I’ve been cut off from the news during my time in Bogaland (the fictional country where our exercised peace support operation took place) so now I’m trying to catch up with everything that has happened in the world and in Bloglandia.
The Swedish government has decided to make an oversight of the Swedish law making it illegal to buy sexual services. That is needed, as there are a lot of scattered studies, speculations, and right out lies about the effects of the law. But there has been no general governmental analysis of the law and its effects.
But (not surprisingly) the government has given the person conducting the overview a limitation: she is not allowed to propose that the law should be repealed.
So even if the governmental investigator Anna Skarhed were to find that the law has had bad effects on the safety and health of sex workers, that is has not limited trafficking or lead to less violence against women or less child pornography (which it is said to be doing), Skarhed is not allowed to say that it would be a good idea to repeal the law.
I’m not saying that it would be any better if the investigation were to be done with the goal that the law should be repealed. That would be equally bad - studies should be made with an unbiased starting point. It is one thing that the government gives limitations regarding scope, depth and main perspective of the investigations it orders. But they shouldn’t say beforehand what conclusion they want.
And of course it goes without saying that the directives of the investigation doesn’t mention that it would be a good idea to speak to actual sex workers about the effects of the law.
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.
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.
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?
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Member of parliament Fredrick Federly (Centerpartiet, the Centre Party) wants to arrange a PR party for Israel. For those of you who are not familiar with this particular …person (I was on the verge of writing something less polite there, but his own words and actions are all that is needed to figure out what kind he is): he donated money - a whopping 30 dollars - to the Israeli military during the conflict with Lebanon in 2005 and … ok, enough examples: he’s a neoliberal nut job.
Federley will invite foreign minister Carl Bildt to this “fancy party” (his own words), but doesn’t think Bildt will show up as he has “wrong opinions” about the Israel-Palestine conflict (that is, he doesn’t think that it is fine and dandy to kill innocent Palestinian children and that apartheid is a great idea). Federley’s dream guest, however, is Carolina Gynning, who won the Big Brother reality show in 2004 and is mostly known from the tabloids for her breast implants. Federley says:
- We need celebrities to elevate the discussion and change the way young people view Israel.
*blink* - ok, he really did say that. *blink again*
Fredrick, I know partying with celebrities and using reality show winners to elevate the political discussion is a lot of hard work, but I have a suggestion for you. Because you know as a politician that it’s important to listen to all sides of the story and to be willing to learn new things. So I suggest you read this book. It’s very readable, although the contents might disturb you a little. I am willing to lend you my copy.
It’s a sad world we’re living in. But I’m just an onlooker from an insignificant country whose cowardly prime minister didn’t dare to raise the question of Guantanamo and other human rights abuses when meeting with Bush because it could “damage relations”.
So is impeachment still off the table? Because the U.S. has been hijacked by bloodthirsty ghouls and cowards. Of course, this report is not unexpected, and will be cheered by the right wing. It actually wouldn’t be that surprising if the White House allowed this story to get out. They’ve softened up the public enough to the idea of torture, after all.
Can someone please explain: a consensual blow-job is grounds for impeachment, war crimes and lies that has killed hundreds of thousands are not? A sad world indeed.
As an illustration to the previous post, go read this great interview in Dagens Arbete from last year, with Sverigedemokraterna’s spokesperson for labour market policy, Per Björklund. It’s illustrates perfectly how undeveloped SD’s politics are.
The first question, to their spokesperson for labour market policy, is: Can you summarize SD’s politics on labour market issues?. The answer: Nah, I don’t know..
Surprisingly, he can’t explain their primary political goal, to “restore a common national identity”, either. A snippet (my translation):
Define what it is to be “Swedish”.
No, I don’t want to do that. Why not?
I don’t think I know enough to do that. Your entire program is full of expressions about “the Swedish” and being Swedish. You’re a member of the party executive, and you don’t know enough to answer what that means?
Why don’t you say what you think, and I will tell you if I agree. Ok… A person who lives in Sweden and/or feels Swedish him/herself is Swedish.
Right. No, I don’t want to enter that discussion, you have to take it with someone at the party’s press service, Mattias, for instance. Your program says that “The primary goal of the politics of Sverigedemokraterna is to restore a common national identity”. What should that common identity be?
