent. It seems that solidarity
with the United States is of higher priority than considerations for
Julian Assange. There is no normal scenario in which the Swedish
government can deny an extradition. That would imply that Sweden
classifies Assange as a political offender or something like that, which
the US government would regard as humiliating. So that alternative is
ruled out. What, then??
The whole affair is a disgrace for Sweden from the very start, and the end
can be even worse.
2011-11-02 Wednesday
For years now our
neoliberal editors, journalists and blogs have done their utmost to
promote the crushing of the respected car manufacturer SAAB. They have
shown an almost morbid satisfaction in explaining that the company is
completely beyond rescue. My paper (Dagens Nyheter) has intensified
the campaign the last year with just about daily demands for the
liquidation of SAAB. In this effort the whole editorial staff has been
engaged (including the entertainment section) in a giant mission which
simply has been incomprehensible for a normal brain.
I emailed a couple of questions to the editors with roughly the following
meaning: “Why do you engage in such an extreme campaign if the company
will crash anyhow? What’s the problem if SAAB against any odds will
survive?” The answer was a rhetorical “masterpiece” maintaining that the
paper cared for the employees, trying to save them from being deceived by
Muller, the previous owner. (For Dagens Nyheter it was obviously a better
and more humane solution for the employees that they were kicked out in
unemployment immediately.)
Now it is almost determined that SAAB will be bought by two Chinese
companies, Youngman and Pang Da. What remains is a formal sanction by the
Chinese government, which is expected to be granted. SAAB will obviously
be saved; the new owners declare that production in Trollhattan will
continue, and new factories will be built in China. Our neoliberal media
have spent enormous recourses in an insane campaign which anyhow ended in
fiasco.
Apart from the impenetrable motives behind the media campaign it was
obvious that those who performed it, with their presumptuous and cocksure
attitudes, had no clue as to the innovative and technological value SAAB represented. At best they had their educated incapacity acquired in
neoliberal economic courses. It’s a blessing that newly industrialized but
still developing countries, like China, can provide the technological
knowledge necessary to understand modern, productive societies.
2011-10-17 Monday
Since journalists are addicted to scandals - and now
after the cease fire in the Juholt affair - they have to turn to our
Foreign minister Carl Bildt, who is famous for getting away with all kinds
of oddities. His weapon is blunt arrogance with which he normally silences
reporters who confront him with impertinent questions. It has obviously
also helped that he belongs to the right-wing party, in a country where
media is dominantly bourgeoisie. But unlike Juholt, the Foreign minister
probably has real misdeeds on his list of merits.
This time he is targeted for a tricky situation in Ethiopia. Two Swedish
journalists, who had gone there to report on the situation in the Ogaden
province, have been jailed for alleged cooperation with the guerilla.
Bildt’s first rather sour reaction was that they shouldn’t have travelled
there in the first place, while others instead expected him to engage
fully in their release. A reporter then revealed that a Swedish oil
Company, Lundin Oil, had been active with oil exploration in the same
area.
Before Bildt became Foreign minister he had been a member of the board of
Lundin Oil, and there were insinuations made that old interests played a
role for his attitude. His integrity was put in question. The heat went up
when Bildt excelled in his usual arrogance in the country’s most popular
talk show, and many came to think that he this time had gone too far. And
one can really say that he has worked hard through many years to prepare
for a drive in media. We’ll see what happens.
2011-10-15 Saturday
Today the Juholt
affaire to everybody's surprise took a dramatically different path.
Yesterday night the executive inner circle of the Social Democratic Party
had a meeting, in which they decided to back their chairman, who since day
one had maintained his innocence, and all through the process had refused
to resign. Also yesterday a prosecutor made a statement that must have
slapped the witch-hunting journalists right in their faces.
A legal investigation concerning the apartment situation had started, and
was finished yesterday after a simple and rapid procedure. It obviously
turned out that there were no regulations about the apartments whatsoever!
Parliamentarians could live there with anyone they wanted, as is the
normal condition for anyone that rents an apartment. Everything else that
had been claimed by journalists was plainly pure fabrications, or lies, if
you prefer a more exact word.
So what I reported Thursday was mostly journalistic fantasies based on
rumors, which had been presented by the most prestigious papers and
TV-channels as pure truths. This is a monumental blowback for the news
media, and well deserved at that. So today’s paper looked completely
different compared with the last few days. Juholt is almost revered for
his strong attitude, even if no guilt is admitted by the editors. But
that’s just so boringly normal. Has anyone ever heard a journalist say the
dangerous words: “I was wrong”? Not to speak of the even worse: “I lied!”
2011-10-13 Thursday
Our media have been
rewarded an enormous scoop, filling every paper and news show to the brim
the past week. The background is this: parliamentarians who come from
other regions than Stockholm are allowed compensation for an apartment in
the capital. The state simply pays the rent. But if you have a partner who
also lives in the apartment, only half the rent should be paid for by the
state.
It turned out that the leader of the Social Democratic Party, Håkan
Juholt, has applied for full compensation, although his female partner
also has lived in the apartment. Thus he has through the years received in
total some 23.000 $ more than he was entitled to. “He has broken the
unambiguous rules!” media shouts. Now, Juholts lawyer claims that the
specific terms are not at all clear and not even explicit in the
instructions. But since media have created such an incredible storm Juholt
is considered to be finished anyway, by media at least. The "defendant"
himself says he will take the fight and not resign voluntarily.
It is said here that in the US it is detrimental for a politician to have
sex in a wrong circumstance, and to be caught, but that infidelity with
money isn’t a big deal. In Sweden it’s the other way around. If someone
here saw a politician humping a cow it’s some chance that a newspaper
wouldn’t even bother to make it a story. Sex is private, and that is
usually respected. But if a parliamentarian uses her credit card, issued
by the state, to buy a piece of chocolate, it is the end of story.
The latter actually happened in 1996 when Mona Sahlin was a candidate for
Chairman of the Social Democratic Party. The chocolate and some additional
minor negligence forced her to drop her candidacy after a witch hunt in
media. No one claimed that she had gained anything personally (she paid
the chocolate privately when she got the card invoice). But such trifles
didn’t matter; she had to go.
And now journalists gather at the parliament’s administrative office to
scrutinize every single one of the receipts Juholt has submitted through
the years. With all his travelling it’s a massive work, but the most
energetic rag has already found two occasions in 2007 (or something), when
Juholt seem to have receipts for taxi and a rent car on the same day.
Horror!
It seems that media consider this kind of hunting to be an interesting
sport. After just a couple of days one paper ordered a poll to be taken to
evaluate the effect of the hunting party so far. The ultimate aim is to
bring down the game, at any cost.
Needless to say it’s the Social Democrats who suffer the highest risk of
being victims of the most severe witch hunts in media. Needless to say,
because 90 percent of newspapers support their political enemies.
2011-10-12 Wednesday
In Dagens Nyheter, our
prime newspaper, one of New York Time’s star pundits - David Brooks - has
a regular column. It’s somewhat strange since his political views are a
bit exotic in our milieu, but he is also a master of nothingness, and in
that capacity he is arguably a very skilled writer, producing easily read
and journalistically effective texts.
This week he takes on the subject of innovation, partly in memory of Steve
Jobs. He points at the Iphone, and notes that in contrast to that magic
phone many other kinds of technical devices have developed quite slowly
since the 1970s. He mentions airplanes, cars, energy sources and houses
which all functions approximately in the same way as they did forty years
ago. There are no colonies on Mars, no flying cars, no nuclear driven
airplanes and things like that (namely what science fiction writers dreamt
of back then).
I remember even earlier fantasies of the same kind: in the year 2000
everyone was expected have his own helicopter; people would not have to
eat food, just to take a daily pill, etcetera. The obvious thing was that
the fantasies were created mostly by romanticizing fiction writers. My
impression is that true scientists and real technological experts
refrained from such wild forecasts. If so, it could be because
speculations about unknown things are irrational and thus meaningless,
something Cartesians usually avoid.
Brooks’ point is that the development of new great innovations suffers
from stagnation. And he is supported by a number of writers to whom he
refers. In their eyes, the creation of spectacular new technical devices,
which make a difference in our daily lives, decreases in number. It may be so, but
those “big” innovations are not necessarily the most important ones for
the material or economic development in society.
Actually, Brooks’ example, the Iphone, is an interesting illustration of
that claim. The Iphone in itself is not as much a technical innovation as
a conceptual one. But it hides under its shell a technological upsurge
created in hundreds of different places which we don’t contemplate at all,
probably because it is so utterly inconceivable for ordinary humans. The
incredible speed of this development is described by Moore’s law. And
these unbelievable technological advances are built on real innovations,
not a single one, but a chain of innovations creating an increasing body
of new knowledge.
This is how the important technological development takes place. Millions
of small innovations, improvements and adjustments are continuously
building new platforms on increasingly higher levels. For Brooks, a car
from 1970 looks like a car today. Obviously it has four tires and a
steering wheel, but that’s about it. In every detail, from the smallest
ball bearing to the computer managed motor, it’s a different product with
completely different performances.
These small but innumerous and daily innovations and improvements form
incidentally the most important basis for technological advancement
whatsoever. That fact is overshadowed by the greater interest for the
spectacular manifestations of new technology that naturally attracts
people like David Brooks, mainly because they don’t know much about the
fundamentals of science and technology.
Most importantly the small-scale and continual technical development lays
the foundation for increased productivity, which is the most dynamic
factor for economic development.
2011-10-06 Thursday
Tunis, Cairo, Damascus, Bahrain,
Sanaa, Tripoli, Madison, Athens, Birmingham, New York... What next?
2011-10-05 Wednesday
Long since
last annotation here! Also long since the last scandal in Sweden? Don’t
think so!
Sweden is a kingdom, one of these anachronistic remnants a modern society
at a pinch can afford. Not that people care about the kingdom as a
constitutional entity, but “it is nice to have a royal faaamily!” It turns
out that the royal family life hasn’t been so nice, though. After decades
of rather well-known secrets about the kings private escapades, the bubble
burst with a new book some time ago where many of the secrets where put in
print.
I will not dwell on the details here. First of all because it is his
private life and the only thing about him which is remotely interesting is
his public role. Secondly the whole affair is just depressing. Those
interested in filthy details can probably find them on the Internet.
A real scandal occurred however two days ago when the king, in his
capacity as honorary chairman of the World Scout Foundation, awarded his
colleague in Saudi Arabia the organizations highest Medal of Honor. It
compares with the Royal Blunder in 1980 when the king awarded the dictator
Ceausescu of Rumania the highest Swedish order, Serafimerordern.
Not that I wish king Abdullah the same fate as Ceausescu, but it would be
a blessing to see him tried for his dictatorial misdeeds before a really
impartial court of law in a genuinely democratic Saudi Arabia, sometime in
the near future.
We have just been condemning a number of Arab dictators, for whom we
recently had no objections; some of them we in fact supported actively.
When the oppressed people practiced active democracy and succeeded to
overthrow the dictators, our politicians immediately turned around and
started to praise the democratic revolution, and abandoned the dictators.
King Abdullah is one of the remaining ones, who not long ago rescued his
friend and colleague in Bahrain from the people's democratic threat by
letting his powerful military forces intervene in a foreign country,
without much criticism from the west..
The kingdom as such is an institution since long apt to be stored in
museums. To see the Swedish soap opera version of a king award a dictator
version such as Abdullah, who has decided that women should be punished
with lashes for driving a car, is just too much. I’ll quit!
2011-09-28 Wednesday
In the face of
compact critique the board of SNS was forced to fire their managing
director. It’s true that the man - Anders Vredin - lost his nerves when
the heavy guys from the business community raised their voices. But the
serious disrespect for academic principles was demonstrated by these
“honorable” representatives from the higher economic spheres when they
presumed as self-evident that results from research should fit their
taste, or otherwise be silenced.
The most vulgar and autocratic attack on the scientists was made by the
head of The Confederation of Swedish Enterprise, Urban Bäckström, a very
prominent figure in the Swedish corporate world. He criticized the
research manager and her presentation of the report, and demanded that the
study should have had other objectives than the ones set up. He implied
that the study was politically biased, which is standard demagogy when
things doesn’t fit one's own political opinions.
Bäckström ones left his graduate studies in political economy for a job as
an official in the government. His top position before the current one was
as Governor of the Bank of Sweden. He’s more known as a kind of political
figure than as an intellectual economist. In that capacity he couldn’t
restrain himself so much as to respect academic principles, which would
have been the wisest thing to do. Well, now he has experienced that the
academic world has its own kind of power, which even the otherwise
overwhelming economic might must respect.
2011-09-27 Tuesday
As for the
result of the study made by SNS, namely that no improvement in efficiency
or quality could be verified from 20 years of continuous privatization of
the social sector, it’s interesting in itself. There should be no doubt
that egoism in principle is a driving force, also in economics. We are
more productive when we own the product, and cherish it with more
interest. The problem is that one cannot simply transfer this driving
force into an organization where many people are engaged and only one of
them is the owner. Parts of the advantages are lost underway.
It seems that demand for profit is a main drawback for the private
alternatives in comparison with the public and non-profit ones. Each cost
reduces profits and it becomes a delicate balance to prevent cost
reductions from harming the quality of the product. Another temptation for
the private owner is to downplay the long-term view in favor of the
short-term.
A telling example in Sweden is the recent introduction of privately owned pharmacies
in a market that formerly was a state monopoly. Some of the public
pharmacies were sold to private companies, but a majority is still in the
hands of the old state corporation. The idea was that competition would
make everything better. It should be mentioned that the state pharmacies
often ranked highest when people’s confidence in corporations of all kinds
were measured, so there was actually no public demand for a change.
One thing that have struck me through the years is that every drug you
could need, even the most odd ones, was available on the shelf in the
state pharmacy. In the very rare cases when this high standard wasn’t met, the
staff could find on the computer screen which nearby store had the
product, and made it available the next day.
Since day one of the privatization I have not once got everything on the
list. Either the specific brand or the size of package prescribed is
missing. But now it takes almost a week to get it delivered. And this goes
for the public pharmacies as well. OK, there are costs associated with
storing expensive drugs, so it saves money to keep stores quite reduced.
Regrettably though, no one has discovered any lower prices for consumers,
so the benefit stays obviously with the company and its owners.
Apart from the inconvenience, there is an extra cost which is entirely
carried by the consumer, namely for time and transportation caused by the
additional trip to the shop. If, say, every second customer has to do
such a trip those costs surely exceeds the cost of keeping complete
stores. The profits from reduced storing are thus paid by others, and for society as a whole
the “economic rationality” in fact is a loss.
More important than the economic effects is that there already has been
cases where the absence of absolutely vital drugs has caused severe
problems for patients. All these factors explain why the state owned
pharmacies ranked high among the public. In those days there were no such
problems, and yet the prices were the same.
2011-09-25 Sunday
Social unrest
in academic circles continues after the SNS scandal. Some very prominent
professors in different social sciences, also members of the highest
academic board of SNS, wrote yesterday an indignant article on the
country’s number one debate forum in Dagens Nyheter (DN Debatt).
They openly imply that SNS’s managing director, Anders Vredin, should
resign for muzzling a scientist. (They don’t discuss the specific result
of the study.)
The professors find it remarkable that high representatives of the Swedish
corporate society, without blushing, expect “correct” scientific results
from institutes they finance. But who can blame them for that? They are of
course used to the fact that everything can be bought for money. Why not
also research findings?
Likewise, the professors find it chocking that Anders Vredin was so
intimidated by the reaction from the corporate leaders that he panicked,
and made his unforgivable blunder. Although Vredin offered a strong
apology as soon as he realized his mistake, the professors seem not to
think that his excuse is sufficient to regain confidence for SNS and its
scientific reputation.
This is a significant and interesting conflict, to be followed up.
2011-09-23 Friday
The report I mentioned 2011-09-20 has of course stirred up anger in
right-wing quarters. The research institute (SNS) is to a large extent
financed by corporations, and unashamed conservatives argue that the
scientific results should have been more ideologically correct. Affected
by that uproar SNS’s managing director muzzled the research
manager responsible for the report, Laura Hartman, who subsequently resigned. As a consequence of
that violation of academic freedom a prominent social sciences professor
also left the institute.
Well, the scientific study had in short shown that 20 years of
privatizations in the social sector had resulted in no visible increase in
efficiency and quality, the main pretexts for the private revolution in
the first place. No one is actually amazed by that result since most
people have personal experiences of those and similar failures. One
typical example of a total fiasco is the privatization in the energy
sector. People now have to choose between over 200 electricity suppliers,
and the only result has been a sharp increase in consumer costs, not
surprisingly.
Since the neoliberals certainly know that they have a weak case, they
instead criticize the researchers for not having studied something else,
such as freedom of choice and consumer satisfaction. One could cynically
note the sudden and unexpected interest for human values shown by the
otherwise anti-altruistic hardliners in the conservative bunker. But in
war and love everything is permitted!
2011-09-21 Wednesday
The conservative
government we have here started their attack on the unions as soon as they
came into power in 2006. In words they stated their loyalty to the Swedish
model, in which collective agreements and strong unions are core elements.
But in deeds they immediately and considerably raised the fee that
employees have to pay to the unemployment funds. Since the funds are
managed by the unions, and many people couldn’t afford the fees, the
result was a rapid departure from the unions by members, who at the same
time lost their unemployment insurance.
