Jenny’s Pennies

Swedish readers, head on over to the Amnesty Press website and read this story about the situation in the occupied Gaza and about how it is reported in the media. Not because I wrote it, but because it is damn important.
Let’s hope that the truce holds.
Also, have a look here.

From the BBC.

A German citizen has gone to court in an attempt to force his government to seek the extradition of 13 suspected CIA agents who allegedly kidnapped him. Khaled al-Masri says he was abducted in December 2003, flown to a US detention centre in Afghanistan and tortured. Mr Masri was released in May 2004 after his captors allegedly told him he had been mistaken for someone else.

I wish him the best of luck - it’s absolutely appalling that you could be kidnapped and tortured “by mistake” and then receive no compensation what so ever.
And towards the end of the article:

Mr Masri says his case is an example of the US policy of “extraordinary rendition” - a practice whereby the US government flies foreign terror suspects to third countries without judicial process for interrogation or detention. He says he was kidnapped in the Macedonian capital, Skopje, in 2003, flown to a secret prison in Afghanistan, nicknamed the “salt pit” and tortured there. On his flight to Afghanistan, he says, he was stripped, beaten, shackled, made to wear nappies and drugged. Mr Masri says he was finally released in Albania five months later after the CIA realised they had got the wrong man. He told the BBC in February 2007 he had been “traumatised” by his experiences.

Why the hell do they put scare quotes around the word traumatised? Of course he was traumatised, he was freaking kidnapped, taken to a ghost prison and tortured. And then finally after five months of hell the Central Intelligence Agency - what kind of intelligence do they operate on?! - realized they had the wrong guy. Dear BBC “editor”, I think you would be traumatised by that too.

Ok this is a bit late, but.

As you might know, a big conference on Iraq was held in Stockholm last Thursday. Condoleezza Rice was there, and Dagens Nyheter scored an interview, which was overly polite and fawning - it ends with a question about her piano playing career.

And in there, there’s this:

/…/ Or how long does the United States plan to stay militarily in Iraq?
- Well, we are there by invitation of the Iraqis. We are there to help them defend themselves against enemies like al-Qaida, to train their forces so that they can handle their own security, which they to an increasing degree does. The United States does not want permanent bases in Iraq. But we will help the Iraqis to finish the work they have begun - to build a stable and decent society.

Yeah there are a load of stuff to bite into in that answer (about permanent bases for instance), but… The US are in Iraq by invitation of the Iraqi people to help them defend themselves against al-Qaida? Really? I thought you were there to find those WMDs? No wait, sorry, it was to remove Saddam Hussein. No wait, sorry, it was to bring peace and freedom. No wait, sorry…

And that - the statement that the US are in Iraq by invitation from the Iraqis - got no follow up question. Nothing. What kind of a journalist makes stuff like that (and more) just pass by?! (yeah, I know the answer…)

On April 7th, two women journalists were brutally killed in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. Teresa Bautista Flores, 24, and Felicitas Martínez, 20 worked for the community radio station La Voz que Rompe el Silencio (“The Voice that Breaks the Silence”), serving the Trique indigenous community.

From El Enemigo Común:

The Triqui indigenous people of San Juan Copala in southern Oaxaca, saw their first radio station, La Voz que Rompe el Silencio, as a major victory of their struggle. When the community declared itself an autonomous region on January 21, 2007, it vowed to stay independent from any party affiliation or influence, creating even a Police of the Community (Policia Comunitaria) to replace government armed forces in the region. The radio was to serve the Triquis people to promote unity, overcome conflicts, and encourage communication among communities, including those that are not formally members of the autonomous region. The radio stressed from the beginning the importance of promoting diversity within the station with the participation of women and particularly, the youth.

Oaxaca suffers from political tensions and attacks from paramilitary forces on the indigenous communities are common. The state of press freedom is very poor. According to the Mexican branch of the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC) there have been acts of violence against other small radio stations belonging to indigenous groups in Oaxaca, such as Radio Nandia in 2006 and Radio Calenda in 2007.
Reporters Without Borders has more. Mexico was ranked as number 136 in their annual press freedom index (2007), and declared the most dangerous country on the continent for the press.

AMARC has released an action alert asking for prompt clarification of the murders, punishment of those responsible, and protection for the witnesses and their children. The whole urgent action appeal with contact information to relevant persons and authorities can be found here.

Via A Womyn’s Ecdysis who says:

So, while some of us contemplate the silence that makes us uncomfortable and squirmy in our easy chairs, chew on this: These womyn died on their way to give and because of their voice.

Are you, am I, are any of us western feminists anywhere close to filling even a thimble’s worth of significance and relevance with respect to what is happening to womyn around the world?

The immensely tragic and terrible murder of a 10 year old girl is all over the news here. Understandably people are scared, angry and sad. But besides the empathy and solidarity with the girl’s family and friends, there is also a darker side to it, fueled by sometimes speculative and vulturelike media reporting. People talk about torture, death penalty and mob justice. Karin Thunberg, reporter at Svenska Dagbladet had to close the comments section of her blog because it totally got out of hand. She has written a very good column that you can read here, where she says:

We can’t begin to look at every stranger, especially if it happens to be a man, as a potential criminal.
What happened to Engla lies beyond what we, at least as outsiders, can feel or understand. For real.

But we win nothing if we start to see the exceptions as the normal. In the society where everybody is scared of each other and expects hell to lie behind the next turn, there it becomes even more dangerous to live.

For all of us.

Now media researcher and professor Stig Hedenius, has proposed that media should be less cautious about publishing names of criminals and of suspects in crime investigations (see also SvD here).
He argues that by publishing names of suspects, we can avoid tragedies such as this one. That if people had known the name of the 42 year old who has admitted to murdering Engla (and also to another murder years ago), then Engla could have been alive today.
That is of course a purely theoretical argument which relies on a lot of “ifs”.