I don’t want to talk about that. The primary goal. You need to be able to discuss the primary goal of your party’s politics.
The primary goal. The most important, the overall goal.
Yes, I know what primary means. No I won’t enter that. I don’t want to discuss the program on immigration policy. Why not?
I haven’t participated in writing the program. I’m the spokesperson for labour market policy. Immigration is your most important political issue. You have been active in SD since 2002. You have a lot of functions and are in the party executive. And you can’t talk about the primary goal of your own party’s politics.
No.
I laugh because it’s so unbelievably stupid, but I also cry because some people think that this country would be a better place if run by people like this. Read the whole interview!
Edit: I had mistakenly written that the interview was in Arbetaren, which is wrong, it should be Dagens Arbete. I have corrected that now, and realize that it is time to go to bed…
Right wing populist party Sverigedemokraterna (SD) is havingproblems. They can’t fill their seats in municipal assemblies; out of their about 140 elected representatives in assemblies around Sweden, 39 have quit since the election in 2006. And their representatives are not participating fully in the political process: they produce very few bills, don’t participate in debates and so on.
Of course this is because SD is a one-issue party: their platform is totally built around the immigration question, over which municipal assemblies have very little influence since it is a state parliamentary issue. To add to that, the party program of SD is really undeveloped - I haven’t heard them say anything about defense policy, or higher education, or monetary policy, or cultural policy, or bilateral relations (unless it’s tied to immigration, of course). And when their municipal representatives are people with little if any political experience and with only one thing to work for - less immigration and more “Swedishness” - well, of course they won’t have anything to say. What do they think about zoning plans, traffic issues, tourism, daycare, public art, housing and other such issues that municipal level politicians are dealing with? They don’t know, cause there’s no party line.
Another reason why people are dropping out is because being a politician in a municipal assembly is lots of hard, and mostly unpaid, work. Most politicians on that level have other ordinary jobs and are doing the political work on their free time. Some, not all, of those who have filled SD:s seats in municipal assemblies around Sweden have been recruited because their were no other candidates. In at least one case, someone had written his own name on the ballot and was then elected because he was the only candidate. And for these people, it now becomes clear that the “I could straighten this place up”-attitude wasn’t quite enough and that it takes more than a strong stance on one issue to actually make an impact and be taken seriously. When faced when the harsh realities of everyday politics, it becomes clear that SD is a very immature party. Hopefully the voters will see that also.
Landskrona in southern Sweden will be the the first municipality to randomly drug test 8th and 9th graders. 20 percent of the students will be randomly selected for the testing. The tests will be administered by the school nurse, and the student’s parents or guardian has too consent as well before the test is administered. The student is allowed to say no, but then a letter will be sent home to the parents. That’s how “voluntary” this is. Of course students who say no will be pointed out as potential drug users and/or troublemakers, disrespectful of authority and refusing to buy the “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to be afraid of”-rhetoric.
Many people are critical, including the Swedish National Agency for Education. Although they are saying that the tests are not against the law, one of their lawyers asks whether it is really the school who should administer these kinds of tests, and also questions how the tests results will be handled with regards to confidentiality.
You know, drugs are definitely a societal problem which should be taken seriously. But blanket testing, disguised under some false voluntariness, is not the solution. I don’t think treating everyone as potential drug users, cheaters (not the sexual kind), criminals etc. are the way of creating a just, equal and thriving society. But what do I know, I’m just a bleeding-heart, terrorist-loving, Sweden-hating, tree-hugging communist.
Due to budgetary cuts, many schools nowadays do not have school nurses or counselors, or only have them very few hours weekly. In total, the number of adults in schools per student has gone down. And now the school nurse’s time will be clogged up from administering and following up and and filing drug tests. Is this wise use of seriously constrained budgets? I ask, wouldn’t it be better to spend the money on real preventive measures instead? (And by that I don’t mean the ridiculous scare-mongering propaganda that I was subjected to in school, the “if you smoke pot once you will end up a heroin-injecting homeless criminal”-kind, which was so easily debunked.)