We hear that public employees in Wisconsin, USA, have been denied their
right to collective bargaining. We must conclude that representatives of
neoliberalism doesn’t give up so easily in its fight against the unions,
in spite of a demonstrated incapacity of the highest degree by that
economic religion, resulting in the most serious economic crisis in living
memory. And in busting the unions it doesn’t hesitate to violate human
rights.
Article 23 of United Nation’s Universal Declarations of Human Rights has
the following wording:
-
(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just
and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
-
(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for
equal work.
-
(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration
ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity,
and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
-
(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the
protection of his interests.
According to point 4 of
this article, unions are expected to protect workers interests, and
bargaining is a main tool without which unions are unable to protect any
interest. Reasonably, to deny unions the right of bargaining must therefore be a
violation of the Universal Declaration.
It’s all very interesting. Here our mainstream media maintain a constant and
frequent critique of China, Cuba, Iran and a few other countries (that don’t
obey western orders). Since these countries don’t engage in wars or even in
military support of other countries, we have to focus on other deficiencies,
notably in the field of the human rights. It’s true that these countries
violate at least four of the thirty articles in the Declaration, and they
rightly should be criticized for that. And so we do. Accordingly it has in
our societal discourse become a serious crime to violate Human Rights.
Regrettably most people are not aware of all the articles of the
Declaration, and those pundits who have some knowledge about them just
ignore the ones not appropriate. Here we have certainly not heard anybody
suggest that the governor of Wisconsin has violated the United Nation’s
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And we will never hear that. For
sure.
2011-09-20 Tuesday
In the past, Swedish
welfare systems were almost entirely run by the state or municipalities.
But a right-wing government 20 years ago started to introduce private
alternatives for schools, health centers and institutions for elderly care
among other things. There was a dominant conception in bourgeois circles
that the publicly run operations were inefficient and lacked quality. The
idea was that private corporations would remediate those deficiencies and,
as a bonus, bring some freedom of choice into the system.
Today almost every fifth employee in the welfare sector works for a
private company. Since the tax payers pick up the bill, in full, nice
profits are more or less guaranteed for the corporations. In spite of the
pretext of increasing efficiency there have been no studies made in all
these 20 years to clarify the real effects of the privatizations, i.e. to
see whether they achieved the assumed goals. The right-wing parties
probably had no interest in any evaluations since they had rammed through
the reform mainly for ideological reasons anyway.
Now an important study has been done, finally. It is made by a serious
research institute mainly financed by the corporate society (and thus
certainly not a left-wing resort). First of all they find it unacceptable
that 20 years have passed without any evaluation of the privatizations.
The researchers consider it grave since the citizens that need welfare
services are in a vulnerable position and are depending on the best
possible care; as formulated by the report: “To achieve this it is not
sufficient with ideological faith as basis for decision”.
The conclusion from their research is draconic: there is no evidence whatsoever that privatization has led to any improvement of the welfare
services: “private alternatives have not been the ‘miracle medicine’ that
many had hoped for”.
My suspicion is that a possible increase in efficiency has been
counteracted by savings and downsizing, and that the whole apparatus just
has resulted in large private profits, with no benefits for the ordinary
citizen.
2011-09-18 Sunday
In Sweden we have a
strange kind of “socialism” that probably would puzzle most Americans. So
if for instance people are short of time and need help with domestic work
such as cleaning and gardening, they can hire a firm to do it, and the
government will pay half the bill. It’s called rutavdrag. The
pretexts for this reform given by the right-wing government included
favoring gender equality and hampering a traditional “black” enterprise.
Well, Swedes have never been used to keep servants; we live in a quite
egalitarian society when it comes to life style. The distribution of
wealth may be fairly unequal, but the rich are not supposed to show off
their opulence in public. And to do one’s own domestic work is considered a matter
of principle. So it’s not surprising that only some 5 percent of
households have taken advantage of the reform. (Nota bene: some x
percent of the upper class certainly adhere to the discrete and completely
untaxed servants they have had for centuries.)
It’s natural to suppose that the 5 percent of households in question are
among the more well paid. We thus have a system where 95 percent of the
people simply hand over money to the richest 5 percent so that they can
buy some extra bottles of champagne each month. Obviously a majority must
oppose such a crazy principle?
Strangely enough even the Social Democrats hesitate to work against the
rutavdrag, calculating that there are no political points to gain by
such an opposition. And deplorably their gut-feeling may very well be
correct. With the help of an overwhelming propaganda, the reform has been
pitched as an increase in freedom and gender equality, so much so that the
simplest calculations aren't made by those who pay the whole bill but get
nothing at all of the benefit.
We can call it an illustrative example of how consent is manufactured in a
society with allegedly all freedoms of expression intact.
2011-09-14 Wednesday
Noam Chomsky
kindly sacrificed some of his arguably limited time to not just read, but
also to answer my email. With his, as always, sharp eye he found a weak
spot in my rather fuzzy remarks on the left-brainers. He finished his
answer with some very encouraging statements. Well, I’ve had a word
directly from the clearest mind in the known universe; a person who
furthermore dedicates his unmatched skills to work for the benefit of
mankind. Nothing could be more energizing for a man like me, who humbly
tries to work in Chomsky's spirit, although on a level a hundred floors
below. Thanks Noam, if I may address you in such a personal manner.
2011-09-12 Monday
Today Professor Chomsky is expected back from travel, so I try
again to send my e-mail, slightly edited, as follows:
Dear
Professor Chomsky,
It’s indeed presumptuous of me to occupy your invaluable time, but a
letter to you has been on the assembly line for many years, and I can’t
resist sending this version.
You have received all laudations there are, so I don’t quite know how to
phrase my appreciation (in a foreign language at that), other than to say
that you are a very important reason for living. The world must thank you
limitless for devoting your sharp brain and unbelievable energy to the
tireless and truly rational analysis of the most important problems, and
for your enormous inspiration.
Being a left-brain type, with a background in science and technology, it’s
a mystery for me how irrational and emotional thinking can dominate the
social discourse the way it does. One of many reasons might be that
left-brain types don’t find the social discourse at all interesting.
Another reason, maybe more important, is that the right-brain types that
dominate the social discourse don’t find the strictly rational approach
appealing. In any event: your rationality is a light-house in a dark
night, with a few scattered torches floating around.
Here in Sweden we have experienced full neoliberal rule since 2006, after
some 80 years of gradually refining the Swedish Model, a distinct
capitalist system with Compromise as main regulatory mechanism.
Some called it “the third way” between capitalism and communism, but that
was just for propaganda purposes; private capitalism was never challenged.
Nevertheless the principle of compromise resulted in some benefits for
ordinary people that somewhat distinguished Sweden from other countries,
for the better.
Now neoliberalism is in full swing. The new government started immediately
in 2006 with deregulations, privatizations and sharp attacks on the
allowances for sick and unemployed. The Swedes were chocked, and even the
mainstream papers reported one scandal after the other. One of the cases
that upset people was about a woman practically dying of cancer. In order
to get her allowances, according to the new rules, she was forced to apply
for work at the official employment agency. This was so grave that the
government later modified that specific rule.
We have an odd system for private schools, euphemistically called
“free-schools”. They are privately owned, but 100 percent financed with
tax-payers money. This of course opens a high-way to windfall profits. The
system was already in place, but got a shot in the arm by the new rulers.
Schools were handed over to energetic individuals who just had to pay for
the used furnishings. By stripping the schools from all extravaganzas such
as libraries, special teachers, medical personnel etcetera the new owners
often became millionaires on tax payer’s money within a year. Then,
following the normal procedure, more and more schools, health centers and
hospitals have been ending up in the arms of venture capital companies
with their headquarters in tax havens.
One could fill pages with shocking examples of these fruits of brain-dead
neoliberal politics. And people accordingly became furious. In 2008 the
government rated catastrophically in the polls and the opposition was in
the lead by almost 20 percent. A regime change in the elections in 2010
seemed inevitable.
Well, it didn’t happen.
As you often have pointed out, the real issues tend to disappear in our
kinds of elections. Swedish voters are normally quite rational and
susceptible for arguments, but this time something backfired. For one
thing the Social Democrats didn’t take a clear stand against the new
politics. Their leadership was trying to reach out to the middle class (in
the European meaning of the word), i.e. strive towards “the center”, thus
forgetting their core voters in the industrialized Swedish mainland. It
also seemed that people got used to the scandals and began to prioritize
their own situation. Those who suffered the most were as usual not
themselves part of the debate.
I think that this example illustrates important dilemmas. Capitalism is
stimulating productive forces (it’s progressive, as Marx wrote), and at
the same time causing severe problems, especially for the already most
vulnerable. But those who suffer the most either can’t be reached or
opposes constructive policies. Many of them vote for the most right-wing
party we have (like in the US), and shout on the Internet: “don’t touch my
property”. I agree with you that it’s an important task for all
progressive movements to try to mobilize all these people, but the mission
seems sometimes impossible. Well, this is just pessimism by the intellect.
When I listen to your talks on the net I regain my optimism by the will.
I base that optimism on the hope that there is a possible society which
gives room for individual freedom, initiative and rights, and at the same
time fundamentally builds on solidarity in all its common functions. So
far mankind has not been able to combine these elements fully in one
functioning society, but your very existence brightens the prospects.
With devotion, and warmest greetings!
Yours sincerely
...
2011-09-11 Sunday
For a
couple of weeks already, Swedish newspapers have reminded us of the
special tenth anniversary this very day. Today's paper has one single
theme throughout the whole edition. It makes us think.
It makes us think about horrible atrocities, cruel deaths, mourning people
and a chocked nation. Terrorism on a large scale suddenly, and for the
first time, hit in the heart of our civilization. The whole world reacted
with disgust for the perpetrators and with sympathy for the suffering
country.
It also makes us think about the terrorism on a giant scale that we in the
western world have afflicted other people with, often poor and distressed
people at that. The number of dead bodies we have left behind us on our
cruel crusade doesn’t count in thousands but in millions.
The ultimate thought could be only one: bloodshed is a bad method,
especially for maintaining dominance over other people. If something good
could come out of 9/11 it will preferable be that violence in all
different strata of the social structure should be minimized, and that
peaceful means, caring policies and solidarity between human beings will
be perceived as a characterization of a wise and intelligent mankind.
2011-09-10 Saturday
My e-mail to Noam Chomsky got this kind reply:
Prof.
Chomsky is unable to access email at this time, as he is traveling out of
the country.
Please resend your message after September 12, if it is still relevant at
that time.
I will take the
opportunity to contemplate the original e-mail, to see if something can be
improved, and will be back on 9/12.
2011-09-06 Tuesday
Sometimes there are things that you just have to do. I began to
read Noam Chomsky's works in the 1970s, starting with The
Responsibility of Intellectuals from 1967. Many years later I saw
Chomsky's e-mailadress somewhere, and immediately decided to write him a
mail in the future. That future finally came, and the mail reads as
follows:
[The original mail is taken out for polishing, and will be sent next week.
For reasons, see September 10th.]
2011-09-01 Thursday
Speaking of obsolete instincts such as racism and xenophobia - remnants
from our reptile brain that we should have gotten rid of a long time ago -
I came to remember a radio reporter’s story some 20 years ago. She was
stationed in Paris and had come to know two Yugoslav women living there in
exile. As fellow countrymen the two women were best friends and helped
each other in the foreign environment. The relationship was ideal and they
became really close. Until one day when they suddenly turned into mortal
enemies. What had happened?
It turned out that one of the women originally came from the Serbian part
of Yugoslavia, and the other from the Croatian part. So when the civil war
broke out in their home country they rapidly adapted their ethnical roles
and became bitter enemies. This is certainly a perfect illustration of the
lack of common sense in our ethnical reflexes.
2011-08-25 Thursday
In a
number of ways the history seems to have gone backwards since the 1970s
in this country. Old and formal rituals of many kinds, which had
been discarded by the progressive youth, step by step reentered the social
life. We have seen a quite massive conservative backlash on almost all
fronts. And racism started to grow, slowly at the beginning and then
accelerating. The question if there are any connections is worth studying.
The 1970s marked the end of “the golden age” in most of the
industrialized countries. From the end of the war till then the economic
growth was considerable. But what specifically distinguished the period
was that the economic outcome was distributed in a relatively equal
manner. That means that ordinary workers saw their living standards really
improve; in addition to the salary also working hours and working
conditions underwent a positive development. Unions in Sweden were
offensive, and there were some large strikes, but the feeling was overall
that democracy was starting to spread into the corporate world. A
miniscule legislation gave unions some influence on corporate decisions on
specific issues.
From the late 1970s this development began to reverse. The
owners of the world realized that the game had gone too far and hit the
brakes. With the help of mercenaries in different services they started to
push the history backwards. On the ideological front Milton Friedman
became the four-star general, leading a swelling army of neoliberal
economists. On the most important political front Ronald Reagan was
appointed figure-head (what he personally understood is disputable), and
Margaret Thatcher became the wicked lieutenant. After 30 years one must
conclude that the war was victorious.
The first “victory” was that economic growth fell to a lower level than in
the previous 30 years. In USA ordinary employees have seen there salaries
stagnate or decline, working hours increase and working conditions get
worse. The only real “improvement” is that a miniscule fraction of the most opulent
has become even richer. All industrial countries have been affected in the
same direction by neoliberal rule, but mostly to a lesser extent than USA.
Thus arriving back to the “good old days” for capital owners we could also
“enjoy” the really horrific crises that are typical of a mindless
capitalism. Ordinary people who for the last 30 years have paid to watch
the rich become even more insanely rich, once again had to pay for the crises others have created
(some of latter now being promoted to the Obama administration). All over
the world people have lost jobs, homes and savings; in the poor countries
it’s a question of starvation and death.
With this as a background it is perhaps not a total mystery that racism is
growing in many countries. Constructive ways of reacting to change
politics are effectively barred. For the moment, that is.
2011-08-23 Tuesday
In the book I wrote about yesterday Georg Klein deals extensively with the
question why we so easily adopt the idea that foreigners pose a danger, just
because they differ from us in one way or another, ever so little. The
fundamental instincts seem to be innate, and to have evolutionary origins.
Survival was simply favored by vigilance and readiness to contest foreign
competitors (who were ready to do the same). Even the impulse to commit
murder is by some considered to be an inborn capability.
Be that as it may, but the terrible failure is cultural. We have a lot of
instincts that we do suppress because they are not tolerated in a civilized
society. But different manifestations of xenophobia are not subject to the
same distinct civilization process as most other unwanted instincts. There
are now thousands of racist websites, the most popular hate object for the
moment being Muslims. (Not very many websites advocate rape, looting or
other impulses we might have, but have learned to control.)
Even anti-Semitism is growing, exemplified by the recent development in for
instance Hungary. In more “civilized” countries like Scandinavia racism is
disguised
under the pretext of “factual critique of immigration policy”. Under the
same disguise political parties have emerged, exploiting latent xenophobic
tendencies among people. In Norway, the land where the horrible neo-Nazi
terrorist atrocity took place, almost every forth voter supports a party
with these shady ideas.
It’s bad enough that there exist opportunists who don’t hesitate to
exploit hidden racist impulses for political purposes. But an important
side of the problem is also why people in these days are vulnerable to
irrational feelings of this kind. In the 1970s there were absolutely no
visual racism in Sweden. Half a dozen stubborn Nazis had hibernated since
the war but they laid low in hiding and were considered to be total freaks.
That was it. We thought that this constituted a rational and civilized
development that could not be reversed. It proved to be a naïve expectation.
How could history turn back so dramatically?
2011-08-22 Monday
Back to the keyboard
after two weeks of computer-free activities!
Among other things I’ve been reading the latest book by Georg Klein, a
prominent scientist (a cancer researcher) as well as an interesting author.
His life is a fairytale in itself. As a Jew in Hungary he one day in 1944
was marched to a railway station together with hundreds of others, ready to
be pushed into a cattle wagon, which would have taken him directly to
Auschwitz and extermination. He knew what was at stake, and miraculously he
managed to sneak through a dark and unguarded station building and escape.
For the months left of the war he lived with false papers in Budapest and
was lucky enough not to be disclosed. In 1947 he came to Sweden and remained
here together with his wife, a classmate from the Hungarian medical school.
The title of his latest book is I will never return and discusses
among other things the situation in Hungary during the war.
What caught my eye was a citation by Pál Teleki, a professor of Geography
and Hungary’s Prime minister 1939-41. He belonged to one of the most
distinguished aristocratic families in his country; he was a respected
conservative – and an outspoken anti-Semite (which in those days meant no
contradiction). Klein cites him in the book with a sentence he uttered to
Klein's father: “The Jews have practically taken over this country’s culture
and we must do everything we can to reduce their influence”.
Teleki was certainly not a Nazi. He denied the German armies free way
through Hungarian territory to attack Poland. He also opposed demands from
the Germans to pass through Hungary on attacking Yugoslavia in 1941. And
when the Nazi-influenced Hungarian military obstructed the government’s
orders and collaborated with the Germans, he committed suicide in his
office.
What struck me was that his opinion regarding the Jews almost verbatim
corresponds with the Norwegian terrorist’s view on the Muslims and their
role in Norway. The important question is: how do distorted beliefs like
these emerge?
2011-08-06 Saturday
The irregularities concerning my notations this summer should be
blamed on unusually nice weather for vacation activities. Now I'll enjoy a
more structured leisure time and withhold all postcards for two weeks.
Back on August
22nd.
Bye till then!
