Jenny’s Pennies

This week marked the five year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. So, this week the Friday Food for Thought is dedicated to that subject. As it is Good Friday (in Swedish called Långfredagen, the long Friday), a day which for many people means reflection and silence, it seems fitting to post this today, even though I am in no way religious.

What you should read:

A war of utter folly, by Hans Blix, head of the UN inspections in Iraq 2003 (the Guardian):

The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a tragedy - for Iraq, for the US, for the UN, for truth and human dignity. I can only see one gain: the end of Saddam Hussein, a murderous tyrant. Had the war not finished him he would, in all likelihood, have become another Gadafy or Castro; an oppressor of his own people but no longer a threat to the world. Iraq was on its knees after a decade of sanctions.

The elimination of weapons of mass destruction was the declared main aim of the war. It is improbable that the governments of the alliance could have sold the war to their parliaments on any other grounds. That they believed in the weapons’ existence in the autumn of 2002 is understandable. Why had the Iraqis stopped UN inspectors during the 90s if they had nothing to hide? Responsibility for the war must rest, though, on what those launching it knew by March 2003.

By then, Unmovic inspectors had carried out some 700 inspections at 500 sites without finding prohibited weapons. The contract that George Bush held up before Congress to show that Iraq was purchasing uranium oxide was proved to be a forgery. The allied powers were on thin ice, but they preferred to replace question marks with exclamation marks.

‘We live in a nightmare. Death and carnage is everywhere’ Ali, Baghdad resident (the Guardian):

“I stood there in the middle of it all. I saw people picking bodies up and carrying them. A police car arrived and the police started to fire bullets in the air. I ran away and hid at the entrance of a shop. When a woman saw me, she started screaming. There was blood on my arm and on my leg.” A friend of Ali’s stopped a passing ambulance and helped him into it. Inside, he found a man whose face was black from burns and whose shoulder was covered with blood. A younger man was bleeding from his legs. “When he tried to lift one of them it bent not at the knee but from the middle of his thigh,” Ali says. “He was screaming, ‘Fix my leg! Fix my leg!’ ”

At the hospital, Ali and the others sat in a corridor waiting to be treated by the overstretched medical team. “There were children there who were all red,” he remembers. “It looked as if they had no faces, they were so covered with blood.”

After waiting a while he was transferred to another hospital, where a doctor examined him. “The doctor told me I just had two bits of shrapnel in my arm and leg,” Ali says. “He asked me why I was crying. I told him it wasn’t for myself but for all the boys and girls around me.”

Am I a torturer? (Mother Jones)

When I first set off to interview the rank-and-file guards and interrogators tasked with implementing the administration’s torture guidelines, I thought they’d never talk openly. They would be embarrassed, wracked by guilt, living in silent shame in communities that would ostracize them if they knew of their histories. What I found instead were young men hiding their regrets from neighbors who wanted to celebrate them as war heroes. They seemed relieved to talk with me about things no one else wanted to hear—not just about the acts themselves, but also about the guilt, pain, and anger they felt along with pride and righteousness about their service. They struggled with these things, wanted to make sense of them—even as the nation seemed determined to dismiss the whole matter and move on.

This, perhaps, is the real scandal of Abu Ghraib: In survey after survey, as many as two-thirds of Americans say torture is justified when it’s used to get information from terrorists. In an abc/Washington Post poll in the wake of the 2004 scandal, 60 percent of respondents classified what happened at Abu Ghraib as mere abuse, not torture. And as recently as last year, 68 percent of Americans told Pew Research pollsters that they consider torture an acceptable option when dealing with terrorists.

Critics of the administration’s interrogation policies warn that the ramifications will be felt across the globe, including by Americans unlucky enough to be imprisoned abroad. Foreign-policy scholars fear the fallout from Abu Ghraib has already weakened the U.S. military’s anti-terrorism capabilities. Lawyers warn about war-crime tribunals. But hardly anyone is discussing the repercussions already being felt here at home. It’s the soldiers tying the sandbags around Iraqis’ necks and blaring the foghorns through the night who are experiencing the effects most acutely. And the communities they’re returning to are reeling as a result.

Posting will resume on Tuesday - I’m going to my parents for Easter, no internet access.
Have a good Easter. Peace.