I haven’t heard a single word about what kind of support would be given to the student who have given a positive drug test - it’s like this that I wrote about screening for partner violence among pregnant women: when you get the results, exactly what are you going to do with it? Report the student to the police? Kick them out of school? Offer them counseling? Enforce mandatory counseling? No-one has said anything about that. Probably they don’t know.
This is another of those measures which sounds good (making sure kids don’t get caught up in drugs, I’m all for that), but which merely paints over the real problems and doesn’t solve anything in the long run. It seems the preferred way of conducting politics nowadays, and I guess anything else would require quite a revolutionary remake of society. And we can’t have that. But now at least the politicians can pat each others backs and say that they are “tough on drugs”.
The debate article I wrote about the other day has gotten a reply from Göran Lantz, professor in health care ethics. It’s well formulated and well reasoned. Anders Svensson has been given the opportunity to reply directly. This time he manages without references to military dictatorships like Burma and North Korea (even though North Korea can’t really be called a military dictatorship, it’s more a personality cult taken to the utmost extreme, but Svensson is a lawyer, not a political scientist, so he’ll get a pass for that one). But he still invokes the image of a country where people are hindered to say and think what they want, and where conversations fall silent in fear of repression:
I was gladly surprised by the positive tone which go through much of Göran Lantz’s contribution. he says, though, that those who want it have freedom of speech. That is actually not the case any longer in Sweden.
Freedom of speech is not that which is marked by the new ground of values of political correctness. On the contrary, freedom of speech is being subjected to serious attacks.
I often think about a headline which struck me already years ago. It says: “When conversation fall silent”. This has already begun in Sweden.
There is only one thing to say about that:
Seriously though, it would be becoming to Svensson and his ilk if they for once would produce any clear examples on how this silencing works and how freedom of speech is being infringed. Also, I am very interested to learn, in clear reasoning, how same sex marriage would affect freedom of speech negatively. Svensson has been allowed two articles in a big and highly regarded newspaper now. Countries in which freedom of speech is truly repressed (like Burma and North Korea) don’t usually let people complain about how they are being repressed. I would like Anders Svensson to talk to some Burmese and North Korean refugees about how Sweden is just as bad as their countries when it comes to freedom of speech. I think they could give him a useful lesson on the subject of what true repression looks like.
Dutch politician Geert Wilders has released his anti-Islam film “Fitna”. It was quite comical today when editorial writer Per Gudmundsson (Svenska Dagbladet) on page 4 in the paper questions whether the movie really exists and complains how it has been stopped by politicians, the media and companies like Google, and then in the same paper, on page 21, there is an article about how the movie is available on the internet. And it’s very Google-able. Per Gudmundsson has noted his mistake.
From what I have read about the movie (I’m sorry, but I’m not going to watch it. Scold me all you want for it, but I’m not) it doesn’t really seem like an insightful work of art. Selected quotes from the Quran blended with pictures of the terrorist attacks on New York, London and Madrid, of executions and stonings and other such terrifying things. More pictures of the Quran, and then in the end the sound of a page being ripped out, said to be a page from a phone book, and then a call to the Muslims themselves to rip the “evil pages” out of the Quran.
Some commenters I have read are of course hailing Wilders’ film as a very important wake up call to us in the west. How? What does the movie accomplish? To me, it seems to add nothing new - any one can pick up a Quran at a book store (albeit translated unless you read Arabic) and the movie clips are of the same kind readily available on the internet, and in many cases, on our TV screens during the evening news. An internet documentary, of which there are twenty a dozen. A tired provocation.
It seems as if the right wing populist parties and the extremist islamists are living in some kind of symbiosis - they can’t exist without each other. For the extremist islamists, the movie is yet another reason to preach their hate, and for the anti-Islam populists, the protests become yet another reason to preach their hate and make yet another movie or caricature. And on and on it goes. Sigh.
What I want to know is - if the anti-Islam crowd are so hell-bent on defending our freedom and our way of life against the said onslaught of scary scary Muslims, what is their proposed solution to the “Islam problem”? Because all of the solutions which comes to my mind run quite contrary to that beloved freedom and democracy they so want to defend. So, what do they propose? Deporting all Muslims? Converting them to another religion by force? Forbid all expressions of Islam (however that one will work)? Invade all Muslim countries, kill their leaders and forcibly convert the population to Christianity (the Ann Coulter solution)? Make being a Muslim a punishable crime (and what should be the punishment? re-education? death? prison?)? Round up all Muslims and put them in special camps? What is the idea?