2011-08-02 Tuesday
The first funerals after the almost unthinkable atrocities on the island
of UtØja in Norway have taken place. The number of
dead is now 77, with many injured still in hospital. The whole nation is
mourning and the Prime Minister, Jens Stoltenberg, has become a Father of
the Nation and a trusted leader. A generation of future prominent-to-be
Social Democrats have been wiped out by a fascist murderer.
In contrast to Stoltenberg, the Swedish Prime minister, conservative
Fredrik Reinfeldt, has distinguished himself by showing an almost
remarkable lack of interest. It took him 16 hours after the terrorist
attack to make his first short and rather detached comment. Then he didn’t
attend a memorial service held in Stockholm (and neither did the Royal
family). For his strange behavior he received rather harsh commentaries in
the press, even in the mainstream newspapers. The government’s bad manners
were even more emphasized when the Danish government and Royal court
arranged a special memorial service in Copenhagen, honoring the murdered
young boys and girls in Norway.
While many people are wondering if Reinfeldt’s behavior in some way
reflects his lack of interest in the lives of young Social Democrats,
right-wing editorials (inspired by O’Reilly?) points out that the
deplorable events mustn’t affect Christianity or conservative politics
just because the perpetrator had those beliefs. We have indeed to separate
these to phenomena (although we mostly did not succeed in separating Islam
from Muslim terrorists)!
The young Social Democrats on that island believed in politics that cares
for everyone. By consciously overlooking the political motives behind the
brutal murders these writers diminishes the convictions held by the young
boys and girls. That’s probably the most disrespectful way in which to
serve their memory.
2011-07-27 Wednesday
Now Scandinavia has
got its equivalent to Timothy McVeigh and the Unabomber: a blond Muslim-
and socialist-hater with the forever damned name of Anders Behring Breivik
(there is at least one man with the exactly same name, and he will
probably have to do something about it). The blond monster calls himself a
rightwing Christian, which has driven the Fox talk show hosts berserk.
Bill O’Reilly certifies that Christians never do the things Behring
Breivik did, namely kill some 80 people, mostly young boys and girls.
(Old Bill just forgets his favorite president, Bush number two, the
devoted Christian who was directly responsible for the killing of
thousands of completely innocent women and children in Iraq and elsewhere. But that’s
another story of course…)
The similarity between Anders B B and his American colleagues is found in
the grievances they experienced from a society that they weren’t included
in. ABB is seemingly fairly intelligent but probably socially inhibited.
He planned his attack on the government and the Social Democrats for about
ten years. When he started the project he had already convinced himself
that the Muslims where taking over Norway and that the Social Democrats
were responsible for letting them in.
It should be said that Norway since long has had a very restricted number
of people immigrating, compared with Sweden it has been insignificant.
Despite that, Norway has for many years had what we call a “dissatisfaction
party” in the parliament, a party
with the main goal of limiting immigration further, at least immigration
from non-white countries.
Anders B B doesn’t appear to be a simple lunatic. But he has got a
fixation to lunatic ideas, and in that he is certainly not alone. The
Internet is loaded with racist and anti-Islamic voices of varying degree
of madness. He has also had direct contacts with notorious groups with the
same agenda, in England and probably elsewhere.
Our blond monster doesn’t have to be insane, at least not more so than the
thousands of SS-men who committed the same kind of atrocities, and much
worse. But he had the same fascist ideology as the SS-men. How did he end
up there? Well, he was a product of a society that didn’t let him
in, as it also threatens to leave many other young people outside. That’s
where we have to start our analysis if we are interested in preventing
similar nightmares to happen in the future.
2011-07-22 Friday
The worst catastrophe
so far this year, according to mass media globally - the Fukushima
disaster - has not yet injured a single individual, let alone killed
anyone (from radiation). This paradox is based on the curious fact that
nuclear accidents are classified by a special measure, with which every
misfortune can be named a tragedy, regardless of the real consequences.
One would think that media had at least some interest in how this
overwhelming catastrophe develops, but the silence is total. That is, if
there isn’t an occasional incidence of high radiation from cattle fodder
or something similar. In such cases a short report is delivered, without
evaluating the non-existing risks, just to remind people of the prime
disaster-of-the-year.
We have to go to the IAEA website to look for facts. But, as it happens,
IAEA closed its daily log from Fukushima already on the 2nd of
June, obviously since the plant status is fairly stable and the need for a
daily log no longer is in place. The progress in cooling the reactors and
the spent fuels pools is continuous, although slow, and there are no
serious surprises to be expected.
The IAEA index page holds this message: “Prior to his departure for an
official visit to Japan on 24 July 2011, Director General Amano stated
that the IAEA welcomes the significant progress the Tokyo Electric Power
Company (TEPCO) has achieved overall in implementing its ‘Road Map’ to
contain and stabilize the situation in the aftermath of the nuclear
accident at TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi power station on 11 March 2011.”
Furthermore Amano said that “the company was ahead of the ‘Road Map's’
schedule in some areas. Based on their progress to date, the IAEA notes
that their plan to achieve ‘cold shutdown’ by early next year could be
possible.” A cold shutdown means that the hazardous phase of the whole
experience has passed, and the greatest non-catastrophe since Harrisburg
has ended without a single injury, as it seems by now.
The worst consequences of the accident will be the irrational setbacks for
energy production in several countries, headed by Germany; this idiocy
accompanied by severe damage on the already weak efforts to counteract the
global warming.
2011-07-06 Wednesday
Today's one-liner apropos gender madness: is it artificial
intelligence or natural stupidity?
2011-07-03 Sunday
My paper, Dagens Nyheter, has featured a series of
articles about masculinity and the role of the modern man. As a closure
they asked a dozen randomly selected, ordinary women the question: “What
traits in men do you like the most?”. The answers were first of all
totally incorrect, politically.
A majority wanted men to be strong and masculine. Some emphasized the
importance of the difference between the sexes; that men were a positive
complement to women. One 35 years old preschool manager said:
-
Men add other
things to life than women do. They look upon things differently in
conversations; they have other perspectives and experiences which I find
enriching. Maybe specifically when it comes to children. Sometimes I think
that men can have a somewhat more rational attitude towards parenthood.
So far the women in the questionnaire had learned
nothing from what the gender lunatics have preached from every corner of the
cultural world: That there are no differences between the sexes outside our
social constructs, and that there consequently are no men or women other
than in our perception (imagination). Or, to complete the lunacy: that there
in fact are eleven different genders (depending on which text you happen to
read).
But of course there was another side of the coin for the answering women:
men should also have nicer and softer qualities, namely towards the woman
speaking. They should participate in domestic work, take care of there
children, etcetera; thus being both strong and soft at the same time. It’s
certainly not easy to become the perfect man.
But what would men answer to the equivalent question? For instance something
like this:
-
Women should
be beautiful and sexy, be a master in the kitchen, take well care of the
children and be gentle to their men, etcetera. It’s a bonus if they are
intelligent, amusing and have social skills. (And things like that…)
There’s just one hitch:
it’s totally inconceivable that men would be asked a question like that, and
even more so that the answers be published in a serious paper. That fact
constitutes a vital difference between the sexes, and proves that the
politically correct are fundamentally wrong.
2011-06-28 Tuesday
Being
home now a couple of weeks from an all inclusive-trip to Turkey, we could
read in today’s newspaper that five tourists have died there recently from
drinking “all inclusive” alcohol. Twenty tourists are hospitalized with
severe internal injuries. It turns out that methanol had been added to the
homemade spirits used for the drinks. The background motives are
revealing.
Tough competition has made it necessary for hotels in Turkey to offer all
inclusive, including all kinds of drinks. Since legal alcohol is heavily
taxed, some 90 percent of hard liquor served at these hotels is either
homemade or illegally imported. Obviously there are some criminally
careless people involved in this business.
For us Swedes, coming from the vodka belt, free alcohol is an exotic
phenomenon. At home we can buy beer, wine and spirits only in stores owned
by the state through a monopoly company – Systembolaget. In small or even medium sized
cities there is normally only one such store, and in the countryside you
have to drive many miles to find them. Not surprisingly, when Swedes visit
countries with easy access to somewhat cheaper alcohol they often make
fool of themselves by drinking too much.
Our hotel hosted other people from the vodka belt, such as Russians. But
there were no signs at all of over consumption, at least during daytime.
One important reason was obviously that families with children formed a
majority. However, we had complementary explanations such as these: The
beer was almost non-alcoholic, rather thin and tasteless at that. The wine
was also very light but sour, and the taste didn’t invite to any extended
sipping. The hard liquor was simply nauseous. We tried a few drops of
(what they called) gin and tonic. It tasted like pure turpentine and was
undrinkable, so we left all that aside.
As a benefit from our abstinence we arrived home with eyes and kidneys
intact.
2011-06-23 Thursday
The
Wimbledon Tournament is underway, with its very special atmosphere. Today
Sweden’s Robin Söderling played the former champion and unique fighter
Lleyton Hewitt, the Aussie. Robin served well (the roof was on, which
benefited him) but he made too many unforced errors, pressed by an
opponent who played a more precise tennis. So for two and a half sets
Robin seemed to be losing the match. With a sudden drop in Hewitt’s
precision in his very last service game of the third set, Robin succeeded
to break serve and take the set, somewhat unexpectedly.
The same procedure repeated itself in the fourth set, with Hewitt broken
in his last service game, losing the set. But the player still balanced
their respective strengths, so when Hewitt got an early break in the
deciding set, one thought the match was over. But Robin replicated
immediately and the rare lack of concentration in Hewitt’s game made him
for a third time lose the final game, and thus the match.
While this was happening, the city of Lysekil decided to sell the only
tennis arena in town, with two excellent Plexipave courts. Probably there
will be no tennis played in the arena because the owners to be have other
objectives.
It all started when the tennis club was forced to go bankrupt after being
swindled by an elected board member. Since the loans were guaranteed by
the city, there were no other solution but for the city to take over the
arena. It soon became a matter of prestige for the politicians in the
ruling parties to sell the arena to whatever buyer they could find.
The tennis players forming a new club couldn’t afford to buy, so the city
decided to sell to what possibly is a bunch of crooks from a neighboring
city. It will for sure be a costly adventure to expel tennis from the
city. This has been argued for by many people and in many different forms,
but prestige has ruled when the decision were to be taken.
So on the same day the tough win by Robin was accompanied by a tough loss
for the 250 tennis players in Lysekil, Sweden. A sad story!
2011-06-21 Tuesday
A minister responsible for financial issues in our government has uttered
some critique against the banks, for instance for their bad habit to talk
about “advisors” when they mean their sales persons. This is certainly
just a small example of the complete lack of quality ambitions in the
finance sector. By tradition this sector is characterized by a conception
of superiority and sanctity which give them the impression of being
independent of customer’s needs and whishes.
This seems to be an international phenomenon. At least in USA the
financial sector is self-righteous in the same fashion, according to a
professor of law, Elizabeth Warren. She is critical of the credit card
industry which usually hides terms and conditions in small print clauses
in pages of incomprehensible texts. Among those terms are confiscatory
interest rates which the customer is not intended to grasp.
Warren points to the fact that there are governmental authorities to
supervise and regulate for instance food and drug industries, but no
protection for the customers from abuse by the finance sector. She argues
for strengthening consumer rights in all aspects, and for forming a new
official body with that purpose, which once was a promise by president
Obama.
On the Internet there are some talks by Warren, which are very
informative. She has analyzed the economic development for the middle
class in USA during the last decades, and that is no success story.
Ordinary families today are under more economic pressure than their
parents were 30 years ago, and that in a society which has more than
doubled its GDP in the same period. Her thesis is that the whole middle
class is economically threatened in USA. And her arguments are convincing!
2011-06-19 Sunday
Our
capitalist forces conquer one stronghold after the other, formerly
guarding the Swedish model. The latest victory is the commercial television
purchasing the Swedish rights to broadcast the Olympic Games in 2014 and
2016. Public service television couldn’t compete because the money has
become too big. For the first time not every Swede will be able to watch
the Olympics, a common good previously considered a public service in
itself.
To complain about a thing like this must look strange in many countries
where commercial media have dominated the market much longer. It’s even
strange here among younger people who have grown up with zillions of
channels and frustrating commercial breaks. We older mummies are unable to
see any gains in that “development”.
It’s true that “diversity” (a favorite word among bourgeoisie politicians
here) has increased. But since that diversity paradoxically has led to
less variation, more idiotic programs and longer commercial breaks which
everybody hates, it’s hard to see any progress in the supply of real
variety. For my personal taste
there were more watchable programs when we had just half a dozen channels,
than today with hundreds.
Apart from me, the sports organizations are also protesting. We had a test
case this year, when a smaller channel had bought the rights to send the
Word Cup in ice hockey, normally a national concern with widespread
interest. This year the whole event sort of faded away because of the more
narrow broadcasting, and the national hockey organization complained over
the decreasing interest in the sport.
The root of the problem is obviously that the Olympic Committee wants to
build up larger funds, and for that purpose sacrifices the Olympic idea of
sports for everyone in the world, in favor of commercial interests which
grants more money.
This whole thing is of course a luxury problem for us in the prosperous
part of the world, but it is an illustration of the same mechanism that in
less privileged countries deprives people of more essential means of
living.
2011-06-17 Friday
Håkan
Juholt was thoroughly rehabilitated in the general debate in the
Parliament Wednesday. It was the first debate between the new opposition
leader and the prime minister, and the outcome resulted in some whining
but mostly silence in papers supporting the government.
After five plus years of undisturbed neoliberal reshaping of the Swedish
model, here comes a man who speaks loud and clear about the price paid by
the sick and unemployed for the government’s policy.
Due to the tightening of social benefits the Swedish state finances are in
good shape. In addition the industry and exports have recovered rapidly
after the international finance crash. But still unemployment is high, for
young people among the highest in Europe.
But in all, the finance minister has got used to getting credit from the
establishment, and everything has been looking just great. And then comes
this Juholt giving voice to the ordinary citizen who suffers the
grievances, or can watch them all around. OK, real politics has entered
the Swedish arena, just like it has in other parts of the world.
2011-06-15 Wednesday
Our new
opposition leader, Håkan Juholt, has made a poor performance in a TV
interview recently. It was his first test facing tough questions, and he
probably has to undergo a lot of training for the future. The contrast to
his brilliant first speech (when no one could interrupt him) was too big.
In modern politics, where the surface often is more important than the
content, it’s not a good sign for the opposition that its leader doesn’t
master the specific art of improvisation needed for an interview.
Nevertheless the Social Democrats have shown rising figures in polls since
the new leader was installed. So perhaps the voters after all have a more
mature insight into the real political issues than is usually expected?
And that is of course the case! If you for instance ask a person what
grievances he is suffering under, he naturally knows what they are, and
surely have suggestions on how to relieve them. It’s just that there
usually isn’t any political instance for him to turn to. He is only
offered surfaces without substance, and that’s not because of his own
choice. That’s a product of the so called democratic institutions,
designed to sell politics in the same way as tooth paste is sold, and to
keep serious issues as far away as possible.
That’s why all media are so focused on Juholt’s failure during the
interview. People must be constantly convinced that the superficial
factors are the main ones, so that the real issues don’t bother too much.
And the polls sometimes show that people have the capacity to see trough a
compact media screen.
2011-06-11 Saturday
Oddly enough I caught a cold in a hot country, presumably the so
called AC-sickness. It nevertheless kept me from doing any thinking for a
number of days (so now the brain has got its vacation also). But now I'm
back in Sweden, and back in business (almost) ready for the postcards.
2011-06-05 Sunday
The
family has spent a week in the heat, so to speak. For Europeans it often
means a visit to some country in the Mediterranean area this time of the
year. For us it meant Turkey which for most people here is a coincidence;
they travel to the sun and Turkey still happens to be one of the cheaper
destinations. Most visitors have no intention to stroll in the old town of
Side to enjoy the amphitheatre and other monuments from the Roman Empire.
They swim and sunbathe, and that’s it.
The tourist industry in this part of Europe would be worth its own study.
Our hotel was one of the more modest in the area; a five store building
with a dining room the size of half a football field. Lots of families
with small children, people everywhere and no chair around the pool free
after eight o’clock in the morning.
When we look around we have a larger hotel as closest neighbor, and next
to that another one and so on as far as one can see. It’s a veritable
industry on a large scale, covering the whole costal area. I heard from a
co traveler that Swedish television had made an investigating program
about this industry, revealing among other things the hard working
conditions the army of waiters and service staff are suffering under.
According to the program they work 16 hours a day and are paid barely two
dollars per hour.
This kind of wage slavery is of course a prerequisite for us guests to
enjoy this all inclusive hosting, with free food and drink almost
all day. The largest number of guests to this hotel were Germans, followed
by Russians and East Europeans, predominantly workers and others from the
lower middle class, some of them probably quite recently acquiring
economic capability to do this kind of travel.
Is there any issue concerning private morale in this picture? Should one
refrain from this kind of travel? It’s not too easy to find out what
Socrates should have said. While contemplating this, one thing can
definitely be said: support workers unions wherever you are! And tip
generously, but only to enhance the modern slaves’ economic courage, not
to alleviate your conscience, because we don’t deserve any relief in that
respect.
2011-06-02 Thursday
The poststructuralist relativism has not just denied the existence of
different sexes, but has abolished the concept of knowledge altogether. A
somewhat prominent female professor of pedagogic wrote in an official
report (Genus och text), among many other unbelievable things, that a
gender conscious physics provides a “relational” approach towards the
subject, and that a lot of the traditional scientific content of physical
science simple should be eradicated.
