The Swedish election is drawing close and all parties try to make themselves shine by slandering the other parties/the opposing political block. This is all becoming very American; today there are only two big political blocks, left and right.

En route to work today I was accosted by two political propagandists trying to sway me by being offensive. I told one of them to move out of my way as he was blocking my way, literally; he didn’t reply other than by holding out a flyer towards me. I repeated what I said and then told him, again, to move out of my way. He did. I’m not voting for your party, fucker.

Then idiot #2! As I arrived in Liljeholmen, I found myself thwarted by a sucker who pushed a flyer into my chest. I asked him if he knew what he was doing, to which he just didn’t reply. I walked past him and angrily walked to work.

Utter bastard. Needless to say, that party isn’t getting my vote either.

Of course, the parties can’t be held fully responsible for what their representatives do, but I’m sick of their vile propaganda. And I wouldn’t have voted for either party even if tomorrow had never happened.

So what else? Loads of work. Tomorrow I’m working in the evening. This week has been nothing but hard labour during work-hours. What? Doing actual work during work-hours?

I wish I were home right now, making cheesecake. E-mailing Texan friends. Dawdling. Watching the second season of “The Restaurant”. Whipping Petting Blixa. Caring for my wife. My wife. I like how that sounds rolling off my tongue, through the keyboard.

We’ve just started a one-month trial subscription to a Swedish morning paper and as such, I’m suddenly partaking in the game that is the daily news, which is something I’ve skipped except through very filtered ways, i.e. RSS-feeds and Twitter, which are of course very pre-filtered by myself and limited to certain areas; I’m not trying to kid myself to thinking that this paper isn’t filtered in every way, from the political arena to who knows who in the editorial office, but it proffers me more than what I’m used to which is really a good thing; it’s lovely to sit and read the morning paper during the weekend with Mia, both of us sipping a cuppa.

Meanwhile, the Swedish TV-jumble that is “Glamorama“, is on TV. A marathon. Mia and I dive through the existence of three girls who have much money and no parlay. Anna Hibbs, one of the mains: “The TV-presenter said we’re ‘jet-set girls‘. How could he say that? I only travel by express train!”

I read of the US having left Iraq two weeks in advance of Obama’s promised deadline date, appx. seven years after Bush touted “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!“. Now, Al-Qaeda and their likes have a much stronger fan-base in said country. There are up to a million killed in Iraq during the last seven years. It just makes me want to play Nelly Furtado’s “Promiscuous” as remixed by Holy Fuck, at obnoxious levels and forget about the entire, maddening thing. Bureaucrats making decisions that affect millions, not even having to push the button that launches the missiles.

Blixa sits comfortably numb on the back of our fat-screen TV, warming herself while definitely not watching what’s going on. Her eyes are even closed.

And the day has just started. Sunday at home. Mmm!

A Thai organisation have made the above film about how Thai workers are lured to Sweden to pick blueberries during the summer. The workers are basically promised the world, but end up entrenched in the middle of nowhere (e.g. the deep northern part of Sweden), having to pay extreme monies for rudimentary things like transports and living arrangements which, in the end, ends up placing a lot of them in debt rather than making them money. There are, according to Dagens Nyheter, appx. 150 court-cases going where Thai workers have sued their previous employer in this mess. Another scary thing¹

The number of foreign berry pickers in Sweden is expected to be a third compared with last year. This despite prognoses that 2010 will be a very good berry year.

The reason is according to the Swedish Trade Union Confederation a new minimum wage.

Here’s to the high cost of low living and maybe it’ll even hand a little perspective to all the Swedes who zone in on foods labelled “Made in Sweden” at the supermarket.

1. Courtesy of Thai Labor Campaign and Stockholm News.

This is a book written by a Swede who has intricate relations with people on the political left in Serbia; she writes of daily life in Belgrade and how the LGBT part of the population is treated and has been for the past decades, and of their struggles.

As Belgrade, the rest of Serbia and the former republic known as Yugoslavia is rising from the cinder that remains of the long internal and external wars, dictators and so-called ethnic cleansings, the desire to come back to life and to join the European Community is stronger than ever. Sadly, some prejudiced views of the LGBT community are hard to squash, and the government doesn’t really do anything to help out here.