(Quote in title from Gil Stern)

Tomorrow, March 22nd is World Water Day. Water is one of those things you often don’t reflect over, if you live like me. It’s just there, when you turn on the faucet. You bathe, wash your clothes, do dishes, water your lawn or plants, flush the toilet… it’s just there. But for about one in six people in the world, getting water is not that easy. Water is one of the most pressing issues when it comes to global environment and climate change, and water shortage and water access disparities can lead to mass migration, epidemics and conflicts in the future.

The world market price for water has never been as high as it is now. To collect, clean and distribute water takes a lot of investments. Before, it was taken for granted that the government would handle the water. Water is, after all, a public good and something that everyone should have the right to. But today, water distribution is increasingly privatized by multinational corporations like Suez, Veolia and RWE, although not to the extent that was believed in the 90s. Today, 5-10 percent of the world’s population buy their water from private companies. Some private corporations even own the rights to the rain falling from the sky. As I said above, it is expensive to collect, clean and distribute water. And I don’t trust private corporations, whose foremost goal is to make profit, will build the infrastructure necessary to distribute water in very arid and poor areas - there is not enough money to be made from that. Therefore local, public, democratic solutions are needed.

In El Salvador, privatization of the water distribution has lead to that many poor people doesn’t have access to clean drinking water. The pipes are there, but the water is not on. Therefore, many have to buy their water from tank trucks, without knowing where the water comes from. A woman who works seven days a week selling vegetables at the market lay up to half of their salary on buying water. Of course, some people can’t afford that, so they are stuck with polluted water from rivers and lakes. The child mortality rate in El Salvador is 30 percent, most of those from water related diseases such as diarrhea. It is estimated that by drinking water, a person in El Salvador consumes one cup of human faeces per year (yes, that is gross, but it’s the reality). Last year, many people demonstrated against the water privatizations, but the demonstrations were brutally cracked down and some participants were accused of terrorism.

In China, a 50 year old dream of Mao’s are now being realized - to build a gigantic pipeline system to lead water from the Yangtzee river in the south to the arid areas in the north. Of course, Beijing needs reliable water supply for the Olympics (to give the Olympics to China seems like a worse and worse idea every day), so villages in the south, who themselves doesn’t have enough water to sustain industries like wheat farming and fishing, are forced to send their water up north. One in four people in China are lacking access to clean water.

Two thirds of the world’s population is expected to run short of clean drinking water by the year 2025! And the thing is, there is really is enough water. Mismanagement, waste, pollution and uneven distribution is the problem, not supply. We in the rich countries can’t keep watering our golf courses or waste liter upon liter doing dishes in running water (I confess to being guilty of that). I’ve been for extended periods in countries with water shortages (Venezuela and Israel), and being able to shower in hot, clean, constantly running water when I got home was a delight. I don’t want to loose that, but then we need to find solutions to the world’s escalating water crises and that probably means giving up some of our unreflecting attitudes towards water usage.

To learn more:
Food and Water Watch
Water Partners International
Vattenportalen (Swedish)
UN Water
Stockholm International Water Institute

I apologize for not doing this yesterday - I had a migraine that threatened to explode my head. So here, one day late, is my Iraq War Blogswarm 2008 contribution. I really want to write something smart, something new, something that sums it all up. But what can I offer? I have never seen war. I type in the comfort of my warm apartment, with snow glistening in the sunshine outside, my breakfast beside me and my loved ones only a simple phone call away. What can I say that isn’t simply platitudes, that isn’t just a reiteration of what so many have said before me, about the lies, the atrocities, the pain and the suffering. My love is coming home tonight, we’re making easter candy. When night falls, we’ll turn on the lights, run water to make tea and then sleep peacefully knowing that nothing bad will happen to us tonight. Half a world away, people are dying, crying, ripped to pieces by shrapnel, humiliated, debilitated. Half a world away, people are lied to, asked to be cannon fodder, asked to lose their lives and limbs for some grand idea, told they are heroes but treated like trash. What can I say?
——————————
Dulce Et Decorum Est
Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the hunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick boys! - An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…
Dim, through the misty panes of thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, -
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Decriminalization, ending demand, and choice: Feministe interviews the Sex Workers Project
- a very interesting post over at Feministe, where Sienna Baskin of the New York City based organization Sex Workers Project is interviewed. The interview deals with the societal response to prostitution, a question which is very much in the focus in the US right now due to the Spitzer scandal. It also discusses the “Swedish model” i.e. the criminalization of the buyer, not the seller.
Go read!