To claim that there is such a thing as knowledge (in physics) with a given
meaning, is not compatible with strive for gender equality in school, is
another wisdom she teaches. The name of this extraordinary professor is
Moira von Wright, and she is now appointed president of a medium sized
Swedish university in the vicinity of Stockholm.
That the word in some aspects is crazy we know. But the Nobel Prize for
craziness should find very highly ranked candidates among the many Swedish
gender lunatics.
2011-05-30 Monday
An Icon
has been here for a short visit, naturally to Stockholm where she has most
of her Swedish fans. She is “an academic star” according to our main
newspaper, which was granted an interview more or less out of politeness.
We are talking about Judith Butler, naturally.
We have lived in a postmodern era in which a woman can become an icon and
a star by producing a garnished philosophical verbiage with no reasonable
content. Her main thesis is that the concepts “man” and “woman” are merely
social constructs devoid of any concrete meaning in a biological world.
Butler’s academic risk-taking includes not just that her thesis
contradicts all real scientific research, but also that it completely
opposes what ordinary people experience in their daily lives. Her
influence on Swedish “gender studies” is fundamental and has more
far-reaching consequences here than in for instance our Nordic neighboring
countries.
To pick just one crazy detail from a large number of similar lunatic ideas
in the “gender feminism” tool box: since there are no boys and girls,
other than I our constructed imagination, all the children in kindergarten
should be taught to play with the same toys. Toys that children chose
naturally according to their gender, like dolls and cars, are “gender
markers” and must therefore be avoided, if necessary just taken away.
The gender theorists claim that we in Sweden “have agreed” on such a
brain-dead policy, although no one even has been asked the question.
Wasn’t it for the feminist rubric put on the madness it would have been
killed long ago. But who’s going to rebuke the women?
Judith Butler herself is obviously more reasonable than her disciples. To
begin with she takes no responsibility for how others use or misuse her
theories, and secondly she has more or less put the gender business in the
background and is now working more with anti-war movements, justice and
similar traditional left wing politics.
2011-05-27 Saturday
Our new
Coop supermarket, which I’ve mentioned earlier, is flourishing. Its
parking lot is crowded all afternoon, indicating that people from all
around the area has found a new favorite shop. Apart from all other
attractive features it has got a perfect location right at the city’s
entrance road.
The contrast to the former Coop store, located just a few hundred meters
away, is illustrative. The old store was in many people’s eyes a more
typical Coop experience, with meager assortment, not so fresh vegetables
and fruits, and a limited number of regular costumers.
Now the staff has expanded with 30 new employees. The faithful old ones
among them now seem to have got more energy and a new, positive spirit
(and some of them also more important tasks). They cheer joyfully to us
old regulars with a body language radiant with pride. In all, it’s a
pleasure to shop in the bright, lofty new store.
Now and then I shop at the private ICA store down the center. They have
obviously been hampered by the new competition and now it’s here you get a
feeling of lost energy.
Why is this local phenomenon at all worth mentioning? Well, it just
contradicts the main economic dogmas that underlie a lot of politics
rationalized by the idea of the importance of profit driven private
enterprises. Coop is namely guided by completely different principles. I
suppose many in the US would call it almost communism.
Neither profit, nor private ownership is thus prerequisites for effective
economic activity, although it sometimes helps. No one can deny that
egoism is an effective energizer, but the private profit motive has an
equally significant flip side. Lack of overall planning, sub optimizing,
and for that matter profit itself, are inhibitory factors. All this gives
room for successful competition from organizations that almost work like
in a centrally planned economy.
2011-05-25 Thursday
The
latest turbulence injuring the royal family threatens peace and harmony in
the country, as it seems. Wherever the king and queen appears fulfilling
their official duties, journalist gather in hundreds eager to ask
questions, which they are denied (=one of the advantages in a kingdom).
Instead they resort to the usual mischief to interview each other.
Our king is a pitiful man who has been forced to take a job that he most
probably wouldn’t have chosen, had he had the slightest freedom of choice.
As a child he was a playful little boy who lost his father at an early
age. He suffered from dyslexia and was not very successful in school. It
took him years to mature and practice for his coming role. As a young boy
his main hobbies seemed to be fast cars, parties and girls.
In Stockholm once, in the late 70ths, I was driving nearby
Nybroplan when a Porsche somewhat carelessly changed lane in front of me.
With a quick maneuver I managed to avoid a collision. When I saw that
the man driving the Porsche was our king, I had the odd thought that a
real crash with the Swedish kingdom could have been interesting.
Even after becoming king it took Carl XVI Gustaf years to slowly adapt to
his high position. When his loyal subjects listened to his speeches, they
crossed fingers in hope for him not to make too embarrassing bloopers.
Now, at the age of 65, when he finally has achieved some safety and
confidence in his appearance, these old corpses fall out of the closet.
All the royalists who have sheltered him, and probably felt sorry for him
many decades, don’t know what to feel now, I suppose.
Of course all this is pseudo news not worth mentioning, a rule I just
have violated. In a not too distant future, when kingdom is history, one
will regard all this as quite stupid time-killers.
2011-05-24 Tuesday
It
turns out that CIA has been performing investigations on Swedish soil
directed towards suspected terrorists. It was discovered by their Swedish
analogue Säkerhetspolisen (Säpo) when they targeted the same suspects.
Experts here consider it
inconceivable
that the government wasn’t informed by Säpo. But the Attorney General
doesn’t want to
comment on the issue, and the prime minister says he doesn’t know of any
details.
Had this been, say, Russian secret police operating in Sweden we would
have seen an outburst of protests from all corners of the country. Before
the news had spread all efforts would have been done to capture the
agents. Then we could have expected the most serious diplomatic protests
and intense media coverage. We had had a strong candidate for “news of the
year”.
Now the story appears in a modest article on page 14 in the most important
paper. A more prominent scoop, qualified for an op-ed on page 4, is a
story about two photos that hasn’t even been published, allegedly showing
the king in a room watching two naked women making love. This follows a
book published earlier that reveals the king’s escapades with young girls
at private parties. That is definitely the favorite candidate for news of
the year.
The way media makes its priorities in these two cases tells you a lot, as
Noam Chomsky often says.
2011-05-22 Sunday
- Two things are important in politics, the first one is money,
and the second... I've forgotten.
That's a one-liner borrowed from an American thinker who's name... I've
forgotten.
This is all I have for today. After a refreshing walk in a long awaited
spring rain other things than just enjoying the very existence seem
futile.
And besides, French Open in tennis at Roland Garros started today, and
will distract me somewhat for the next couple of weeks. Which is not to
say that I will stay away from this side completely. Certainly not, I
hope.
2011-05-21 Saturday
In Europe there is something called public service radio and television,
playing an important role in many countries. That’s the case in Sweden,
where the public companies, SR for radio and SVT for television, dominates
the trade.
An audience research published I while ago showed that two of the twenty
most popular TV-programs (ranked 9 and 19) where produced by a commercial
channel (TV4), the rest was SVT productions. All the other limitless trash
from innumerable commercial channels was not in the vicinity of the list.
TV viewers here show with astounding emphasis that they want serious
programs, sober entertainment and above all no commercial brakes. Except
for the last condition, it wouldn’t be impossible for commercial channels
to provide decent programs that people want to watch. But instead, there is
a comical race to the bottom among commercial channels. For some
incomprehensible reason their managers think that they have so provide the
shallowest, if not the most stupid, programs available. And the viewers just
chose SVT, of course!
In its worship of private enterprises the European Union has decided to
put an end to the successful public service radio and television. Or at
least make its existence harsher. The mantra is that governments must be
prevented from interfering with the free market system by subsidizing
public companies. One technique EU has directed is that new types of
programs in public service channels must be approved of by some impartial
body, the principle being that public service shall be barred from sending
programs that commercial channels are able to produce.
Public service in Sweden is paid for by an annual license fee for owners
of TV monitors, which now amounts to roughly 300 US dollars. SR and SVT
are owned by a foundation, and thus not formally governmental
organizations. Nevertheless the rules and directives for the companies are
given by the parliament. The listeners and viewers costs for public
service broadcasting is somewhat less than they indirectly pay for the
commercial crap that only a minority really likes.
The best, most popular and most cost effective broadcasting companies
shall be hampered in benefit of the brain-killing garbage, interfered by
sickening commercials, that EU's favored enterprises produce. Well,
Jonathan Smith, where are you?
2011-05-20 Friday
Well,
SAAB may be sacrificed on the altar of the neoliberal church, if the
metaphor isn’t too kind. Noam Chomsky holds that neoliberalism isn’t even
a religion, but merely pure dogmatism (and he arguably has the sharpest
brain in the US). If that is neoliberal economy, what then to say about
neoliberal politics? I don’t think those words can be found in a common
dictionary.
One of the most peculiar circumstances concerning this so called new
economy, allegedly created by Milton Friedman and his co-thinkers, is that
it definitely isn’t new. It is a carbon copy of the 150 years old
Manchester liberalism, which in turn derives its roots from the 17th
century and John Locke. Why was it then that Manchester liberalism and its
night watchman state was abandoned a long time ago, and replaced by more
socially conscious politics? Obviously it was because its consequences
were too brutal towards ordinary people, the masses.
And this is still the core problem. A completely free and unregulated
economy favors the rich at the expense of the poor. This is the very
essence of the doctrine and the real motive for those who promote it. In
the beginning of the industrial era the consequences of the unregulated
societies were horrible for workers and poor people, not least observed by
a man named Karl Marx. He inspired workers to organize and struggle to
achieve changes.
The workers movements spread around Europe and elsewhere, and became a
significant force not easily neglected. Thus Manchester liberalism was
thrown into the ocean and gradually replaced by social liberalism and
social democracy. This was obviously development towards a more humane
society, a progress which in many ways culminated in the 1960s,
at least in the industrial world. After that came the anachronistic return
of Manchester liberalism, now just with a new name.
As expected, the economic divide between the rich and the rest have widened
in more or less the whole world since the 1970s. The
mechanism by which this class marker is spread is called globalization. In
short one can note that neoliberalism has had no confirmed advantages
other than this growing divide between classes. Economic growth and
employment rate have sooner declined than the opposite.
The proper walk-over for neoliberalism since more than three decade is a
real mystery, and is too much to clear up for this short column.
2011-05-18 Wednesday
The
ones who doesn’t care if SAAB survives or not usually points to the fact
that the company hasn’t been profitable over the years. And that is true,
although the owners have shown considerable patience in that respect. For
the society as a whole the question of profitability is of a different
kind.
First of all SAAB has been a technologically very progressive
organization. They have a reputation of building cars for engineers. As
just one example the renaissance for turbo engines in ordinary cars was
one of their achievements. The very existence of such a center for
excellence in engineering development functions as a dynamo for further
technical progress in the society.
Then there are a number of subcontractors whose production corresponds to
a considerable portion of the assembled car. And those companies have been
profitable, and in turn generated even more profitable production.
In a third circle we find the whole infrastructure of suppliers to the
factory workforce, such as stores, construction companies, all kinds of
services etc. There is even a forth circle of factors, consisting of the
cost for the community from unemployment and other social disturbances
caused by a bankruptcy.
If we add all these economic factors together and calculate the aggregate
socioeconomic effects, we would probably find that SAAB is profitable for
the society as a whole. If this effect was confirmed it would have been
economically sound for the government to buy SAAB and thus save the
company.
But that would have been a heresy from an ideological point of view,
and is unthinkable for deep believers in neoliberal dogmas. Such things as
rational decisions are not a high priority for that church, not to speak
of caring and humanistic deviations.
In comparison with the
common superstition glued to the very name Chernobyl, these are comforting
words. The problem is “merely” that this expert view, the best there is,
cannot find its way into the public discourse. Therefore people have mostly
false information to rely on.
Worst off are the so called intellectuals, who deliberately keep themselves
ignorant, not just of Chernobyl, but of the whole nuclear power issue, facts
about radiation and everything else that could disarm their existential
fears which they cherish. Therefore they don’t want their horror picture
disclosed, it seems.
2011-04-13 Wednesday
We have a special Minister for Social Insurances. When the center-right
government took power after the 2006 election a woman was given that
position. She had to administer, among other things, new brutal rules
restricting the benefits for sick people. This was party orders which she
had to implement.
Together with other outrageous attacks on the poor, the sick and the
unemployed this made ordinary people furious. The support for the government
in 2008 became record low. Strange enough the opposition couldn’t (or didn’t
want to) capitalize on the public sentiments and the next election saw a
second period for that previously hated government. That was probably a
Swedish record in lost opportunities, as far as politics is concerned.
Nevertheless, the poor woman who had obeyed orders was made a scapegoat for
the bad PR and was thrown out of the government. And in came a somewhat
younger wannabe who made clear from the beginning that he wouldn’t back off.
But after the arch bishop had paid him a visit, and media continued to make
noise, he announced some changes.
Now there was a catch. In order to prevent the opposition from interfering
in the details for the new rules, the proposition had to wait until this
autumn when the main budget is presented. There is a law, namely, which
provides the main budget to be accepted or rejected as a whole. Then the
opposition parties cannot cooperate to change a specific part. Every issue
that is connected with money in any way can be proposed by the government
within the main budget.
So, in order to preserve the government’s prestige, the suffering sick
people have to wait an extra eight months for a possible relief.
2011-04-12 Tuesday
The
Fukushima accident has uncovered the old and widespread radiofobia,
fostered and nurtured with exceptional intensity in cultural circles. I’ve
tried to throw in some facts into the debate, with a couple of emails to
cultural profiles. To the extent that I have received answers it was
obvious that facts had nothing to do in this debate.
Our gifted literary intellectuals still convinces themselves that
Chernobyl was one of the most horrible catastrophes of the 20th
century, with hundreds of thousands dead and an area “the size of
Switzerland” evacuated. The unnecessary facts are that the number of dead
from the very accident is 30, and about another 30 in all the years up
till now from latent radiation injuries. And that there simply doesn’t
exist any other deaths from radiation. And that people were forced to
abandon their homes to just a limited extent because of real radiation
risks, and overwhelmingly due to hysteria that had hit ignorant
politicians and journalists, among others. (But from an area just a fraction of
Switzerland's size.)
And here we go again in Fukushima. Not a single human being has so far
been seriously injured by radiation, let alone died. And the most
dangerous phase of the accident has passed.
Of those working closest to the reactors a few have got a radiation dose
exceeding 100 mSv. No one has yet got 250 mSv, which is the limit for
rescue work. Is that much? Authorities in Japan is now planning evacuation
of villages outside the 20 km radius, since the radiation dose for the
inhabitants is estimated to reach 20 mSv in the course of the coming year.
Well, if you live in Ramzar in the western province Mazandaran in Iran you
get our "emergency" dose of 250 mSv or more each year, due to natural
radiation (mostly from Radium-226). There is no enhanced frequency of
cancer in Ramzar; actually it seems to be lower than normal. It’s a
popular sea resort famous for its hot springs, probably heated by natural
nuclear power.
Okay, maybe our eggheads think that natural radioactivity is something
else than (the exactly same) radioactivity created by engineers. Or they
have some other excuse for avoiding all real facts. Possibly they are just
living in their constructed “reality”, a common phenomenon in their
beloved postmodern and fictitious world.
2011-04-11 Monday
On the
Swedish page today I update readers here about the current struggle in
Wisconsin for employee’s fundamental rights. The most fundamental of
these, the right to be a member of a workers union, and to found such a
union, is guaranteed by Article 23 in UN’s Declaration of Human Rights.
The question is whether Governor Scott Walker violates this specific
article. If someone would charge him with that, it would be an easy case
for celebrity lawyers to counter. But the guilt is not legal but moral,
and that should not be a trivial issue. Everyone knows what the
declaration means by ‘the right to be a member of a union’. It certainly
doesn’t mean to prohibit workers unions from collective bargaining, or to
deny them the right to strike.
We can for instance compare with the Chinese view on the right of free
expression, and their actions related to that. At least in western
countries not many believe the Chinese officials when they say that Liu
Xiaobo is imprisoned on grounds of ordinary criminality. We are quite
certain that he is silenced by the countries leaders as a dangerous
dissident. Consequently that China is not living up to the Declaration of
Human Rights.
We widely consider this specific deficiency in the Chinese political
system one of the countries most severe crimes against its own population,
and we hold it up as a main reason for our very serious critique. Since we
obviously, and rightly, regard human rights as extremely important
components of a civilized society, simple logic demands that we live up to
the highest possible standards ourselves.
The first step on this route should be to scrutinize those other 26
articles of the UN declaration, not just the four we apply on China and
some other states that, odd enough, share the property of not obeying our
orders.
2011-04-10 Sunday
Sunday
came with even more warmth: 15 oC. And
consequently less time at the computer this day too.
On the Swedish page today I referred to some articles in DN about the
declining quality of the Swedish schools. It’s an undisputable fact that
high school students here don’t perform nearly as well as for instance
Finnish students. Pointed out as one important root to the problem is the
educations of teachers.
What we observe is, among other things, depressing consequences of the
poststructuralist infiltration of academia. Apart from inspiring absurd
forms of gender studies, relativist ideas have also had detrimental
effects on the social sciences and the education of teachers. The foundation
of these ideas is that there is no certified knowledge (or any knowledge
at all according to the fundamentalist view).