Wassholm follows different types of people, all activists in some sense of the word, from well-known figures to persons who have discovered their sexuality and are trying to live in an environment that can be very dangerous and at the same time strangely looks like it’s becoming more open. Or so it seems.

The activists fight and fight against what seems like perennial oppression both from the government and the government-favoured right-wing and fascists.

Then there’s the enflamed discussion regarding the independence of Kosovo to consider, not to mention the massacre in Srebrenica.

I think this is a very interesting, in-depth look into the lives of a few activists who are trying to live in a growing Serbia where the government is fairly corrupt, you can easily get beat down in the streets for proclaiming your sexuality and there’s a lot of partying going on.

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Imagine “The Office” in political shape, if you will; the highest political level in Great Britain – bar the corporations. the lobbyists and Rupert Murdoch – where the Prime Minister is surrounded by people trying to help and scorn him at the same time – mostly the latter. The film involves the British politicals trying to avoid or attain war together with their American counter-parts through an assortment of ways during this quick-paced and extremely funny film. My comparison with “The Office” extends to using very similar embarrassing and highly painful scenes, e.g. mistakes being endured through silence and anger, somebody behaving in a way that is embarrassing to all except him/her, et.c.

The film seems based on “The Thick of It“, a TV-series that I have not seen, using the same people in the film except for the Americans. In the film, James Gandolfini makes a funny appearence as an American general, Steve Coogan comes through as an angry, funny, navel-gazing bastard but really, Peter Capaldi steals it all through his performance as Malcolm Tucker, the angriest witty, political man in the world.

Peter Capaldi vs Chris Addison

Cinema Blend offers this quip on the film, which I find says a lot about the humor:

I love a movie that can put out a great line like, “Climb the mountain of conflict? You sounded like a Nazi Julie Andrews,” and have it be number 114 on the list of the best lines of the movie. The problem is that the 113 lines from In the Loop that are funnier are so replete with “F***”, “s**t”, and “lubricated horse c**k,” that I had to go way down the list to find one that could be written without **** in this review. This movie is one of the most foul-mouthed that I can remember. It’s also incredibly funny and, if you’re a tree-hugging liberal, it throws in a little anti-war satire to boot. Just remember turn on the subtitles, you’ll thank me later.

At the end of it, I found myself missing the cast a little even though most of them were complete knobheads. Loveable knobheads, through all of their cowardice, trials, accomplishment, torment and utterly stupid action. This is a firm recommendation to all lovers of quick dialogue, humor in the darkest of times, insult-laden pop-culture references and anti-heroes.

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Despite the Michael Moore-isms here, e.g. comparisons with “Europe”, the cheap tricks, e.g. trying to force his way into banks to get his monies worth as they’ve squandered tax-payers’ cash, this film works. Mainly as a wrecking-ball of sorts, as I mostly deem this film as a vehicle to get to Americans, not to reach the global market. Which it incidentally does; the world economy is not very much unlike the American one, as we’re all victims of globalisation and corporations becoming bigger than governments. Moore’s strength lies in simplifying stuff and using humor and tragedy in parallel to reach his goal, to display how the richest people in America get more and more money while the working class, the people at the bottom and those beyond that are trampled on in the name of Money. Even though I think Moore tramples logic in the face by trying to show how capitalism is anti-christian and hence bad (as I deem christianity to be just as bad, if not worse than capitalism), I feel this is a film that is current and worthy of watching – albeit with two open eyes, a critical mind and a will to delve further into politics and other ways of living.

We get an American judge who earns millions of US Dollars per kid he sentences to months of jail-time for piffle crimes, stats on the world, e.g. that the top 1% of the population controlling more financial wealth than the bottom 95% combined, and Moore wonders where the $700 billion bailout money which Congress gave to the big banks and Wall Street investment companies went.

It’s a flawed film, but entertaining, funny, tragic and horrible; mainly, it makes me want to react, rebel and illuminate myself further, and there’s no wrong in that. Like Zack de la Rocha once said: your anger is a gift.