Sorry about the lack of posts lately (to my approximately two readers); here’s a clue to what I’ve been doing.

So, remember this? Now, the investigation is apparently finished and…

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - A bailiff who forgot about a woman locked in a courthouse holding cell and left her there for four days without food, water or access to a bathroom has been suspended for 30 days but will keep his job, officials said Wednesday.

Washington County Cpl. Jarrod Hankins acted without “intentional misconduct” when he left Adriana Torres-Flores in the 9 1/2-by-10 1/2-foot cell, Sheriff Tim Helder said.

Hankins “became busy and simply forgot” about the woman last Thursday, leaving her in the cell with only a jacket until Monday morning. (full story here)

Yep, that’s right. He’s getting off with a slap on the wrist. No criminal charges, no loss of job. For doing something that could have left a person dead.
Oh, no sorry, not a person, an “illegal immigrant from Mexico”. I’ll just second what Vox ex Machina said:

Just because someone has broken the law by crossing a border does not mean that it is okay to deprive them of basic human rights. If Adriana Torres-Flores had been Nancy Worthington, Nice White Lady Born and Raised in Little Rock, that bailiff would be facing charges right now. But immigrants are only people if they have the documents to prove it in today’s America, I guess.

The reason Adriana Torres-Flores appeared in court was because she was charged with selling pirated CDs. Oh yes, the terrible terrible crime of selling pirated CDs. So let’s compare here: Selling pirated CDs plus being an undocumented brown woman = okay to be deprived of basic human rights. “Forgetting” someone in a cell for four days without food, water or access to the bathroom = nah, not so bad, just suspension without pay and then back to business.

Wow. This is appalling.

A woman was locked for four days in a tiny holding cell in a northern Arkansas courthouse, forgotten by the authorities and left without food or water, the local Sheriff’s Department said Tuesday.

The woman, Adriana Torres-Flores, 38, a longtime illegal immigrant from Mexico, slept on the floor with only a shoe for a pillow, and with nothing to drink except her own urine, The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported. There was no bathroom in the cell.

The chief deputy of the county’s sheriff’s department, Jay Cantrell, says there will be an investigation, but assures that the incident was an “honest mistake” without any malicious intent.

Honest mistake? Well, that may be true, but it’s still a mistake that should get your ass thoroughly fired. But there’s no mention of that idea in the article. Only that there will be an “investigation”. What’s there to investigate? The procedures and policies of the department, yes. But the fact that his gross negligence make the employee in question unfit for his job? That seems pretty clear to me. But of course, the victim was only an undocumented brown woman, so it wasn’t all that serious, right.

While we’re into the immigration issue in the USA:
You really should read this article in the New Yorker about Hutto, a former prison in Texas which is being used to detain immigrants and asylum seekers. Note: immigrants and asylum seekers. Not criminals. About half of the detainees in Hutto are children, many of them born in the USA. Hutto is run by CCA, the Correction Corporation of America, a huge private prison corporation. Their deal with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of Homeland Security pays them approximately $2.8 million dollars monthly for Hutto. There’s good money to be made from keeping unwanted noncriminal brown people locked up. Feministe has more on the subject.

My gut feeling is to agree with Per Gudmundson in today’s Svenska Dagbladet (and it doesn’t happen often that I agree with their editorials).

Background for non-Swedish readers: a few days ago, the Swedish police performed searches at members of Svenska Motståndsrörelsen, SMR (the Swedish Resistance Movement). Weapons and explosives were found, and three men are detained for illegal possession of weapons and preparation to inflict serious damage (I guess that means blowing stuff up).

SMR is a neo-nazi organization which wants to abolish democracy and create an authoritarian national socialist society, hates Jews, Muslims and homosexuals, and struggles for the ultimate victory of the national socialist ideology and the creation of a new world order. (More in Swedish at Expo here.)

They have organized paramilitary training camps for their members, they idolize people like Hitler (obviously) and William Pierce, they want racial war, obviously store weapons and explosives, and their leader, Klas Lund, has been convicted of bank robbery, assault, illegal possession of firearms and manslaughter.