The media and the public should not be a substitute for courts and the rule of law. I agree there are a lot of problems with our criminal justice system, but the solution must never be to dismantle the legal rights of the individual (yes, even if that individual is a murderer and pedophile of the most heinous and awful kind) and to let the profit driven media and revenge hungry public act as the prosecutor and the judge. There are other ways to make our criminal justice system better.

We already know that the media is driven by selling papers (or getting viewers) and making money, and that their track record of respect for truth and decency is less than perfect. A few weeks ago, we had another tragic murder case, where two little girls were killed and their mother seriously injured. Before long, media had pointed out the father/husband as the perpetrator. But oups, turns out he was innocent, and the suspect is now a German woman. And when foreign minister Anna Lindh was murdered in 2003, a man called “the 35 year old” was pointed out as the killer. No name was published in that case, but enough details to identify him anyway if you cared to. He was innocent too. Being at the wrong place at the wrong time should not get you plastered all over placards and front pages. That isn’t something we as citizens should have to live in fear of.

I’m not saying that names and pictures of suspects should never be published. If the police investigation is seriously stuck and a name/picture publishing would move it forward, then yes, it can be okay. But only in close cooperation with the police, and not without serious consideration of the consequences. Unfortunately, I don’t trust the media to make that call. Today one one tabloid screams “How he became a murderer”. As if they have the answers to that.

And they see their circulation go up when tragedies happen. Grieving mothers, monstrous killers, those thing sell. What is really public interest here? Do we need close ups of crying neighbours, do we need nosy interviews with people who went to school with the suspect 30 years ago? In whose interest are those things published? Not in the victims’ and not in the public’s anyway.

Free newspaper Metro (Swedish edition) does it again. Who the hell writes their headlines? The headline in question was published Monday and said: Female terror increases dramatically (”Kvinnoterrorn ökar dramatiskt”).

Wow, has a female suicide bomber struck again? Has the number of female hostage takers, murderers, stalkers and torturers gone up? No, the article deals with the fact that the number of reported cases of violence against women have increased in Sweden - seven new cases are reported daily.

So why on earth does Metro use the term “female terror”? It is hard to convey it accurately in English. But to try to clarify: if you use the phrase “police violence” (”polisvåld”) it is obvious that it is a police who is the perpetrator. But often in Swedish, the analogous “female violence”, “kvinnovåld” in Swedish, is used to describe violence against women, even though the most obvious interpretation of the phrase is that the perpetrator of violence is female. I have no idea why this is, but people keep using it.

So now Metro used the world “female terror” (”kvinnoterror”). Let’s replace the world female with, well how about religious, Muslim, American… Who would you interpret as being the terrorist then?

Blogger Annakristina spotted the misleading headline and e-mailed the journalist about it, using the analogy with “Muslim terror”. The answer she got was poorly written and the journalist completely and utterly missed her point. The journalist answered (my translation): A woman who is subjected regularly to this terror in her home, has probably little understanding for the fact that there are other forms of terror in the world who by impartial observers should be seen as more serious.

Big WTF?!?!

Via ETC.

(Other example of Metro stupidity here)

I picked up a copy of the free newspaper Metro when I went to Stockholm yesterday.
At page four, they ran a story titled “A brightening future for female business owners” (”En ljusnande framtid för kvinnliga företagare”).
And, along with the article, a picture of a mop and a bucket.

Yes, a mop and a bucket is, according to Metro editors, the perfect way to illustrate that Svenskt Näringsliv (the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise) believes that the possibilities for Swedish women of starting their own business are really good right now.

Because, you know, you should start your business within something you’re good at. And everyone knows that women are just born with a mop in their hands.

It is also disheartening that the reason that the time for a woman to start her own business is now, is that the public sector is being more and more privatized. Thus Svenskt Näringsliv believes that the possibilities for business ownership for women lies within the traditional female spheres of taking care of children and the elderly, tasks which previously has been the responsibility of the public sector.

I am no friend of privatization, but as it says in the article, there are many women within for example child care who have years of experience and are extremely competent, and if they feel that they want to try it on their own, best of luck to them. It is just sad that within some editor’s head, female entrepreneurship = mop and bucket.

Update: I did a Google search on the article headline to try and find a link for it (no luck on the Metro website), but I only found Katrineholms Syndikalistiska Ortssektion (the syndicalist section of Katrineholm) who also have noticed the awful picture choice.

I read through my post about how the blogosphere is new feminist ground and realized that it could be read as though I had a disdain for young blonde women who blog about fashion and such issues. Which I assure you, I have absolutely none.

My point was only that usually when mainstream media reports about women and blogging, they seem to focus on the fashion bloggers (who can be both well-written and fun to read, although I’m not a regular visitor to their sites), whereas other subjects are often disregarded. Which is how mainstream media works. Which is why blogs are good.

So, no offense to fashion bloggers out there. The internets are big enough for all of us, and there is certainly no need to erect a wall between “fashion bloggers” and “political bloggers” - there can be dialog, critical examination on both sides, and learning from each other.

I was quite surprised this evening when I looked at the website of Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter and found an article about the blogosphere as the new ground for spreading the message of feminism and voicing women’s opinions that don’t fit in the usual media discourse.
Article here (in Swedish).

The article was based on a panel discussion held today with participation from, among others, the political party Feministiskt Initiativ (Feminist Initiative, link in English here).

The short article was quite shallow and didn’t really say anything new, but it was nice that for once we got a media report about women and blogging that wasn’t about young blondes writing about fashion and celebrities. And it was featured prominently way up on the front page, with a big headline, and not tucked away somewhere in the arts section.

(Maybe there will be a better report in the paper tomorrow, but I’m not holding my breath.)