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• Q&A: Why Michael Moore Hates Capitalism (time.com)
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Or could it be the fucking cold has killed parts of my brain? Most definitely.

This Saturday, Mia, The Pirate Cats and myself were celebrate Criz’s birthday and moving in with her boyfriend at their place, which is located on the same subway-line that Mia and I live on. But wait up, I’m moving too fast.

In the morning of said Saturday, I met up with Jesper, his girlfriend Malin, Stephan, Peter and Tenne. We all collated to help Malin move in with Jesper, so I went by subway to Slussen, changed to the red line for Hornstull. No problems there, everything went as it should. Put some more intensified feeling of distress, frustration and hate into those italics, will you, please? We did our thing, ending me up in Huddinge. As I was to go home by Huddinge train station, the signs said everything was delayed. At the time I reached the station, the trains were delayed by 45 minutes already. Add 45 minutes of waiting to that. Then triple the time it usually takes for the train to reach its destination. I then walked from Södra station to Medborgarplatsen, heard three different announcements over the speakers and waited for 45 minutes for the subway train to come. The train travelled two stations before their system broke down, and I had to wait 30 minutes in the open, blistering cold at Gullmarsplan for a replacement bus and was lucky enough to see it go the entire distance. It took 30 minutes before I got home.

Back to the future; Mia and I were underway towards Slussen, on our subway line. While sitting down a guy, maybe 15 years old, sat down in a seat two jumps in front of mine, one eye very swollen, face filled with wounds and gushing blood. People jumped as they saw his face. Breathing heavily, he looked back and forth in the aisle in the middle of the subway cart, and stopped a lad smaller than himself, maybe 12-13 years old, who carried a plastic bag.

- Give me your bag.
- What? Why should I?
- Because I tell you to. Give it to me now.

And the boy gave the robber his plastic bag and walked away. A few seconds passed, and the latter went in the opposite direction of his victim. Nobody tried to stop the robber. I won’t make excuses; I was afraid of him. I thought he’d might bleed on me and give me HIV; I’m telling you what went through my mind at the time. But I could have said something. Fuck.

We went on by subway towards Slussen, a station where we were to meet the Pirates. Or, rather, we crept forward. Crept. We met them, jumped on another subway which stopped at Alvik which is where our real problems began.

SL, Stockholms Lokaltrafik (which means Stockholm Public Transport), had “ordered buses” to replace the train for the remainder of our trip. As we stood in a sea of aggravated fellow travellers, we witnessed ONE bus come and go during our 40-minute stay there. We called Criz, told her we weren’t coming to celebrate her and Daniel, and tried to get on the train back. Only, that train wasn’t moving anywhere. And there was no train to begin with.

So we’re stranded in the middle of Alvik, late evening at -8 degrees Celsius, with nowhere to go, and a seemingly ironic, non-aiding Stockholm Public Transport system to “back us up”?

T called for a taxi, waited 10 minutes in line to speak to an operator and soon thereafter, we were sitting in a warm car, almost got hit by a bus but were well on our way to the Pirates, where we de-frosted, warmed up, cuddled with their cats and drank the wines and spirits that we had brought along on our journey. Needless to say, we had to take a taxi home afterwards. But it was well worth it; and SL will pay for both of our fares.

I cannot state enough, through my decrepit body, how much I deplore and loathe the Stockholmian transport system at winter. I understand that this winter is exceptionally cold and long, but as I today sit sick, throat rattling more than that of Shane MacGowan and Tom Waits combined, I see a queue of people from my living-room. This queue is probably around 100 meters long, and they’re all queuing up to go to work – by replacement bus.

The Stockholm Transport System’s web site is down at the moment, either because 1) it’s build by the people who run the Stockholm Transport System and it’s just a synergy effect or 2) everybody in Stockholm wants to know if they’re more likely to die on the way to work than actually get there. But the mobile site works, and the part in regards to delayed traffic on the subway says “all traffic above earth is cancelled” when it comes to the green line where I connect to traffic; how much of a bad joke is that?

So, without any respect and most due, I say: fuck you, SL. Get your shit together now.