Anyone can realize how destructive such illusions are for the teaching of
students. And the illusions are real. One female professor of pedagogic
studies have, in an official study, quite seriously demanded that factual
element of the traditional physics field have to be removed in order to
create “gender sensitive” physics. The report is full of this kind of
nonsense. Yet the professor was later promoted to become rector of a
fairly large university.
This is one effective way of destroying a society which used to be quite
reasonable .
2011-04-09 Saturday
It's 8.30 p.m. and not much time has been spent at the computer
today. Spring is very late here, but this day suddenly came with warmth
and sunshine. All accumulated work in the garden has to be done, and the
time is shorter than usual. It's a small garden, but plants have enormous
growth power. One barrow after the other are filled with twigs and leaves.
But it's a joyful work in the sunshine, birds singing in all kinds of
tones. After an unusually long Swedish winter this is like a taste of
paradise.
So, excuse me! Nothing whatsoever in world affaires can compete with this,
and I just rest my case. And soon will get some rest for my body too. Back
tomorrow!
2011-04-08 Friday
Friday today and not much happens. Couldn't find a word on
Fukushima in today's paper. Nothing better to do than to make fun of our
finance minister, Anders Borg. The picture (two years old) shows some main
points for a speech he was about to hold. The points translated as this:
1) Serious economic situation
2) Protect public finances
3) Very [exp...] politics
35 + 9 + 15 = 60 [sic!!!!!]
4) Clear priorities
5) Critical towards the opposition.
A finance minister who cannot do the simplest arithmetic! The opposition
and comedians had some joyful weeks.
2011-04-07 Thursday
Some
Arab dictators have been overthrown by there subjects, others are probably
packing their bags and others still are sensing the gun smoke in the air.
It's becoming the Year of the People. It remains though to secure the true
democratic outcome of the processes, not a self-evident result in any way.
Western countries have finally, and somewhat reluctantly, agreed to help
the insurgents in Libya, the lack of enthusiasm stemming from the fact
that Khaddafi at last had accommodated to “civilized” norms. He had
started to be cooperative, held back Islamic fundamentalists and delivered
oil and gas properly. That’s obviously all we ask for when we judge
dictators in that region.
What will happen if people in the oil heartland – Saudi Arabia and the
Gulf Emirates – start the same process is the real touchstone for western
altruism. Today there are no signs of that nature. The dictatorships in
those countries seem to be rock solid, consolidated in every way by USA
and the rest of the western world. The fact that they are absolute and
harsh dictatorships, with values which in some respects are more mediaeval
than contemporary, does not bother the leading lovers of democracy, namely
us.
But the sheer movement is uplifting. First we saw Latin America progress
in the direction of substantial democracy, then the Arab countries. One of
these days we may perhaps see real power, including economic power, in the
hands of a majority of the people even in the western (nominal)
democracies. Who knows?
2011-04-06 Wednesday
On March 13th
this year Noam Chomsky held a speech in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where
he brilliantly (as usual) commented on some current and important issues
in world politics. I’ll certainly come back to this intellectual giant and
compassionate conscience for the humanity as a whole. But today I’ll pick
up just one single remark he made, namely that 20 percent of US citizens
qualify for food stamps.
It’s hard to believe, and I had to contemplate those words a second time:
Every fifth household in the world’s richest country cannot entirely feed
itself.
Here in the alleged land of welfare we are heading in the same direction,
even if we still have some distance to go before we reach the food
stamp-level. But there is a debate about increasing child poverty here.
The cynics, including the government, ridicule the very concept, saying
that it is just a relative measure, thus irrelevant. Still, we have never
in modern times had a development in that bearing.
If this is a pattern, we can expect future economic crisis to affect
ordinary people deeper and deeper. And if there isn’t a radical change in
the whole economic structure in our countries, new and more severe crisis
are bound to appear. The important question is what to do about it. And
there are answers. We just have to go to Chomsky on the net to find
inspiration.
2011-04-05 Tuesday
Sweden as a model for
welfare states is rapidly deconstructed under the conservative party’s
supremacy in the government. One of the things that was done in this
purpose was to tighten the provisions for sickness benefits, which were to
be cut off after a fixed period of time. After that period sick people
were forced to search for jobs, all kinds of jobs regardless of their
education. If they “insisted” on being sick they weren’t allowed back into
the insurance system until after a considerable qualifying period.
The absurdity became publicly clear after an article in the leading
newspaper by a number of oncologists. They wrote that even patients dying
of cancer had to report to the state employment office to look for work.
This aroused public horror, and the government hastily produced some
amendments to the law, with exceptions for the very seriously ill.
But there were many remaining and grim constraints which the government
has refused to relieve. The pressure sick people are subjected to,
together with economic problems caused by the new rules, have detrimental
effect on their already bad health.
And this very day the Swedish archbishop has paid an official visit to the
minister in charge of the social insurances, to report the burdens sick
people suffer under the new regulations, and to point out the seriousness
of the problem. He told the minister that all his bishops had urged him to
take action since they had seen a sharp increase in the number of people
seeking the church for advice and relief with regard to their health,
severe economic situation and other problems.
This is not Sweden as we knew it. People my age had never ever thought
that we, with regard to political mentality, could regress back to the medieval ages
in this country. The situation had normally made the public here furious,
but the government now feels safe enough to take the situation with ease.
“We will present a proposition on the issue during the parliament's spring
session”, the minister says, somewhat irritated.
There are heartbreaking reasons to follow this question closely.
2011-04-04 Monday
On the 30th of March
two dead workers were found in the basement of Unit 4 of the Fukushima
plant. They had physical injuries indicating some mechanical accident. One
speculation (mine) could be that it happened during the actual earth
quake.
These two men are the first confirmed victims of the Fukushima accident,
as far as I'm aware. Or rather the Fukushima disaster, as it's called
here. Chances are that there will be no further casualties. Even with a
few more serious injuries we have been witnessing a very moderate disaster
indeed.
The real catastrophe is going on in places where the tsunami hit
communities and killed nearly thirty thousand people. There the search for
bodies of missing persons is still going on. Evacuated people live under
harsh conditions, many of them mourning family members and relatives.
These really terrible circumstances facing the stoic Japanese have been
close to neglected by media here, certainly in comparison with the uproar
at the news desks caused by the invented radiation risks. It's a
depressing experience of a media taking no responsibilities at all for the
fear and anger they have caused on totally false grounds. With the stupid
excuse that something really big always could have occurred.
Probably we can soon leave the whole nuclear issue behind. The interest in
Fukushima from media here is declining fast when the sensational material
for making up reports is continuously diluted, like Iodine-131 in the sea
water.
2011-04-03 Sunday
In Miami, Florida, the
sun is shining right now with a temperature of 33o C. At the
same time it's dark outside in Sweden and just above zero degrees. How I
know? Well, the final in the tennis tournament over there is under way;
Djokovic and Nadal taking one set each so far with great tennis from both
players. It's somewhat distracting when you try to write...
But today I just wanted to report that my newspaper is cooling down on the
Fukushima issue. They even present real facts over two pages, informing
about radiation in a moderate and sensible way. All about the natural
sources of radiation and the marginal effect nuclear power on average has
in this respect.
This follows a familiar pattern. First there is this unlimited outrage
over the horrendous threats facing the human species by nuclear radiation,
or whatever the issue is for the moment. This keeps going on till the
audience is exhausted and somewhat bored. Then comes the afterthought when
“someone” is criticized for spreading such exaggerated fears.
It’s such a ridiculous spectacle that you are tempted to feel sorry for
the media, instead of being furious, which is your instinctive reaction.
In Miami it’s tie break in the third set right now. Have to sit this out………..Djokovic
won!!!
2011-04-02 Saturday
Today's IAEA briefing
on the Fukushima accident confirms that the situation remains very
serious. This refers to the situation within the plant itself. Nothing new
has emerged that in a physical way affects the health and safety of the
population.
Much work is now being done to transfer water from the turbine buildings
in unit 1, 2 and 3 to a safe tank. A pit housing cables in unit 2 is
filled with radioactive water which is leaking directly to the sea through
a crack in the wall, 20 cm in length. A plan to patch the crack with
concrete is underway.
Fresh water is still injected into the reactor pressure vessels to cool
the cores. Small temperature decreases are continuously recorded.
Depositions of Iodine-131 and Cesium-137 have been confirmed in 7 and 9
prefectures, respectively, with no alarming dose rates.
An important circumstance that certainly isn’t a turn on for the media is
the radiation doses received by the workers in the plant. Of the entire
workforce engaged so far only 21 have received doses exceeding 100 mSv. No
worker has received a dose above 250 mSv, which is the dose limit for
emergency workers.
In other words, all those who consistently refer to the accident in
Fukushima as a “catastrophe” must still wait for the first man or woman to
be killed, or even seriously injured, by radiation, and they will most
probably have to wait indefinitely. And while all interest is focused on
the nuclear plant, the confirmed deaths from the tsunami itself are
increasing day by day, at most noticed in the margin by media here. That’s
indeed a catastrophical misjudgment by the media!
2011-04-01 Friday
Our newspapers have
sparsely referred to IAEA, the United Nations’ body for supervising
nuclear power internationally. The reason seems to be that IAEA doesn’t
provide material suitable for the chock treatment media is so keen to give
their listeners and viewers. Instead IAEA checks reports from the Japanese
authorities and the plant managers, have radiation measured throughout the
country and releases a daily status report.
Mostly these daily reports have established that the situation within the
plant is serious but reasonably stable, and that measurements mostly show
low and harmless levels of radiation. Media here have not been void of
insinuations that IAEA tries to embellish the picture in cahoots with the
local authorities. If not embellish, at least suppress or silence
inconvenient facts.
So, at last, an IAEA-observation hit the headlines in our main paper. In
the report of March 30th there was one single line saying that
measurements in the village Iitate showed radiation exceeding IAEA norms,
leading to recommendations for evacuation of the residents. (The Japanese
authorities, though, estimated that evacuation wasn’t necessary.) This was
the very line media had waited for from IAEA. The rest of the report was
filled with the usual, uninteresting stuff about progressing cooling
operations, falling temperatures, and lack of radiation throughout the
country, nothing of that fit for printing in descent newspapers.
Is it really a fact that we have the media we deserve? Allow me to protest
that! Our media act as they do because they have an intentional agenda.
2011-03-31 Thursday
Correction: Dr. Busby
is a Visiting Professor at the University of Ulster. Still he mostly
publicizes his work privately, thus avoiding the peer review that’s
required when you intend to publish your texts in recognized scientific
journals. His view on low level radiation risks is namely controversial,
to say the least, and he consequently relies for his career mostly on
different green organizations, which nurture themselves on radiation
conspiracies.
Still Busby is interviewed both here and there about Fukushima, even by
BBC. The underlying mechanism is interesting. Media folks, who really
don’t know much about science, pretend to know even less, from which
starting point they can motivate that “different opinions” must be heard.
And here the representatives for the “unorthodox” enter the scene,
including the crackpots.
Media obviously spend enormous resources to cover the Fukushima accident
(much less is spent on the real catastrophe for the Japanese society and
the real victims of the tsunami). There must be an army of production
teams, at least the size of a regiment, from media around the world.
Now, imagine that just a fraction of those resources were spent on
gathering some real knowledge. It would require that a few of the
brightest journalists and reporters sat down for a few hours with a
handful of their countries' most merited scientists in the scopes
concerned, such as reactor technology, radiation biology and radio
physics, to name some relevant fields. If media then really made use of
the knowledge extracted from such conversations, the reports would be of a
totally different and probably very informative kind.
But that’s not what media is for. The purpose and aim of media is to
create a maximum of sensation and excitement. That’s selling! If the
downside then is that common people (for false reasons) are upset, scared
and depressed, it’s a price worth paying. The cynics always think that a
price paid by others is worth paying.
2011-03-30 Wednesday
It’s remarkable how
nuclear radiation can elicit the most wonderful exaggerations in all
directions. A certain George Monbiot, an environmentalist writing for The
Guardian, has stirred up emotions by proclaiming his conversion on the
nuclear power issue. He notes that Japan has suffered a gigantic tsunami
of the once-in-a-millennium kind, and horrible consequences in the area
near the coast, with probably some 30 000 people killed, and whole cities
totally destroyed.
Fully exposed to the devastating effect of the tsunami was a nuclear
plant. An older plant with partly outdated technology, not built to cope
with a 10 meter high wave. In spite of the worst possible odds the
consequences when it comes to emission of radioactive material seems not
to be very alarming, so far.
Monbiot’s argument is thus that nuclear power has proven its capacity to
withstand the most extreme conditions possible, without fulfilling the old
doomsday predictions which are so widely embraced. So nuclear power should
be used to counter the much more dangerous and immediate risk that fossil
fuel carries, he maintains.
To answer Monbiot, a Dr. Christopher Busby has been mobilized. He claims
that he has done research in the field (though not achieved the competence
of a professor, obviously) and has specialized in perceptions which
happens to be found in a small and hypercritical sector of the research
community.
Busby claims a much higher rate of cancer after Chernobyl than for
instance the United Nations’ expert committee has done. Such claims are
very appropriate since it’s impossible to detect cancer rates of that
scale. They simply are buried under the much larger cancer frequencies
from ordinary causes. More inappropriate for Busby & Co is that the UN
experts draw conclusions from all experience of ionizing radiation on
humans, and that knowledge doesn’t make the Busby-type reasoning very
plausible.
We certainly haven’t seen more than the end of the beginning when it comes
to nuke debates. They who preach doomsday will not give up in front of such
trivia as facts.
2011-03-29 Tuesday
While conservative USA has a socialist in Congress, socialist Sweden now
has a prominent Tea Party member, or at least a true supporter, among the
former editors in chief for the main paper Dagens Nyheter. His name is
Hans Bergström and he still writes a column in his old paper, where he
demonstrates his steady starboard yaw.
The fact that Bergström, now a US citizen, voted for Tea Party candidates
in the last mid-term election was probably in itself a big surprise for
his friends here, since he after all is an old liberal (in the European
meaning of the word). But that he used his column in DN to more or less
brag about it was such a breach of etiquette that people let the incident
die in silence, probably out of pity. The Tea Party is too much populism
even for the most conservative here.
Thinking of Bergström, there was once a liberal politician, Per Ahlmark, a
former deputy prime minister, who also drifted away out in the blue (the
color of the conservatives here) and finally defined himself out of the
community through more and more extreme views. The last and probably final
book he got published years ago elaborated over the fact that democracies
never go to war against each other. Apart from that fact being no mystery,
he managed to overlook that the overwhelming number of wars the last 50
years, and by far the most deadly, were started by his favorite country
USA, the leading democracy in the world.
If Bernie Sanders were a Swede he would have had a lot to do, also here.
2011-03-28 Monday
Have anybody
heard anything about the five or six workers at the Fukushima plant who
was declared dead after the hydrogen explosions? That is, the media
declared them dead. The company, on its website, only reported a few
injured workers but no deaths. It was obviously taken as self-evident by
western journalists that the company's officials were capable of bluntly
lying. The reports about the deaths was repeated without hesitation and as
head news a number of days, but then suddenly disappeared from the pages
and TV-news.
The very thought that the officials could have been prepared to lie, given
that every such lie was deemed to be revealed and to bring the liar into a
deeply embarrassing position, is perhaps significant for western
journalists with their
bullying and hereditary
imperialistic state of mind. That’s harsh words, but they can take it.
They were most probably the liars in this case, and that they must hear.
2011-03-27 Sunday
Even our
leading center-right newspaper today celebrated Håkan Juholt for his
speech yesterday, at least for the enthusiasm it aroused among the
delegates at the congress. On the editorial page, on the other hand,
Juholt was described as someone going backwards into the future, by
relying too much on the old, basic social democracy, abandoned a long
time ago, according to the editor.
In a way Juholt sounded a bit like the independent senator from Vermont,
Bernie Sanders, although Sanders is the more outspoken of the two. Another
difference between them is that Sanders is marginalized in the Congress,
while Juholt is the leader of the largest political party in Sweden.
By the way, I wonder how many Americans know the existence of Bernie
Sanders. For me, who follows Swedish media quit well, he was completely
unknown until a friend told me about a
YouTube clip with a powerful speech by him.
As for DN’s main editor I think he’s going to be refuted by history when
it comes to which direction the Social Democrats under Juholt’s leadership
is heading. All the neoliberal devices applied to the reality here have
created so much opposition that the ground is prepared for a
reconstruction of some of the lost qualities in the Swedish society. (This
is of course a prediction, and we just have to wait and see.)
2011-03-26 Saturday
Håkan Juholt was indeed elected chairman of the Social Democrats,
unanimously as expected. His main
speech today in front of the party congress was probably a great surprise
for most listeners. There stood a man who sounded like the real Social
democrats did, before the neoliberal hoax covered all enlightened politics
with a wet blanket. He talked about the need for solidarity in a society
where greed and heartlessness had been spreading for years.
Child
poverty, which has become a problem here, must be fought, he said, together
with youth unemployment, now reaching record levels. Through privatization
of schools and medical facilities tax payers' money now pay for large profits
transferred by private companies to tax havens.
The market for electricity (among many others), which was deregulated some
years ago, have resulted in much higher costs for consumers and factories,
and in really huge profits for electricity companies. This and other
deformities in the free market must be dealt with, said Juholt. Safe
existence is a prerequisite for freedom, solidarity is everybody’s gain and
equality profitable for the society, he also said.