So, my gut feeling is to agree with Per Gudmundson when he says that the SMR members should be charged using the law on terrorist crime. Because that law says that terrorism is (big disclaimer about me not being a legal expert and knowing how to translate legal text accurately) to seek to “instill grave fear in a population” or “to seriously destabilize basic political, constitutional, economical or social structures in a state”. And that seems to fit pretty nicely with a movement that wants to destroy our society and install a dictatorship.

But.
Just as Svensson, Christian Engström and Mårten Schultz, I think that we should be careful to use the terrorism rubber stamp. Individuals can be guilty of acts of terrorism, but to label a whole movement or organization as “terrorist” is problematic. Especially when the organization or group is incoherent and multifaceted - that may not be the case with SMR, but it is certainly true of other organizations that we, in the era of the “war on terror” have put the terrorist label on.

And, as Christian Engström writes - the law on terrorism has mostly been used against non-Swedish citizens. It has allowed the state to deport them to torture and to freeze their assets, all in breach of human rights and rule of law. Even though it is tempting to put an equal opportunity spin on it and for once use the terrorism law against shiny white very Swedish people, we’d better not. Terrorism can and should be addressed using our perfectly fine “normal” laws.

And I really don’t want something like this in Sweden - The law HR.1955: Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007, which is being passed in the USA. It defines “homegrown terrorism” as: the use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual born, raised, or based and operating primarily within the United States or any possession of the United States to intimidate or coerce the United States government, the civilian population of the United States, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.

This is what the American Civil Liberties Union have to say about it (they’re not too excited, as you can imagine). A snippet:

“Law enforcement should focus on action, not thought. We need to worry about the people who are committing crimes rather than those who harbor beliefs that the government may consider to be extreme.”

So true. So even though my gut feeling tells me that of course the SMR members should be tried as terrorists, the implications, real and possible, makes me think that it might not be such a good idea after all.

Via Isabella Lund, I find out that the Swedish government are conducting a hearing on prostitution and on trafficking for sexual purposes. A number of organizations have been called to participate, from Save the Children and the Red Cross to the Swedish Association for Victim Support and The Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights.

Do you think something is missing? As usual, sex workers themselves are not invited to participate. Not a single sex worker organization, such as SANS, on the list. Renegade Evolution file stuff like this under “typical”, and so do I. Why do they think that sex workers, current and former, have no useful knowledge about the subject? Why aren’t sex workers allowed to take part in the conversation about themselves?

For crying out loud, even if you don’t agree with sex work/prostitution, can’t you at least listen to what the people who are actually in it have to say? How is that going to hurt you? Dear Swedish government, why do you think an organization like Män för jämställdhet (”Men for equality”) have more useful insight about the subject prostitution and trafficking than do an actual real life prostitute?

Well, to answer my own question, it is because what they might hear from people like Isabella Lund does not fit in their preconceived notions on what sex work/prostitution/porn is. And it is because it will not score them any political points from the people who set the agenda on this subject in Sweden.

I self-ID as a feminist (cue disclaimer about not being a hairy-legged man-hating ugly lesbian, and for the Swedish crowd, about not agreeing with Gudrun Schyman), and you know, a big thing in feminist discourse is the word choice. Now I’m going to borrow some rhetoric from belledame222 at Fetch Me My Axe who writes, with address to the anti-pornstitution (sic. they do call it that) radfem crowd:

Seriously, let me ask you this. I assume you’re “pro-choice” when it comes to reproduction? (If I’m wrong, ignore what follows). Okay. Putting aside the irony of “choice” being an acceptable feminist concept when it comes to reproductive rights but not when it comes to sexuality (for pay or otherwise) (or even personal adornment and modification, depending on who you ask, but that’s another argument, maybe)

…putting that aside, do you, you know, -like- abortion? I mean, are you like, “yay!abortion!” Are you gleefully advocating that women just go out and have abortions for shits and giggles? Do you claim that “choice” means the -correct- choice is always to get an abortion? Is the “abortion industry” a heartless sinister machine to which you’ve pledged your allegiance in exchange for a mess of pottage and your immortal soul?

Ridiculous, right? Well, funny thing, because this is pretty much how a lot of let’s say non-nuanced pro-lifers see the pro-choice folks.