Five-dollar registration fee for persons planning to overthrow US government

Terrorists who want to overthrow the United States government must now register with South Carolina’s Secretary of State and declare their intentions — or face a $25,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison.

Speaking of mad things… In Stockholm, Sweden, a person has blogged this (in Swedish) regarding how two policemen start harassing him for taking their pictures as they’re harassing two teenage boys. From his post:

Så på behörigt avstånd (för att inte störa poliserna i deras arbete) tog jag jag tre snabba bilder med min kamera. Poliserna undrar vad fan jag håller på med och jag förklarar att jag inte fotograferar de båda ungdomarna utan bara de två poliserna. Jag frågar om de är poliser men de svarar avböjande och istället undrar den första polisen varför jag tar foton och jag förklarar att jag skriver om kollektivtrafik och kontrollsystem. Då bryter helvetet lös.

He also produced the following video of this; it’s repaired due to some video damage that appear as skips in the video, but do keep in check with his blog as the full video may pop up soon. In any aspect, it’s completely mad and I hope these two persons get what they deserve.

As a sort of antidote:

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From The Genius of Charles Darwin Uncut Interviews. “Wendy Wright is President of Concerned Women for America (CWA), the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization. Miss Wright promotes legislation and international policies that are beneficial to women and families, briefs congressional and presidential staff on pro-family issues, and trains grassroots activists. She is frequently interviewed in national media on moral, social and political issues. Miss Wright was named among “The 100 Most Powerful Women of Washington” in 2006 by the Washingtonian Magazine. The National Pro-Life Religious Council awarded Wendy for her “continuous leadership in the cause of life.”

Now, having seen the entire dialogue on the matter of Darwinian theory between Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist, and Wendy Wright, christian, I must warn the sensitive viewer to refrain from physically jumping out of your seat as the latter separates “science” from “facts”¹ by trying to conjure a vision of science as a way of “unlocking” the secrets that are hidden to us (by god); now, “facts” to her, as far as I understand Wright, are “truths” that are yet to be unlocked. Hence, in Wright’s world, just because something isn’t scientifically proven doesn’t mean that she can’t say it’s true.

So, with that in mind, consider the following in this paragraph to be an open letter: Wendy Wright, I believe that god has sent me to perform open-heart surgery on you to prevent demons from ever locking your mind. I believe that your god has told me so, and hence, it’s true. When can I start?

From the dialogue in the below video:

Wright: Let me ask you: why are you so aggressive? Why is it so important to you that one believe like you believe?
Dawkins: I’m not talking about belief, I’m talking about facts. I’ve told you about certain fossils. And every time I ask you about them, you evade the question, and you talk about something else.

Straight-forward enough. Wright doesn’t respond to this other than she has been thought; when overwhelmed by logic, run another way. And she does, by talking about something different. To me, this polemic is very akin to that of right-wing American demagogues.

By the way, I love how Wright wavers on the matter of how old the Earth is. Wonderful.

Even though I object to how Dawkins would like atheists to refer to themselves as “Brights”, I feel he makes a lot of valid points; in this instance, as far as I know, I’m with him all the way. Besides, when trying to discuss any matter scientific with somebody who believes in magic (e.g. “intelligent design” and christianity), you can only get to a certain point in discourse until their stabs at logic expose these persons for what they are made of.

At the end of part three of the video below, Dawkins asks Wright to point to any positive scientific evidence in favour of creation, and Wright brings up DNA. She explains that the fact that everybody is different means that creationism is valid and true. Dawkins points to the fact that her theory supports Darwinian theory. As Dawkins asks Wright: “Is that evidence against evolution?” I also like how Wright repeats the phrase “the Smithsonian institute” as if the mantra would ward off or, in the least, speak against the Darwinian evolution theory.

Wright as she is calling Dawkins condescending, which, in itself, feels condescending to me; during the entire interview, Wright uses a phrase that she calls “ad hominid” (e.g. in part 1, at 06:08), which I guess should be “ad hominem“; of course, this is valid in her attempts at discourse, not with Dawkins’.