This was really a day when social democracy was reborn in Sweden. Now it
just remains to be seen how these impressive words will be transubstantiated
into action. As I said after the press conference two weeks ago: it’s
interesting times coming!
2011-03-25 Friday
On my Swedish page I declare today that I will let go of the whole
nuclear issue, at least in what concerns the accident at Fukushima. I
sketched what I believe will roughly be situation in six months from now.
On the whole most thing will be back to normal, and planning for the
deconstruction of the power plant will be under way. And a few other
things...
On this page I made a kind of prediction already on march 17th, so I will
not repeat myself. I rest my case (a phrase picked up from the many US
films on television here).
Tomorrow Håkan Juholt will make his important speech at the Social
Democrats' extraordinary congress, after being elected chairman of the
party. My Postcard then will probably be entirely about that speech, and the
reactions to it from the usual pundits.
2011-03-24 Thursday
My web log indicates that this diagram has been found by browsers
both here and there, from New Zeeland to Romania. So, I should perhaps be
more specific about some details. The underlying numbers are from this
source, and were presented at a conference on accidents and risks held
in Davos, Switzerland in 2008.
Only accidents with more than five deaths are considered, so the
death toll from accidents in nuclear plants is limited to Chernobyl and
the directly related deaths which were 31. Thus nuclear power is invisible in the scale of the diagram. Some 30 people have
died in sequelae from radiation injuries, including thyroid cancer, in the
following years, up till now.
In accidents related to coal and hydropower China have suffered by far the
most. The number of victims claimed outside of China is for coal 8 400 and
for hydropower 4 100. Nevertheless it's a death toll far higher than that
for nuclear power. Just for the comparatively insignificant energy source
LPG (Liquefied petroleum gas), and only in EU countries, the death toll is
ten times higher than that for nuclear power worldwide.
2011-03-23 Wednesday
Spring is coming with 5oC but also with hard wind,
reminding of autumn. It feels significant for the debate, in a way.
The fine-tuned souls continue their esoteric writings about nuclear
energy, of which they obviously doesn't have a clue as far as facts are
concerned, but instead have the most magnificent feelings with which they
fill an endless number of articles. They already sense the end of
civilization and are daily reinforced in that prospect by reports of
contaminated water, milk and salad, smoke from reactors, pictures of
evacuated people etcetera.
In half a year, when all this is over (unless there is a new earthquake)
and it turns out that not a single person was injured by radiation, let
alone dead, the debate will just fade off and no one will have to admit
they where wrong. Hopefully we will then have had a period when focus have
been on the really tormented: the children who lost their parents, people
who lost their homes and everything else, in short all those who really
suffered from this enormous natural disaster. They are those who need the
worlds help.
Then some years will elapse and a new incident will occur. All the
fine-tuned souls will wake up again, and the whole procedure will restart
from the very beginning...
2011-03-22 Tuesday
The Social Democrats’
internal affairs are for some odd reason everyone’s business in this
country, especially their political opponents’, it seems. An op-ed in DN
today is critical of, among other things, the sacking of the right-leaning
Tomas Östros, up till now the party's spokesman on economic issues. He is
a man from the north who grew up in politics, but now has spent too many
years in Stockholm to be aware of the real feelings in the party
nationwide.
Östros made a blunder some time ago when he said something like: “the
motto ‘it must pay off to be working’ has always been at the heart of
Social Democracy”. The problem was that the old conservative party years
ago made exactly this motto notorious in their efforts to achieve tax cuts
for those with the highest incomes. (A well-known columnist made fun of
them with the slogan: “it must pay off to be rich”.)
As one of the top leaders in the party during two devastating election
defeats, Östros naturally had to bear responsibility. Still the
conservatives here shed crocodile tears over the “brutal dismissal” of
him. But one can rather say that he showed bad judgment for not leaving
voluntarily after the election last September.
The reason is this: As late as in 2008 the opposition had the largest
majority in the polls that has ever been recorded here. They had 40
percent more voters than the government. People were furious about the
government’s savage cuts in allowances for sick and unemployed, together
with mindless privatizations where common assets like schools, preschools
and medical facilities more or less where handed over to individuals for
private profit, sometimes in random as it seemed.
For Social Democrats it would have been the easiest possible
task to win the election in 2010; this was really about their core issues.
But the Stockholm-based leadership ignored the whole situation. They were
busy aligning to the mainstream, medium line in politics, which meant a
turn to the right, and didn’t pick up any of the issues that had made the
overwhelming majority of Swedes fuming. Mona Sahlin and Tomas Östros were
certainly the two most responsible for this terrible misjudgment, and both
naturally had to leave.
2011-03-21 Monday
A reshuffling in the
most central body of the Social Democrats, the executive committee
(Verkställande utskottet) is underway, and new key people will be
presented as nominees before the extraordinary party congress this Friday.
Leakages suggest that some individuals who were too much burdened by the
latest election defeat will be asked to step down, a very rare procedure
in the party since those positions are elected by an ordinary congress and usually
keep their seats the full term.
Besides being connected with defeat, two of those who are forced to step
down belong to the right wing of the party. This group included the
retiring chairman, Mona Sahlin, and was also to a high degree Stockholm
based. The party's core voters on the other hand, are people in the rest
of the country where industry and raw materials dominates the economy. A
cultural clash was apparent here, and the traditional Social Democrats
blamed the defeat on a too lenient attitude by the party leaders towards
the government's pronounced right-wing politics.
A turn to the left is on its way in the Social Democrats, also emphasized
by appointing Håkan Juholt as the nominee for the chairmanship. He is
considered to be a traditional, slightly left-oriented party member. My
guess is that this will reconstitute the party and regain voters, who in
polls, with a large majority, have demonstrated their resentment towards
the many anti-social steps taken by the current government. There are
interesting showdowns to look forward to this spring!
2011-03-20 Sunday
This gloomy day I suffer somewhat from the consequences of a party
yesterday, which in some way was connected with a coming 70th birthday.
But I'm up and going, and have some research to do for next weeks
Postcards. By till then!
2011-03-19 Saturday
Today the nuclear
doomsday seems to be postponed, at least for the moment. Instead the paper
is filled with news about Libya, and the decision on a no-fly zone there.
For once we seem to have a military intervention in sight which can be
justified on grounds of real contribution to democracy and freedom. (If
western countries had shown the same determination when Saddam Hussein was
in the midst of slaughtering his own people it had perhaps also been
justified. Instead many western governments then supported Saddam in all
respect.)
The popular uprisings in northern Africa are significant in many ways.
They show that even the most inveterate dictatorships can be overthrown in
spite of the harshest repression. This is an extremely positive sign and a
role-model for many oppressed people around the world.
My suspicion is that the financial meltdown is one of the factors which
sowed this seed. Also in many richer countries the not so well off have
suffered from the crisis and the following depression. Perhaps we stand on
the threshold to a new era where popular actions will be of greater
importance. Remains to be seen.
2011-03-18 Friday
After writing an agitated post in my Swedish section today about
the anti-nuclear revelation journalists and others obviously experience, I
feel somewhat drained of mental power. This unbelievable doomsday
journalism would be wearing down ones trust in humanity, if it weren't for
the conviction that there anyhow are lots of rational people out there. It's just
that they for the moment have no say in media, in the hurricane of
feelings that have blown away all kinds of common sense.
Well, it's Friday, and there will be a beer with the dinner, by the way a
beer from USA: Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, a real pearl among beers in
general and among pale ales specifically!
Cheers!
2011-03-17 Thursday
Yesterday one could sense that media here had realized a new
threat in Fukushima. The cooling of the first reactors possibly affected by partial
core meltdowns seemed to be successful. The temperature fell and so did
radiation levels. All the horrors about the unparalleled accident never
before seen on earth, and possibly the conclusion of Japanese culture,
threatened to end up in... nothing at all. But, yippee, when
the need is
greatest,
help is most close (a Swedish proverb in bad translation)!
Today the reporters were back on the air with renewed and exuberant
indignation. A storage basin with used fuel was loosing its cooling water
due to evaporation, and there were problems with water bombing from
helicopters. Instead the rescue workers tried to reach the basin with
water from a hose, but apparently didn't succeed. "They don't seem to know
what they are doing" a reporter said in a
contemptuous tone (as if he knew better himself). Anyway,
the day is made for the media folks. There is still hope for at least a
fragment of a disaster.
And in such a case, after half a century and more than 10 000 reactor years with
western type nuclear plants, without any deaths from radiation, the
anti-nukes really hope they can finally say: "didn't we tell you?".
PS. What the management of the operations probably is doing is first of
all to protect the workers from getting more than the allowed and harmless
dose of radiation. But if there was an imminent danger of
catastrophic consequences, I certainly think we can trust them to find
ways to solve the problems. In weeks or months I will be back on the issue
saying: "didn't I tell you?".
2011-03-16 Wednesday
Media
people here have fallen in trance before the nuclear events in Fukushima, the
explosions and leakages. Whenever one turns on the radio there is an
exited man, or an even more exited woman, preaching about the holocaust
waiting around the corner.
This is a topic containing everything media can wish for; above all it is
the perfect subject for creating sensation, indignation and anxiety . We have that
wonderful phenomenon called nuclear radiation with its perfect combination of
danger and invisibility. And the possibility it creates of printing
photos, covering half the page, of men in white coats and mouth
protections measuring radiation on a little girls.
Hour after hour on the radio, page after page in the newspapers, the whole
horrific history of nuclear power; Harrisburg, Chernobyl, everything.
Reporters once again travel to Ukraine to interview people who think they
got sick from radiation 25 years after the accident. No media person does
the obvious thing: read the UNSCEAR 2000-report which gives the complete
story, including the truth. Maybe they suspect that such a prank would
destroy the whole story (in which case they are correct).
Occasionally professors specialized in different nuclear and radiation
subjects are interviewed. They say, usually calm and patient, that the
emissions from the Fukushima plant are very low, and consequently cannot
possibly harm the public. At that point they are frequently interrupted,
and the program returns to the main furrow, namely to create maximum fear.
It’s a depressing performance.
The license for the whole show is that there always is a possibility
for a general catastrophe. It’s a bit like people who don’t dare to become
atheists, because there always is a possibility that there is a
God. And we don't want to be wrong about such things, do we?
2011-03-15 Tuesday
Bradley
Manning is reported to have a tough time in prison, quite thoroughly
harassed, as one perhaps would expect as a proper treatment for a traitor.
If he had been a Chinese soldier in a Beijing jail, would we then have
considered him a political prisoner? Tough question.
The man, to whom he delivered the secret documents, Julian Assange, is
still in England waiting for a higher court to decide on his appeal. I
made a remark to a DN journalist about the total absence of interest in
the man’s security, which is odd when you consider that journalists
normally hold freedom of expression as an almost holy human right.
In the USA prominent people have cried out for the immediate execution of
Assange. Everybody expects him to be delivered from England to Sweden, and
after that the probability for a strong demand from USA for an extradition
is high. Still there is no readiness in the press here about how to
prevent an extradition, which if carried trough means with some certainty
a severe punishment for Assange.
The remark to the journalist I mentioned was induced by some scornful
writings by her about Assange. She has perhaps rethought things, because
her latest op-ed was about the newest scandal in the prosecutor’s team. It
turns out that one of the police women in the interrogation group was a
close friend of one of the accusing women. She had also written about the
case in a blog. This was bad according to DN, but still not a word on how
to protect Assange and the freedom of expression in the prospect of a
demand from USA.
2011-03-14 Monday
My daily reflections on this website have often - maybe too often
- something to do with the writings in Dagens Nyheter. The reason
is nevertheless quite natural since DN is the leading newspaper in Sweden
and thus sets the agenda for a large part of the discussion. I should add
that there is an overwhelming majority of center-right, what we call
"borgerliga" (bourgeoisie) papers and that the Social Democrats control a
shrinking number of newspapers with minute circulations and based
mostly in smaller cities around the country.
In spite of the center-right dominance, media is often accused of
harboring too many leftist (liberal, in US terms) journalists, which is a
gross exaggeration, probably used mostly as an attempt to defend a
disproportionate reality. Anyhow, since we have a tendency to point
at the top, Dagens Nyheter has got the role of leading the herd.
We noticed in yesterdays DN a stunning blindness for the mass deaths and
for the suffering people in Japan, in favor of an unmotivated fixation on
the operational problems in a nuclear plant. Today the editor in chief
seems to have sobered up, and the real and horrendous catastrophe in Japan
was reasonably reported on. Only two pages were spent on the nuclear
issue, mostly reporting that the problems are probably no problems... but
on the other hand it's leaking here and there, and you never know...
etcetera.
Misconceptions, myths, sensationalism, and ignorance about facts are
inherited from the last nuclear incident in a way so consistent that it
must be considered intentional. If I should be wrong here, there is a
heavy burden of proof for those who refutes that claim.
2011-03-13 Sunday
Our sacrosanct newspaper DN spends eight full pages of today's edition
to increase the feelings of catastrophe with regard to the damaged nuclear
plant in Japan. On the really dead, and the suffering people, they spend
much fewer words.
A large majority of Swedish journalists have for many years had a
horrified attitude towards nuclear energy. The main purpose of that is
self-evident. To intimidate readers by creating fear is supposed to be a
positive market factor. People are supposed to buy more papers if the
head-lines are really terrifying. The rational for that beats me, and I've
never seen any empirical studies which supports that seemingly crazy idea.
Still it is constantly practiced.
On this website I have written a good deal in Swedish about nuclear
energy, for instance about the UNSCEAR 2000-study, conducted by an expert
committee formed and monitored by the United Nations. The committee's
conclusions implied in fact that almost all popular media reports about
the nuclear accident in Chernobyl had grossly overestimated the harm
done by radiation. Most suffering and premature deaths was caused by the
evacuation of large populations and the social catastrophe for many people
that followed.
During a conference in Davos, Switzerland in 2008, the following numbers
of deaths in accidents directly associated with a specific energy source
was reported:
The nuclear death toll disappears in the diagram, because it is only 31,
and that is from Chernobyl. I believe this diagram deserves some
contemplating thinking.
2011-03-12 Saturday
The sad but most important news today is of course the earth quake
and tsunami in Japan. We can just embrace the suffering people in our
thoughts and hope for the best. And also wish that help with the rescue work
will come from all parts of the world.
The domestic news were somewhat overshadowed today, but
Dagens Nyheter continued their sour remarks about the candidate for
leader of the opposition party. The front page was headed by:
"Juholt keeps
silent about the choice of direction for S"
(S is short for Social Democrats), followed by: "Exactly what the coming
party leader Håkan Juholt thinks about the future of the Social Democrats in
shrouded in mystery".
Everyone knows that a candidate cannot speak for the whole party, or reveal
any of his plans as a party leader, until he is really elected (every party
member has de facto the right to challenge him for the job at the convention). For
those who happens to be ignorant of that elementary circumstance it is
repeated by the candidate every time he is asked those questions. So DN's
purpose is of course not to inform but to cast a shadow of suspicion and
conspiracy around Juholt in the most childish way.
The candidate is chosen by a democratic process within the party, and the
choice reflects the will of a majority of party representatives. Those are
the ones who should be asked what expectations they had when they chose
Juholt. But they are history for the journalists and reporters. Now it's
Juholt who is the fair game. Ahhh, politics!!
-
2011-03-11 Friday
Yesterday the election committee presented its result, and
nominated a candidate to become the new chairman of the Social Democrats,
a not so well known man called Håkan Juholt. He is a member of the
parliament and chairman of the defense committee there. This decision has
the support of the boards of the 20 plus party districts around the
country. Apparently they thought that the old, well-known guys have their
best days behind them, and choose this new, energetic man who is believed
to position himself somewhat to the left of the mainstream within the
party.
Most people here haven't seen Juholt in action until yesterday. At the
press conference he gave a vivid and positive impression and didn't
conceal his concern for the people in most need. Probably he surprised not
a few with a commanding presence and swift answers. Anyway, the
center-right (what we here call liberal) papers today immediately played
down their readers expectations by somewhat disparaging remarks about the
new candidate. This is indeed a promising sign for the Social Democrats.
The party's former leadership had the illusion that success in elections
depended on how well they could impersonate the political ideas of the
bourgeoisie parties. This was called "to adjust to the mainstream line" in
politics. Now the frontiers are more clearly defined and the forces ready
to action. It's spring coming!
2011-03-10 Thursday
The daily question in the newspapers here is who is going to be
the next chairman of the Social Democrats, the party that once created the
Swedish model and ruled the country for most part of the past century. In
last years election the party lost again, and the center-right government
got another fore years in power. With some delay the party chairman, Mona
Sahlin, finally resigned and a new one will be elected later this month.
An old tradition in the Social Democrats is that a new chairman is agreed
upon through discussions and negotiations among representative bodies
within the party, so that the party convention has only one candidate to
vote for. This means months of speculations in media about which candidate
is the hottest for the moment.
This procedure once ended in an odd way. When Ingvar Carlsson retired as
chairman in 1996 there was a few possible successors, among them the
eminent finance minister Göran Persson. But he
emphatically announced that he wasn't a candidate, and that the only thing
he wanted was to remain finance minister. It was all very convincing and
media accepted it as true. So when the day came and Persson was presented
as the new candidate for chairman and prime minister, many jaws were dropped.
Subsequently the journalists were fooled, and that is something they never
forgive (they were challenged in their own field, which is to master in
fooling others).