What she’s getting at, of course, is that just as the anti-choicers see the pro-choice crowd as “yay! abortion”-shouting maniacs, the anti-pornstitution crowd also often come across like this. With the demonization of people not agreeing with them and the tendency to see everything in black and white: a sex worker is either a brainwashed victim in need of rescue, or a patriarchy-enabling sellout in cohorts with the enemy.

I can assure the Swedish government that if you would expand your list to include just one group who speaks for actual real life sex workers out there, you are absolutely not going hear them say: “Yay! Trafficking! Let’s have more 16 year old Moldavian girls who are kept drugged down and locked in apartments in Stockholm suburbs!”. Neither will they tell you “Yay! Selling sex is for everyone and should be a mandatory female experience”.
You know that.
So what are you so afraid of?

So, we’re in some kind of a backlash here in Sweden. A backlash of the majority, against the minorities who demand equal treatment, a voice and some damn respect.

You see, according to “ordinary people” (ordinary = male, white, heterosexual, Christian by birth but not church going), the demands of “special interest groups” has gone too far (special interest = female, non-white, non-Christian, non-heterosexual).

- Why is everyone so sensitive? (they whine). I believe that all people are equal and have equal value and equal rights. But feminists and queer activists and immigrants and all those special interest groups, they want more than equal rights. They want special rights! And I never offend anyone! But you know, you should really grow some thicker skin and stop whining so much. Being offended is the new black it seems. And I’m free of stereotypes! I have nothing against gays and Muslims as long as they mind their own business! Being called offensive really offends me!

Well, I’m sorry, but if you feel that discrimination and hate crime and prejudice and judgmental attitudes against people not like yourself are bad, if you really believe that all human beings have equal value and rights, then you need to wake up and smell the coffee: this does not only mean educating and changing the KKK members, Hitler follower, rapists and Talebans out there - it also means that you, yes you, have to give up your preferential right of interpretation and your privilege. And yes, it also applies to me, being a white, university educated middle class European.

It does not matter if you have twenty black friends, never knowingly have uttered a bigoted or homophobic remark, and are a nice ordinary human being - you can’t expect the fight for equal rights and against discrimination and prejudice to stop at your doorstep, because it makes you uncomfortable to be called out on your privilege and your prejudices. You tell “minorities” (who, added together, really are the majority. White Christian men are in no way “ordinary people” seen in a global perspective) to develop a thicker skin. Well if being asked to examine your own privilege and acknowledge that your interpretation of the world is not a universal truth offends you so much, then you need to grow a thicker skin.

Saturday, on International Women’s Day, Claes Schmidt/Sara Lund was supposed to give a lecture on diversity and the equal worth on all human beings, in a pentecostal church in southern Sweden. It was not a church event - a women’s association called Zonta had rented the church for the speech, which was titled “Women, men and all the rest of us” (Kvinnor, män och alla vi andra). But when the minister of the church, Magnus Jonegård, heard about the lecture, he stopped the meeting. You see, Claes Schmidt/Sara Lund is not two different persons. Claes Schmidt/Sara Lund is one person - a heterosexual married man, who sometimes dresses as a woman under the name Sara Lund, i.e. a transvestite, and who does lectures and stand up comedy about norms and values, gender and “normality” (website in English here).

The minister said that he had nothing against Claes/Sara in person (they never do - love the sinner, hate the sin, you know), but that the contents of the lecture was against the values and teachings of the church. You know, human dignity, loving thy neighbor as yourself, respect - all very unchristian concepts…

The church was of course under no obligation to rent out its premises to Zonta and Claes/Sara’s lecture. But when the Swedish good templar order IOGT expelled Åke Green (the Swedish minister who compared homosexuals to a cancer growth on the body of society, was tried for this in court and acquitted), because Green’s opinions did not correspond with their values and teachings, then the Swedish Christian right was up in arms about it and said that this was so intolerant and undemocratic.

As Tor of Antigayretorik said then: it would becoming to the right wing Christians if they would think a bit further before they start to scream about “intolerance” and “oppression”.

And over in the States, Dolores Huerta, human rights activist and well-regarded progressive leader, was supposed to give a talk to Catholic school children about her funding role in United Farm Workers and the importance of public service. But she was stopped, because of her views on reproductive choice (which had nothing to do with her talk whatsoever), which makes her an “unfit role model”. Yes, social justice, integrity, non-violence… all very unfitting concepts for the Christian right it seems.
(Via Feministe).