I haven’t heard anyone in the right wing populist anti-Islam crowd actually propose a solution to the perceived problem. It’s like when pro-choicers ask the pro-life crowd what the punishment for having an abortion should be. The answer is — crickets. Or some mumbling about “but that’s not what I meant”. It’s easy to rail and chant and make movies and provoke, but when they are called on the consequences of their ideas, they are mostly speechless.
PS. nowhere in this post have I questioned the right of Geert Wilders to make the movie and to show it. He has every right to do that, no matter how stupid it is. That is not the point.
(I promise, the headline will make sense if you read on!)
Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet publishes a tired old same-sex-marriage-will-destroy-society tirade in their debate section today. It’s written by Anders Svensson, who says he’s a lawyer and law teacher at Stockholm University. I pity his students (and hope they take him on tomorrow):
Imagine a country were the legislators re-interpret human rights according to a value-neutral ideology, where dissidents are violated and where media censors unfit opinions. The military dictatorship of Burma or North Korea? No, it’s the country of Sweden.
Dear Anders Svensson: If you write a long opinions piece about a contentious issue and then get it published in a really large newspaper, where debate ensues and people are allowed to have different opinions and counterarguments are raised and you get support from some and critique from some, and all this happens without the police knocking on your door or you losing your job or getting imprisoned or tortured or threatened - that’s usually a sign that you’re not living in a military dictatorship.
His main argument against same sex marriage is not “won’t somebody please think of the children!” or “horses and box turtles and forty wives oh my!” but this:
It is not hard to see how a gender neutral marriage law would be yet another weapon of censorship against traditional values.
Oh really? What would be censored? How would this censoring work? Would legions of newlywed same sex couples invade newsrooms, lecture halls and kitchen tables everywhere to make sure everyone follows the “homosexual agenda”? Svensson, of course, doesn’t tell. But he sure is censored and oppressed, the poor little sod, sitting there at Stockholm University and getting his writing published in a large private newspaper. Yes, you can really feel the Swedish military dictatorship at work here.
But if the GLBT folks are so powerful that they can impose a brutal military regime à la North Korea on us unsuspecting Swedish citizens (they’ve done a great job of masquerading it as a pretty decent democracy, I can tell you), you would wonder why they haven’t managed to get that gender neutral marriage law passed in the parliament yet. Maybe they forgot to squeeze it in between brunch and facials.
A good society must rest on stable ground of values which are reflected in legislation. What does this ground of values look like? Well, it can’t lack values. In Sweden, we have abolished this ground of values and are traveling down a road of lack of norms. How can the legislature accept this?
If people aren’t allowed to think and speak freely, a democratically stable ground of values are missing. We don’t need any more laws which despite good intentions create a fearful society where conversations die out. I want to warn the Swedish parliament of taking further steps down this road of silence and censorship. The parliament should say no thanks to this sophisticated form of euthanasia for marriage.
As often with these kinds of articles, there’s no substance. No explanations, no examples, no logical arguments, not any arguments at all about why a “good society” can’t coexist with same sex marriage, why same sex marriage hinders people from thinking and speaking freely, which values will be destroyed and how and why conversations will be silenced. No explanation on how man-woman marriages will be “euthanized” if man-man or woman-woman marriages are allowed. No line of reasoning to follow. Just fluff and a lot of words.
Also, note this lovely allegory, used to rail against anti-discrimination laws and policies. As a metaphor for gay people, he uses a weed.
A dandelion isn’t discriminated against because it can’t call itself a tulip.
So, uppity gay-dandelion-weeds should be satisfied with the civil unions they have today (which people like Anders Svensson raised all kind of hell against when they were introduced in the 90s because they would destroy society, but which they now present as a great “separate but equal”-solution) and not destroy the lovely garden of heterosexual tulip-marriages. Dandelions can also silence conversations and turn countries into North Korea. Or something.
Tor of Antigayretorik takes on the train-wreck article here, tireless and to the point as always.
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