Anyway, the question who should be the chairman of the Social Democrats is
often presented as if it was a concern for the whole country. Thus the
center-right newspapers, who have an overwhelming dominance in the market
for printed media, treats it almost as a national trauma when the
selection procedure now meets problems. Every day old and new possible
candidates are scrutinized and judged. No favorite has emerged and none of
the names mentioned are exciting in any way. Some of the names are really
unknown to the public, and those who are well known are intimately
connected with the election failure and in many peoples opinions
politically worn-out.
In the blog-world even Göran Persson's name is mentioned again, but this
time really in vain. Soon we will know, and that will probably
deserve to be commented on.
2011-03-09 Wednesday
On my Swedish page Dagsnoteringar today I refer to a talk
by Noam Chomsky, where he in the Q&A session touched upon the dictatorship
in Egypt. The talk was given in 2010, i.e. long before the now ongoing
uprising started, and he commented a press conference held by Barack Obama
before the presidents travel to Egypt in 2009. Obama was asked whether he
would raise any questions about the authoritarian regime in Egypt with his
host, Mubarak. (Chomsky commented that the word "authoritarian" was more
of a compliment to one of the most brutal dictatorships in the Arab
world.)
According to Chomsky the president answered: "I don't like to use labels
for folks, so I will not call him authoritarian. In fact he is a force for
stability and for good". You may remember a
similar comment by
our foreign minister Carl Bildt, this time about Khaddafi of Libya. The guys from the smaller countries learn from the bigger chiefs!
One question Chomsky thinks that we should ask ourselves is how we might
expect the Arab world to take seriously our harsh demands on (for
instance) Iranian leaders to respect human rights, at the same time we
treat much more horrible dictatorships with kid gloves. Of course he
doesn't find the very fact especially strange. Useful and obedient
dictatorships are frequently well treated by western countries. But the
blatant hypocrisy is non the less a disgrace for civilized and thinking
people.
2011-03-08 Tuesday
How come that a non-profit, state regulated public service media
company can outperform every private counterpart in all respects, also in
reaching an overwhelming share of the viewers? It's not even an isolated
Scandinavian phenomenon, we have BBC in Britain as another role model.
Thus it should not be a mystery. But with respect to strict neoclassical
economics it is.
We remember from our school books how the perfect society was formed, did
we just let the invisible hand guide the egoistic economic man
(within us all) acting solely to maximize his personal gain. In such a
society no cooperative or any other non-profit enterprise could compete
with companies driven by the force that private profit creates. Still
there are in our country lots of such competitive organizations built on
idealistic grounds. It seems that the theory is in fact - quiet bad!
To start where work is really free of charge: estimates have been done
that about 300 thousand man-years of work is performed completely without
pay, in charity work, sports clubs and in many other activities
(incidentally this figure roughly equals the number of unemployed in Sweden). Then there is a
large consumer cooperative, called Konsum (or Coop), which is a major
actor in retail trade of everyday commodities. There is an interesting
political component here. Konsum is somewhat despised in some bourgeoisie
circles, who prefer the largest private alternative ICA.
ICA is a franchise organization, with the shop managers taking care of the
(sometimes quite large) profits. Still ICA has not been able, through many
decades, to oust Konsum from the market. It seems that the absence of a
demand for profit creates enough economic margin for Konsum to survive. So
in every Swedish community there usually is an ICA-shop on one side of the
main street, and a Konsum-store on the other. Often ICA and Konsum have
engaged their own architects, responsible for designing a number of stores, so when
you travel by car and pass all these small cities you have perfect déjà-vu
experiences.
All this is by all means not socialism! Sweden has a much more privatized
economy than France, among others. We for instance have the probably most
privatized railway system in the world, with almost 30 different companies driving
trains to and fro on the rails. But that is a sad story in its own, which
people here rather not think about.
2011-03-07 Monday
Bureaucrats in the European Union try to interfere with the rules for
state owned public service radio and television in member countries. Their
capitalistic dream is to reduce those services to a minimum, with a first
step to prohibit public service broadcasters from producing types of
programs that commercial corporations at all can do. The rational is to
prevent states from distorting competition by more or less invisible
subsidies.
The problem is that commercial television stands for quite bad quality and
taste in most of Europe, and certainly in Sweden. As audience research
here shows: of the 20 most viewed TV-programs in 2010, two (in place 9 and
19) were made by the largest commercial corporation (TV4), the rest 18 by
our state controlled public service company, SVT. All the other private
broadcasters were not in the vicinity of the list at all.
It's of course remarkable that the private broadcasters have failed so
completely when it comes to their only objective: to produce programs that
attract many people. The reason is however rather obvious for a lot of
observers with their brains functioning. The companies have made the
false assumption that people would like simple, superficial and sometimes
stupid programs. They really didn't understand the ordinary TV viewer in
their own country. Perhaps they had been to the US to learn the basics,
and didn't notice that there is a large differences in our cultures, who
knows?
Dagens Nyheter revealed the viewer statistics today, together with an
interview with the head of TV4. He obviously approved of the restrictions
proposed by EU, and bragged somewhat about his company's good economy and
profitability, but had no comments on the bad statistics.
The reader's comments to the interview in the web version of DN was filled with patronizing
critique of TV4, their long and frequent commercials and their terrible
programs. Not a single positive word so far. This is the depressing
reality that EU bureaucrats and the Swedish government will meet by restricting their highly
competent public service competitor. There is indeed a call for a reborn
Jonathan Swift!
2011-03-06 Sunday
Speaking about secret services, in Sweden carried out by
Säkerhetspolisen, or SÄPO for short: those who are familiar with the now
famous Millennium trilogy by Stieg Larsson, especially the third part,
have been given an exaggerated example of SÄPO's activities. In reality
the operations probably are far more dull and trivial. With the need for
"budget spies", to motivate state appropriations, popping up every so
often. Accordingly the media every other year or so is fed with
information about some spy arrested on diffuse grounds, most of the
circumstances secret, of course, and soon it's all forgotten and the
suspect released. Nowadays that arsenal of suspects has been reinforced
with the concept "terrorist".
Since World War II we have had three real spies as far as I know. They
were all trusted persons, none of them a communist. The most famous (and
dangerous) was a colonel in the air force, Stig Wennerström, who delivered
important military secrets to the Soviet Union. According to himself the
reason was to level the balance in world politics between USA and the
Soviets. The second one was a marine officer, and the third a police
officer at times working for SÄPO. But there also was a fictional spy who
fitted SÄPO's default image of a real spy much better. He was a communist,
a party member, living in the dark north.
This mans name was Fritiof Enbom, a notorious mythomaniac who was sickly
driven to become famous for something, be it at the price of a lifetime
spent in jail. This was in the 1950s and the Cold War was at it's
hottest. SÄPO had a desperate need to come up with a spy (two of the real
spies were not found yet), preferably a communist one, and so had the rest
of the establishment. (Sweden was certainly not that socialist society the
Eisenhower's administration tried to create an image of.) Thus the police,
judge, prosecutor, attorneys and media cooperated effectively to reach
mostly false verdicts. Secret documents, since declassified, reveals the
tragicomic imaginations accepted as truths by all presumably intelligent
people who created the verdicts.
To bring some credibility to his fictional stories, Enbom dragged a number
of friends into the shenanigan, by mainly false accusations. A number of
the "spies" were convicted, Enbom and a man called Gjersvold to lifetime
in prison with hard labor. Gjersvold tried a number of times to appeal the
sentence, without success. He was paroled in 1962, but continued his
struggle for rehabilitation. Books were written about the miscarriage of
justice in the Enbom case, and many prominent people became engaged in
Gjersvold's destiny. He died in 2002, before his last appeal to the
Supreme Court was settled.
This is a different picture of the Swedish model, embraced by progressives
throughout the world. Even the sun has spots, as we say here.
2011-03-05 Saturday
A fairly recent law in Sweden authorizes Försvarets radioanstalt
(FRA) - our equivalent to the National Security Agency (NSA) in USA - to monitor
(among other things) data traffic crossing the border. Since the server
hosting my web hotel is not placed in Sweden, this website is certainly
passing through the FRA filters. Maybe also NSA crawlers are searching for signal
words in this English section.
Anyway, the other day a curious thing occurred. All the pages on this site
was momentarily visited exactly 20 minutes each, which has never happened before. Now,
I'm not inclined to conspiracy theories, and will not claim or even
suggest anything. But it brought to mind a 35 years old memory.
I then lived in Stockholm with a woman who worked at an office serving
Swedish technical attaches, with Eastern Europe and Russia as her special
responsibility. It was an highly official activity under the auspices of
The Royal Academy of Engineering Sciences. But in those days even the most
elevated connections with the communist countries was regarded, at least by
the silly secret police, as something suspicious.
Consequently our telephone was tapped. Even such a simple thing was made in
the most amateurish way with click sounds, tones and sometimes voices
constantly disturbing our calls. What in the world they thought to achieve
with that probably expensive activity challenged my imagination.
So, if NSA incidentally is listening: I'm a completely peaceful man, who never in my 70
years have physically hurt any living creature, human or animal (with the
exception of insects and the like). The closest
I have come to domestic violence is two instances many years ago. The
first one was a woman (who had dumped me!) hitting me in the face, and the other
a woman (whom I had dumped) threatening me with a knife. In both cases I
just walked away.
Seriously though, we enjoy in this country an extensive freedom of
expression. Even more so in the USA. We should always be grateful to the
popular struggle which took us there, and to a system which keeps it that
way. And thus try to resist any attempt by the powerful to undermine that
right.
2011-03-04 Friday
A cartoonist, Johan Jarnestad, hit the nail on the head in
yesterdays Dagens Nyheter.
Two people with cocktail glasses on the table are talking. The one to the
other:
-
- Damn strange this thing with Egypt. In just
about a week it first became a dictatorship and then a democracy.
The fact that Egypt
was one of the harshest dictatorships in the world was formerly touched upon
very lightly by politicians and media here. The same was the case for a
large number of other repressive states all over the world. All critical
emotions was saved for China, Cuba, North Korea, Belarus, Iran and to some extent
Russia, who all of them were condemned in innumerable op-eds and political
speeches.
These condemnations have been built solely on the lack of democracy and
the disrespect for human rights in those countries. If we apply the most
elementary logic to the contradictions embraced by these decent and revered
persons, it's
impossible to find even a trace of coherence. It cannot possibly be about an
honest interest in democracy or human rights. What is it then?
By being so blatantly hypocritical politicians and media have themselves
opened the door for embarrassing speculations. The most obvious one is that
dictators who look after our interests are good ones, irrespective of the
brutality they exert, whilst for instance those who use state power to
uphold egalitarian principles or provide education and health care for all
are among the bad ones. Is this a coincidence? Good question!
2011-03-03 Thursday
Surfing aimlessly on the net I happened to stumble over Google Ngram
Viewer, a remarkable tool from an impressive company. Google has scanned 5.2
million books in six languages, or 20 percent of all book ever published. An
outstanding performance (in accordance with the thesis that the most superb
things come from USA, together with some other things...)
After doing this Hercules job Google offers the gigantic database for
everyone to use. I sat fascinated for a long while studying all kinds of
worlds and expressions. As an example I copied this diagram, showing three names mentioned here earlier, and the frequency of their appearance in
international literature (Swedish is not among the six languages, of
course). It was to my satisfaction that Palme 25 years after his death still
is mentioned more often than our previous foreign minister.
2011-03-02 Wednesday
Speaking of Palme, in 2004 Noam Chomsky, a well known professor at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, held the Olof Palme Memorial
Lecture at The University of Oxford in England. He there spoke on
Doctrines and Visions: Who is to Run the World and How? Chomsky is
arguably one of the most brilliant minds in the world. Palme shared some
of his virtues, but was of course handcuffed by the demands that practical
politics posed upon him. Both intelligent men and both on the left side in
their views on society. A coincidence?
Wouldn't think so. The common denominator is the moral universality, which
says that a person should submit to the same standards that he applies to
others, or more stringent ones if he is serious. Every normal, logically
thinking human being has to adhere to this principle of moral
universality, there is no alternative. From there on is no
other way than to work for an egalitarian, peace and solidarity seeking
world, since that is what we normally expect from others. In such a world
there is no place for revenge. (If I hit someone because he previously had
hit me, I just demonstrate that I thought it wrong of him to hit me in the
first place, and if it is wrong to hit someone then etc....)
Noam Chomsky is Americas gift to the world. For me he confirms the
experience that USA spans the best and the worst of everything. For one
Chomsky and a few of his kind there are regrettably an endless number of
right wing lunatics. (This is of course a value judgment which is on me,
totally.)
2011-03-01 Tuesday
This is the day 25 years ago when most Swedes got the terrible
news about the murdering of Olof Palme. Lots of people gathered at the
corner where Palme died, placing a rose or just standing there silent and
mourning. Many where crying openly. One interviewed woman sobbed with
tears running: "but the struggle for peace must go on."
This is not what happened. Sweden eventually drifted towards the
mainstream and lined up with the now neoliberal majority of capitalist
states. The poor and starving masses of the world became a non-issue.
State terrorism and support of dictators obedient to western powers was
looked upon as a necessity, at most a bit unpleasant but not much more.
Make money, not love, was the slogan for this new era. Palme soon seemed
completely forgotten.
Olof Palme was killed, like Martin Luther King. Both men had a vision of a
better world, and both made great contributions in that direction. In the
short run it seems like they lost their cases, but in the longer
perspective applied by wiser humans they both will be named among the
winners. Pessimism is for the short-sighted and optimism for those who
will outlive them.
Yesterday a flag guard was posted around Olof Palme's grave in central
Stockholm, and many people put down new flowers. This has been a heavy
winter in Sweden, but the spring is around the corner and sooner or later
the sun will shine again and give us a warm and nice summer.
2011-02-28 Monday
This very day, 25 years ago, prime minister Olof Palme was shot
dead in a street in the central parts of Stockholm. The time was 11.21 pm
CET. In some of the brain-dead right-wing circles, as for instance among
some of the inbred nobilities left over from an ancient and bloody period
of this country's history, champagne bottles were opened. Happy cheering
was also later reported to have taken place in some police stations.
As the brain-dead celebrated, the normal Swedes were chocked by the
murder. Never have so many people in this country cried at the same time
as on that following day. A mountain of flowers was built up on the side-walk
where Palme died. Suddenly immense love and admiration for Palme was
expressed by the ordinary Swede. This probably came as a surprise for
many, especially in the bourgeoisie.
In his life-time Olof Palme was a controversial figure who often took a
strong stand for people in need. Among many other things he engaged Sweden
in support for the freedom fighters in South Africa, at a time when USA
and others backed the apartheid regime and viewed Nelson Mandela's ANC as a
notorious terrorist organization.
Palme's early and outspoken criticism of the Vietnam war made him unique
among high-level politicians. His engagement for the poor was consistent
and rewarded him with seemingly more admiration in the developing world than in his home
country. A number of streets and places are named after him in cities
around the globe.
The right-wing celebrations of his death was just the natural end-point of
their hate towards Palme. Together with the neo-Nazis they had
excelled in smear, defamation and lies for centuries, and some of it had
probably affected the lumpenproletariat, but also parts of the
middle class. What the normal, working Swede thought of Palme was hidden in
obscurity. On the day of the murder the true feelings came forward: It was
love. Palme's fight for the poor ones among human beings and his struggle
for peace was at the heart
of the Swedish mind.
Who did the shooting? Probably an intelligent psychopath and drug-abuser
with a violent and criminal background, now dead. His name was Christer
Pettersson, and he was identified by Olof Palme's wife, who had seen him
at a meters distance. The police succeeded in screwing up the
identification procedure, so that evidence was cancelled by the court.
Pettersson was also seen by others near the crime scene before the
shooting.
One of many circumstantial evidences was Pettersson's connection with a
Swedish unabomber imprisoned for blowing up a prosecutors home and for two
other bombs, killing two persons. This man
was a notorious hater of government and Palme, and had in a testament
sworn to carry out a bloody revenge on the society for his time in jail.
He suffered from cancer but had tied acquaintance
with Pettersson in prison before he died. Pettersson was convicted in the
first instance, but acquitted in the final one, on grounds of insufficient
evidence. The police investigation still goes on.
2011-02-27 Sunday
Freezing rain has covered roofs and streets with a smooth glaze
this quiet Sunday afternoon on the Swedish west cost. No signs of spring
whatsoever, but a beam of light in an other respect anyhow. This website
(schaff.se) today broke the seven-digit wall in the global Alexa-rankings,
to reach position 998 726, and thus be among the 0,4 percent most visited
websites on earth. The site's rank in Sweden is now 3 147.
This is something I better not brag so much about on my Swedish pages. You
see, we have something here called the Jante law, which provides
that you don't consider yourself to be better than others. Now this is
somewhat double-edged for me, because I really do think modesty is a
virtue. "The Jante law" is something you can hear a rich and not so
cultivated parvenu hiss between his teeth when confronted with critical
comments. And I'm usually on the side that delivers that critique.
Still most people here think that there is a much more relaxed atmosphere
around these matter in the US, and yet not with more of the negative
side-effects like selfishness and bullying than anyplace else. One effect
of that atmosphere is that people can be positive towards the success of
others, which truly must be a virtue. But an even greater virtue is of
course to promote the interests of the most unsuccessful of all those
among us.
2011-02-26 Saturday
Our friend, the foreign minister Carl Bildt, seems to have worn
out some of his Teflon coating. He is now, surprisingly, under attack for
some sloppy formulations about the situation in Libya, thus reported to
have said that the question which side to support is irrelevant and that
the important thing is to maintain stability in the country.