Dawkins: You said there was no evidence of intermediates in evolution, and I told you about five fossils, and–
Wright: And I say if those were valid, there would be tons of evidence–
Dawkins: There is.
Wright: –because there are so many different species, that there ought to be tons of evidence, even, let’s say, for one per-cent of the, eh, macro-evolution that’s taken place, there should be evidence, but–
Dawkins: There is.
Wright: –there’s not even one percent, let alone ten or fifty or seventy percent.
Dawkins: There is a massive amount of evidence. You just need to go into the books and go into the museums, and look at it. It’s there. You are believing people who are telling you there’s only [can't hear the number /Niklas] percent.
Wright: And again, I go back to… It’s…it’s very demeaning, to say, that we only believe what we believe because we’ve been told that, and yet, we have evolutionary scientists who want to be the ones to tell all of society what is fact and what’s not fact, and to censor out information that is inconvenient.
Dawkins: I’m asking you to go and look at the facts; I don’t want you to believe me. Just look go and look at the facts.
Wright: And I have.

What?

The very best part that I sincerely recommend that you see if you won’t watch the entire thing (after all, it’s long and this is the Internet age), is the end of part 6, where Dawkins polemically pokes Wright in both eyes by calling her out on her using the word “evidence” in a, shall we say, logically speaking unsatisfactory way. Here’s the video, and go to 06:20 and into the last part, #7 to catch the biz in its entirety.

Sadly, and good for the sake of argument, Dawkins’ polemics allow Wright to expose herself as the ignorant anti-intellectual she is, while I personally feel she’s let off the hook too easily. Admittedly, it’s impossible to debate with somebody who doesn’t answer questions. My polemics would in all probability lead to her quickly vanishing.

Dawkins produces evidence, Wright says he should produce evidence (re. fish fossils in part 7). She says there’s very little evidence of evolution. He points to the massive amounts of evidence that there is. She points to mistakes by evolutionists made in the Victorian age, and Dawkins says that yes, those were mistakes, but doesn’t even mention the apparent mistakes that are in the bible (e.g. that the Earth is flat), basically because it’s man-made.

The end of part 7 is quite interesting during Wright’s monologue: while she is quite oblivious to what Dawkins previously said (as usual), first talking about a loving god that brings “order in this universe”, and then literally says that her lobbyist group works towards the “best society”; she also says their “moral laws” are “the best for each one of us”.

Here’s the entire video playlist, meaning that when one part ends, another one is automatically continued:

1. Which are, I must warn you, terms that aren’t completely easy to comprehend as far as they appear to Wright; see the interview and note how Dawkins (unsuccessfully) tries to get Wright to define what the word “evidence” means to her.

Obviously, the two are very sharp objects, but Stewart doing a spider-impression in the middle of faux-political discourse is hilarious. And also:

Stewart: You’re a news organisation between nine and eleven, and then you’re “opinions” between eleven and one, except on Jewish holidays…

I love the second part where O’Reilly defends the fact that FOX News (their label) nowadays separate “news” and “opinions” without labelling them once on the air.

O’Reilly: you don’t think people know the Factor is an opinion chair, you don’t think they know that?
Stewart: it’s certainly not clearly labelled; I’ve looked at your promos – you’re part of the “fair and balanced” part.

Also, as quoted from The Hollywood Reporter, but edited and corrected by me:

In the second segment the duo debate whether Fox News is a “fair and balanced” news organization, with Stewart calling the network a “cyclonic perpetual emotion machine.”

“You have become, in some ways, the voice of sanity here, which, as I said, is like being the thinnest kid at fat camp.”

The part at 24:43 where O’Reilly feels like becoming a TV-preacher and Stewart laughs and goes “Oh God”, might be the funniest thing. That, or the fact that streaming this pulp shows what FOX News is about; politics as entertainment. Too bad they’re not trying to combine the funny with truth – do note the words at the top of this screenshot:

The end is just so simple and sweeps away the entire conversation, in a very metaphorical sense regarding FOX and, well, reality:

O’Reilly: you’re out of touch with the folks.
Stewart: the folks?! You live in a castle!