One piquant aspect of Bildt's slipping tongue is that his political rival
and a former prime minister Göran Persson (Social Democrat) once made a
similar mistake on an official visit to China. He there said that
stability was important for Chinas economic development. This was
interpreted (but of course not meant) as a support for the dictatorship.
Back home Persson was flooded by attacks about his blunder for weeks, with
Carl Bildt among those whipping up severe condemnations.
"Hut går hem" is a Swedish expression that I can't find a precise
translation for, but it roughly means that in the end you have to pay for
the same things you once made others pay for. However, if this affaire
will leave any scratch marks on the steel nerd remains to be seen.
2011-02-25 Friday
A court in Britain has now decided that Julian Assange shall be
handed over to Swedish authorities to be faced with accusations regarding
sexual offences. The judgment is appealed by Assange's legal assistants.
Here in Sweden there is still no discussion on what will happen once he is
here. If the United States, with it's special court prepared for Assange,
puts pressure on the Swedish government to deliver him, it's certainly a
delicate question whether Sweden can resist. To claim that USA isn't a law
society is unthinkable. To refuse because the risk of a death penalty
would be embarrassing. For Carl Bildt personally to come into conflict
with his friends over there is hard to believe.
With all these uncertainties, and possibly the life or freedom of an
international celebrity at stake, the silence in the media here is a
mystery. Even more so when one considers that freedom of expression is a
core question in the whole affaire. For journalists here that fact
normally inspires the highest degree of protection to the endangered
individual. Dagens Nyheter, for instance, have for years been intensely
campaigning for Dawit Isaak, a journalist and Swedish citizen of
Eritrean origin, now suffering in an Eritrean jail on dubious accusations.
No such support for Assange is in sight in mainstream media. On the
contrary occasional articles appear where his character is put in question
on the sexual issue. As a Swede one can't avoid asking: what are we about
to do? Don't we mean anything with our celebratory speeches about human
rights and fundamental freedoms? Albeit USA consider him a spy or
something, that's understandable. But a moral obligation for non-allied
countries is exactly that of offering shelter for people accused of
political crimes by other governments.
It's not healthy to be upset by questions like this on a recently bad
stomach. It's better to just start hoping for the best in the Assange
case.
2011-02-24 Thursday
The main part of the day spent packing and driving, and now back
to the head quarters. Minus 18 degrees Celsius at the start, down to the
spring-like minus 2 at the end destination on the west coast. This winter
(together with a couple of the latest) has given the climate debate bad PR
here. Consequently the greenhouse effect is not on the front pages right
now. For ordinary people, and especially for journalists, the distinction
between climate and weather is not always clear.
If there is a hurricane and a flood in Bangladesh it's taken as proof of
the human impact on the climate, but if large parts of USA is buried under
snow it has no bearing on the problem whatsoever. The fact that Bangladesh
had the maybe toughest hurricane in human history already in 1970, killing
half a million people, does not affect the conclusions either.
It seems that for journalists a scientific view requires great
demonstrative effects to be interesting, a shortcoming severely damaging a
correct perception of the climate problem. The core of this problem is a
temperature increase of one or a couple of tenths of a degree each year,
which is predicted to create possibly harmful changes in the climate
decades or centuries into the future. Weather fluctuations, sometimes
enormous, have on the other hand always occurred as a natural phenomenon.
Nor are climate changes something new in history, for that matter. Trough
the ages the earth has experienced the most spectacular climates, among
other effects resulting in disastrous results for living creatures.
To sum up: The average earth temperature is undoubtedly increasing, and so
is the content of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. That the first
phenomenon depends on the second is widely
perceived among scientists, as is the claim that human actions are
fundamental reasons for the problem as a whole. On the other hand:
allegations that extreme whether situations occurring today are results of
human activities are speculations not agreed on by serious scientists as
far as I'm aware. Such fluctuations have always been perfectly normal
phenomena on the earth.
2011-02-23 Wednesday
Still food poisoning and no concentration. Plan to be back tomorrow.
2011-02-22 Tuesday
Instead of skiing and blogging I've spent the last days in bed,
food poisoned. A had a bad wiener schnitzel at a cheep road eatery and paid
for that twice. But anyhow it gave me today's topic.
Food poisoning is a much more common decease than would be necessary,
regarding that
the reason too often is inadequate knowledge. In this otherwise well
regulated society it's much too easy for anyone to start a business serving
food without adequate knowledge of food hygiene. In that respect the private
kitchen is of course an even higher risk factor.
As a consequence, about 1,8 million individuals in Sweden suffer from food
poisoning every year, with a seriousness that keeps them in bed for at least a day.
That means one out of five Swedes, each year. This sickness is painful, costly and (in
theory) quit unnecessary. Occasionally a few people even die. Still there is
no much fuss about the issue.
I believe people in general doesn't regard this as a big problem. On the
other hand there is intense debate over other food issues with much less
impact than food poisoning, for instance pesticides, food additives, GMO
and other man-made phenomena which poses a
negligible risk in comparison.
This consequent inconsequence in our everyday thinking is a human attribute
over which there is no point to brood, if you don't want to shorten your own
life from despair.
2011-02-20 Saturday
This time a year Swedes enjoy a winter holyday, called "ski
brake", distributed over five weeks with one week for each of five regions.
Our week here at the west coast starts tomorrow. We have a 250-mile trip in
front of us tomorrow, to reach the most southern of the ski resorts in this
cold country. From that point there are numerous ski resorts found in
another 600 miles or so northwards driving. Today was spent with packing and
preparing. Hope to be back tomorrow evening. By till then.
2011-02-18 Friday
Our foreign minister Carl Bildt is an ambitious man who started
his political career as a teenager (much like Bill Clinton). Back then he
was a lonely conservative wolf fighting the hordes of radical youths in the
1960s. The prospects in those days for a conservative to ever become a
member of the government in Sweden were infinitesimal. But Carl was a man
of extraordinary self confidence and iron will, and one day some 20 years
later he became prime minister.
In his party he then had a young man called Fredrik Reinfeldt, whom he found
a little too outspoken on wrong issues, and subsequently blocked from a
career in the party for a while. Today Fredrik is prime minister - and Carl's
boss. That's life!
Our man, Carl Bildt, is a typical Teflon politician who seldom gets tainted
whatever happens. Journalists seem to avoid scrutinizing or pursuing him as
if he was a bit sacred, much in the same way as they
once respectfully treated his former father-in-law Gösta Bohman when he was
finance minister.
During a period as businessman, before reentering the government, Carl was
for instance a member of the board of Lundin Oil. This company was involved
in oil affaires in Sudan and was allegedly cooperating with military forces
accused with murdering local civilians who interfered with the company's
activities.
A CV like that would have been deadly poisonous for any other politician in
Sweden, but not so for our Carl, characteristically christened "the steel
nerd" by a clever female columnist years ago. Media made some vague efforts
to create a scandal but nothing happened and they soon ran out of gas.
Today Bildt has to answer for the governments passivity in the case of the
Egyptian uproars, and why Sweden have indirectly supported Mubarak by
quietly accepting the active, military support given his regime by USA. By
responding that the opposition party, the Social democrats, was a members of
the same Socialist International as Mubarak's party the discussion ended.
More chapters of The Bildt Saga are for sure expected, some of which will
probably suite this webpage.
2011-02-17 Thursday
Julian Assange has now got another reason to fear extradition to
Sweden. The other day Dagens Nyheter revealed some new secrets from the
Wikileaks files. It turns out that there exists a semi-secret high-level
group called e-PINE, which spells out Enhanced Partnership in Northern
Europe. (The foreign Department's press secretary says he didn't know
about it.)
This e-PINE group is manned by high-level officials from the Nordic and
Baltic countries, plus for some interesting reason the United States, who
has been represented by the Assistant Secretary of State, Daniel Fried. What
the secret documents reveal is that the real purpose of this group is to
build a shield against Russia. So one topic of discussion is how to
strengthen the Russian border states, for instance how to facilitate for
Ukraine and Georgia to become NATO members.
One of the more delicate parts of the revelation is that the group has
discussed how to drive a wedge between President Medvedev and prime
minister Putin of Russia, with the aim to strengthen Medvedev and weaken
Putin. As it contradicts Sweden's official foreign policy to interfere
with other nations internal affaires, this has become an embarrassment to
prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt and foreign minister Carl Bildt. Since the
former probably doesn't forget things very easily, and the latter has a
slight touch of megalomania, Assange's hopes in this country have dropped
another level.
Still there is no debate about the fear of Assange being extradited from
Sweden to USA, should he be forced to come here. If the United States will
demand Sweden to extradite him there are definitely formal problems for
Sweden to deny it.
Strange how we find freedom of expression such a wonderful thing in Egypt
and such a disaster when it really is used here in a substantial way.
2011-02-16 Wednesday
As I mentioned yesterday our frontrunner in the struggle to save
reason and logic from the postmodern feminist stranglehold is Tanja
Bergkvist, a young women who grew up with mathematics and physics in a
science-oriented family, with a mother who was born in Bulgaria and thus not
afflicted with Swedish feminist folly. On
her website Tanja puts up
an hilarious and satirical show where she reveals all the stupendous
"research projects" granted millions of dollars for the most unbelievable
studies.
One of the smaller projects Tanja revealed had the title: "The Trumpet as a
Gender Symbol", which was granted almost 100 000 dollars from the
governments main research foundation (Vetenskapsrådet) for "problemizing the
concepts of masculinity and femininity and closely examine the ideas which
are active and constitutes the trumpet as a masculine marker". An article by
Tanja about this Gender Trumpet in a large newspaper made her name known,
and made normal people laugh in resignation, but the gender feminists were
not discouraged. After that we have had the discomfort to "enjoy" a
seemingly never ending flow of "research" made by these esoteric scholars,
of which 90 percent are women (speaking of gender equality!).
When we consider this development in large sectors dominated by feminists,
it should becomes easier to understand from where the odd Swedish sex laws
originate. Our laws on prostitution are unique in that they make it criminal
to buy sex, but not to sell. It's as if women were not accountable for their
actions and in some way were incapacitated. And these laws have come into
place in the name of women's emancipation!
Perhaps the background for the prosecutors action towards Julian Assange now
seems more clear, if not justified. One commonly says that Britain is bound
to deliver Assange here, since Sweden must be considered a normal, lawful
country. In that case the next question is whether he will be extradited to
the United States or not. This is a question of enormous dimensions, since
Assange risks severe punishment there, death penalty not excluded. In spite
of that there is no discussion whatsoever in mainstream media here about
this possibility. Not a single responsible person has stood up and
guaranteed that Assange not will be extradited. Well, whoever lives shall
see. Maybe Assange won't belong to them.
2011-02-15 Tuesday
One thing about the Assange affair that has puzzled most of the
world is the curious Swedish sex legislation. To be sentenced to prison for
rape here doesn't require that any violence has taken place, not even milder
coercion than that. It's sufficient that one part has said "no", regardless
of other circumstances. And sometimes this "no" is not explicitly necessary,
for instance if a man is expected to know what the woman would have wanted
anyway. So if a woman lies naked in bed with a man with whom she has had
voluntary sex the evening before, and he enters her in the morning (without
condom) while she is asleep, that can also be rape. And that seems to be the
most serious of the suspicions aimed at Assange.
Someone may ask what the holy principle of equality under the law has to say
in cases like these. What will for instance happen if a woman forces a
reluctant man to have sex, with means of psychological mistreatment or any
other improper coercion? Will she end up in jail? We will never know, since
a case like that on no account will appear in a court, ever. There is only
suppression of women, not of men. That's the most holy principle, overriding
all other principles.
With this principle as a foundation, and extreme postmodern gender theories
as a driving force, the hard core of Swedish feminists have drifted away far
out in the desert. The guru of this movement is Judith Butler (a US citizen
I'm sad to say) who's completely fabricated idea that different sexes
doesn't exist has led hordes of gullible women into an utterly unfruitful
nonsense world. That's harsh words which requires justification, which I
hope to accomplish in coming Postcards. In that task I will just follow one
of the brightest women in Sweden, a Ph.D. in mathematics named Tanja
Bergkvist, who has declared total war against the mumbo jumbo that these deceived
women are subjected to. We'll come back to Tanja and this topic.
2011-02-14 Monday
In these days Sweden is of course most famous for the Assange
affair. Our mainstream media - of which Dagens Nyheter (the New York Times
of Sweden) is No. 1 - doesn't really know on which foot to stand. Here we
have freedom of expression at stake, but also a legislation on sexual
behavior which is sacred for our feminists and last but not least the
important relations with the United States. Consequently there is little of
this and little of that on the matter, but above all a lot of silence.
There is an interesting thought experiment to make as a litmus test on the
editorial staff at Dagens Nyheter (DN). We might just suppose that Assange
had revealed, not US but Russian secrets of equivalent importance, and that
prominent politicians and media people in Russia had screamed for him to be
immediately executed. Furthermore that Russian authorities had carefully
prepared a special court for Assange in a reliable district near Moscow and
expected Sweden or some other country to deliver him on a silver plate.
In such a case there are no doubts whatsoever about which reactions to
expect from DN. It would sound approximately like this: "Putin and his
associates show there utter contempt for human rights when they seek to
severely punish a man who just practices his elementary rights of free
expression. This is what you can expect from these stone age-thinking post communists (of course in nicer wordings) and we must do our outmost to
protect Assange from all evil. An extradition is out of question!" Regarding
the case of possible rape we certainly could have expected the decision made
by the first female prosecutor to stand, namely to drop the case (in the
improbable event that the police officers had even bothered to forward the
questions from the two girls in the first place).
That's politics, same style here as everywhere. It's just cute to watch
people with unquestionably functioning brains act like trained dogs when it
comes to these issues. It should be said that Swedish politics has been
drifting slowly from the old social democrat ideals in a rightward direction
since at least 20 years. And the newspapers have drifted along. But still
our most conservative politicians wouldn't feel uncomfortable among many of
the liberals in the US. So there is always a perspective to take into
account.
I believe there will be reasons to comment on this affaire in the light of
future events.
2011-02-13 Sunday
As probably an exception we will leave the world of serious
matters, and for a moment look into the circus of sports. Namely tennis.
Once upon a time Sweden was a superpower in this game. Björn Borg is of
course rather well known, but after him came an army of followers who
crowded the courts around the world. I believe Sweden once had 18 players or
something like that in
a Grand Slam draw. And I myself remember a big tournament where three of the
four semifinalists were fellow countrymen. But that's history.
Today we only have Robin Söderling. The next guy in line is an Australian
ranked 200 something who happened to have dual citizenships and choose
Sweden the other year. (Thus minimizing the competition he would meet to
reach a Davis Cup team.)
The reason to dwell on tennis today is that Robin just won the 500 ATP-point
tournament in Rotterdam, defeating Jo-Wilfred Tsonga in the final and
winning tons of money. Robin has a descent serve which usually, together with a
bomber forehand, takes him a long way into the tournaments. Ever since he ground down
Rafael Nadal in the epic Roland Garros match in 2009, he has steadily
improved his other strokes. With today's victory he managed to defend his
world number four position in the rankings.
One good thing with a deep love for tennis is that you can combine watching
the game on television or computer with ironing shirts and such stuff. But
enough with that! Tomorrow I will probably be back in the real world, i.e. after reading what the New York Times Internet edition has to say about
Robins victory.
2011-02-12 Saturday
Let's start from the very beginning. Sweden is the land of blond
and beautiful girls. Nicht? No, not really. Sweden is the land where
for instance one single city, Södertälje with 85 000 inhabitants, has
received more refugees from Iraq than the whole of the United States of
America. So with every year this becomes slowly a multicultural society
where consequently darker hair and skin gets more and more common.
Sweden is a late developer, just a generation or two away from a backward peasant
society. As one consequence the adaptability towards ethnical changes is not
the very best. Swedes are however descent people by upbringing and have
therefore on
average a sound attitude towards immigrants. But a slow and steady
development away from traditional social democrat values resulted after last
years election in the first clearly anti-immigrant party in the parliament.
Some say we are the most Americanized country in Europe, which in certain
respects is obviously true. On the other hand there is still a solid base
for solidarity solutions, strong unions etcetera. In other words it's an
interesting cocktail.
This cocktail has recently been laced by a prosecutor's activities regarding
Julian Assange. I'm sure we will return to that story later on, but this is
quite enough for one postcard today.
2011-02-11 Friday
Welcome to this modest website and its English language page. Here
we will publish snapshots from Sweden in a simple and comprehensive manner,
hopefully. "We" that's me - Lars Schaff - M.Eng. in chemistry and B.A. in
political economy. You find my resume in Swedish on a
separate page.
You might at least understand the figures there, from which you learn that I'm
close to 70 years old, and thus very experienced and somewhat out of
fashion.
There is one thing that I'll say only once: you have to pardon my English
since I have no English native in the vicinity to correct my writing.
The topics on my web pages have a few things in common. First of all I try
to build on the foundations created by the Enlightenment. Thus reason and
clarity are ideals, not that I pretend to fulfill them, but it's certainly
my ambition. Since reason and Enlightenment together creates leftist
solutions on political questions, you will see some of that here. I owe you
this declaration so that you can leave right here if your political inclination
is to the right of Michael Moore or someone like him.
Since it's Friday afternoon and I had a quite sudden impulse to open this
page, I will stop here and prepare for a more substantial start tomorrow. By
till then!
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